The_Bluester

I have been so horribly busy with work that I have hardly visited the site since I posted my image. There were a number of images that I really enjoyed, congratulations to tomato on the win, and Clarkey as well, that is a really lovely field. Unfortunately with the winter weather in Australia this year, my imaging time has been as limited as my forum browsing time!

My effort, shot in a mad rush last night in the roughly 2 1/2 hours between moonset and the end of astronomical darkness. I ended up with 22 useable 300 second exposures as some high cloud drifted through during the night. Shot with a 10"F4 Newtonian and ZWO ASI2600MC Pro camera. This shot is in Centaurus, easily made out are NGC4601, 4603, 4616 and 4622 with many other galaxies visible either as sizeable objects or background smudges. I think I am going to have to go to this area again come the new moon and have a really good go at it to bring out more detail in the background.

My "dusty thing" This is broadly part of the Chamaeleon Molecular Cloud complex, near the south celestial pole, with reflection nebulae CED110, 111 and 112 in the frame. There seemd to be very little information out there on these three, in Stellarium for instance, CED112 is simply described as a reflection nebula, and the other two as "Interstellar matter". This was shot with my Stellarvue SVX80T scope with 0.8 reducer and my ZWO ASI2600MC Pro camera on an Orion Atlas (AZEQ6 clone) mount, capture managed with Voyager. The best 100 of approximately 120 X 300 second subs were integrated in Astro Pixel Processor with post in Photoshop CC. The subs were shot on 05-06 February. I was thinking about shooting something dusty and this challenge gave me a push to get out and do it.

Another image I have been working on for a few weeks. I was hoping to capture more data but time and weather are against me. NGC1788, the Cosmic Bat or Foxface nebula, quite a pretty area with the HA floating around what is largely a reflection and dark nebula. There is a tiny bit of Oiii and Sii signal in the main reflection nebula area, but it is overwhelmed by the RGB. Capture details: Scope, Carbon fibre tube 10"F4 Newtonian (Skywatcher main mirror but an enlarged secondary) with a Televeue Paracorr. Mount, iOptron CEM70G (Using an off axis guider not the inbuilt guider in the mount) Camera, ZWO ASI2600MM Pro with Astronomik LRGB and 6nm HA filters. 61 X 600 second HA subs, 21 X 300 second Luminance and 16 each 300 second RGB. All capture using Voyager, integrated in Astro Pixel Processor and post in Photoshop CC.

Thank you again all, it is nice to be browsing somewhere new, and with a geographically very diverse spread of members.

A comment on the needle roller bearings on the shafts to reply to a post a while back. You can't replace them with a tapered bearing like is used in an EQ6 as the clutch design on the AZEQ6 is totally different. In the AZEQ6 the clutch is under the head of the shafts and doing the clutch up pulls the shaft (RA or Dec) through those bearings to pull the shaft down and put pressure on the clutch disc to engage it. That leads to my other suggestion, when you dummy assemble it, tighten the clutches down and check the clearance between the setting circles and housings. The RA clutch disc compressed over time on my mount (Orion Atlas AZEQ6 clone) and eventually the RA setting circle started fouling on the fixed RA housing and dragging, eventually it stopped it tracking. Once it gets like that the only fix is to replace the clutch friction pad to restore the clearance as the more you try to tighten the clutch the harder the setting circle drags. I cur 0.5mm thick aluminium packer discs and added them under the clutch discs to restore clearance as mine failed over the Christmas period a couple of years ago and I would have been waiting weeks for parts. It is still set up that way now and working perfectly. The other effect of that clutch design I have found is the payload sits on them which makes them drag, so balancing is tricky. I rotate mine counterweights up which releases the Dec clutch for balancing, but RA is harder, all you can do there is adjust the mount altitude as low as it goes to get as much weight off the clutch as possible.

I have spent the last month imaging M78 in Orion on every available clear night. I last imaged it via not very suitable equipment and was never very happy with the result. This year was with different everything! Different mount, different scope, different camera. Acquisition details: Scope, Carbon fibre tube 10"F4 Newtonian (Skywatcher main mirror but an enlarged secondary) with a Televeue Paracorr. Mount, iOptron CEM70G (Using an off axis guider not the inbuilt guider in the mount) Camera, ZWO ASI2600MM Pro with Astronomik LRGB and 6nm HA filters. 49 * 600 second HA subs, 78 * 300 second Luminance, 24, 28 and 33 300 second subs for R-G-B respectively. All capture using Voyager, integrated in Astro Pixel Processor and post in Photoshop CC. This image would have to be the one I have put the most work in to so far in terms of data acquisition and processing.

Thank you all, it has been a frustrating year for AP with Australia having a La Nina year (Meaning cloud and above average rain through spring and summer) but the opposite weather (El Nino) means worse bushfires so I can live with it.

Hello all. I am from Kilmore, Australia (Well, Forbes actually, a short drive out of Kilmore but pretty well no one knows where Forbes is, even those in Kilmore) I have been an on again/off again visual observer for many years but recently moved over to imaging, and I thought after a few years browsing the same couple of forums it was time to join a new one for a fresh perspective. I am currently imaging with a 10"F4 Newtonian and a Stellarvue SVX80T refractor using a pair of ZWO ASI2600 cameras, one mono and the other a one shot colour. Those are swapped between scopes as the targets demand. And I have a poor neglected goto dob that only gets an airing a couple of times per year at star parties. Paul.