EAA with Flat interrupted by Sudden Clouds

The past week brought many clear days and nights, but I was too tired to take advantage of them. A recent international trip left me jet-lagged, and the recently full moon wasn't ideal for stargazing either.

On Monday, the Moon occulted Mars. I managed to observe it with my naked eye and a pair of 7x50 binoculars, but I didn’t have the time to set up my telescope.

Tonight’s Goals

I had two primary objectives for the evening:

Test my new flat frame light panel: I wanted to capture quality flat frames and use them for imaging M31 and other flat-sensitive targets like M45.
Image Mars and Jupiter: Mars is currently at its largest and brightest for the year.

Did the Flat Frame Work?

In ASILive, the corners of the live stacks appeared too bright, suggesting the flat frame could be improved, even though the histogram had a peak around 25,000 as recommended.

The images below were processed using stackfit.js, which utilizes Siril. Initially, I attempted to include calibration frames while running stackfit.js but encountered errors (such as negative pixels when applying the dark frame). I then realized that the individual frames saved by ASILive likely already have the calibration frames applied. Upon reviewing the frames later, it appears that vignetting has indeed been corrected.

The Evening's Challenges

I planned to start early, before moonrise at 8:21 PM, but I spent extra time preparing the flat frame light panel. Then, I worked on taking dark, bias, and flat frames.

To complicate matters, I made several mistakes:

I forgot to attach the focal reducer, which made plate solving difficult, especially while aligning the platform.
I accidentally left the L-Enhance filter on while capturing the flats, which meant I had to keep it on for imaging as well. Unfortunately, the filter isn’t adequate for the targets I had in mind.

By the time I turned to M31, it was really low in the sky, just above the roofline. I shifted focus to a few deep-sky objects (DSOs) in Orion, the Pleiades before getting ready to image Mars.

A Sudden End

While adjusting the focus in FireCapture, Mars suddenly disappeared. When I looked up, the entire sky was covered with low clouds. Conditions hadn’t looked all that great earlier, and by this point, all my equipment was covered in dew. And just like that, my night of stargazing came to an abrupt end!

Observations

NGC 1501 Oyster Planetary Nebula - Camelopardalis - I saw it by chance while aligning the platform - I had never observed it before
M31 Great Andromeda Galaxy - failed to stack more than 2 frames
M42 Great Orion Nebula
NGC 1973 Running Man Nebula - Orion
IC 434 Horsehead Nebula - Orion
NGC 2024 Flame Nebula - Orion
M45 Pleiades - Taurus - could not pick up any nebulosity - it is not a good target for the L-Enhance filter
Mars - did not get to focus!