Tim

On 15/11/2019 at 13:20, steppenwolf said:

I am going to bring this thread to the attention of the magazine that I write for but I can't promise anything as their workload is already heavy enough without complicating things further!

Glad you saw this and are letting the guys know Steve, I do think the OP has a valid point about images taken abroad. I wonder where they send them to to get included, unless they get submitted to the TV show gallery, if that is still a thing. I don't remember exactly, but when I had images on S@N on telly, they were chosen from a Flickr group set up for pictures for Stargazing Live I think.

9 hours ago, Helen said:

I'll be there on Saturday afternoon - with Welsh cakes 😉 

Helen

Which has just decided my visiting time

One night, at around 1am, there was a tapping on the door of my obsy. Only I was in the warm room and the tapping was from inside the observation area, not accessible from the outside.

I gingerly opened the door and in flew a huge Hornet!  There followed an impressive array of impromptu Kung fu moves, and a fair bit of screaming before it found its way out again.

On another night I was doing an errand for a farmer on his fields when his cows decided to kill me. They had me trapped in a field about 20 yards from the fence and were going mental. I actually filmed them on my phone so my family would know what happened to me, and then ran for all I was worth and dived under a barbed wire fence, beating them by inches. Quite scary really!

2 hours ago, Starflyer said:

From going to star parties for eleven years now I can say that spring events have far more chance of being drier and clearer than autumn events.

I'd agree. Events in the western side of the UK usually have better weather in Spring, and the eastern regions have better weather in Autumn. I've been  comparing them for years, ever since the Spring SGL and Spring Kelling used to share dates. For the past few years we have been spending three weeks at a time in Norfolk in autumn. Even this year there was a good 7 usable  nights, and 9 if you like lunar observing,  but in the same period as we were away, the weather was awful with only a couple of good nights.

I dont think Lucksall were so keen on us using the site in spring though?

Oh rats! Gutted to say the least.

Not surprised though, the fields in the midlands are absolutely saturated now, many rivers have broken their banks already, lots of flooding around. It looks like being a real problem this winter, going to cost a lot of people a lot of  money I think.

What an anti-climax for you Grant  We are going over to Winterfest at Kelling in November should you need to get a big scope fix...

I dont know, but maybe Nebulosity? It is designed to be easy. There always used to be a free trial version to see if you like it. From the same guy who introduced PHD

On 25/10/2019 at 12:51, FLO said:

A )  10Micron demo.  We will take our demo 10Micron GM1000 mount (available at Ikarus Imaging) to the SGL Star party.  If you would like a demo please ask. 

B )  A new mount !  We will shortly be revealing a premium range of astronomy mounts that are new to the UK and will be available exclusively at Ikarus Imaging. We will have one available for demo at the SGL Star Party. 

C ) ZWO ASiair.  The ZWO ASiair is proving very popular and is arguably the best example of its type - an affordable stand-alone unit that provides control of ZWO cameras and a filter wheel.  It also provides Wi-Fi connectivity to a mount, auto-guiding and more. @Grant has been using one for some time and will happily provide a demonstration if asked. 

A - Suggest taking a supply of paper towels or similar, helps with the drooling......  Seriously though, great to see FLO with top end kit like 10 Micron mounts, I absolutely love mine and have never regretted the investment.

B - Ooooooooooo!

C - Very impressed with the ASiair, and will actually be looking to purchase one with the little guide camera they do with it. Was going to wait until IAS 2019 unless there's a better time to have a look?  

Looking forward to seeing you all again

56 minutes ago, thommo10 said:

Hopefully England V Wales 

That would be great. My wife is half Welsh, and there is Helen of course. I'm impartial, but do enjoy the vibe and atmosphere that surround well played internationals

14 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

I recall many years ago at SGL SP about twenty people cramming into Mathews awning to watch something on Sky, rugby maybe ?

Dave

Ahhh, I miss Matthew! Yes it was the rugby   With Psychobilly Peter and Matthew there it was great fun

I've always enjoyed the results from my Baader filters, they work well and are sensibly priced.

In recent times more brands have been introduced. It's just an assumption but I would guess at them coming out the same production facility and just being rebranded.

There just might be something of interest on the telly on saturday morning........

The 200P is an all time best seller, for good reason

3 hours ago, Uranium235 said:

Could you please point us to a link (reversing Baader filters) where this information is posted?  Otherwise it means that 99% of all imagers have been doing it wrong for many years (including myself), as practically every optical system requires a flattener or reducer for imaging

Well, you learn something every day!

Having the 10 Micron will be excellent for you and allow you to see much more, from the simple fact that you will know 100% that the target is in the eyepiece, allowing you plenty of time to relax and spend some time on each target, using averted vision, eyepiece tapping etc. Poor skies can be challenging, but the accuracy of the mount will save you from mucking about trying to determine what is what.

Let yourself get completely dark adapted, turn off all lights, the brightness right down on your keypad, and get as comfortable as possible.

Enjoy, it's a great scope, I have one that I sometimes use on my 10 Micron too in light polluted Coventyr skies   

10 minutes ago, Lockie said:

However, civic chiefs turned it down after council planners branded the building 'incongruous' and 'un-neighbourly.'"

