RobertI

Very nice report Magnus. The Veil is fabulous with an OIII filter, it really gives definition to the ‘flames’ in the Eastern Veil. And like you, I find the nebula is all but invisible without the filter, unless the skies are really dark. I can get the whole complex in with my 4” refractor, but the best views are with the bigger apertures like yours. You’re right about needing to familiarise with some of these open clusters before going out, especially in the star rich regions of Cygnus. There are a number of Collinder clusters I want to track down but I will need to prepare carefully (and will probably never find the time!).

Extraordinary! Congratulations Peter.

That's very impressive stuff Steve, the colour, detail outer shell are amazing. I tried my first LRGB multispectral last night with my "grab and go" EAA setup - a tiny 66mm refractor, a Lodestar camera which appears to be producing increasingly erratic subs and a SkyProdigy mount which stubbornly refused to align properly - the results were extremely poor, I think I will experiment a bit more before I am brave enough to share! However, there WAS some colour.

Just installed and had a play - some very nice new functionality and usability enhancements. Thank you. 👍

I believe the Equinox was the higher quality version, same lens but CNC tube and rings, sliding dew shield and better focuser. They stopped making it for some reason but seem to be re-introducing something similar in the form of the Evolux.

Personally I would go for the Starfield for the the following reasons: The focuser is higher quality, rack and pinion and is rotatable You get a sliding sliding dewshield, CNC tube and rings At F7 it’s a shorter tube which is easier to use and easier on the mount - my 4” F10 refractor is definitely more challenging in that respect. Slightly better for wide field viewing. Overall it has a premium feel that Skywatcher will lack. I believe the lens quality is very similar, both really excellent. You get a lot of extras with the Skywatcher, I guess the finder and diagonal are very useful if you don’t already have them, but on the other hand you are paying for a reducer you may never use. I may be slightly biased as I have an identical scope to the Starfield (rebranded Altair Astro) and I absolutely love it. Get some binoviewers for planetary and lunar observing and you will be blown away. 🙂

The Veil is really tricky if you don't have dark skies, but the OIII should hopefully make it pop into view - good luck!

let us know how you get on. 🙂

I have an Astronomik OIII - if you read the blurb it will say it's best used with scopes of 6" and above, but the general consensus on SGL is that this is not true in practice, and you can use with much smaller scopes.

If you can, I would thoroughly recommend one, it’s worth it for the Veil alone!

How do you turn a budget Heritage 130P into a light bucket? Get an OIII filter! Last night was wonderfully transparent but with so little time I decided to take out my quickest setup - the H130P on a mini-giro. I thought it would be good conditions to try some nebulae so started with the Veil at 30x. Meh. Disappointing, I could barely make it out, so popped in the OIII filter and the transformation was remarkable, with the Eastern Veil popping out extremely brightly, the pointed Western Veil easily visible and also Pickering's Triangle. Always a delight the Veil, there's something special about it, and it was like the filter was revealing a celestial secret, only visible to those with the magic filter! Next was the the Dumbell, without the OIII I could see the apple core shape, but with the OIII the wings became visible against the darkened sky. I kept comparing the views with and without the filter, and it's remarkable how the nebula seems to get brighter with the filter - I know it's an illusion of contrast, but it really does seem to get brighter. Finally I thought I would try my Nemesis - the Crescent Nebula. I have struggled with this over the years, and I did finally manage to see the brighter portion very faintly last year (cannot remember what instrument I used) but it was not satisfying. But this time I could easily make out the full extent of the nebula - yes it was an ill defined blob, no crescent shape, but definitely the full nebula as I am now well acquainted with the field stars around the nebula! I think a bigger scope would have revealed something special, but alas, I had run out of time, and time for bed.

Fascinating object, it does look slightly ‘unreal’, beautifully captured.

I use this one also, as you say, very good if you want an enjoyable browse along the terminator.

I always used my 102ED on a Skytee with a 2” tripod - rock solid but really heavy. I recently got an AZ4 on a 1.75” tripod which is considerably lighter and I’m pleased to say is also extremely solid and good for high mags with the 102ED. I’d say it’s the perfect sized scope for this mount. The AZ4 might not be the most refined mount from an engineering point of view, but for the price you can’t really go wrong.

Many thanks Martin. I gave that a quick go over cornflakes this morning, and it did stack them all, but still shows as B&W - I think I'll take some better shots later on and try again. Thanks for the pointer on the capture icon - that explains what I was experiencing!

OK, it looks like SLL is appending the red/green/blue to the filename. I tried stacking the images in jocular but it looks like it failing (I assume that’s why subs are shown in red) hence why it’s shown as B&W - I’m assuming I need to take some proper astro images to get this to work?

Thanks Steve, that's a clear explanation. I was hoping perhaps by telling jocular which filter the incoming subs were using, it would tag them accordingly, but doesn't sound like that's how it works. I'll experiment a bit more with SLL and see what happens. To be honest, just setting up the filter wheel and getting it working was such a pain, it made me debate whether I really wanted the complication at the telescope - the whole point of this wide field setup is to be quick and easy!

Given the cloudy nights at the moment (frustrating given the sunny days) I thought I'd get the filter wheel set up to try some L+Ha or LRGB next time out using Jocular. I have a Xagyl filter wheel with an ASCOM driver which I control with a separate utility (I couldn't get jocular to connect to the filterwheel directly) and use StarlightLive for capture. What is the best way of getting Jocular to recognise the different filtered subs to get a colour image with this setup? I tried various approaches (including setting the RGB in SLL) but nothing seemed to result in colour images in jocular. The most logical approach seemed to be to set filterwheel to 'single' in the equipment section of Jocular and then tell Jocular what filter I was about to capture with, eg: Select 'L' filter in jocular, move actual filter wheel to L filter, start watching in Jocular, start capturing in SLL (then stop in jocular & SLL after X exposures) Select 'R' filter in jocular, move actual filter wheel to R filter, start watching in Jocular, start capturing in SLL (then stop in jocular & SLL after X exposures) Select 'G' filter in jocular, etc..... However this didn't seem to produce a colour image in Jocular, although I was looking at a red brick wall in the dark, so not sure what to expect! Am I using Jocular in the right way for LRGB or have I missed the mark completely??

The second image is a great angle. 👍

Stunning!

Great images Mark, looking forward to later in the year and might even have a go myself (might need some help from fellow SGL’rs though )

Excellent - I’m bookmarking that one!

Will do. 👍

Thanks for your very speedy help guys - it's late and I didn't think about the focal length - I entered the correct FL of 700mm for my old Arp 12 image and success!

Thanks for the guidance Steve and Mike - just had a play with my own Arp images and Jocular's included Arp 186 image (all available for selection in the DSO catalogue) and I get the "no match" message - I've tried all up/down and left/right combinations - not sure what's wrong? Lovely capture of NGC7331 Mike. 👍