Happy 2023 from the Terrace

The condo association gave me an early Christmas gift cutting down the sky obscuring dying tree outside my terrace. Trees across the way still block my light polluted skies. Nonetheless, I now have a descent strip of sky between 20 and 45 degrees altitude to work with during Orion season. I'll still make trips to my favorite darkish site in Harvard, MA but this will cut down on my carbon footprint as well as freezing toes during winter months. An additional benefit is access to WiFi allows me to monitor the scope using Chrome remote desktop. I'm pleasantly surprised with NGC2359 acquired with 15s subs which I first imaged with 60s subs last April from the McCoy's landing darkish site.  I'll definitely revisit NGC2359 between now and April from the terrace. 

The experiment with finder only All Star Polar Alignment has worked better than expected. Typically, I have only needed the two alignment stars plus two calibration stars after rough alignment with Polaris which is not visible from my south facing terrace. Typically less than 2 degrees of azimuth and less than 1 degree of altitude correction have been needed to correct for axis deviation from polar alignment. Thus far the Celestron AVX GoTo puts targets in the NightOwl  field of view (FOV). To center faint targets I just use Precise Goto which puts a bright star in the field which when centered in the FOV and centers the target with an offset.  Below are targets acquired on 12/27/2022 using 60x15s or 120x15s exposures.  Update: M42 reprocessed for reduced contrast and saturation.

M77 Irregular Galaxy

NGC 1788 Reflection Nebula

Left to Right: NGC2024(Flame Nebula), NGC2023, Horsehead Nebula (B33)

NGC2359 (Thor's Helmet) -- To be revisited

Orion Nebula (M42) again 😂

Alignment and Guiding Experiment

After setting up the telescope I usually do a Celestron AVX all star polar alignment (ASPA) using the visual finder for rough centering then fine centering on the computer screen with the ASI294MC Pro. I thought this might be bit of overkill considering the use of the Orion Magnificent Mini Autoguider. I setup the scope on my 3rd floor patio, as lousy a place for viewing considering no access to Polaris and a tree limited view. The ASPA was performed using the visual finder only starting with  rough north alignment. Jupiter, Saturn were used for alignment and Fomalhaut for calibration star. I usually use two alignment and four calibration stars in the field. Surprisingly only 7' altitude and 7' azimuth corrections were required. Pointing accuracy was less accurate than typical but was good enough to put target on the camera sensor. I had not checked the alignment of the finder with the optical train. This was good enough for M42 but not for NGC2023 so I used precision go to which uses a bright star as a waypoint to the faint target. M42 and NGC2023 with the Flame Nebula and Horsehead Nebula imaged that night appear below. Update: M42 reprocessed for reduced oversaturation.

M42

NGC 2023(center)with Flame Nebula(left) and Horsehead Nebula(right)

Update: A pleasant  start of Orion season surprise. Condo association removed twelve dead trees surrounding my building including the tree right in front of my terrace. Likely the association was prompted by the coming bomb cyclone that will hit Greater Boston with heavy rain and high winds. More sky!! 😀