{"id":149,"date":"2014-10-04T11:29:24","date_gmt":"2014-10-04T17:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/?p=149"},"modified":"2014-10-04T11:29:24","modified_gmt":"2014-10-04T17:29:24","slug":"i-fought-the-moon-and-the-moon-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/?p=149","title":{"rendered":"I fought the Moon and the Moon won."},"content":{"rendered":"

The CSC looked awesome last night despite the moon phase, so I went out for another run at some targets… and practice. I arrived early enough to take flats while I unloaded the rest of my gear and then shot bias frames while I was balancing and doing my polar alignment. The sky was very clear and the visibility was far above average for where I image. The only issue was the moonlight from being about 70% full phase (waxing gibbous).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I was having some trouble finding targets bright enough to image. I blame my ignorance of the night sky for most of that, but the ambient light definitely was part of it. I even had a difficult time with star alignment due to the diminished relative brightness of the alignment stars. Eventually, I shot a few lights and darks of M92 – because it is very bright – just to have something to process, but over the course of a few hours, I tried several targets with no result. I even realigned my mount thinking I surely must be slewing off target. Nope and nope. The night grew colder and even though I was running my dew heaters, I didn’t have them set high enough to prevent moisture from forming on the front element. I will pack a hair dryer for times like this moving forward so I can do a quick recovery.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As the moon moved toward setting, the promise of amazing imaging was near, but I was cold, hungry, frustrated, and out of coffee… all with another hour and a half until moonset. I decided to just pack it in. It was a good learning experience and another night of practicing set up, balance, alignment, acquisition, and tear down of my gear. Practice is good.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Waxing<\/a>
<\/span> Waxing Gibbous<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CSC looked awesome last night despite the moon phase, so I went out for another run at some targets… and practice. I arrived early enough to take flats while I unloaded the rest of my gear and then shot bias frames while I was balancing and doing my polar alignment. The sky was very … Continue reading I fought the Moon and the Moon won.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4P0Vj-2p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/13thstone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}