Y.A.M.S.

Y.A.M.S. stands for Yet Another Moon Shot.  I often take shots of the moon when other plans have gone by the wayside. It's always a good fallback. Tonight I had planned to do a full evening of Deep Sky Object (DSO) shots because this afternoon the weather looked to be set fair for a while. But things don't always go to plan, do they?

The moon appeared early in the afternoon as a very faint object in the sunny blue sky, so I really had to ramp up the contrast and brightness to get anything worth looking at. I suspect you will either love or hate this image of the daytime moon.

Afternoon Moon (2/5/20)

After it had gone dark I started taking a few shots with my big telescope (which I am still getting used to) and the guide camera which can also be used as a planetary camera. I was pleased to have some success with this as the guide camera produces much closer images than my normal cameras do. I waited for Polaris to appear out of the clouds that had rolled in so that I could polar align my mount and get on with tonight's main business.

I waited, and waited and ... waited, but the clouds didn't lift. So I just kept taking a few more moon shots in the hope that it would lift eventually. By 11pm it had got colder and damper and there was dew beginning to form on the grass, so I decided that would be it for the night.  Of course, after I had packed everything away, the sky started to clear again, but by then I'd had enough and I decided that I just process what I'd got and call it a night.  Here's the first of them and more will follow tomorrow.

Waxing Gibbous Moon (2/5/20)