petevasey

I hope you succeeded, Dave. I stayed up until 2 am, but still no sign of clearing, and sat24 showed continuous cloud coming from the South. So went to bed - I'm up at Kielder this weekend and needed my sleep. Still cloudy this morning so I made the right decision. Pity tho' - would have been an interesting image. By the way, you said " needed more time spending on it to even up the background but haven't got around to it " This link might help. Cheers, Peter.

Best of luck, Dave. Use a pretty long focal length to show up the Eskimo - from your image above the comet doesn't seem to have much of a tail. I think I'm screwed here in the North East- despite an earlier BBC forecast today promising clear skies, it's looking very doubtful Cheers, Peter

Hi, Dave, At midnight it will be 30 degrees above the horizon and rising. That's at my 55 degree latitude, probably around 4 degrees higher for you, transiting at 4.30 and 60 degrees for you. But if you've got to go to work tomorrow... Cheers, Peter

Nice animation. But er... shouldn't the comet be moving from right to left? Don't forget, early hours of Friday (9th - tomorrow) it passes close to the Eskimo Nebula. Cheers, Peter.

Got my Canon back in less than a week after sending it - good service, Andy Nice job - the autofocus still works correctly, and a custom white balance is also doing the job for 'ordinary' use. Which leads me to the question: When using a modded camera for astro work, should the white balance be set at custom or auto, in particular when capturing RAW images? Cheers, Peter.

Beautifully detailed, deep and nice colours! But ' So many clear nights in October '. Grrr!! I had 3 clear dark nights in October, and one of them had impossibly bad seeing. My fault for living in North East England Keep up the good work. Cheers, Peter.

Good point. But when you consider that stepper motor driven mounts could have the same problem, I suspect the inertia of the system including a camera and lens is probably enough to absorb any small 'kicks'. And of course we don't know how many impulses per second - with clockwork one tends to think of an impulse every second with pendulums. But watch escapements can run a lot faster with several impulses per second. I wonder if anyone has bought one yet? Cheers, Peter.

Beautiful shots and superb processing - lovely and crisp with no artifacts - just like an eyepiece view. Well done! Cheers, Peter.

NGC 7640 is an almost edge on spiral galaxy in Andromeda. Reasonably large, but faint at magnitude 11.1 Interesting in that although there are no nearby galaxies, it appears somewhat distorted. If there has been interaction it must have happened a long time ago. Although last night (1st November 2018) was forecast to be clear, I had another engagement, and would not be home until later on so would not be able to collect much data (full dark was at 6.35 pm with Moonrise at 11.55). But I decided to take a chance on leaving the system running with the dome motor in action, and it paid off - I set it away at 6.10 and when I returned 4 hours later all was well with the telescope only slightly off centre in the dome slot. I kept imaging until an hour after Moonrise - the 34% illuminated Moon was on the other side of the sky. In the end I only had to scrap one sub frame - the very first luminance which was taken when there were remnants of clearing clouds. So I ended up with 15 x 10 minutes luminance and 8 x 10 minutes each RGB, all binned 2x2. QSI 683 wsg on RC10 truss with SX AO unit. Cheers, Peter

In Pisces, mag 10.4 and quite small at 5.4'x3.9' Very tightly wound spiral arms. I'd seen an image by Adam Block, which as usual is excellent, and prompted me to have a go. http://www.caelumobservatory.com/gallery/n488.shtml But relatively low from NE England and proved difficult in mediocre seeing to tease out detail. Anyway, QSI 683wsg on RC10 with SX AO unit. Luminance 12 x 10 minutes, RGB each 4 x 10 minutes all binned 2x2. Lots of distant background galaxies. Cheers, Peter

I know this thread is 2 years old, but just for information, Andy is again doing camera mods, and I think has been for some time. He has my 700D at the moment! URL is: http://www.astronomiser.co.uk/ Cheers, Peter

Yes, the outer area is a lot fainter. But worth doing a bit of selective brightening if you have suitable software. Nice colours! Cheers, Peter

Looks as though the price has gone up since I posted in March. Even so at £109 good value. Although it's possible to use a ball head or normal tripod fluid head for polar aligning, probably more stable and accurate with a wedge type mount on the tripod. The Star Adventurer wedge is available to buy separately for under £50 - less than a high end ball head, and certainly far cheaper than a Manfrotto geared head. I have a very similar ball head to the one supplied as an extra with the mount, and it works very well - a saving of £11 over the supplied unit. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Andoer-Camera-Ballhead-Release-17-64Lbs/dp/B00JSJXH3Q Actually if on a budget , don't already have a fluid head, and are prepared to fiddle a bit more with polar alignment, probably good enough top and bottom of the mount! A little later. I have this pan head which I can recommend. A bit cheaper than the Star Adventurer wedge, and of course good for other photographic uses. As the 'blurb' states the long handle allows for precise movement. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Velbon-PH358-Fluid-Panhead/dp/B001S9OGMA But to be fair there are numerous alternatives! Peter.

After a run of very poor nights both at home and at Kelling Heath, Friday night (14th Sept.) gave me a few hours of good clear sky in the early hours. So as I knew Giacobini-Zinner was approaching M35, decided to have a go. It was actually going to pass right across M35, but in mid morning - I wonder if anyone elsewhere in the world captured the passage. I started imaging around 1:30 local time, but the target was very low at only 18 degrees altitude. Also in the East which is my worst light pollution area, looking towards Newcastle upon Tyne. So I waited, and eventually was satisfied with 10 frames around 4 am when the comet was at 40 degrees altitude, at which point the clouds arrived. So here is the result. Canon 700D on TS65 quad. 10 frames at 3 minutes and ISO1600. Processed using a combination of Deep Sky Stacker, MaximDL and Photoshop. The small very old cluster to the lower right of M35 is of course NGC 2158, with IC2157 further to the right. Previously posted in the Observing section - my apologies! Cheersl, Peter.

LDN 1235 is a dusty area in Cepheus. I hoped to capture it last week at Kelling Heath, alas conditions did not play fair at all. But unexpectedly last night the sky cleared well for a few hours after midnight and I was able to collect a reasonable amount (tho' not enough - there's never enough!) of data before the sky started to lighten. The popular name is pretty obvious! North is up. Poor forecast the rest of this week then a full Moon. But Cepheus stays high for a few months, so hopefully I'll return later in the year for more data. QSI 683 on TS 65 quad. Luminance 9 x 10 minutes, RGB each 3 x 10 minutes, all binned 2x2 Cheers, Peter.