Astrophotography: Mount and Telescope setup time-lapse

I was asked to show how I setup my mount and telescope, so I recorded me accelerated 30 times, and shared it on YouTube:

Time-lapse of the setup of my old CGEM Celestron mount and the TS APO 65/420 refractor telescope, with an ASI178MM black and white camera (planetary, but cooled by a DIY Peltier module for longer exposure deep-sky imaging).

Taken on 2023-02-20 near Paris.

Part 1 - 25min from 18:42

Initial assembly and positioning of the mount, the scope, the heaters, the cameras, and all their cable.

Short break: I stopped the recording after approximately 25 minutes, while I had to wait for the night to fall, for the Polaris north star to appear in the sky.

Part 2 - 30 min from 19:26

When Polaris (the north star) appears in the sky, it’s time to align the equatorial mount with the Earth’s axis of rotation. After that, I point the mount successively to Venus & Jupiter planets, a star I forgot, then Capella giant & Betelgeuse supergiant stars, to calibrate precisely its orientation.

After that, I am ready to start my imaging sessions (from inside the house): tonight it’s the Monkey Head nebula (NGC 2174) in H-alpha (Hα, with a wavelength of 656, in the red).

Footnotes

I’ll try to retake this in 4K and without the midle break. I should be able to get a better quality overrall.

TODO: I should also post a retrospective on how I built the little DIY Peltier module, and link it here.