Having never set-up near this small rural town before, I was fortunate enough to find some abandoned silos off a country road four miles north of the small town which also provided a windbreak. By the time I had assembled my equipment in a record time of 15 minutes, Polaris was now shining brightly. I loaded my viewing site's new coordinates in the controller after consulting my Polar alignment
Long and short, after attempting to re-collimate my Orion Newtonian's optics, I noted the primary mirror was beginning to fog because I had removed the shower cap to access the screw adjustments. However, once collimated I shot a few frames of M42 and noted the haloes around the brighter stars. Drats, the primary mirror was just a bit too fogged. Shutting that camera down, I went to the Meade 70mm piggy-back scope and noted its front objective was still clear and decided that was my only option for the evening. The humidity was already off the charts and my equipment was already sweating even before the fog began to roll in 45 minutes later. At that point the wind/breeze was less than 3 to 4 mph on the lee side of the silos, the air was remarkably steady - probably close to a Pickering 6 - the sunset afterglow was gone and the sky was about a
I was able to capture a string of about twenty images of M42 before I sat back in my viewing chair and noted the surrounding sky was going away really fast. I then noted all the farm lights on the horizon had totally disappeared because of fog banks rolling in. Drats, foiled again! I quickly reviewed my last few frames and noted the haloes around the brighter stars. Yep, my night was done! Though directly overhead at zenith, the view was still acceptable, I decided it wasn't worth it so I tore everything down and loaded up. Of course, by the time I finished and looked around, the fog had cleared out, or it had cleared where I was. Should I? Nope, I was done. And good thing I made that decision because as I was driving back to the Interstate I drove through several other fog banks. Yeah, same ol' story, Nature 1 … Hank 0.
However, the next morning I did manage to salvage some useable images captured with the Meade 70mm, enough to generate a not-so-spectacular single-frame of M42 and an okay Stakker-Lite version using six frames/lights. If what started out as a somewhat spectacular evening had held and my Orion 6-inch was still available for imaging, I think it would have turned out to be a nice night, especially since I was going to try to image a series of galaxies that evening like M106, M101 and other galaxies which members here had somewhat recently posted.
If nothing else, I guess what these images are really a testament to is Meade's 70mm
Actually, upon further review, the single-frame appears to be superficially better than the Stakker-Lite image, but there are subtle differences which argue otherwise … I think.
Meade 70mm
Canon EOS 77D
Single-frame … 90 seconds, ISO 1000
Stakker Lite … six frames/lights, total data - 207 seconds
No filters
First image - single-frame, full frame
Second image - single-frame, 3X crop
Third image - Stakker-Lite full frame
Fourth Frame - Stakker-Lite, 3X crop