Farm VII with Doug Biernacki July 11-12, 2023

This was my first opportunity to work on DSO imaging under a dark sky since correcting the ring problem by flocking the focuser draw tube.

The purpose of this trip was to prepare Doug for the upcoming arrival of his Losmandy G11G by running through my start to finish process for an image session to give him a sense of the end result that you will be striving for as we as we begin to groom his software for the new mount’s arrival. Our target for this session was to image the North America Nebula.

This trip was a little earlier and the lunar cycle than our normal visits just before and just after the New Moon. This is because clouds and smoke precluded any astronomic activity around the June New Moon period, so we wanted to take advantage of a long-overdue clear sky with good seeing and good transparency. The was about 25% illuminated.

With the exception of an injury that required a trip to the Gettysburg hospital, the sesson went very well, and we captured some pretty good data.

The overnight low temperature was down a comfortable 53 degrees, so the furnace was not needed.