The first night this year clear for many hours and, in absence of the usual thin veils of whatsoever, the band of the milky way shone faintly overhead. This means images with even backgrounds. Since the Moon rose near midnight I captured the Antares region, the Dumbbell nebula and the Lagoon nebula twice each with an IMX585 camera on an APO and with the Samyang 135mm with a DSLR in parallel. Earth is rotating too fast. The objects moved towards west at an incredible speed, so I felt while collecting their precious photons. It may have been the last clear night this year🥴.

As it was about 28°C I made a few darks. With a sky as clean and clear as this, further calibration can faithfully be skipped in favor of light frames collection, some of which were ruined by satellites and airplanes, most likely crossing through wide fields and always without my official permission.

As the Moon has arisen a clean image background can no longer be obtained without adequate filters. So I changed gears, mounted the C8 and turned left to Saturn in Aquarius which heralded the Moon and Jupiter, both in Pisces (uploads to follow next).

As the air became a bit turmoil, the images of still remote Saturn and Jupiter do not qualify for a separate upload but are nice for decoration of lunar images.

It was the first time to use an EQMOD cable directly connected to the serial port of the Orion Atlas EQ-G mount retiring the SynScan V3 hand control which has a loose RJ45 contact anyway. SharpCap and Stellarium 23.1 seamlessly interface with EQMOD for mount/scope steering. Also, star alignment can be omitted as objects are found based on the scope's parking (home) position (0° azimuth, my 26.2° latitude), not accurate but manageable with a Samyang 135mm as finder and imager. I know SharpCap can assist polar alignment and has further convenience in store but I haven't tried it all yet.

All in all, five deepsky images and 12 lunar images plus Saturn and Jupiter, not a bad yield at all for a single hot and humid summer night embraced by the lovely odor of mosquito repellant spray.