Just a typical night out with the astro gear!

December 16, 2023

Bortle 4-ish skies are great on a night when the upper atmosphere behaves, low altitude haze and fog are absent, and a new moon lines up reasonably well, but tonight is not that night. Take a look at the the haze around the large blue star (ν Andromedae) at the bottom of this single sub-exposure of Andromeda. I count 7 satellites running through this tiny rectangle of the night sky during this one five-minute exposure. What is also crazy is that guiding is actually pretty good, with a total error of 0.51 arcseconds. I don't know if those guiding numbers would have continued. I was hopeful when I first saw them. But after two exposures, I called it for the night. We have a Nor'Easter swinging through tomorrow afternoon, with an advance guard of clouds arriving tonight. I've packed things away, left everything setup and covered for a couple days. Hope everyone else has clear skies!