kirkster501

Unusual imaging target and I like it. Top job!

Lovely. I actually prefer it in RGB like you have done here.

A new combination I am using - my Samyang 135mm and the QHY268C, a combination that gives a huge wide field. I do not have the back spacing precisely right just yet but this is not a bad first go. It is also my first time out with NINA capture software and I am giving up on SGP. The image is just 19 x 180s with the lens at F2.8 and guided. I need to stop the lens down another stop to improve the corners. The gain and offset of the flats and darks I made afterwards do not match that of the lights, doh!, but they seem to have worked ok. I need to use an aperture mask moving forward and fully open the lens to get rid of the spikes around the bright stars. Anyway, hope you like it.

Yes. OSC for sure.

Cool. I need to look into this too. Here is mine: http://skycam.zapto.org/allsky/ I need to take flats and darks and clear the muck off of the dome.

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Agreed. It is a very difficult balance to strike.

That's some serious going at that FL, well done. I could never get my 14' Meade LX200 guiding in my Bortle 5 skies and so I sold it. It pained me to do so but needs must.

Magnificent. Those tubes weight a ton.

Golly, it was worth the wait. That is superb.

Lovely images. You did them on my birthday as well

Wise. The 8" scope is a lovely sweet spot. Easy enough to carry out and cool down, or put in the back seat of the car to go to dark skies, yet enough aperture to show a lot of great stuff. You do not always have to go bigger and bigger. You are no less an astronomer to use a 200mm compared to someone using a 300mm. Unless you have dark skies the aperture makes little extra difference. It is much better to have a 8" scope and actually use it rather than a 12" and you CBA to use it because its dimensions and keep lugging it out puts you off, or you can't get it in your car. Trust me, I tell you this from hard learned and expensive experience and others will tell you the same. All that said, a 12" is a great scope, don't let me put you off. But is it the right scope for *you*? That's what I always ask people considering aperture upgrades.

AP can indeed be very frustrating and very bespoke to the individual and their setup and their PC's foibles. There are general things to check for that forums like this help with but much of it is tinkering, experimentation and eliminating things. All made so much more frustrating in the UK by the fact we get so few clear nights that we do not want to waste half of them getting the rig to work.

Nicely done with lovely colour and detail in the nebula. Super. If I may say, it would be A1 if you could correct the star colours. It is often worth shooting 8 x 2 mins in each of RGB and using the stars from that to replace the ones in the image from the narrowband filters. There are techniques to do that in PI or Photoshop.

I've looked into doing something in this area too guys. I find taking flats with a flat panel on the Obs wall a right royal faff TBH and would like something on the scope like the astrodad thingy Problem is I use FSQ and TEC and so would need TWO of these widgets. Also how does your dew heater tape connect around the objective if these flat machines are in the way? Never happy unless we are spending money are we?😂

And here is 46 x 300s on M109. 16 x 1x1 in luminance and 10 x 2x2 in each of R,G,B. TEC140 and Atik 460 with Astrodon filters. Will get more data on it as and when to try and reduce noise a bit. I am very averse to overly denoising images. It is a crop since the galaxy is small - 130 million light years.

Processed this yesterday, 24 x 300s in each RGB channel binned 1x1 to give six hours in total. No separate Ha or Luminance. TEC 140 and Atik 460. Grabbed the Blue the other morning and R and G November last year. It was a total cloud out from November to March and I never got the chance to finish it (along with many other works in progress).

Yes John, absolutely. Some people, lost in aperture fever, do not seem to realise how *hugely* the telescope increases in physical size for an extra few inches worth of aperture, that depending on the skies may not actually make that much difference. I'm not intending to dampen Alan's spirt, just making him aware how big these 12" scopes are and be aware that it may no longer pass a spouse's acceptance! An 8" can be hidden in the broom cupboard. A 12" may not. And the 14" and 16" are colossal.

A 12" Dob is a big scope. Please be mindful of this.

A nice image of M16 - well done. I think you have slight field rotation?

Lovely mate! A sight to behold.

Slight changes in focus make no difference at all, I can 100% confirm that from experience. You do not need separate flats for minute focus changes over imaging runs. There *can* be difference between the filters though and so you should take flats with each filter. However, you can reuse those flats over many sessions if you have a permanent set up and you can be 100% confident that you do not move the camera. I reuse flats up to a month or so.

Another data set from April that I just processed. This time M64, The Black Eye Galaxy, in Ursa Major with TEC140 and Atik 460. About four hours in this one. It could use some more data. It is not as colourful as many other galaxies and the spiral arms show very little in the way of HII regions.

You can't please all of the people all of the time to quote Bob Marley 😁

A mighty fine result with great colours and lovely framing on an annual favourite for all of us. Well done mate.