LukeTheNuke

Nice to see you back in action. I'm getting the weather, but the work thing is also affecting me, alas! #mustdothelottery

Wow, some super granulation! Congrats! Somebody didn't get up early when it was completely clear then spent a good while cursing at clouds. I got some h-a, but only a few seconds of white light for my amateurism.

Nice one, Steve. I think we were luckier our way. I'm getting around to doing the capture bit, but not the processing bit at the mo!

That hasn't come out too bad!

Wow, Ewan, amazing shots and processing! The prom steals the show, but that's some amazeballs granulation in the white light shots. What a joy to see!

The problem for me is more what happens if it goes faulty. What you get back may not be as good. I'm tempted to buy a new one, but I must resist. My one is not that good, and it's developed a fault. The power goes off randomly. My wife's Quark was okay but has deteriorated terribly. I think I recall reading something about that issue over on SolarChat, but I can't find the thread now. It is pretty dire now - unsellable. Our two Quarks would cost over £2K new now. I'd say they're worth close to nothing now. It's a lot of money we can't get anything back on. Whereas my Baader Herschel Wedge has been completely problem free. I might just stick with white light and lunar when my iffy Quark finally packs up. But yes, a Quark that works well is brilliant, and a good price. If my first Quark hadn't gone faulty I'd be a huge fan. It was really good. I did think about getting a Solar Spectrum or Lunt, but over on SolarChat I see some folks have had issues with faults getting fixed too. What a sorry state the h-alpha game seems to be in. Darn expensive, and getting things fixed to your satisfaction can be a pain. My wife's Quark actually went faulty within the warranty period, but my previous experience was so disheartening that we decided just to leave it. If you get a Quark and it's like Ewan's (or even just half as good) and it continues to perform like that, then I imagine you'll be delighted with it.

Wowsers, those close-ups are cracking, Dave! Love the fine detail inside the spots too. And that's with the Baader solar film? Looks as good as the fancy pants Baader wedge to me?

Nice one, Steve. I dunno if I am out of touch with Sol these days, but those spots down South look fairly big? Not as big as The Monster from the last cycle, though, I'm pretty sure. I'm liking the Steve Triplet for Sol. The inverted works well for me, very fancy.

Wohoo, my shiny new PC that was as dead as a vampire riddled with silver shots from an Uzi 9mm is alive, I tell you, alive! Many thanks to Palicomp. Nobody wants a dead PC to arrive, but what really matters is that when things go wrong, which can always happen, they fix it. And fix it they did, always getting back to me within 24 hours. I never needed to chase them up. I did manage to shoot myself in the foot by missing the first attempted delivery of the fixed PC yesterday - one was imaging Sol... I paid more attention today to the incoming post. So 4K gaming, here I come! I went for an i7 14700 and an RTX 4070 TI Super. The 14 TB SATA HD from my old PC is up and running in the new PC. And for good measure, so is a new nippy 4 TB m.2 Lexar SSD, partly for storing solar and lunar data off my lappy. It's been a crazy few weeks of spending due to a windfall that I will have to get unused to very soon, alas - I could get used to this! The question for me now is what to do directly for astro. I picked up a Grasshopper 3 camera cheap, but the big gap I think is with a large dob. We sold our 16 inch a while ago and our largest scope at the mo is a 10 inch dob. Maybe two scopes, like a 12 inch solid tube (Stella Lyra?) and a 16 inch that travels well for star parties. A rather lovely problem to have. I hope the postie has been kind to you lately too.

Congrats on your new PC! I bought one recently from a supplier, but I think next time around I'll build one myself, partly because the one that I just bought didn't work anyway, LOL! Oooh, some fancy pants Samsung SSDs? You know, I went nuts and bought myself an 8 TB Samsung SSD last week. It was late at night and I got carried away, and the price seemed much cheaper than elsewhere. Then they emailed me and mentioned it was reconditioned, LOL! No wonder it was a good price... I cancelled the order rather promptly. Is that one of those fancy, exotic mechanical keyboards? I've never tried one. If it is one, what do you like about it over an olde-style keyboard?

Thanks, much appreciated! They arranged for the PC to be picked up yesterday, so hopefully they are on top of things. They mentioned getting it back to me this week, though that seems super fast! I'll be amazed and thankful if they make it. They have been good at getting back to me. In the meantime, I have my new lappy to play with. I just need some clear sky to test it out with my camera. Sun or moon, I'm not fussy!

