Tommy B

Thanks everyone for your support it has helped a lot to relieve the blues and restore my passion. I won't let this experience stop me and I'm sure it won't be long before I am back outside catching light again. I certainly will not be having any further dealings with newspapers thats for sure. Hard to believe how this escalated just from taking advice to send a pic into the local newspaper. Thanks again people Tommy B.

I am the subject of article on the daily mail site. The story was syndicated and I had no control over the papers it was featured in. I've been a member of this site for years and can attribute much of what I have learned to many people here so It's a real shock that I should see such negative and ignorant comments, but I am very thankful to those who have defended me. The reporting in the papers has been terrible, and pretty much everything that was written besides my age and name is false and changed from paper to paper. I got into astrophotography to connect myself to the universe and that connection feels a little infected now. I have not made use of the last few clear nights as a result. I do not have an obsersvatory, or even a shed! The photo of me was taken in that conservatory because it was raining outside (not the place to setup expensive electronic equipment). Let's clear up the 'Star Spikes' issue. I originally started taking astrophoto's with a Skywatcher 200p newtonian and a canon 1000d dslr. This obviously produced star spikes from the secondary mirror vanes and it was an effect that I loved. A year later when I switched to an Equinox 80 refracter I was dissapointed at losing the spikes so set about reproducing them using homemade vanes. This did not work to well so now I occasionally use software to add them in. I am an artist and a photographer, not a scientist and will often enhance things to increase the visual and emotional response to my work. Besides, whether your spikes are produced using physical vanes or software, both are artificial effects! Thanks again to all those who had the brains and strength of character to see through the nonsense.

Thanks Olly, your praise of AA5 has given me the push I needed to finally give some other software a go. AA5 came in the post today and the features really sound fantastic, especially its ability to run more than one camera at once. I had terrible trouble getting Artemis capture to recognise two cameras without it getting confused. All I need now is a clear sky to get a feel for it...old England is being a real menace lately weather wise. Tommy.

The noise is only very very minor on the 314L+ and I do wonder if it even affects the final image at all but the hot pixels can be very aggressive and Dark frames are the only method I currently know that shifts them. I use DSS for stacking but I don't think it has a BPM function. Astro Art is something I have considered getting for a while but lots of money has gone on equipment lately Are there any standalone programs that can remove hot pixels?

Thanks Freddie, I really must brush up on DSS.

This is for my Atik 314L+ as I do get a bunch of hot pixels and some noise.

The elephants trunk is certainly in season lately and I thought it a good target to do my first Hubble narrowband image. I have never created an image using separate filters before so I found this quite tricky and there are lots of errors and processing problems but I'm really surprised by my result. The OIII and SII seemed really weak even binned at 2x2 and I didn't expect to get much from them so they were stretched quite aggressively plus I had real problems with the stars as their sizes varied greatly between wavelengths. Despite a few days of frustrating processing I am now hooked on narrowband and hopefully can give another target a go tonight! I had to align the subs manually in Photoshop as I don't have any software to do this as yet and didn't fancy shelling out $150 for registar. Does anyone know of good free programs for aligning images? Equinox Ed 80 + Atik 314L+ mono + EFW 2 Filter wheel Ha Lum 1x1 11 x 600s SII 2x2 15 x 300s OIII 2x2 15 x 300s Ha - Used Ha luminance Criticism is most welcome I still feel I am just fudging my way through astrophotography All data stacked in Deep sky stacker Processing done with Photoshop 7.0 Thanks for looking Tommy.B

Excellent! Many thanks for the reply Amra, love the fridge idea haha. Think I will get started on this tonight.

Hi folks, Just a quick question about dark frames that I'd like to throw out there. I hate taking them at the end of a session because I'm usually very tired and get frustrated waiting around for the exposures to finish. I'm right in thinking that as long as the temperature and exposure time is the same with all light kept from entering the camera it doesn't matter when I take my dark frames right? Is it then feasible to create a library of dark frames on cloudy nights at different common exposures and temperatures to use at a later date? Thanks, Tommy B.

I just downloaded Microsoft ICE and......My word that was effortless! That's possibly the most instantly gratifying piece of software I have ever used. Many thanks Steve.

A couple months ago I acquired a Celestron Edge HD 8 and typically the first few clear nights I had were Moon nights so Deep sky imaging was gonna be a problem. I've learnt to take whatever I can get depending on conditions so I thought...what the hell lets test this baby out on the moon and see what detail I can get. So I threw my Phillips SPC900 webcam in the back and began capturing 42 x 30 second videos in the freezing cold. The next day I spent an age stacking all the videos in Registax 5 tweaking wavelets and the like ready to be pasted together in photoshop. It was a real headache lining up all the frames due to some serious brightness and contrast variations and I nearly threw the towel in...but I persevered and ended up with my best effort on the Moon to date. The end result was huge and retained a nice level of detail even when zoomed in, however this version is scaled down a tad Waxing Gibbous Moon 20/2/13 Thanks for Looking. Tommy B.

Thanks for the great advice people. The ADM saddle certainly looks beefier than I imagined and Its already filling me with confidence. An obsy is within my means but sadly I have to travel to my imaging site and have no suitable ground to build one, although I'm sure I'll find a way of sorting one out in the future.....somehow. My Equinox 80ED is impervious to wind on the Neq6 so I always have that to switch to like you say Laser.

Thanks for that guys, will definitely be swapping out the saddle now. Do you think anti-vibration feet would help much against wind? or do they only help against seismic vibration?

Hello all, For the last few months I have been imaging with a Celestron Edge HD 8 on my Neq6 mount. The Edge HD is a fantastic telescope and gives me the opportunity get in close on galaxies and the smaller Dso's. However, my setup is suffering from one problem....if there is a light breeze or small gust of wind the setup wobbles and gives me wide stars so I'm looking for ways to either stop or reduce this. The telescope is bolted to the mount using a vixen dovetail bar and I'm wondering if changing this for the larger Losmandy dovetail would help? Any other suggestion? Many thanks, Tommy B.