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M106 taken using my Celestron C8 with Meade 0.63 reducer and a Zwo ASI 294 MC pro camera. Capture software was NINA with PHD2 for guiding (separate guide scope currently being used). A total of 239 90 second subs taken at bin 2. The subs along with flats, darks and dark flats were stacked with Pixinsight using weighted batch pre processing. All subsequent steps were performed using Pixinsight to get the final image. I am still not sure I have the C8 optimsed properly with the back focus from the Meade reducer. Additionally I have convinced myself that my flats are not right as there was a lot of vignetting and. some rather odd halos concentric to the galaxy. The capture was probably not helped by a rather prominent moon, but if I waited for clear skies and no moon I wouldn’t capture anything! Thanks for looking Ian

Just watching Cuiv's latest video from two hours ago. Not only is graxpert free but it now has a noise exterminator feature. Gonna give it a go

I have been using flats for several years but recently was wondering if maybe the flats I was taking might not be as good as they possibly could. My current method is to use a light panel with several sheets of white A4 on top to dim the light source. I then adjust both the gain and the exposure time so that I can achieve an exposure time in the region of 1.5 seconds and the histogram at or around 50%. In order to see if I was doing anything wrong or if my results could be improved I had a look around the web and seemed to find some conflicting information. Some sites state that the camera gain should be the same as used to capture lights. The problem I have with this is that if I keep the gain the same I end up with very short exposure times if I am to keep the histogram at or around 50%. This then conflicts with other online advice that states that flats exposure time should be somewhere in the range of 1-3 seconds. Given I have spent hours optimising and capturing data I don’t want potentially reduce the quality of my processed image through poor calibration. Therefore What do people consider to be the best way to capture flats? Thanks, Ian

The ADC is recommended to be the last piece of equipment before the camera or eyepiece. I've never tried it in any other arrangement though to compare.

I'm not sure Andy - statistics don't lie! And what was it that good old Patrick used to say - "Every nut thinks Every other nut's a nut'! That's quoted from the book Bureaucrats and How to Annoy Them, by R. T. Fishal. (Patrick Moore). Which incidentally I've loaned to some lower than life individual who I've just remembered hasn't returned it. If only I could remember which lower than life individual I loaned it to??😕

You don't need a flattener for planetary imaging as you are capturing on axis images. You would fit the barlow into the focuser and then the camera. What is the pixel size of your DSLR to determine what strength of barlow would be best? The resolution of the planet won't be great though due to the small aperture of 72mm.

Just about managed to get round the issues of flats not working - something must have rotated. 27 x 300 sec Triband RGB wih ZWO 2600 & WO 132

I'm expecting them to be tiny but was reading a post on here from someone with same scope and the results looked good to me. Was just thinking on a 50% cloudy evening but I can see Jupiter or Saturn it'd be pretty cool Just have no idea size/type/fixing of the Barlow needed. There's a lot on eBay not read all the link but first image would be pretty incredible to get. Similar camera as me, likely bigger telescope Ty for this

Thankfully, the car owner's insurance covered a builder to do the wall, saving me a lot of effort.

Looks like a lot of hard work has gone on since the initial build, looking rather smart and very Garden Makeover too. Sorry about your BMW wall interaction, cars hitting your property is never much fun. But your rebuild looks up to your usual high standard 👍

planets are tiny you may not need a flattener if you were using a tmount with a tring to your dslr then you could insert the tmount into a barlow or screw it to a shorty barlow then put dslr with barlow into focuser on telescope i think could look at this https://www.astropix.com/html/equipment/canon_one_to_one_pixel_resolution.html

Been reading some interesting posts on here about using a Barlow on my 72ed with a dslr to image planets. I assumed a Barlow lens was very similar to a Tele converter/whatever canons stupid name is, and so 'bad' for astrophotography. Seems this is not the case? How would I include a Barlow in my image train to try this? Would I need a specific size/thread/adapter? If it went between focus tube and flattener my back focus would stay same? Also if it's possible, please point out any incredibly obvious potential issues I will be completely ignorant of. I'm struggling to Google Barlow dslr planets and get anything that shows how to connect it.

