Brumtaffy

Croeso! If you are in N Pembs; Well hello! If you are from south of the Lansker

I WAS enjoying it! Outvoted by my 12 yr old daughter... Grrrrrr!

Sounds great. Tied up tomorrow, but I'm keen to hear how it goes. Well done you!

Nice report MJ! Setting an alarm for 4am, check. Getting up and out at that hour.... weeeeeell...... You have great commitment my friend

There's lots of carbon in bamboo LOL I'll be mostly sticking to my carbon-frame Specialized Roubaux for cycling and NEQ6 Pro for Astro.

Planets = webcam; a Mak is a great option DSOs: many are too wide-field for a Mak; ED80 refractor or similar is good. Don't forget that guiding is king for DSOs, unless you don't mind having to bin most of your data... Probably the best compromise is a solid Newt reflector on a decent mount that can cope with the load. That's my two penneth anyway

There's a wonderful book 'Making Every Photon Count' by Steve Richards which is to be thoroughly recommended. His take is that moving to guided imaging is the quantum leap. 'Follow' your target Going for a mount with a ST4 guiding port gives you more options. So HEQ5 or NEQ6 in the SW range gives you that plus the payload ability to carry a guidescope/camera and ephemera. Of course plenty of other manufacturers/makes are available

That does sound good. From what I can extract from threads passim all these scopes are great value and judging from what owners say they are happy with them. I'm about to take the plunge too. Nice thing is the used resale value is high anyway, so it feels 'safe' all ways round

You gonna pray for a shower of kidneys? LOL

Hey, you have crabs! Nice shot! Yeah, I clip all the time too, it's a PITA Why not post your very decent data and get the SGL brains to illustrate how they do it?

At a dark sky site in Devon, managed an hour on Sat just after our arrival- lovely using our hosts 50cm Dob. BUT cloud ever since Still, been looking at tuts for using my newly acquired NEQ6 Pro, lots to learn while the clouds frustrate us!

I'm in just the same boat, NEQ6 Pro, about to go all SW ED 80, but not sure how to start with the dark art of guiding... Quite fancy using one of my SPC900s with an adapter on the finder. My critical requirement is ease of use/ shallow learning curve- does that tick these boxes?

I hope it will turn on more people to our obsession I particularly enjoyed seeing the southern hemisphere sky. I'll just have to get a South African holiday one of these days

Wowie! What a magnum opus Congratulations!

The secret to all this, as Shrek tells us, is LAYERS Even with the 10m USB cable, or Obsy, you will need to be outside.... for prolonged periods Use what you have- someone mentioned fishing gear, great, just put lots of layers underneath. I'm into dinghy sailing and have a drysuit. I can put that over any clothing I like, the feet are sealed rubber sock-like extensions of the suit. I tend to go for a running/hiking long-sleeve top, a fleece, the dry suit and a top coat (last one just for the pockets ). Over the rubber-feet I have some Sealskinz socks, waterproof (from my cycling obsession). I wear a Skinfit running beanie under a thicker Ospreys Rugby one (c'mon the boys!!), don't forget yer bonce! Who says a fella can have too many hobbies

Sorry to be numb, but why does pushing up the ISO help so much? The k5 can, apparently, go to very high ISO without too much noise creeping in. I wonder, then, what optimal ISO might be? I'll just have to have a play! 800 1st!

Really impressed by this image! I would though, as I'm dyed in the wool Pentax too Pentax get overshadowed by the marvellous support there is for Cannon (esp. modded ones) in the Astro world/community. I want my DSLR day and night, though I just moved up from a k200 to a k5 and was wooed into also buying the 0-GPS-1 unit. This allows the GPS data 'in' (via a small hotshoe attachment) to move the CMOS, allowing exposures of up to 5 mins on a fixed tripod (dept. on dec of object). This is a single shot with a 200mm lens, on a tripod, 60sec, f8, ISO 100. Not nearly as detailed as Theo's, but this is a cropped image. The device is really good for wide field stuff too. Pentax Pentax

Hello from Moseley! --- I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=52.438798,-1.886170

This could help get my teenage sons into astronomy