Some nights things just don't go right - a failed attempt at imaging the cygnus region of the milky way

 From the back garden

With views restricted only to looking North west to East (steep garden, woodland, houses, bright lights - you name it - I'm surrounded by it), astrophotography from the garden can be tricky and restrictive.

However, I have spent the last two nights trying to capture the Cygnus region Milky Way. 

So here are the details of these back garden micro-adventures. 

Target:

• The milky way in the Cygnus region stretching from Deneb down towards Altair

I tried to frame it with Deneb in the top left hand corner down to Altair in the right hand corner of my frame - but that didn't work - bits of house, bits of trees and bushes. The best I could get was it going semi horizontally across the frame - not ideal but hey ho - sometimes you just have to go with the flow. 

Equipment:

I thought I'd give CoPilot AI a go and get it to recommend to me what equipment I should use and what settings as well given the date, bortle sky area and moon phase. And, surprisingly, it wasnt far out! 

• Astromodded canon 800D
• Samyang 14 mm F/2.8 lens
• SWSA 21 with William Optics wedge
• Benbro Mach 3 carbon fibre tripod
• MSM green laser pen for polar alignment
• Two power banks - one for camera and one for dew heater band
• Samsung A10 galaxy tablet for white screen for flats 
• Aoelan intervalomneter - wireless remote 
• GoPro Hero 9 action cam with small cvub light and amazon basics tripod for videoing

Settings:

Cloudless skies from 0030 and light winds. Temperature around 15C throughout the night. Moon at 53% and growing larger following night. 

Taking all this into account - my initial test shots and histogram review suggested:

• ISO 800
• shutter speed 30"
• aperture F/2.8
• best shooting times 0030 to 0230

And, CoPilot - got all that right! Go figure! 

I ended up with 100 useable light frames, 25 darks, 30 biases and rubbish flats which I had to reject - they came out a horrible orange colour and I have absolutely no idea why - so they have been ditched. 

However, I also came out with some terrible coma and star trailing at the edges - and again I have no idea why.

Some sessions just work well. Others, well they serve up a horrible  'porridge' of mistakes and errors. Still, the best learning comes from analysing our mistakes, doesn't it. 

Below is the final image - full of mistakes: 

So, what are the errors? 

• A lack of sharpness to the stars - it was very evident that there were some coma issues on all of the images - particularly around the edges - and there was nothing I could do to sort it
• I think my Ball Head was slipping through the night - very slow, almost unperceptible, creep
• I think my star adventurer 2i tracker clutch may not have been tight enough

Since then, I have checked over the tracker, sorted and repaired the ball head, and checked my samyang lens focus.

This really is a poor image and I just can't account for the disasters you can see in it.