Two nights in a row! This is a nice monsoon break and it happened on a weekend, so I have been able to take full advantage of the clear skies. Tonight I decided to double my fun. So I set up two scopes, first the refractor to continue acquiring data for M31, which I began last night. Also, I set up the LX200GPS for "First Light" tests with the spectrograph.
It's been great to see the M31 data coming through, after changing the way the focal reducer was attached I am getting much flatter fields. I've got quite a bit of data between last night and tonight, so hopefully when I finally get around to processing it I will get a good result.
The First Light on the spectrograph is also going well. There are definitely some things I need to tweak in the system but at least I have figured out how to set it up and get some data. I'm collecting images on a couple of bright stars. Since I bought it used, it's not really first light for the instrument, but it is for me, which has been a long time coming. It also was a challenge to get the old laptop working adequately tonight, it keeps crashing and the "e" key doesn't want to work.
It's chilly and I'm tired, but it's always fun to see what mysteries the Universe has to reveal on a clear night.
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