Humidity problems.

I noticed last time out (which was some time ago) that I was getting some blurry and out of focus images even after carefully adjusting focus and checking that I had no dew accumulation on the front element of my scope. I was almost done for the night, so I didn’t think too much of it, but it happened again tonight resulting in cutting the imaging session short. I didn’t get enough color data to add to this Pinwheel Galaxy, so I’ll have to go back for some more subs another night. I am guessing that the dew forming is somewhere between the rear element of the OTA and the CCD. I really am at a loss, but I’m sure some digging around on the Internet and/or forum queries will reveal the tribal knowledge I need to get past this speedbump. I tested out my first Bahtinov mask tonight – which worked great until my little dew situation. I think only about an hour of Luminance data was usable after ditching some fuzzy subs. I don’t know how to integrate less than three frames per channel in PixInsight (I think that is a limitation by design, but not sure), so I’ll have to do some more RGB on this target next night out. The learning curve on the SBIG is fun to climb, but a mentor would make things a lot smoother. :)

Messier 101