Wohoo, funds are through at last! I think I will have a proper look at the latest used stuff on sale here on SGL and at astrobuysell. Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

Wow, that's got more pockets than a millipede's pair of jeans. For cooling, I use Pepsi Max. The hood does look useful. I'd been using a towel over my head for years, then felt pretty daft this year when I noticed a floppy sun hat worked as well, and was more comfortable! I think I need to use a hat or hood at night too, I think it would help cut out stray light from a few bright lampposts. Good luck for some solar sessions soon with the fancy new clothing!

My delayed Lenovo lappy arrived on Monday. I've since added a 4 TB M.2 SSD, so hopefully I'll have plenty of space for solar and lunar captures. My willingness to splash out on the SSD was increased by recording on my budget lappy in recent weeks, which has about 200 GB in total for me to record after dumping as many files as I could! And it was painfully slow transferring the files via USB. Of course, it was full sunshine while I paused to transfer the files in the middle of a solar session, then the moment the files were off the lappy, the clouds rolled in! 🙂 The new lappy has an RTX 4060 so should make for some fun gaming. My old desktop has a GTX 1060. And my new desktop has gone back today for fixing hopefully. The seller has been responsive. They might be able to get it to me by the end of the week, but I have my lappy to play with anyway. The lappy screen is fab. I'm also delighted with my new monitor - best monitor I've ever had. Which is ace as I was a bit disappointed with my old monitor, which wasn't as good as the one I had at work. So I suppose we'll have two weeks of cloud. I want to see if my lappy can handle my Grasshopper 3 camera at 90 FPS! (my old lappy managed about 26 FPS).

Thanks John and Louis, sorry for not responding sooner. I thought I was following this thread, but I wasn't, and have only just noticed your replies! I'm following the thread now. 🙄 John, £3K for a 20 inch is tempting, and I see that one has a new Astro Tuff Truk. And they say it will fit through a standard 30" door opening. Hmmm. Do you think those poles are easy to take off? I have the storage issue. Sarah is not keen on it being in the house unless it's packed away in our cupboard under the stairs (where our 400P FlexTube was stored). And fully assembled I think it's going to be too tall for our shed. Louis, thanks for the heads up on Obsession prices. I should have the funds hopefully within the next 7 to 10 days. I think Sarah and I don't mind waiting for the right deal, we'd just like something in time for the new season. Sarah is fairly keen we get something to cover us for star parties. I did have a chat with Sarah if she'd prefer to get a new solar filter / scope instead, as she struggles to do late nights at the mo. But she loves the variety with night-time observing. And I had a think about going for a smart telescope instead. I like the idea of the easy imaging aspect, but I think I will stick with solar and lunar imaging. I think imaging during the day better suits me. I'm not much of a night owl, my brain shuts down at 8pm. So keeping it simple with observing works best for me I think. Maybe if I one day get an obsy, I might think about DSO imaging. I did pick up a cheap USB camera for my solar and lunar imaging, and that hasn't eaten into funds much (I sold my cameras a while back, but had the itch to get back into it).

Hmmm. PC is still dead, they want me to try to take the graphics card out and see if it then powers up, but I can't figure out how to get the card out. I can't see how to access the lock for it to open it. And I was thinking "Oh well, at least my Lenovo lappy is coming today! I bet that'll work!" It was meant to come lunch time. Then the truck ran off and it was changed to dinner time. Now it's rescheduled for Monday. I don't think the gods want me to have new PC hardware! Bother! I was hoping today would be my last go imaging with my super budget lappy that only has about 200 GB disc space, which then takes an age to transfer it to a memory stick. What are the odds? Dead PC. Lappy no-show. I'm in trouble with the powers that be! Update: Got the graphics card out, phew! It was hard because I have a big CPU cooler than blocks off access I think to the catch I needed to open. I got it open using an XXXL toothpick! I'm feeling more cheerful about my computer woes since I had the bright idea to compensate myself with some kind of present. 😃

Is that the ED DS-Pro? I have the 100 mm - a cracking scope for the money. The optics aren't embarrassed by my Tele Vue 85, even allowing for the greater aperture. I wasn't that excited about the 100, but I was so wrong. I love that scope now and would never sell it!

Wowsers, my new PC turned up today, I wasn't expecting it this soon! Hopefully my long-held dream of gaming in high detail in 4K is about to come true! (GTX 1060 -> RTX 4070 Ti Super). Oh, erm, of course, it's mainly for doing serious work, and astro processing! I have a little budget for some new games. I dunno what to go for. Games with a high replay value, not a play-through-once style of game. Edit: It's completely dead, LOL! No lights, fans or noise.

