It was an interesting spring!
January and February:
Cloudy and cold. But that's what late winter is like here, so it was hardly a surprise.
Mid march into early April:
Covid. Yes, after six years of somehow avoiding the thing, we're no longer possible Novids. My wife came down with it first, and because she wasn't showing the classic symptoms we assumed it was just a head cold. Then five days after she started showing symptoms it was my turn, and it was a fun five day run with it. I had the latest variant's calling cards: minor fever and wicked sore throat. Despite not resorting to the Paxlovid thing by day six I was feeling pretty much back to normal. Unfortunately I kept testing positive for a couple of weeks longer, keeping me in a self-imposed quarantine because I wouldn't wish that sore throat on anyone!
Mid April and May:
I splurged and purchased the ASI2600MC, the near-identical twin to my MM model. This year I'll concentrate on imaging with it on my FSQ-106EDX4 and a couple of cameral lenses. I'm curious to see how the results compare with LRGB imaging.
A head cold forced me to cancel new moon reservations at Lac qui Parle state park. I missed one beautiful night of the three I had reserved. Two were cloudy.
I did manage to get out one night and test my backfocus adapters for the new camera. The results were great. Field tilt was essentially zero so the camera has the usual fine ZWO quality. I always use at least one pass of BlurXterminator while processing and its default values produced pinpoint starts all the way to the image corners. Can't really ask for more.
There was a minor disaster when my imaging laptop's Windows10 suddenly decided I needed to log into it and would not accept any of the passwords I had for it. After much research I found that my only recourse was to wipe the machine and reinstall Windows. This meant I lost all my imaging configurations.
Several days of restinstalling software ensued. This wasn't a totally bad thing, as it fixed a problem I was having with getting NINA to recognized my mount. In fact, I can now use NINA's connect all button without it squawking about some sort of ASCOM error.
June:
The last thing I needed to restore was the autofocus parameters for NINA; I've now completed that for imaging with the FSQ plus its focal reducer and with my Samyang 135 mm lens.
Tomorrow night is forecast to be clear, so I'll be going out someplace modestly dark and imaging Sh2-129. Assuming that happens, I'll have the results next time.
