Astronomist

I had intended to have a go at the Owl Nebula this session, however rather embarassingly after half an hour's searching I was unable to find it in the eyepiece.🤣 Instead I tried to improve on my previous attempt at M82. This is 800 x 400ms exposures, at 60% gain. And here's a bonus pic of procyon and its spectacular diffraction spikes:

Thanks for your advice everyone, Last night I had another session on M81, with dramatically better results. Gain was half the camera's maximum. 1272 x 380ms exposures: still noisy but better than my previous attempt by a long shot.

I can't really increase the exposure time much as the scope has no tracking, but I might be able to get up to 400ms without too much star trailing. This should allow me to lower the gain quite a bit. I will attempt to give M81 another go tonight, but with longer exposures and more of them. I also see Sharpcap has the option to use darks; is that likely to make much difference?

Here are the fruits of my first session with my new Altair Hypercam 585c. In the absence of anything brighter and more spectacular I went for M81 and 82 (separately, my FOV is too small to get them both at the same time). Both are ~300 x 300ms exposures at prime focus on my 10" dob, at the camera's maximum gain of 136500. Capture and stacking done in Sharpcap. Annoyingly, the use of a high gain has made the results very noisy, but this is still way better than the eyepiece view from my Bortle 6 location. While there is lots of room for improvement, I'm quite happy with this for a first go!

It's the fan cooled version, I don't really need the full tec cooler as I don't plan to use it for long exposure imaging. It seems to be a very well made item, fit and finish is better than the ZWO asi120 I had a while back. Best of luck with your potential purchase!

DPD left this on my doorstep today- about 3 weeks late because they lost the first parcel. Also Altair Astro's communications are quite slow, as I'm sure many of you have already experienced. Anyhow it's here at last, and the sky is looking clear-ish. I've just tested it against the neighbors chimney pots, the sensitivity compared to my DSLR is amazing!

Here is the finished article, after 3 coats of Everbuild clear satin varnish. The varnish has darkened the wood a little, which I am quite pleased about, and hopefully should keep the mount safe from the elements for years to come. I also made a matching Telrad finder shoe adapter thing with some offcuts, as my old one (visible in the picture in the first post of this topic) was a bit loose fitting and didn't always stay put. clear skies!

You should be able to spot the pup in either of those scopes, the major obstacle there is seeing. I finally spotted the pup for the first time this year in my 10", after about 20 unsucessful attemps. In theory it should be quite easy at that aperture, but the seeing in my area is usually awful... Best of luck with your future scopes!

Thanks for your kind words everyone, I was able to test the new mount last night (thankfully the grass was dry) and I can confirm it works very well, dampening time after a nudge is pretty much halved from the original version, and the square cut outs make it much easier to lift the scope in one piece when dodging trees. Unfortunately there is a little excess stiction on the AZ bearing, which I will attempt to sort out today. Likewise... look closely at the pictures if you don't believe me. An electric sander and some filler can cover up almost anything.🤣

Hi everyone Here's some pics of the new rockerbox I've been building for my 10" Dob. The original particle board base has served me well for a while now, however it is starting to fall apart and go rotten. I managed to get hold of two sheets of 1" beech faced ply for free recently, as I figured it would make a good rockerbox for my scope. The design is heavily influenced by @Moonshane's build, linked here: Home made Dobsonian Base. - DIY Astronomer - Stargazers Lounge The new base is very stiff, as well as being significantly lighter than the original. I have reused the azimuth bearing ring and pads from the old base, in addition to the aluminim bushing thingys around the centre bolt. The eyepiece tray has also been retained, albeit in a more convenient position. All I need to do now is stuff up the gaps left by my shoddy carpentry skills with filler, and give it a few coats of varnish, or else it may end up just like the old one quite shortly. 😨 clear skies!

Welcome to SGL from salisbury, on the other side of wiltshire! I'm sure the folks on here will be delighted to help you spend your money.

I assume this would have been done already if it was possible. Perhaps the computing power required is unfeasibly large?

You are referring to optical interferometry. As far as I am aware for this technique to work the light paths of the component telescopes must be physically brought together, meaning it simply is not feasible over the very long distances you describe. AFAIK the largest optical interferometer is the VLT at ~140 metres maximum baseline length. For radio telescopes however the data can be brought together via a computer, meaning extremely long baselines of thousands of miles are possible.

I didn't realise SharpCap could be used with a DSLR - apparently it can but needs an ASCOM driver. I would try this, but I should have an Altair Hypercam 585c arriving in the next couple of weeks so there's no point wrestling with drivers for the DSLR. The debayering is all done automatically, so probably is all wrong, and as far as I can tell you can't adjust the colour balance of the live stack manually.

Hello everyone The second of March was the only clear night I've had in nearly 3 weeks.😧 I had a go at some rudimentary EAA for the first time with my manual 10" Dob and canon EOS 450D. 295 1/3 second exposures, stacked with the new Siril livestacking function and background extraction applied. No darks, flats, or biases. I would have done more exposures but the core was already becoming saturated.

something tells me if betelgeuse went supernova you wouldn't see it on that feed...

The sky background never seems to get brighter or darker... maybe the scope is in the arctic. Also, this youtube guy has been posting betelgeuse-related sensationalism for over a year, and making a big thing over betelgeuse changing in brightness- its called a variable star for a reason. nobody knows...

Welcome to SGL!

+1 for the nirvanas! They have very decent edge correction for the price, and even the giant 28mm is only just over £150.

Very hard to tell the difference, but IMHO the Towa does look a tiny bit sharper. Still, impressive performance for an antique lens!

You could look at orion optics UK, their products look very good, however their reputation is less than stellar. Take Mr Spock's comments Re weight with a pinch of salt, Vulcans are much stronger than the average human... 🖖 Joking aside, Dobs are really not as heavy as they look. Most of the awkwardness comes from their large volume, which can make negotiating stairs tricky.