It was a pleasant evening last night – very clear, and unseasonably warm (+17 degrees at midnight, after frost the night before).

I was able to capture an hour of Red data for M13 under good steady skies. I thought it might be interesting to share the colour channels data for such projects as they are collected, in case others might like to use them to experiment with processing, colour combination, etc. (I found few such examples to play with when doing my own searching some years ago.)

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Now, in mid-autumn, the sky has rotated to the point where M13 is well-located from my observing spot – and it’s dark earlier too.  So I started an M13 data collection project tonight with 2 hours of luminance data, in 5-minute subs.  Colour will follow over the next few available nights.

I finished the mount and scope tuning, re-did the PEC training, and feel generally ready to start trying the new configuration. I took a quick image of M13 to test. It wasn’t supposed to be a quick image, but I almost immediately ran into a guiding problem, so only got about 25 minutes of data. The problem was just my very limited horizon – my guide star drifted behind an obstacle. I still have to get used to planning where the clear path is for objects I’m trying to image.

It’s supposed to be clear again tonight, so I hope to have a chance for another go.