WolfieGlos

I found the same too, especially on APSC. I wished I had had a fish eye to trial on it. Still, it was spectacular anyway.

I think it was a plane, but will check later on. Disturbance is now 1350!!

Phone shot of my flip screen

Back in business, huge eye visible streaks in the sky again.

Not yet, but I still have a huge area of various colours to the north east. The huge pillar I mentioned earlier spanned from zenith to beyond the pole, and was shadowed with a red outer streak too. I wonder if the 1000 is catching up, or if we’re in for a bigger show to come!

Aurora app is now saying disturbance is over 1050nT!

We’re in business again, HUGE pink streak to the north!

Get some sleep for all of us 🤣 Aurora app is now saying disturbance is 972nt again 😳 This is going to be a long night!

I literally just caught it after changing batteries! Came back after putting the old one on charge and saw it on the screen Colours a lot more vivid and bright on the camera screen. Suspect it’s losing it from RAW to jpg conversion when copying the image over wifi to the phone. Shame, I’ll have to review them all later. But the streaks are still visible now.

Ditto! 🤣 We had the magenta streaks to the north east which have now disappeared but…. It was north east, but northwest is still showing red now for me:

Aurora has just started here again! What a night!

Wow, I never seen anything like that before. The reds and greens were visible to the naked eye, milky like streaks all over the sky. Every direction I photographed the aurora was there. What a joy tonight has been to behold. I actually the scope set up ready to image tonight but forgot to start it running (not that it would have been any good anyway!) such was I in awe of what right in front of me. Some pictures straight from the camera:

Got it down here too, now the clouds have gone 😃 Scope is probably pointless now though lol

It does make it easier to carry the mount-head out separately to the tripod in terms of weight, but it's just an another operation you will have to do when setting up. If I only had a single door, I couldn't do this due to the wide tripod legs, but double patio doors means the tripod is easy to carry out. All I do is check the tightness of the mount-head to the tripod every session. With regards to level, it is best practice especially if on the grass, so yes I would suggest to level the tripod first. However, because I set up on a level patio with the tripod legs fully retracted, in all honesty I've never checked my HEQ5 for level and I have no issues when imaging with regards to tracking, guiding or lost subs. If I had a larger scope with a longer focal length (say a C8), then yes maybe I would. Prior to the HEQ5, I used a Star Adventurer which comes with a built-in spirit level. I used it across my whole patio and never found I had to adjust for level, so a bit of prior "testing" and judgement aided with this.

I had similar last year when Comets 2022 E3 ZTF and 2022 U2 Atlas were close together. I managed to get DSS (and Siril) to stack the comets, stack the stars, but not both "frozen" in a single image. Starnet didn't remove the star streaks in the Comet stack, and the star stack had a green mess of a halo. It was far from perfect, but I didn't have Ha to deal with either! I might revisit it with PI at some point, this image has given me some inspiration 🙂

Thanks, I'm aware of the Hubble Tension but only by name, no detail so thanks for the explanation. I saw Dr Becky on Sky at Night, so I might check out her youtube videos if I get time. Thanks, and yes, you're right, it is there but only just. It's there in the data, like you say with a harsh stretch straight from linear it starts to come through. I then tried running NoiseXT after this, and NoiseXT actually removed it from the image so it's not there in my final process at the start of this thread. The 3.741 quasar is also tagged on Aladin, but the faint object just below my cursor (and the galaxies to the right) don't have any references. Similar for a lot of the faint fuzzies in this image.

That's a superb result, really nice image! I'd dread to think of the processing involved to get the comet into that background.

You could always gather more data on M101 to match Onikkinen's newt 😁 In all seriousness, look forward to seeing the results.

Wow, look at the spirals, that's great Lee. Here's what I captured during the Full Moon, and it was only 1.5 hours not the 2 that I originally said. I did use a video on YT that used pixel math to add it to the image, but I'll have a look for the method you've described and see what I can find. Thanks.

