Tonight's astronomy session brought me a lot of joy. I've been sidelined by a bout of Covid, making it challenging to find the energy for stargazing. However, tonight marked the first clear night where I felt well enough to take my equipment outside and test my recent upgrades.

I made some improvements to my Equatorial mount, incorporating a PegasusAstro PocketPower Box and a new PC. My previous mini-PC was unreliable, often failing when I wanted to observe interesting celestial objects. I suspected USB ports and the USB turbo setting in Sharpcap were causing the issues. Wanting a more robust computer that wouldn't strain my CPU, I switched to an Intel Nuc with an i7 and 64GB of RAM. This upgrade significantly improved my workflow, allowing me to run all my applications smoothly with the CPU rarely exceeding 20%.

My goal for the night was to capture the Helix Nebula before it disappears behind buildings and trees later this month. Unfortunately, previous attempts were plagued by USB power issues or the inconvenience of changing filters at the end of the night, requiring new calibration frames.

Luckily, daylight savings time extended my nighttime imaging hours, and many of those hours fell before 8 pm-a perfect window for a quick session on a work night, as was the case this evening.

Impressed by the Optolong L-Extreme and the Moon and Skyglow filter in recent experiences, I decided to try the L-Pro filter tonight, hoping it would enhance the capture of natural colors.

What made this session particularly enjoyable was the PegasusAstro Pocket Power Box Advanced. Despite my setup being relatively simple, the Power Box significantly reduced my setup time. With everything mounted on my mount, I only needed to plug in two cables-the power going into the box and the USB cable going into the computer. I even managed to use an up-converter to power the Nuc through the box, making everything self-contained.

This session leaned more towards astrophotography than Electronically Assisted Astronomy (EAA). After a brief observation period, I opted to let the software stack approximately 1.5 hours of subs. I've been experimenting with a trial version of PixInsight, and I believe I'm starting to grasp its intricacies. Perhaps that will be my Christmas gift to myself this year.

Below, you'll find the results of my efforts from this evening.