There are a lot of sparkly things in the sky...

[chris.bailey]

... and no moon, about bl^&$y time!

[MikeDunn]

but my obs lappy's playing up 

Bloomin' Dell Atitude ... Dell POS more like it 

[ChrisLX200]

Not around here there isn't

ChrisH

[Nomis Elfactem]

There is here too but I've just got back from London after getting up at 5:20am and I'm shagged.... just winding myself up to going out as I'll kick myself if I don't especially as this will be the first time since the beginning of November.... better go and get some snacks for the obsy Gremlins as they are bound to have moved in since I last fired it up !

S.

[Phillyo]

I actually managed to hoover up some photons last night after weeks of issues with the mount and cloudy skies. Now I need to remember how to process it all :/

Phil

[chris.bailey]

Reckon I got 12 hours worth on the same little faint booger. Hope it processes up to something worthwhile.

Clarity at 1am was exceptional here (more than 10 stars naked eye in Pleiades) though seeing deteriorated from under 2 when I did a focus run at 6pm to about 3.5 when I did one at 1am before retiring. Shame we are not getting a few more like it!

[Phillyo]

The clarity was crazy. My guide camera in PHD2 had so many stars to choose from I had never seen anything like it, and when I ran my auto focus routine the screen was full of little white things. One of the best nights i've seen for a while. Unfortunately I didn't get set up till approx 8:30pm as everything had been packed away and the laptop decided to restart itself at approx 3:30am but I think I managed to grab about 5 hours of data in 30min subs on IC410/IC405 in OIII. So we shall see what we have.

Good to be back imaging again! The shed/obsy build has been put on hold until the summer where I can dedicate more time and lighter evenings to the build as I want to do it right.

Phil

[MikeDunn]

Oh that's right ... rub it in 

I gave up on the lappy around 10 last night ... have another look today.

[Phillyo]

Oh that's right ... rub it in 

I gave up on the lappy around 10 last night ... have another look today.

 

[chris.bailey]

Oh that's right ... rub it in 

I gave up on the lappy around 10 last night ... have another look today.

Sorry to here that Mike. I'm a bit OCD about that (and other things!) and run the obsy computer with a mirror of the system drive so it can be swapped over in the event of a drive failure but also keep a laptop up to date so that can be used in the event of a major system failure.

[Nomis Elfactem]

Well, I eventually went out, opened up, fired everything up (and miraculously it appears it's been too cloudy for the gremlins to make home as everything worked first time - result [sorry Mike]).... I aligned on my first star and was just about to move to target (Rosette Neb) when the bloody cloud appeared... as you can imaging the air was red with expletives... packed it all back up and was in bed by 11:30pm fuming... it really is no fun living in the south west of England... the Bristol channel really is the arsehole of Britain when it comes to cloud coming in off the Atlantic.... it's the first place it hits and it always seems to hit early evening 

S.

[ChrisLX200]

Similar story here Si, setup with no problems, ran a new sky model (40mins worth), got on target, focused, 5min into first sub it went cloudy. Never really cleared for the next 1-1/2hrs and Sat24 images were not looking promising so I packed it in and went to bed.

ChrisH

[PaulB]

I've forgotten the last time I did anything.
This must be, the worst winter ever. For Astronomy. It must be very frustrating, for those members who don't have a permanent setup. Or are awaiting a break to test a new telescope, like Chris H.