Western South Dakota has been blessed with 3 or 4 days straight of very good night skies - clearer than normal with above average transparency, seeing, etc. Last night I was attempting to make a good 5 hour run at IC1805, The Heart Nebula. After an unusually quick and successful setup of my rig I inserted my Ha filter, racked the focus in record time and then dropped sixty 90 second subs on to my laptop.

In the dark I then grabbed my [OIII] filter and while swapping filters in my HyperStar's filter tray I noticed a cable hanging off the side of my mount and realized it was one that was unused. I am old and easily distracted. No bad luck yank of a connection. Whew. I then made the filter swap. Or so I thought. I should have noticed my mistake when the focus stayed the same. I thought it odd at first but blew it off as luck.

Seventy five more [not OIII] subs later I had enough [Ha not OIII] subs to do a quick swap to [SII]. After a focus adjustment I set off to do a quick stack in DSS to chimp what I thought was a respectable HOO pic. That's when I discovered I had almost three and a half hours of Ha. :/

To you refrac dudes and dudettes three hours of subs is a drop in the bucket. To a HyperStar nut like me, 3+ hours of f/1.9 is the equivalent to 75+ hours of f/10!

The good news...the lemonade in my tale...is that I had collected the most time on one filter since I started AP 18 months ago. And I must say, the results have taught me a valuable lesson - the quality of that one stack is better than anything I have ever taken. There truly is no substitute for copiuous amounts of good data. Period. I know I don't deserve any sympathy, especially from anyone shooting f/6 or longer, and I'm not asking for any.

Now...I am off to bed to stare at the ceiling with thoughts and permutations of how I am going to have to get 6 or 7 hours of [OIII] to pair up with my stack of Heart Nebula Ha.

HaHaHa.