Paxo

now that's a proper star party

Stunning shot Alan, loving the detail. Steve

That's why I like the monochrome image.......that and too much light pollution for RGB. Steve

Not done any deep sky imaging for over 3 years. A few changes in personal circumstances have meant a new lease of life back into the hobby. So here's 80 minutes worth of 10 minute unguided Ha subs using an SX H36 camera through a Tak FSQ106 mounted on a Paramount MX+. Taken on Friday evening when I had to be up early on Saturday to get the train down to London to attend Astrofest. Calibrated the image with some flats, bias and darks taken on Sunday Morning. Minimal processing (trying to remember how to use Pixinsight) so stacked in DSS, some basic stretching in PS. I'm happy I'm back in the saddle again. I think I'll try and add some more data to this one before the winters out. Thanks for looking Steve

High Jim, A very warm welcome to the forum from just up the A1. Steve

Hi Peter, a very warm welcome to SGL from just up the road in Hebburn. Please don't hesitate to ask if there's anything you need to know. Steve

The SkyX Pro Point Grey FlyCap2 on USB 3.0 Maxim DL6 All working so far Steve

Just going through some of the more cloudy video sequences shot on Friday either end of a 20 minutes of clear skies and came across a sequence where we missed an airplane flying directly across the field of by just a couple of seconds, but we did catch the con-trail. The image below is a stack of 13 frames (which represents 0.5 seconds of AVI, any more and the detail is lost in the con-trail), so I'm left wondering how spectacular that shot could have been if only we have been a couple of seconds earlier (it would have been a pig to process anyway. Thanks for looking, Steve

I thought we were going to get totally clouded out, then the skies partially cleared for a few minutes enough to get a couple of images. Thankfully we had exxcellent skies the day before so I did all the focussing then. Steve

The weather didn’t totally spoil the eclipse on Tyneside, with gaps in the cloud allowing some photography to be done after about 10:10. Images were taken using a Lunt LS60THa/B1200CPT 60mm H-alpha Telescope equipped with a Point Grey GS3-U3-28S4M-C. This combination gives a full disc on the chip (which is 1928 x 1448 pixels at 3.69 microns). AVIs were taken over 20 seconds at 26fps giving 520 frames. Stacking was done using 100 frames with Autostackert2 with wavelets applied in Registax 6. The two images below were taken at 10:13 and 10:28 respectively before the clouds rolled in. Thanks for looking, Steve S

Unexpected clear evening last night, and with the rich starfield of Cygnus overhead I decided to have a go at a previously untried nebula for me, NGC6888, the Crescent Nebula. Due to the considerable light pollution here in the heart of industrial Tyneside, I've gone for my usual Hydrogen Alpha filtration, in this case a Baader 2" 7nm filter fitted within the adaptive optics unit. Image is 10 stacked lights of 900 second duration giving 2.5 hours of total exposure, and calibrated with bias frames, flats (dark flats) and dark frames. Imaged with SX-VR H36 through a Pentax 75 SDHF scope which gives a 3 arcseconds per pixel resolution giving a massive field of view of 4.16 x 2.78 degrees. Optics mounted on an EQ8, guiding camera was a SX Lodestar activated through a SX-AO unit. Guiding and image collection software was Maxim DL 6, stacking was done usig DSS, image tweaking was through PS CS3 Thanks for looking, Steve

After an afternoon and early evening of trying to get to grips with PC serial port issues, it was nice to grab a quick NGC7000 before calling it a night. Image is 5x10 minute exposures in Ha, this has finally got the dust lane between ngc7000 and IC5070 looking as it should, superimposed against the Ha. Camera : SXVR-H36 Guiding: Lodestar + AO Guiding + Capture software : Maxim 6 Mount : EQ8 Filter: Astronomik 7nm Ha Thanks for looking Steve