Try out the new pier with some imaging

November 9, 2020

The weather has not been cooperative but I have set up the SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro on the new backyard pier, along with the William Optics GT81 and my narrowband imaging train. I'm using the latest (v1.54) Stellarmate for these tests, but not in Stellarmate mode (not using the app). I'm remoting into the machine, running on a Raspberry Pi 4 4GB board with 128GB, and just running KStars/Ekos there. I used the QHY Polemaster on the Mate to polar align, and that was easy. My one imaging test so far with NGC 281 (Sh2-184) the Pacman Nebula in Hydrogen-alpha worked well enough with 7 240-second Ha subs stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop 2021. No calibration frames. There wasn't time before the clouds drifted in. My next test is to use SharpCap Pro's Polar Alignment functions, and see where that gets me. 

Some shots from the the night of November 7: