I managed to get in three observing sessions yesterday. The Sun at around 0900, Venus at around 1830, and some DSO work at around 1930.

The morning session with the Sun went well. I set up with the 60Da on the 4” with a 2x PM. The sky was completely clear when I started setting up, but I was dodging low puffy clouds by the time I started shooting. There was a nice sunspot group approaching the central meridian, and another one about to rotate out of view.

The afternoon session went well too. I set up with the ASI290 on the Meade for shooting Venus. I managed to capture some cloud detail with the UV filter. Processing was interesting. I mapped IR to the Red channel, IR/UV 50/50 to the Green channel, and UV to the Blue channel.

Knowing that Venus is very low by the time it gets dark right now, I was wondering if that would improve over the next couple of weeks. I decided to go ahead and shoot it now, because I found that it is transiting the meridian at about 29 degrees now elevation and that will decrease to about 23 degrees by early November. It was only 18 degrees about the horizon when I shot it yesterday at about 30 minutes before sunset. I will look for another opportunity to shoot it at the meridian, which is about 1545.

After dark I worked with the TV/ASI6200 again. I was marginally smoother compared to the night before in getting everything up and running. Guiding is still crap. I’m going to take a closer look at backlash today. I will stay focused on guiding with this set up until I get it worked out.