It’s been quite a while since I’ve been able to head outside and shoot. So after obsessing over the weather for the past month, you can imagine my excitement to get out again to take pictures finally. Yet once again, I was reminded that this is not a hobby for people who lack patience. You see my friend Murphy (of the famed law which bears his namesake) decided to tag along for the holiday. So let’s just say for the sake of the pun that he was less than welcome. A disaster no less from the start to the finish of the week and I’m happy to put this year in my rearview mirror. But at least I was able to get outside again after being cooped up to take a few not-so-good images of the California Nebula.
It All Started When…
The first clear night of the past month was at hand. I was more excited for this evening than my boys were for Christmas morning. So I got my trusty Samyang 135mm lens out to test with the mount upgrades that I discussed in my previous post eons ago. The night was a balmy -2 degrees Celcius. My polar alignment was bang on. Now all I had to do was line up the California Nebula and being shooting. So reached down to turn my powerbank on to power my tracker. My powerbank however, had other ideas. Like a fish off a hook, it flipped and wheeled right out of my hands to pancake itself on the ground. No worries I thought – it’s a solid device. On the other hand, my tracker USB port – not so much. The tethered USB cable ended up disemboweling my USB port… Game over for the night.
I took a little solace in the knowledge that I planned ahead for this scenario. I purchased a handful of USB ports and posts for just such an occasion. And I had an added bonus as one of my boys wanted me to teach him how to solder. Cool, fix the star tracker and spend time with my son. Awesome! Except … I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I put those little stinkers. After 2 hours of tearing my home apart, I gave up. Now I’ve got a broken tracker and a messy house. Again, awesome… But I found another port during my search and decided it would do for now.
Fail University
OK, I’ve got my parts, my son, my tracker, and my solder station. Class is now in session. I plugged my iron in and started disassembling the tracker. And just as I started to open the tracker’s electronics housing, observed one of my paddle connectors snapping. Facepalm. Well, OK, that’s just one more thing to fix, no worries. I explained to my son what we were about to do and covered all the VERY VERY HOT safety demonstrations. But curiously, after being plugged in for about 5 minutes now, my iron was – well, not hot. Doh… After 20 minutes of turning the house upside down again, I found my backup iron. Back in business.
So now I’m ready to finally show my son how awesome his dad is. And I did so by expertly soldering two of the USB posts to each other. No, son, it’s not supposed to look like that… Crap, where did I put my solder sucker. Well, apparently I kept that with my USB ports and posts. So now I’m using braided wire to try to undo my initial sodering attempt. Which I succeeded in doing. But not before my teen completely lost interest. Another day I suppose…
Long story short, the tracker is fixed, back online, and reassembled. Time to get out to shoot the California Nebula.
Wait, What?
Outside again and enjoying a rather mild winter evening. As I’m putting my rig together I’m having a little difficulty mounting my tracker on the wedge. What is going on? You’ve got to be kidding me… I put Gamma’s dovetail rail on backward. Ugh. My safety stop is preventing me from mounting the tracker. I discovered though that if I put it all the way back, it would just fit. Not ideal but better than spending another 10-15 minutes fixing the issue. Well, if that’s the worst thing to happen this evening then I’m in good shape.
Polar aligned, and all framed up to shoot the California Nebula. The moon is being a bit obnoxious, but I think it’ll work out just fine. I’m shooting at f/3.2 with an ISO of 800 for 40 seconds. I set my plan to run 200 exposures and I think that will be fine for my first attempt at capturing this target. So I let ‘er rip and Gamma was back to tracking nails. HA HA – TAKE THAT MURPHY !!! I also took darks and flats and wrapped everything up after about 3 hours. Nice.
Processing the California Nebula
Technically, my photos turned out very well. Tracking looked solid and I was only tossing about 1 in 10-15 photos from the session. After reviewing about half of my photos, I decided to run a sample set through SIRIL. It was getting late and I was tired but I wanted to get a sense of how things went. So I processed 100 photos with darks, flats, and biases which took about 20 minutes. Here is the result of my sample stack.
OK Murph, you win… While I was pretty happy with how the California Nebula was shaping up, I was less than impressed with the big booger sitting to its left. I checked my lens and I couldn’t see anything impressive enough to cause the issue. I swapped to my 50mm lens and ran some quick flats and guess what… the booger was still there. Something must be sitting on the sensor. I ran the camera’s sensor cleaning routine but no joy. I need to manually clean the sensor – using stuff I don’t have on hand or probably wouldn’t be able to find even if I did.
On the bright side, my son and I enjoyed a nice little trip to Krakow this morning to pick up a sensor cleaning kit at a local photo shop. And I’m happy, if not relieved, to share with you that after about 20 minutes of careful work, I was able to manually clean my sensor without stuffing anything up. My flats are now coming out clean. Now I just need to wait for another clear night to try again.
Happy New Year!