Why didn't I get one before?
An Astro Essentials right angle polar scope viewer! Possibly the best invention since sliced bread. Total game changer. From nothing to shooting M13 again in thirty minutes. My fastest set up time ever on anything astrophotography or astronomy related. Well chuffed. I actually completed polar alignment on the ASIair within 2' 05'. A personal best!
Out in the back garden peace is beginning to descend. Traffic noise from the valley below is lessening as midnight approaches. Just a few boy racers with their supped up cars disturbing the nocturnal tranquility. The distant rumble of the late night London train as it passes through the cutting and under the small road bridge.
As I sit at my garden table, mug of warm tea alongside my tablet, bats swoop overhead and frogs croak up by the terrace pond. Distant foxes cry out, a startled pheasant clatters through the woodland shrubbery. I am reassured by the rhythmic click of my camera shutter and the tiny periodic gear clunk from my new new mount.
A sequence of 60 x 60" shots at ISO 800 on my zenithstar 61ii. The rig is on my lower lawn and I am sat on a bench on the little deck below it. Beyond up the steep garden is our little woodland heaven, trees silhouetted against the night sky and its very faint orange light pollution glow. A bortle 4 rural-suburban sky. Arcturus is almost directly above me to the east.
Guiding is good. I'm getting the hang of ASIair management. RA average 0.80. DEC 0.73. I have worked out how to stop the celestron lithium pro power-tank from sliding down the tripod leg. And the right angled polar scope viewer, combined with my MSM laser pen that attaches to a polar-scope..... game changers. Tonight it took 3 minutes to polar align the mount using the illuminator and a mere three minutes to reconfirm it in the ASIAIR. That alone normally takes me ten minutes.
£79 for the viewer. Worth every penny! Why didn't I get it right at the start of my astronomy/astrophotography journey? What a muppet eh?
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