After a crazy month of September spent crossing the globe on business travel – a week in DC, two weeks in Australia, and a week in Boston – and looking forward at the (equally crazy) calendar for the rest of the year, we decided to take advantage of the October New Moon weekend. I got home late Friday night from Boston and we took off as early as we could get packed up for the dark skies of the Comanche National Grasslands in Southeastern Colorado. We’ve been focused on Base 2 math – with my 2^6 birthday in October 2024 – thus the 2^3 theme of this blog. Two nights of imaging, with two telescopes each planned to image two targets is two raised to the third power, or eight images!
Two nights (5 & 6 October 2024) * Two telescopes (Big Bertha & Southern Cross)
* Two targets per telescope = 2^3 = 8 targets
The collages show the four targets captured by the each of the two telescopes. The collage shows them in the order they were captured as if you’re reading a book from the top left corner. At the bottom of the blog, is the link to the gallery post for each of the images where you can read the fun facts, capture and processing notes, equipment description or just gaze at the full size picture and skip down to the summary section for the basics.
Travelogue & Capture Adventures
We traveled to Comanche National Grasslands for our October dark skies adventure, planning to camp in the Wisdom Tooth Arch canyon area that we’ve enjoyed in the past. We got a late start to the trip because I had been on a business trip (my third in the month of September, including an almost two week trip to Australia). I arrived home late on Friday night from the trip to Boston. We had planned to leave on Sunday morning, but Mother Nature vetoed that “give me a day to finish packing and loading up the Beast” plan with a cloud forecast change. The skies were only going to be clear on Saturday and Sunday night, so we decided we really needed to head out as soon as practical on Saturday morning – which turned out to be about 0930MDT and drive to the Comanche National Grasslands in SE Colorado.
When we arrived and drove into the Picture Canyon area of the Grasslands, we got ourselves a bit turned around. It took us three tries to get into the correct canyon. Once we got to the throat of the Wisdom Tooth Arch, we came upon a sign that said “No Vehicular Traffic” into the canyon! We drove back out of that canyon area along the brow of the canyons, ending up at the spot where we camped the very first time that we camped in the Beast! On this trip we nicknamed the area Comanche Camel Rock for the rock formation that was the NE of our campsite…that Paul captured in the picture below with Zeus and me sitting on the camel’s back.
We set up camp (cleared the cactus and rocks that were in the spot where we were going to put down the ground cloth) and then I started setting up my gear. I’d planned two targets per night (an early setter and a late riser), for each of the two telescopes (Big Bertha and the Southern Cross), for the two nights of imaging (Saturday and Sunday, 5-6 October 2024)…so the 2^3 dark skies trip that did result in eight targets’ data being successfully captured!
Setting up is never a quick process, although I do seem to be getting a bit better/quicker at it. Paul helped by putting the leg pegs into the Southern Cross’ tripod and Big Bertha’s field leveling stand – which saved a good deal of time. Even with that assistance, I ended up setting up Big Bertha in the dark, so for the first night I decided to forego the autofocuser on BB. I did connect the autofocuser on the Southern Cross because the EAF’s connecting boot wouldn’t come off the telescope focuser mechanism when I disassembled it, so it was a relatively easy installation.
The first night was very windy, causing a number of power and focusing issues. Also, I discovered that although I thought I was polar aligned, when I polar aligned on the second night both rigs were substantially out of alignment. So, while I benefited from the rich colors afforded by dark skies, the star trailing on all the images captured that night is evident if you look close enough – so no pixel peeping please!
The second night was much calmer – both from the wind and rushing to set-up to beat the darkness perspectives. I polar aligned – finding both rigs to be substantially out of alignment – more so than the normal settling between sessions would account for. I’d taken the time during the daylight to attach the autofocuser on Big Bertha (but didn’t test it – so ended up not using it for imaging after all). So, I was completely ready to go and just waited for the sun to set far enough below the horizon to get the night’s activities started. Everything went much more smoothly – collecting on two targets per rig from the end of astronomical twilight on Sunday night until its beginning on Monday morning.
The specific information on each target’s collection is included in the entries for that deep sky object. The summary of the collection across all the equipment, targets, and nights is highlighted below.
- The first night was a late start (Southern Cross’ first image capture started at 5Oct2024, 2051MDT, Big Bertha’s was at 5Oct2024, 22:34MDT).
- I had some (what I thought was strange at the time) power/connection issues with the RST-300 (BB’s mount) which was connected to the dedicated “power panel” that Paul had installed on the passenger side of the Beast, that draws from the house batteries. The power booster that Paul designed constructed was connected to the end of DC cable coming from that power panel – which works like a charm to give greater than 12V power for the RST-300 throughout the night. But the issue was the laptop’s comm port wasn’t being recognized (even though it was showing on Equipment Manager) by the RST-300’s ASCOM driver. Many laptop and mount reboots didn’t solve the problem – only turning the power off, disconnecting the power cable from the Beast’s power panel and the power booster and starting from a cold start solved the issue (and then it worked fine throughout the night). The same thing happened at the beginning of the second night, but it took me far less time to troubleshoot!
- The TS Optics Field Flattener that I’ve used successfully with Big Bertha, ASI2400MC camera to cure the coma at the edges of the image had the opposite effect. The IC59 & IC63 Ghosts of Cassiopeia image (my first image of the first night with BB) was filled with comma-shaped stars throughout the field! So, when I switched targets, I took the FF off for the rest of the trip.
