M15 & M2 Globular Clusters & NGC 7789 Open Cluster – Sony IMX224

M15 Globular – 181×1 sec, Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6.
M2 Globular Cluster. 75×4 sec, Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6.
NGC 7789 Open Cluster. 157×4 sec, Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6.

First appreciable cold front with clear skies came through, finally.  I managed to get some scope time to do a shake-down imaging session to test equipment.   This was on the night of Oct 11, 2018 and I was shooting from a Bortle Red zone in the city.    I shot a few things playing around and these were the best three pictures of the bunch.   Not the prettiest astro images , but at least I got to see what stuff still works and what did not after not imaging since March 2018.

My USB hub and some cables probably need replacing.  The hub has seen better days.  There is lots of corrosion inside the connectors.  These connection problems precipitated other problems with the laptop and my EQMOD settings got trashed.   I had to delete the AppData/Roaming/EQMOD  folder to fix it.  That required me to redo all the location settings, guide speeds, etc.   Could have been worse, I guess.

I managed to update drivers and the astro-related software on the laptop, which was a good thing.   My Toupcam IM224 had a batch of new drivers released the very same day as the imaging session.   I could not have timed it better.  lol

Oh, and my dew strap for the TV-85 was not working, either.   The wire broke inside the strip, so I just tossed it.   Oh, well.    Luckily, it was so dry this night I did not have to worry about any dew.

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