kirkster501

Must have counted 30 at least. About zero degrees in declination.

Can anyone else see them? Loads of them in a line spaced equally apart? About magnitude 2

Hi all, I've had a gremlin for a couple of evenings where the Meridian flip failed in SGP on my Mesu. Scope managed to park itself but the only error in SGP was just that "meridian flip failed". As a consequence a lot of wasted clear sky time as this happened when I was in bed. I started to investigate this evening and do a dummy sync in CdC just to the East of the meridian. I go West past the meridian and bingo it flips to the West. Cool. I then slew to a star to the East of the Meridian and it flips back again. Cool. However, a couple of times after the flip Sitech came back with "bad scope comms" error when the scope was on the West side and I could not move the scope with either Sitech or CdC. In Windows Device Manager the USB connection to the scope is still sound and if I disconnect the USB cable, the comm port goes out in device manager Plug it back and up it comes again. So physical connection in fine. I note an ASCOM error under these circumstances. It didn't give much away, just ASCOM error. I have to close all SW down, power the mount down, power back up and I'm in control again. This happened three times. Any theories what is going on folks please? I am on Sitech version 0.94N which is the latest version on the Sitech website. I am on Servo firmware 9.5 which is quite a recent one too (and I am loathe to start flashing the mount without very good reason). The Software and firmware have been stable for ever, this issue just started it seems (although I have not been doing much meridian flipping during the last year and I did update ASCOM last Autumn). No recent changes at all to the SW on the PC other than windows updates. Must say though, I don't normally use CdC so maybe something to do with that and this is not connected to the SGPO meridian flip error that started me off on this investigation. Anyone know of a way please to test meridian flips with SGP in the day with dummy images?

Thanks. Less is more when it comes to processing and the better the data you have the less you have to faff around with it. Yes, it is way past the meridian now. There's always next year mate.

The star spikes are artificial and added with Star Spikes Pro - a Photoshop plug-in. I felt they framed the galaxy nicely and without the spikes the image lacked something.

Quality refractors on a Mesu mount. I'm not sure there is anything to beat that combination. I have observed The Moon through my TEC140 many times. Sure it may "only" be a 5.25 inch aperture. But it is spectacular. The Starfire will be even better. It will be fabulous on imaging as well.

You can also get more out of the HII regions by sampling the red in you image and building a layer mask from it. Then, use curves and saturation on Red only exposed through the mask to bring them out more. I sometimes "cheat" like that if I don't have any Ha data. My recent post of NGC2403 is a recent example.

A noble notion Dave, to get closer to those galaxies. I'm a galaxy man myself and would love to do likewise and have tried to do so. But our seeing where we live simply does not support that mate, we are in English Midlands, under a turbulent confluence of weather systems with Bortle 5 skies. The art of this activity is to accept limitations and work around them by focusing on the [many] things that we can do. A large aperture, long FL reflector like you propose is going to disappoint you, I can tell you that from experience. Many other imagers - Olly included - have converged on using quality refractors for imaging and there is a reason for this. Please buy that Starfire add remove it from my temptation!

Very much better. A tad blue but OK. The background sky is now very good. It is very evident that there is a lot of data in here. I think you could use a tiny bit of HDR with a heavy mask to bring out some more detail in the galaxies. It would respond well to this I think.

*Exactly* what Olly and others say. What will your seeing support? The Mount Palomar 200" in my back yard would be a waste of time. My Meade 14" is a borderline waste of time. The skies are not dark enough and the seeing will not support it. You must always determine this before buying large and expensive telescopes or else you are just wasting your time and money and setting yourself up for disappointment. There is a lot more to this than just throwing money at it. EDIT: I'd be tempted by the magnificent Astro-Physics Starfire EDt 130 refractor if I were you in the For Sale section if you've got money to spend You'll get a lot more satisfaction with that than a large reflector with 0.35arcsec/pixel which is, at best, once per year seeing for us in Nottingham. I'm tempted by that scope myself to build a dual refactor system.

Yes exactly, the galaxies. The detail is just astonishing. I'd create a mask to focus just on the galaxies and try and reduce the red a bit. Just my opinion of course. There is no right or wrong.

Both superb. Interesting you didn't use the luminance and I likewise don't use luminance for globular or open clusters. RGB at 1x1 is enough in my opinion. I cannot give a scientific reason for that, just a "feel" that a separate luminance just doesn't add anything to the final result. If you don't mind, here is my version of M13 by way of comparison and I prefer yours very much; your rendition looks much more "natural" than mine. You've inspired me to go back at this data set and have another go.

I like this. I prefer the second version where you did not raise the black point quite so aggressively, despite the dust bunny. Is there an in between version? You could up the colour saturation more I think. I think there is more in this data set you've painstakingly collected, screaming to be let out. That is nit-picking on a great image and composition.

Fantastic details. To my eye a tad too red??? I love the detail and composition.

Yay, it does have a Caldwell number - Caldwell 7. I'm starting to look around for some more unusual objects to image. I did 3c273 last night as well and a current trend I like to do is observe it with my 12" Dob at the same time I'm imaging it. Next project is M87 - just M87 on its own. I'd have bagged that last night fully too but meridien flip failed..... So i just got L and R channels.

Ten hours of LRGBHa, TEC140 and Atik 460 CCD with Astrodon LRGBHa filters. March/April 2020.

M101 in Ursa Major. TEC 140 refractor, ATIK 460 and Astrodon LRGBHa filters. Pixinsight and Photoshop processing. Five hours of ten minute luminance 1x1, 90 minutes each of RGB 2x2 and two hours of Ha(3nm) 2x2. March 2019 for Luminance and April 2020 for everything else. I'm happy with the galaxy but I could not control the two three upper stars.

3c273 was the first quasar discovered in 1959. it is also known as PGC41121. It is said to be the most distant object amateurs will ever see visually (I have seen it myself) at 2.4 billion lights years. Here's a quick 30 x 2 mins in each of RGB through my TEC140 last night. Many PGC galaxies billions of lights years distant.

Indeed, the immensity of the life and civilisations that must exist in this image.

Field of view is 8 degrees by 6 degrees. So at this scale the galaxies don't exactly shine out but I think it's interesting to see them in different ways. I'm also working on a widefield Leo Triplet and M51 too.

Samyang 135mm, G2-8300 RGB 15 x 300s in each filter. Not much to show but quite majestic nonetheless.

With Samyang 135mm and G2-8300 CCD camera, March 2020. 20 x 300s each in RGB.

Very nicely done. Extremely hard to process I found when I did mine.

Added the Ha to the LRGB I posed a few months ago. I know the Ha and red is a bit strong but thought I'd share for interest's sake. Hope everyone is keeping safe. FSQ85 with Atik460 LRGBha Baader filters.