RoryG

Hi Torben, A good resource is https://www.shetland.org/visit/plan/accommodation, there should be plenty accommodation available after the summer season. There are some great Bortle 2 areas when you’re away from Lerwick and the other villages (and in the north the Sullom Voe terminal and gas plant is a major light polluter). If coming by ferry from Aberdeen I suggest you book well in advance as it can be difficult to get a cabin and a vehicle, it’s not a pleasant 14 hour overnight journey without a cabin! Cheers, Rory

The weather is likely the worst thing, although it can be amazing like Tuesday, 17.5°C and clear skies. And if you want to go south getting to Aberdeen and back by ferry (overnight, 12 or 14 hours depending on the route) with a cabin and a car on the dates you want to travel is nigh on impossible between April to September unless you book months in advance.

Hi from sunny (!) Shetland, a group of island 120 miles north of mainland Scotland at 60° north. We’re blessed with long dark winters (only around 5 hours of daylight in mid December) to virtually no darkness at all at this time of year, just short of 19 hours of daylight at the summer solstice with no astronomical twilight until the end of August. I’ve been interested in astronomy for all my life, and thanks to my late dad I can name all the constellations in the northern hemisphere, and many of the brighter stars, galaxies and nebulas. He had an enormous refractor telescope - about 8’ long if I remember (this would have been early 70s) - that had terrible CA but you could just about see the rings on Saturn and the moon looked amazing as did Andromeda. Last winter I bought a Seestar which rekindled my enthusiasm. The first night I had it the seeing was great, and as it’s so simple to set up I was rewarded with an amazing image of M42 in just a few minutes (I ended up letting it run for over an hour saving the individual subs). The next morning I downloaded Siril on my Mac Studio and had a go at stacking with a Seestar script then processing, it’s still one of my best images! Since then I’ve become reasonably proficient with Siril, and recently started a trial with PixInsight. During the summer I’ve been imaging the sun (on the rare occasions we see it) with a Baader filter, stacking raw video in ASIVideoStack which produces excellent images. I run an aerial media business, mainly drone surveying and mapping but we do a lot of corporate video production, site monitoring, time lapse, etc., and even film and TV productions, we’ve filmed all the aerial footage for BBC’s Shetland crime drama since 2017. We’re currently working on a very exciting project (more on that soon) which allowed us to invest in some great Astro kit including a CPC Deluxe 800 HD and an Askar 65 PHQ. Although the primary use is not astronomy in the true sense, the kit will be available when not in use for work so I’m planning some planetary and DSO imaging when the dark nights return. A big shout out to Chris at FLO who’s helped considerably with my kit list! We’re lucky to live in a Bortle 4 area, and Bortle 3 just five minutes drive. And in less than 15 minutes I can get to an elevated Bortle 2 area with an unobstructed 360° sky view! The 8” Celestron is fully mobile in its own environment controlled trailer so easy to get to dark skies and not long to wait for acclimatisation. Here’s a few of my Seestar images, including M42 from the first night I had it. Orion Nebula (around 250 x 10s), Horsehead Nebula (around 150 x 10s), first quarter moon (2 minute AVI 50% stack), waxing gibbous moon (3 minute AVI 50% stack), sun with Baader filter (2½ minute AVI 50% stack), Rosette Nebula (just 50 x 10s).

Thanks guys. After a bit of further research I've gone for the ASI715MC without a barlow.

Thanks for the reply. I considered cooled as I may use it for DSO, but in retrospect I think a camera specifically for planets makes sense, so thanks for the advice. I like the look of the 678MC, it ticks all the boxes and with the 1.5x barlow the FoV is excellent. Cheers!

Hi from Shetland! I have a Celestron CPC Deluxe 800 HD that I bought for a visual rocket launch tracking system I'm building for use at the Saxavord UK Space Port, the first launch by RFA is scheduled for August, exciting stuff! For the first year or so there will only be a handful of launches so I would like use the kit for its intended purpose - astronomy - and try some planetary, lunar and solar imaging. I have a Seestar that I use for DSO (I stack the subs and process in Siril) and also solar / lunar (raw video stacked in ASIVideoStack), so really interested in the solar system with the 800HD. For rocket tracking I use a Panasonic GH5S with a Metabones EF to M43 0.71x Speedbooster which gives the perfect field of view, but no use for planets. The sun and the moon frame well with the reducer, but I would really like a dedicated cooled high frame rate colour astro camera for the planets, particularly Jupiter and Saturn, and to get up close and personal with the moon. I do like the ZWO products, but I'm open to any suggestions. I have a budget of around £1,000 which will include any adapters / Barlow, etc. There seems to be so many cameras out there it's hard to make an informed choice, so what better than ask the experts here! Thanks in advance, Rory Here's a few of my SeeStar images, M42 with Hubble palette (300 x 10 second subs), the moon (stacked 2 minute raw video), and the sun with a Baader solar filter (stacked 3 minute raw video):