April 20th & 21st The clear Friday night developed into a clear, calm and dry weekend, so it was time to get back to the wall. I've built walls before at the Washington house. Made from modern metric bricks, they turned out so neat, that some people thought the pictures were CGI of what I planned to build. This wall isn't like that at all. The bricks are Victorian, dating from around 1860, appear hand made. Some are huge, around four and a half to five inches wide in places and none are exactly the same size, nor have flat faces. Some are bulged, some are con-caved, the ends aren't necessarily square and the proportions aren't right for the length of one brick, to work with the width of two bricks for the pillar. All of this is made laying them a real challenge. Straight and level needs to be an average, as a small level won't sit flat on any of the bricks! Several bricks broke or crumbled during dismantling of the wall, so multiple half bricks were used on the far side, below ground level. They are all being reused from the original wall, so all are stained from age or lime mortar. I may try cleaning them once the wall is finished. By the end of Saturday, I had four courses added on the front and two on the back. My back really didn't want me to go back out on Sunday, but I couldn't waste another good weather day. Another two courses were added to the front, with four at the back, though every fourth layer has the bricks laid across the wall, to tie the two sides together. It was all covered in plastic by the end of the day, as the rain came back that evening and has continued on and off to today. Lynne also gave the lawn its first cut of the year. It was still a bit wet, but had got so long, it took her two hours. I'm hoping a rotary wire brush or grinder can clean off the bricks a bit. A quick test seemed to suggest that would work, but they've got 150 years of weathering to catch up on to match the rest of the wall - which also needs pointing. Yet another job! It was nice to get back out in both the garden and observatory.

For me it's down to the details of how exactly it operates. Impossible to tell at this stage. Definitely watching it!

How do visual only astronomers feel about the Pegasus product? Would you embrace it or do you feel that it introduces a disconnect between you, the optics and the heavens?

Here's a six pane mosaic of the Moon, shot at 1 metre focal length on the 200PDS with the 742nm IR filter and ASI178MM camera. I'd also had the observatory open earlier in the day to grab a quick white light Sun. After the mosaic, I tried the x3 televue barlow, as the seeing appeared to be fairly good. I did some close ups with the x3, before switching to the TAL x2 as seeing started to deteriorate. x2

Correction I’m not a nerd I’m actually a GEEK 😂

Well, it's like having a minimum of 6 eyepieces in one, perhaps more if you dabble in half-mm focal lengths. So, that makes just over 2 pages per covered focal length! That doesn't seem so excessive then.😁

I made a start a few years back with a 4 panel mosaic of the Chain, but it was only a couple of hours per panel.

April 19th The 19th was productive in the garden and in the observatory. A clear day also resulted in a clear night! Funny how life is circular. When the old Victorian school was knocked down in 1969, to make way for our house, the site was around one acre, with the bungalow only taking up a small part of that plot. The rest of the land was used as a plant nursery. Here we are in 2024, with plant production now going into industrial levels to fill the garden. We've multiple seed trays on the go, which have started to come to life in the last week. Having already spent around £200 on plants for the railway and path, I'm now looking for a cheaper source to fill in gaps. The postman also brought another box of twelve Purple Rock Cress plants. Right now, they are tiny, but they will go along the edge of the railway to complete a solid line of these plants as a barrier between the ballast and embankment. With night time frosts still possible, I've potted them for now, until we can be sure the frosts are behind us. Lynne was fretting a couple of nights ago, that we might loose £200 of plants to a late frost! In the picture below, I've got three pots of Forget-me-nots, pulled from the lawn and the grass separated from them. To their right, in the Flash box, are three pots of wildflower seeds. I think the seeds are tiny, so the box has a white powder mixed in to help to show where they've been spread. With it being still cold outside, I planted some in pots, kept indoors, to see if anything would emerge from the powder mix! The remaining two pictures are Candy Tuft seedlings, which were big enough to separate from the seed trays and plant in their own pots. The Slushy pots, complete with lids, make quite nice mini greenhouses which also helps to keep the moisture in. The open top still allows fresh CO2 in, for the leaves to breathe. I'm interested to know if those with lids grow faster or slower than the others.

Like as been said it depends on your perspective, imagine you are standing out in space with no stars, you know that your feet are down and your head is up but the space around you has no up or down left or right

Thanks for posting these pics Steve, always great to see new products! Was there any product presentation on the Pegasus SmartEye at all? Like how it would compliment an observing setup (would it need a standalone PC or just run via smartphone), estimated release date etc. Was there a demo of some kind (albeit during daytime indoors haha) showing how it works?

Never forget with a Venn diagram that I believe you can lie beyond the circles!

That's great! Using Venn diagram and bringing the discussion into the mathematical world really clinches it for me. We all now know without doubt where we stand in the greater scheme of things.

I was aiming more on funny side rather than informative, but hey .... (I edited the post and inserted the actual image instead of hot linking it ...)