I got sucked back in when I learned about the ZWO ASIAir controller that “simplifies” some of the tasks that kept me from improving my telescope skills, so the telescope just sat for several years.

But the learning curve was still pretty steep. I now have an autofocuser, a guide scope and camera, and it took me forever to get the autoguiding to work (which I had to make myself understand and use because my new telescope mount has a periodic error in the gears that makes little star streaks back and forth).

Anyway, after I practiced enough in my suburban, moderately light-polluted backyard with some pretty good results, last night I took the rig out to a dark sky location on Alabama’s Lake Guntersville. This is the result: 4.25 hours of 5-minute images processed in Pixinsight and stretched and color-enhanced in Adobe Camera Raw. I was blown away… click on it to do some pixel-peeping.