Council planning departments are an absolute joke in Warwickshire and have demonstrated time and again that they pander to wealthy interests of massive developments and nitpick over minutiae with household projects. I take delight in thwarting them by using their own double standards against them.

When they visited my home for a query about a structure, they noticed that I had erected an 8ft fence along one side of my garden. They said, "You are not supposed to do that, it is un-neighbourly!"

My reply was a little sarcastic i'm afraid:  "Is it? Oh. Well I erected it to stop the heroin addict boyfriend of my neighbour from trying to hit golf balls from their garden, across ours and another garden, into the nearby parking area for aeroplanes at Coventry airport. But I am being un-neighbourly!!"

As for the poor guy in the OP, well he should have gone through planning I guess, but even if there wasn't bad feeling between the neighbours before, there will be now. So who wins? 😕

1 hour ago, carastro said:

If the council complain about the POD I will sell it and replace it with a ROR.  But so long as no one complains I will leave it as it is as rather too much faff to change it unless I have to.  

Carole 

If you have had it over four years without complaint there is nothing they can do anyway

18 hours ago, Raph-in-the-sky said:

I went the cheapo road and bought a ironing chair for £15! Eventually I will try to build on myself.

To be honest that was one of the reasons I didn't get one until now, because I have the wood, the skills, and the tools to make my own, and always intended to at some point. Just never found the time

18 hours ago, scarp15 said:

Great, good reasoning and nice chair / picture. There is something magical sitting in comfort, with good posture at just the correct eye level to your eyepiece, visually absorbing a subject.  

Agree totally. Could really concentrate on the targets. I regularly observe with big dobs but have always either stood or used a step ladder, the seat is far more comfortable though.

Hi @Grant, are there many pitches left available? Just had three weeks off work but might be able to sneak another couple of days under the radar

Around ten years ago I spent some time solar observing with a friend using his solid oak observing seat that somebody had handmade. It was height adjustable, with an adjustable footrest, and made it very comfortable to sit and let the tracking mount follow the solar sphere as we observed it.

However for the following few years the gear I took to star parties tended to be imaging based, so no need of a dedicated seat for observing. These days though I just pack my trusty 18" Dob, and at the recent Kelling Heath SP decided to cave in and get a Tracer 12V battery while they were on offer. Combined with the tracking platform that sits under the dob base the battery pack really completes my push-to setup nicely, but I do tend to find that slightly crouching or bending a bit is causing me more and more back pain lately, indeed I missed a whole clear night of observing during the main star party due to the pain. This in turn leads to sometimes cursory observing on my behalf, sometimes missing out on the finer points of a particular object.

So when a second hand oak observing chair came up at the boot sale on Saturday morning at Kelling, I thought that the £80 asking price might be money well spent. The fact that I am a sucker for solid oak items bore almost no influence on the decision  

Well, I have to say, what a difference! Being able to sit comfortably and just observe, without having to crouch or bend or nudge the scope made a MASSIVE difference to my enjoyment of the sessions, and with a relaxed comfortable posture, I was able to spend much longer on individual targets, properly using averted vision for extended viewing, and also eyepiece tapping.

It was very gratifying to slowly work my way through H beta, Oiii and UHC filters side by side, really getting to grips with the different views they present, which was especially enjoyable on the Rosette nebula, and M42. My wife even joined me at 2am one night and we stayed out until dawn, and even she commented that the time just flew by using the comfortable chair for observing. An additional highlight was the California nebula (NGC 1499), which through a 21mm Ethos with Lumicon H beta filter just seemed to go on and on, but without the support of the chair I would not have been able to observe the half of what I did of the nebula, it would have been too painful.

Needless to say I am delighted with the purchase and look forward to the next trip out with it, which may hopefully be at SGL 2019 very soon, or at Kelling Heath again in November.

(Pic taken with phone and a placed red light just to test the effect, I like to observe with absolute minimal light sources around! As it was, we had the whole of the bottom red field at Kelling to ourselves when everybody else left, and enjoyed a really dark situation)

Hi Mick,

I've just returned from Norfolk to Coventry after a three week break there. We go every year for darker skies than at home. Enjoy the forum

9 minutes ago, retret66 said:

I have that also but with bathinov mask although the diffraction is good, focus is still slightly off so I never use it

Used properly a Bahtinov mask is pretty much foolproof, are you manually adjusting focus or automating it to get it slightly off?

How exciting!

And I am almost perfectly qualified for the part-time dispatch operative role in every respect except one, having no experience in making mistakes and so don't know how to admit to them

51 minutes ago, FLO said:

Today was Ian's first day at FLO 🙂 

We have also built a new separate website that, like Ian King Imaging, will focus exclusively on astro-imaging.

Ian will oversee the website and, as before, will be contactable via phone or email.

We will make the website live soon (lots of product pages to fill!). 

Regards, 

Annette, Grant, Ian, James, Katie, Lisa, Martin, Rob & Steve. 

This is a great news item

Pixinsight, in my humble opinion, (and that of world class astrophotographers  ) offers the most comprehensive set of tools for image control, and can probably be considered as professional software. It is constantly upgraded. I've never regretted paying for it, although it was a fair bit cheaper a few years ago. 

I also enjoy the super clean and easy to use Nebulosity for image capturing, a doddle to work even with only half an eye open at 4.30am