kirkster501

Super. I love those epiphany moments! yes I love the AA blue too. Alas, no longer available as you say.

That is very nice. Well done.

In Lanzarote for a week. First day, We’ve been travelling and I’m knackered. So bit of an early one. Got the bins on the balcony with a San Miguel. Low down but there it is, sparkling a bit in the haze but good to see you again Canopus after all these years, last time I saw you was when I was in the Gulf 22 years ago now. We’re growing older together, you and I. Also, Formhalhaut Quite high up instead of hugging the horizon. Orion rising to my East on his side instead of low down to the south east like in the UK. Sky seems weird without Ursa Major but not circumpolar here and is below the northern horizon. wonderful. I’m so tired though after a busy week at work and up at 4.30 this morning to travel here that I’m retiring now for the night. There’s always tomorrow hopefully !

I received my SA yesterday. I am very impressed with the quality - it far surpassed my expectations. I gave it a quick whirl under the moon last night and it was tracking perfectly.

This is the cable you want if you run under windows 10. The older hitech astro one does not work. Search for Chris' EQMod videos on Youtube. You can practise getting it all going, including dummy platesolves from photos, indoors.

Plate solving is almost magical once you've got it to work. Especially so when allied to meridian flips

Wow, lovely. What filter did you use, a 3nm Astrodon?

I love the picture with stars in. Not keen on the starless one, and I don’t like starless pictures, it’s like the sea with no fish.....! good to share though for interests sake.

I like them both to be honest. One isn’t better than the other, just a different emphasis.

Yes indeed Olly. To start with I thought the cloudiness in front of the two bright stars was some issue with my capturing, maybe some high haze. But analysis of other images shows that this is due to nebulosity around those stars. I may revisit and grab more RGB on this at some point.

A light tweak to the saturation before I got to go to work....! Whaddayreckon?

Don't see this one coming up often... Sharpless S2-202 in Camelopardalis. The bright bit at the bottom - that I left in to give scale and luminosity clues - is the the top of the Soul Nebula. The whole area, looking out into The Perseus arm of our galaxy abounds in very faint gas clouds as can be seen in this image. An intermediate faint nebula, clearly much more indistinct from the nearby and much more famous Heart and Soul Nebulae. Samyang 135mm and G2-8300, Astrodon HaRGB. 24 x 300s Ha (3nm) and 9 x 300s each of RGB. Pixinsight to get to the RGB master and Starless Ha masters and then Photoshop for the blending. Can do the blending in Pixinsight too with Pixelmath but it is easier in Photoshop. Anyway, an odd object but I hope you like it.

Very nice. Great commitment to one subject gathering that much data. Chapeau to you for that.

I like the blended one. Superb.

Redid the data from November using some of my new found Photoshop skills. Samyang 135mm and Moravian G2-8300 with Astrodon RGBHa (3nm). 25 x 300s Ha and 12 x 300s each of RGB. Precious little to show in the G and B channels on these nebulae but they are clearly there. Developed RGB and Ha masters in Pixinsight up to the none linear stage and then blending done in Photoshop after removing the stars from the Ha master with Starnet++

Yes Martin, that's what I used to extract the Ha from the star-field and then blend that in various combinations with the R channel at 60% and the Blue and Green at 20%. I used pixelmath to put the RGB back together. And then I used the Red_Ha combination again as a luminance to the reconstructed RGB blended at 50:50.

This is very nicely done on a very tricky target Bob, good job. A lot of the Sharpless objects are very faint but you've got lots of the dark nebula in the background there. My only slightly down point is I think you've lost some signal in an attempt to get the sky background darker by moving the black point too high? There is more in that data I think.

Fabulous. Lovely to see the background nebula that is often overlooked on this subject. Have to be very delicate not to process it out!

Nice. A hard one to process this.

HaRGB, Samyang 135mm with G2-8300 CCD and Astrodon RGBHa (3nm) 20 x 5 min Ha and RGB, 8 x 5 mins each Developed in PixInsight and Photoshop. Lots of blending of the Ha channel in various combinations with the primary colours (predominantly red but small amounts added to blue and green as well). Recombined them then a master luminance of a blend of Red and Ha added to the resulting RGB. Hope you like it

I used mine with a 10Kg scope like the Espirit just fine. That said, I was using OAG and a DSLR. The HEQ5 is rated at 10-11kg for imaging so I think you are good to go. At the upper limit, true, but it'll be OK I think. I would not be loading it with guidesopes and massive cameras though.

Thanks. Yes it was fine. I do indeed shoot 15 minute subs with the Ha sometimes, depending on air traffic.. I am under a flight path heading to East Midlands airport with the airliners at 3000-4000 feet and I can waste quite a lot of them because such low aircraft cannot be removed in stacking. So I sometimes go to 20 minutes on a good night when air traffic is landing at the airport in the other direction.

24 x 10 minutes Ha and 16 x 10 minutes OIII. TEC140/Atik 460 and Astrodon Ha 3nm and OIII 3nm.

Thanks they look good James. Steve

I am going to get one of these so I can do some imaging away from home if I am working away, overseas etc. EDIT: Just bought one 😉