Farm IX with Doug Biernacki September 14-15, 2023

Five weeks had passed since our last opportunity to visit to the Farm for dark site astrophotography, andhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/astrojimjohn/53189441426/in/dateposted-public/ we were surprised at one big change. In August we found that prime imaging time between the end of astronomical twlilight and the beginning of astronomical dawn to be barely 5 1/2 hours. As a result of seasonal change, we found three additional hours, and were grateful for the chance to collect even more data.

A more moderate temperature was another welcome change. We found that camp and equipment setup was much less of a burden and we were a lot less fatigued when it came time to do some serious work at the telescopes.

And one last surprise is that we found better sky conditions than in August. Technical issues kept both of us to starting our imaging runs as soon as the sky was dark enough. Otherwise, we would have been able to image during the entire period of darkness.