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).