Cloud Summoning

In truly time honoured fashion, as my new mount arrived, the weather started gathering. By mid afternoon the clear and shiny skies of the morning had turned into a grey mass of mush. Only to be expected of course, new astro gear summons clouds.

I attempted to improve my Leo picture last night with some playing in photoshop. I've been trying to be less heavy handed in my adjustments than I normally am. I'm not certain if I made it any better, but any processing experience can only be good. I played with a few of the other tools as well as curves and levels. I'll keep at it for a while yet. Maybe I'll get it better than the first one.

I did a quick test of the SLT mount last night. Set up in the dining room. Whilst this might make it hard to see the sky, last night, as I said above, this wasn't a problem. After a quick one star guesstimate align on Polaris, I know roughly where it should be, I told the mount to go find me Saturn. The scope ended up pointing in about the right direction, so it looks like I got it set up properly. Oddly, and this I'm not sure about, instead of slewing the shortest distance, about 90 degrees, it slewed the long way around, going nearly a full 270 degrees instead. I then told it to slew to Mars, M42 and Sirius, and each time it pointed in roughly the right direction and once aligned tracked. Given the lack of stars, I'd say it's working well. I just hope I can get to test it out properly soon. The forecast says that it should be clear on Friday, and I'm not going to get a chance to use it then, how typical is that ?