The Clear Sky Clock (CSC) called for a few clouds till 9 PM.
So it turns out that the only clouds were centered over Hamilton, far to the north, and Binbrook Hill was pristine. The Sky Quality Meter (SQM) read 20.15 and the milky way spilled all across the zenith.
I made my way with Jackie and Kerry to our hilltop observatory.
It was nice to arrive together, since the headlights could light the setup process without trashing anyone’s night vision.
I think an improvement to the CSC would be to lift a small sub-bitmap for each cell, rather than just expanding a single pixel to fill the cell.
Then, at a glance, you could see the extend and proximity of clouds at each hour, without having to poke around.

My next Sequential Messier Marathon Object (SMMO) was M40 and although i set the Great White Scope (GWS) up dangerously close
to a spot where a tree would soon hide M40, i managed to get setup,
collimated and align the finder to the main scope with lots of time to spare.

Kerry broke the news to me that M41 does not even rise till 3.53 AM, and by then will be low behind trees, so the rest of the evening was spent trolling for other DSO’s.

While Kerry and Jackie did unguided shots of the sky with their cameras,
i pointed out that an EQ platform is effectively tracking, and can be used to support a tripod in any direction. We started conspiring to do an EQ platform clinic and make one for each participant.

I patrolled around the sky looking for things i could remember how to find… and I brought in M28, Jupiter (which required more counterweights), M34, M57 and was going to ask for a 5 mm eyepiece to try to bring out some detail in it (M57), but the GWS had stopped tracking (The battery on the EQ platform was dead)… i was able to attach the standard connector on my scope’s primary fan to power it though, so i was back up and running in a few minutes.

but soon we were off on other pursuits…

We went on a search for Stefan’s Quintet, and although a fine faint fuzzy just south of NGC7713 could be barely seen in the GWS, even i had to say ‘bring on the cameras’ because no amount of averted vision was going to help get detail on that one. (Turns out it was discovered in a 16 inch scope, so perhaps it’s worth another look, now that we know how to find it).

The counterweight issue with the GWS is starting to get more troublesome.
I need to get a new case for the water bottles as it’s getting hard to keep removing and replacing them in there.
The concept of some heavy chain is starting to sound better all the time, although it would only work if it was allowed to touch the ground, not just the EQ platform.

The Helix Nebula was seek’d and not found. The sky in the southern direction was actually rather dull, and i could not make out guide stars very well at all.

I put my XTi onto the water bottle holder and snapped a few 30s time exposures, and a single 30S Dark frame. It turned out that the BULB mode requires the finger to remain on the button till the exposure is over, which is actually a bit of a problem because the support on the scope for the camera is not strong enough to drag me along with it.

I guess i will soon be in gadget building mode again. I would like to make something which can time an exposure and a repeat rate for exposures.
Preferably without requiring an entire laptop running to do so.

One more try… M74. But it was not to be. Kerry was packing up and Jackie was soon to beat a hasty retreat, well in advance of fabled 3 am endurance records. Even before midnight there was talk of packing up. I ended up packing up at about 12:30, intent on doing some early morning set-up on Monday to bag M41-M45.