- I also had power issues with the Southern Cross, which was connected to the cigarette lighter plug that Paul had installed drawing power from the vehicle’s battery. The connection has never been very secure. I didn’t realize that the wind would have such a deleterious effect on it. When I came out to change Southern Cross targets at about 00:30MDT, I discovered that while the mount was still powered and tracking, the laptop had shut down and would not recognize that it was plugged in. Before starting up again on the second target, I connected a DC extension cable to the Beast’s back-end power outlet (which to this point had been a more reliable connection than the front-end battery connection). That worked until it didn’t! Something terminated the M45 Pleiades sequence at 0322MDT when the autoguider lost its guide star. I haven’t dug into the logs to see if I can get more details on exactly what happened – but it was likely the wind wreaking havoc on either the power connection or the autoguider.
- On Sunday morning, in going through the power issues I had with Paul (the real/practical electrical engineer in the family), he told me how sensitive DC is to slight perturbations. The wind or not inserting and turning the cigarette lighter connection to make sure it is secure could have been the root cause of my issues on Saturday night. So I made sure to do that for Sunday night’s imaging (of course, there was no wind) and only had the repeat of the BB comm port glitch at the switch from polar alignment to SGP imaging at the beginning of the evening and then I was golden with power on both rigs throughout the night.
- I didn’t connect the autofocuser to Big Bertha on the first night because I didn’t have the courage to work with all the small screws, nuts, bolts to attach it in the dark. I did connect it during the day on Sunday to use it during Sunday night’s imaging. But – I’d forgotten to bring BB’s new rack and pinion focuser, so I was using the original Orion Crayford focuser. The EAF focusing shaft knob was connected to the EAF, so I just had to install the bracket and attach to BB’s focuser’s shaft. When I did that, I noticed that the knob was just barely contacting BB’s focuser’s shaft, but at the time I didn’t think I had (didn’t want to take the time/energy to) any way to test it. I could/should have set up the laptop to test it in the daylight. Because when I started the sequence with the EAF in the stream, it was barely moving the focuser (even though I had it set for a step size of 175). At that point…in the dark…I took a closer look at the connection between the knob and BB’s focuser’s shaft and realized I should have moved the knob away from the EAF end to get more “bite” onto the shaft. That would have required taking the entire bracket assembly apart and off of BB…in the dark…so I opted not to use the EAF for the second night of imaging either.
- As I’m typing this journal (two weeks later) it just occurred to me that the other issue might have been that I had the wrong EAF knob attached. I have to verify the next time I set up BB, but I’m thinking that knob may have been the (bigger) one that I need to attach to the rack & pinion focuser’s shaft.
- I discovered when I polar aligned the equipment on the second night, that both rigs were out of alignment more than the settling overnight would account for – so all the images captured during the first night on both rigs have a substantial amount of star trails.
Despite these issues, I was able to gather data on 2^3 (=8) targets! Even though I didn’t have ideal conditions with the wind, power issues, and the lack of an autofocuser on Big Bertha – as always the dark skies images are still far superior to light pollution filter images under the best of conditions!
The eight images…
The collages at the top of the blog post show the four targets captured by the two telescopes…captured in the order as if you’re reading a book from the top left corner. Below, is the link to the gallery post for each of the images where you can read the fun facts, capture and processing notes, equipment description or just gaze at the full size picture and skip down to the summary section for the basics.
Big Bertha images
5 October 2024, Target #1 (5Oct2024, 22:34MDT – 6Oct2024, 00:53MDT): IC59 & IC 63 Ghosts of Cassiopeia. BeersAstrophotography.com gallery page: https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/ic59-ic63-ghosts-of-cassiopeia/
5 October 2024, Target #2 (6Oct2024, 01:15MDT – 6Oct2024, 05:54MDT): M33 Triangulum Galaxy. BeersAstrophotography gallery site: https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/m33-triangulum-galaxy/
6 October 2024, Target #1 (6Oct2024, 20:18MDT – 7Oct2024, 00:43MDT): SH2-86/NGC6820 Nebulous region in Vulpecula. BeersAstrophotography website gallery site: https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/ngc6820-vulpecula-nebula/
6 October 2024, Target #2 (7Oct2024, 01:05MDT – 7Oct2024, 05:54MDT): My old OCD favorite…IC443 Jellyfish Nebula. BeersAstrophotography website gallery site: https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/ic443-jellyfish-nebula/
Southern Cross images
5 October 2024, Target #1 (5Oct2024, 2051MDT – 5Oct2024, 23:08MDT): SH2-157 Lobster Claw Nebula and its Cassiopeia neighbors. BeersAstrophotography gallery site: https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/cassiopeia-neighbors-sh2-157-lobster-claw-nebula-ngc7635-bubble-nebula-m52-cassiopeia-salt-pepper-star-cluster-sh2-161/
5 October 2024, Target #2 (6Oct2024, 00:45MDT – 6Oct2024, 03:22MDT): M45 Pleiades. BeersAstrophotography website gallery site: https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/m45-pleiades/
6 October 2024, Target #1 (6Oct2024, 19:33MDT – 7Oct2024, 00:27MDT): IC1396 Elephant Trunk Nebula. BeersAstrophotography.com gallery: https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/ic1396-elephant-trunk-nebula/
6 October 2024, Target #2 (7Oct2024, 00:45MDT – 7Oct2024, 05:53MDT): NGC7822 Flaming Skull Nebula. BeersAstrophotography website gallery site: https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/ngc7822-flaming-skull-nebula/