Thanks, I've just looked at the SDSS catalogue....my screen is white with text! I'll have to try and whittle it down a bit to see if I can make it readable and find out what those small fuzzies are. Whilst looking into this, I also spotted another possible galaxy cluster just below M106 in amongst that group of those quasars at 12h+19m. Speaking of quasars, I created the below image and the text file, sorted it in Excel and the largest redshift in the field is 3.741, located towards the bottom right. I haven't captured it, but I have captured the third largest in the field of 3.321. So if I'm right, using the calculator you linked, this gives 11.784 billion light years ! * My caveat with that, is I have only filled in the Z value, assuming all others are default values that need not be changed, and using the "flat" button, not "open". Not sure what the difference is, but "flat" gives a larger light year value. I also thought there was an exceptionally bright quasar to the right of +47'20, called "NPM 1G+47.0221". Querying this in Aladin it tells me it's "LEDA 3087510 -- Galaxy", redshift of 0.067. Fascinating!

Thanks Lee 🙂 I've seen an image with something like 30 hours of Ha which was remarkable. I captured 2 hours in the last Full Moon for a laugh, and it really didn't add anything to the image at all. It's not a process I'm overly familiar with having only followed a video for that attempt, so it might be a lack of knowledge/experience too. Thank you Oni 🙂 I believe they are, looking on Aladin Lite I can find a reference for "ClG J1217+4730 -- Cluster of Galaxies" and "LEDA 2299019 -- Brightest Galaxy in a Cluster (BCG)", but as for distances (and labelling the image to show them) I'm not sure how you get this data. Can you do this with the Annotate script in PI?

I would also be interested in this too, and to see some actual data, because I wonder if it's a bit of an urban myth that might be partially out-dated by modern sensors and filters? Here on SGL (and elsewhere) I see that some people just shut-up-shop after losing astro-dark. I accept the further north you are makes imaging more difficult with the earlier loss of darkness, and that you'll probably not get the fainter details in targets, say tidal streams. But last year I imaged throughout the loss of astro-dark, and captured the Eagle with the l'enhance filter with nearly 6 hours of exposure last July, and, it's in my most light-polluted portion of the sky. I've just reprocessed it with PI and XT this week - shown below - and I'm pretty happy with it compared to what I had processed previously - I might even add more exposure to it this year. I even captured M104 in 30 minutes (same area of sky) this past weekend in Nautical Darkness which really surprised me. Perhaps being fairly bright targets made this easier? Personally, if practical this year (due to home circumstances changing), I'll be doing the same again throughout summer. It'll be interesting to see what everyones thought's are on this issue though 🙂

I use my Starfield 102 purely for imaging, and I run it on a HEQ5 as shown here, and have been for just over a year now. The HEQ5 handles it with no problem and is well within the weight limitation, although the HEQ5 is hardly a "portable" mount. Although if using it only at home, you can also purchase a wheeled pillar mount (or make your own!). I can carry the mount and tripod out of the house with a single (or two) counterweight's all in 1 go (I'm late 30's if age is a factor), and then attach the scope afterwards. Hope that helps. Ooohh, interesting. This fits the tube rings on the Starfield 102? I've been looking for ages for a handle for it with no luck. Do you have a link to the one you have?

Thanks Vaughn, that's great to hear 🙂 Yep, similar kit although your guiding is much better than mine if I recall! I spoke too soon about those clear skies...forecast has completely changed, looks like 1 or 2 nights later in the week now. Tonight was supposed to be clear according to the forecast this morning and at lunch....looked again at 6ish and nada, not a chance 🤣

Further to my recent post on M106, I've been gathering more data (between the rain, clouds...) and have now brought this up to 15:40:00 hours of OSC RGB subs. Continuing to use PI and the XT tools, here is hopefully the final process of this image, although I may drop the black point a tad; it depends which screen I look on! Quite pleased I've managed to capture some detail in the smaller galaxies in this field such as NGC4231, and a distant galaxy cluster just above NGC 4248. At this stage I'm a little undecided whether to pursue capturing RGB for detail in the outer spiral, a Ha capture for this image, or to move to another target altogether. Potentially I have 3 or 4 nights of clear skies this coming week, so that would enable a full capture of another galaxy....... 242x120s subs and 152x180s subs, all calibrated with a few darks, 20 flats and 25 dark-flats. Stacked in Siril, fully processed in PI, with Blur/Noise/Star XT. Border added in GIMP. Comments and criticism welcome as always. And whilst waiting for Astro-dark on Saturday evening, I had a quick look at M104 in Nautical darkness. Totally shocked that I captured this in only half an hour - 15x120s - with 2.6" guiding. In fact, I'm struggling to justify adding more subs to this! I think it may add a little bit of detail in the dust lanes, but as it's a small target is it worth it?