Against my wife's better judgement, I got: A Point Gray Grasshopper 3 USB3 camera. I used to own the ICX687 model in the range, which was good for solar h-alpha. Anyway, I rage quit imaging after some Quark troubles, and with solar minimum approaching, and a new hobby taking off, so I sold my Grasshopper 3 and ASI174 cameras. Last week, I saw a Grasshopper 3 for sale and had no idea which model in the range it was, but figured the price was good enough that I'd take any in the range for that price and do what I can with it. If it's no good for solar, fine, hopefully it can do something on the moon. I wondered if fate would move me in a certain direction. If it was a mono, gosh, maybe check with FLO if they inspect their Quarks before sending them out! If it was colour, stuff the Quark! Perhaps a new scope for lunar imaging? If neither, I'll figure something out! What I hadn't counted on was that it's monochrome NIR?!?! "An NIR camera? Erm, can this even record anything for me, or is it for scientists only?" But it's NIR-enhanced. I don't think the QE curve is anything too much to worry about?: It's not normally like me to take a punt like this, but I figured why not go on an adventure and see where this camera takes me? I was hoping to image the sun in white light today, but it was permacloud. So I imaged a microscope slide instead. Well, a first light's a first light. The sensor is a CMOSIS CMV4000. It has a relatively large sensor, at 1 inch. It records full frame of 2,040 x 2,040 at up to 90 FPS (my poor lappy only got into the 20's, LOL, but I have a new lappy coming on Friday, hopefully, that should shift). Anyway, here's the first light, with some false colour added: I've no idea what it is. But it looks interesting and reminds me a bit of the sun. And speaking of the sun, I suppose a fairly large square sensor might be useful for full disc. If it's any good...

Wow, great minds think alike! I'm pondering getting a new action camera, either the Osmo Action 4 or Go Pro 11 or 12 (I have the original Osmo Action and some cheaper ones, like the Okaso V50). They are probably not the best for astro! Those action cams are not that great in the dark! Fun cameras, though, for recording your adventures without risking your phone, and they can sometimes go places where it's tricky with a phone. Maybe underwater with a waterproof case? I think the Go Pro can do 120 FPS at 4K resolution? So great for slow-mo (I'd really like 4K at 120 FPS). And my new Lenovo lappy is due to arrive on Friday! I'm beyond excited! Ah, you have one with an RTX 4050? That should be fun for gaming / animation, erm, I mean serious work, LOL! Enjoy!

Yeah, I think I am suffering too. One day, I think a more practical scope is sensible, maybe even a smart telescope is the next step. The next, I'm thinking about whacking the cost on the credit card and driving for 90 minutes to pick up an 18 incher. #iblamethefullmoon

I didn't get this especially for astro processing, but I'm looking forward to trying some 16 bit images with the Lenovo ThinkVision Mini-LED monitor that claims to offer a "genuine HDR experience". I hope I prefer it to my old monitor, which I've never been fully happy with. I preferred my old monitor at work, and my son's Lenovo monitor really impressed me. I hope it doesn't disappoint! I'm hoping the postie may have something more directly related to astro imaging for me in the next few days (this forum is a terrible influence!)

Thanks Earl for the insights on the cameras. Much appreciated! I had a budget Blackview phone that's now bust (won't recharge) and the camera was not that great. I've been using my wife's old phone (a midrange Blackview) that's got a much better camera - I now appreciate a phone with a half decent (by my low standards) camera! And so I've now got an Honor 90 that I hope its camera will be at least as good as my wife's phone. I'm waiting to get a screen protector for it though, which is not turning up until Sunday, apparently! And I've just ordered a CCD camera that I hope to use for some lunar and maybe solar. I sold my cameras a few years ago, and miss it a bit.

Ah, you do look quite the camera pro looking at your signature too! Google Pixel 7 Pro, hasn't that got a great camera? GoPro Hero 11 Black, DJI Mini Pro (is that for a drone?). I'm considering the GoPro Hero 11 for the 4K 120 FPS, or the DJI Osmo Action 4 with the larger sensor - though the GoPro seems to beat it for sharpness despite the smaller sensor? I have the DJI Osmo Action 2 - it can do 4K at 60 FPS, but is prone to overheating in that mode, which is a bit annoying. It will stop recording when it gets hot and bothered, which can be every minute or two after it heats up on a warm day.

Gosh, handheld? Same as Mr Spock. I just can't get the hang of it! Do you rest the camera lens directly on the eyepiece, or hover above like a hummingbird? I shall give up on my hopes of one day becoming a surgeon. I'm a bit wary of whispering this in case the frac fraternity are around, but the Edge 8 has a bit of a refractor vibe to it.