Martin Meredith

The (extensive) documentation for the maps is now available here. Martin

Thanks Laudropb, Ruud, Rob, Michael and Dave. Dave, I'm pleased the download went fine. It means I must have some dropbox bandwidth left (I have the pro account which gives me up to 100G of traffic a day apparently, which means up to 11 people/day can download the whole monster ;-). I'll soon be writing up what some of the chart annotations actually mean… Martin

Thanks Michael, Hiten and Alex. The remaining constellations are uploading as we speak (though Leo et al are already there in the Spring bundle…). I was up early this morning and spotted Leo so maybe it is spring already, although at -4C maybe not. Nice idea about the name Alex given that the maps are crawling with PGCs. Actually, the existing name arose when I was showing the maps to an astronomical acquaintance who thought mag 18 was pretty deep, and it stuck. Rod Mollise mentioned an earlier version of the maps on his blog, calling them "insanely deep", which I also like a lot, but being British I'm going to stick with the understated version for now ;-) Martin

I'd like to announce the first all-sky release of a new deep atlas: http://tinyurl.com/prettydeepmapsThe atlas was conceived to support electronically-assisted observing, but it will also be useful for other deep sky enthusiasts, both visual and imaging. Some might be interested in the object index which can be used independently of the charts, and which allows filtering more than 100000 DSOs by constellation, and sorting on any number of properties e.g. magnitude, angular size, redshift etc. The atlas is free and simply requires a decent PDF viewer (I recommend Acrobat). The whole thing is a rather large download but can be acquired by constellation or seasonal groups. All the bundled constellations (e.g. north circumpolar) are already there, but some of the individual constellations (mainly spring/summer) are still being uploaded. If you experience any problems, let me know. There are daily download limits on dropbox that could conceivably be breached Martin

Excellent selfless work Don and really useful for the community at large. Martin

Excellent post Dom. All good shots but I particularly like the Pelican. Do you have any information on how read noise compares to the Lodestar family? Also, could you say more about how you set up two copies of LL running on the same machine and recognising different USB ports? Thanks Martin

I agree Olly. I've been using one since last autumn and find it really useful to guide what might be worth going for on any particular session. I take several readings during the night to monitor changing conditions too. The best I've obtained in the garden is 20.5 here in a village with a few street lamps and a well-illuminated (but largely congregation-free) church. I intend to use it to find better sites nearby but just haven't got round to it yet. Once I have enough readings I'll plot a graph of faintest object recorded vs SQM. While on the subject of meters another useful device is a combined digital thermometer/hygrometer (about 5 quid on ebay). Humidity levels change very rapidly where I am and reach nearly 100% surprisingly often. Martin

Inspirational stuff -- more power to your elbow! That is going to be one fast scope and not too high off the ground. Martin

Fantastic! This could go equally well in a science museum or an art gallery. Martin

Good luck Nick. I hope it works out (and you can get back to your drivers ;-)

Here's a few more with the Lodestar-C in alt-az (data on the photos) adding up to a grand total of 7 minutes cheers Martin

Great idea. Everything I do is in alt-az, mainly in short exposures for "near-live" observing (none of these are for hanging in your gallery). All taken with the SX Lodestar-C guide camera using SW Quattro CF 8" f/4, no filters unless mentioned nor coma correctors. All are saved screenshots from Paul81's wonderful free LodestarLive application with no further manipulation. I mainly post on the video forum but these are as yet unseen shots. BTW alt-az induced field rotation is not much of an issue with live stacking + shortish subs. I mainly limit myself to 60s with my 80mm f/6 refractor and 30s with the Quattro. NGC 6946 Fireworks galaxy 1 x 30s M1 Crab (rather low at 23 deg at the time) 4 x 30s M101 4 x 30s B33 Horsehead + NGC2023 (stupidly low at 16 deg and with out-of-date darks but irresistible and a proof that I'm mainly an observer and not an imager ) 4 x 30s Part of the Veil with O-III filter 3 x 30s NGC7635 Bubble 4 x 30s M27 1 x 30s Cheers Martin