I have been unable to image for quite some time.  Prior to two weeks ago, I could honestly blame the typical weather conditions locally.  However, since then, I have been traveling.  While away from home and my gear, I have no doubt that there have been many a clear night.  But I have not checked.  I couldn't bear to know!

This is a sunset photo of the Pie Town VLBA antenna, one of the areas my wife and I explored during our travels.  I love this area.  It is a low population area, has multiple ecosystems and supports diverse wildlife in abundance, including elk, antelope, mountain lion and one of the rarest of all, astronomers.  This includes one of the premier radio astronomy installations in the world, the VLA.  The VLA itself is about 50 km east of the location that this antenna is located.  This antenna was designed to be, and is part of the VLBA, a set of similar antennae that span the continent and includes sites in the Virgin Islands and Hawaii, yielding an interferometer of roughly 5,300 miles aperture, though I am not sure if all these antenna can be trained efficiently on any single target very often, given the curvature of the earth. 

One site states that the data from this antenna is recorded and very accurately time-stamped, so that it can be combined at a later date with data from the other sites.  That likely still occurs today, as was/is done for the imaging of the M87 black hole event horizon and for Sagittarius A.  However, in the more limited context with its proximity to the VLA, this antenna has had an optical link (underground cable) to the VLA since ~2009.  I believe that this obviates the need to do the manual data syncing when it is used as an expander (to 78 km) for the VLA.  The article I read about the commissioning of the optical link between Pie Town and the VLA stated that the hope would be that a series of these antenna expanding the aperture of such a system to roughly the width of New Mexico, presumably all linked with optical data transfer.  The goal was to be able to fill the gap between the VLA and VLBA capabilities.  To my knowledge, this has not been funded at this time.  

Though not a requirement for the operation of the VLA or VLBA, the area around Pie Town has Bortle 1 skies and I can attest to the beautiful views one can see from this region.  This certainly rivaled the views I had on Mauna Kea that I had 5 years ago.  I had never seen the zodiacal light prior to this, even from Mauna Kea, though seeing that feature is seasonally affected.  In any case, even though this may not be the prime time to see ZL, I was able to easily trace the light cone of the ZL all the way to the zenith.  It is cool but I might have a different opinion if I had to deal with it during an imaging session!

Finally, I want to add a shout out to the owner and tech at SkyPi remote observatory for taking the time to show me their facility.  This was the first time that I saw one of these sorts of facilities in person.  I was very impressed!  And as their web site suggests, there are many challenges to running such an operation in such a remote location.

I am led to believe that my new 12 inch imaging Newtonian is a few weeks out.  In the meantime, I am hoping that the opportunity to image, now that we are getting a few clear shots here, will occur soon.