TheSkySearchers

Thank goodness April is over. Since I started back in astronomy this past April has had to to be the worst one yet! When the Moon wasn't blazing, it was cloudy, if it wasn't cloudy the wind was howling or it was cold enough to ruin a brass monkey's day...... Oh and then there was the issue of any interesting target to me being below my threshold for imaging.

Since the move over from the DSLR to dedicated AP cooled cameras my ole 1100D Canon has been on a holiday. Same can be said for the CG-4 mount with dual axis tracking. What better a time to hook the two of 'em up together.....

Problem is, I have never figure out what to do with such a rig! I am trying to keep this part of the hobby simple. If I want complicated I would go open the observatory and mess with the DSO gear in there...... In the past I have meddled in Nightscapes (looses definition for what I think nightscapes are). As I don't own any fancy lenses for the 1100D rudimentary nightscapes should be my focus!

I know the 1100D fairly well, it was my original AP camera. It displays a lot of noise on ISO's over 800. Below is a single 20 second image shot at f/4.5 at ISO 6400. Processing was attempted with Luminar AI.

My gut tells me to lower the ISO and bump the exposure up to the 30 second max and stay with single images.
The closest yard lights in this image are 6.5 miles away. My imaging location is bortle 1-2 and Astropheric says my LP is not bad. BUT with seeding getting going a lot of yard lights in farm yards are now fired up for the ag season. As can be seen the LP those suckers put up towards the sky is not AP friendly!!!!!!

Hi OhNo. Same thing here if Florida. Lots of rain and high humidity. All you can do is say the poem "April showers bring May flowers". I just hope that we are right on this poem.

Sadly we are at the front end of another drought year. Haven't had April showers for so long A couldn't even log a guess at when the last time was! Typical semi-retired farmer response huh!