Summer = photogenic nebulas. This shows the area around IC5068 and it is located just to the south of the North America + Pelican nebula complex in Cygnus. I've shot this area numerous times, as each focal length showed a vastly different perspective. See my 200 mm image here and my 400 mm image here. This image was taken with 660 mm focal length and without a narrowband filter, so this image looks a lot calmer (less dramatic) than the other two. Fortunately the dark nebulas snaking their way through the bright nebulas still show dynamics.

Technical details:
Date: Jul 30, 2016
Time: 9:20 pm - 1:10 am
Camera: SBIG STF-8300M
CCD Temperature: -5 C
Optics: Televue 127is (native)
Filter: AstroDon L
Light frames: 23x8 min
Dark frames: 16
Flat frames: 50
Flat darks: 50
Binning: 1x1
Guiding: Orion SSAG @ Orion finder (~162 mm)
Mount: AP Mach 1
Dithering: Manual
Processing: Stacking and deconvolution in CCDStack, Curves, Levels in PSCS6.

Other notes:
I made some changes to my setup but it's nothing that will show up in my images. At the end of my last outing in June, I noticed that my CCD stopped working properly. I wasn't a big deal as it happened at the end of a session but it was something I had to investigate. I go home, charge up the batteries, take some test images, it works, and think it was a fluke. But then I remembered that the battery I was using the for the CCD took an unusually long time to charge up. So I wait a couple of days and take a voltage reading from the battery ndash; it's basically dead. So the CCD worked for a short time (~12 hours) after the battery was charged, but it's useless afterward. So I have to buy a new battery. No big deal; this battery was 5 years old and I used a piece of shit charger to 'maintain' it. But while I am solving this battery issue, I might as well fix another potential future problem: How do I take this setup off the grid? What do I have to do, to allow me to take this setup for a 4-day weekend in the middle of nowhere while still being able to charge my batteries? The gentlemen and scholars of the cloudynights forum offered a couple of solutions, the most obvious being (1) get a generator and (2) go solar. Either way, get some AGM batteries with a capacity such that one night of shooting only discharges it by ~33%. In the near term this meant having to buy a 105 Ah battery for the laptop+mount+fans and a ~200 Ah battery for the CCD, ideally consisting of two 6 V batteries so I can carry them without breaking my back. I also have to start adding battery voltages to my log so I can tell in advance if one of the batteries is developing issues before I take it out into the field. In the long term, I'll perhaps also buy some solar equipment because I don't like the idea of having to maintain a generator (moving parts).

Alright! So I buy the appropriate batteries and charger, wire it all up, and head out for their first session. I connect everything and start up the mount as it's the first thing that needs to boot and it immediately throws a quot;Servo Failurequot; in my face. In my limited experience, this means a poor electrical connections and I start to panic a little because I really needed my photon fix and I won't get it with a dead mount. I wiggle the connectors to ensure a proper contact with the battery, the error goes away ndash; crisis averted. I was hoping that this issue was the 'glitch of the night' and not a 'preview of the night'. Sure enough, everything was working beautifully from that point forward.