After five or six years of an empty observatory, I am finally getting some gear back in there. Everything is on the pier and all cables are run. As of last night, one camera is fully operational (ASI 071 Pro on a Celestron RASA 11″) and the AP-1200 mount has been drift aligned. I just got the stepper controller for the second telescope’s focuser (SBIG STT-8300 on a Meade 10″ F/8 ACF) running tonight so that will be in service next time I have some sky time out there.

Grabbed a quick test shot of M38 last night. Not surprisingly, I don’t remember everything I know about image processing! This one was a challenge to process anyway due to vignetting (a real challenge at F/2.2) and very short exposure time (5 frames of 2 minutes each). No light pollution filter, no flat frame correction, no guiding. It has been many years since I used a one shot color camera so that was a challenge as well.

Still, it was fun to put an image together again and it does verify that the RASA is working fine and collimation is decent.