Ole Gene Autry - just think of all the dark skies he saw under the Pecos sky! Now - milky, murky, mucky, and yucky!

..............But with a 43 percent chance of rain I decided to go for it. I imaged from 10:30 or to 4:45 (before meridian flip) NGC7000, clouds killed a bunch but I managed to keep 98 lights. The supporting files were 200 flats, 120 bias, 50 darks. I used the Atik 383L + OSC camera with the 625mm, F/7.7 Vixen ED81s refractor on the AVX mount....which I proudly report worked just fine. I did zero alignments and just used Stellarium to point the mount in the general direction of the target and Astrotortillia to center it. It was spot on and before I imaged....I tested it using multiple targets on both sides of the meridian and celestial equator. PhD2 and Polemaster handled the PA and guiding....loads of backlash but the guiding worked flawlessly....other than dithering, the target stayed centered throughout the night and the 3 minute exposures for close to 5 hours of total time still gave some pretty sharp stars ..for me anyway.

Tonight has been a disaster - clouds, winds, and threat of thunderstorms but cooler weather is headed our way (70-80's) and 3 to 5 days of clearer skies lies are forecast.