Day 178 Tuesday 23rd September 2014 The Autumnal Equinox,NGC 7790 and 200 galaxies imaged.

It has been generally cloudy for the last week and I have not had the opportunity to use a telescope. It was promising last night but cloud descended once more. At 6.50 this morning however it was clear (with a little Autumn chill to the air) but the morning was approaching. Orion was very bright and the Pleiades were overhead. Auriga was high in the sky with the "kids" very clearly visible even though it was nearly dawn. Sirius was blazing away at magnitude -1.44 as the brightest star in the sky with Canis Major below it partially disappearing behind the mountain horizon. The Plough was North of East standing on its tail. Sirius was outshone however by Jupiter which was was brilliant at -1.91 and high above the Eastern horizon - below and to the left of Canis Minor and Gemini and above and to the right of Leo.  Procyon was visible at magnitude 0.4 between Jupiter and Sirius. By 7.30 a.m. the only objects visible in the sky were Sirius and Jupiter. Venus had not yet risen. At 0825 the Sun rose above the mountain as shown - I am having difficulty typing this as the Sun rose very quickly and my eyes have not yet adjusted from the glare. The positions of Venus at mag -3.93 and the Moon with a phase of less than 1% are shown.

 I used the position of the Sun and Jupiter to adjust the SkyX  horizon photo ( that I had stitched together  from single images) and recorded the settings as below

The sky is very clear now (08:36) - I hope it stays that way into the night. We shall see!

It was clear and an imaging run gave me images of just less than 200 galaxies. I also had my first run on the cluster NGC 7790 using B and V filters as an initial step in determining transformation coefficients for my photometry work. I need flat, dark and bias frames for these and several nights of further images of the cluster to average out the results.