Ratlet

I love a first first light report 😁.

There is nothing quite like looking through the eyepiece the first time and seeing a DSO.  It's a difficult experience to describe.

I started out last year and have been bumbling around with different scopes, but the BST Starguiders are really brilliant eyepieces for the price and they are a world of difference from the kit eyepieces.  I've got both the 8mm and the 12mm and you cant really go wrong with either in my opinion, although I get most use out of the 12mm in both my dob and 5" Newtonian.

If I could offer 2 suggestions:

1.  If you haven't already, look at globular clusters.  M13 and M92 are both high about the time it gets dark and are among the best.  Photos and sketches don't generally capture how beautiful these look through an eyepiece, and since they are clusters of stars they handle light pollution well.

2.  Once you're happy and comfortable with your gear, sketch.  You'll struggle to find something that has such a low cost but helps with observing as much.  Others can explain better, but for me it makes the difference between looking and observing.  I feel more connected with a session when I sketch.  And it doesn't matter about being good.  I'm rubbish but can still churn out a recognisable picture 9 times out of ten.

Congrats on getting first light so soon with it, I'm absolutely delighted for you

7 hours ago, bosun21 said:

On my 12” SL dobsonian I bought the 35mm M4 bobs knobs. On reflection I could have fitted the 30mm M4 as the 35mm ones are a little too long for my OCD. 

I've got a 10" Stellalyra and a 130pds.  Same experience as bosun.  They fit under the protective lid, but they are a bit on the long side.

I just ordered ones from AliExpress since it works out about 10xcheaper than bobs knobs.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mLSQMA8

4 hours ago, Mike Q said:

We are all in.  2 light buckets and the robot.  Now if the skies cooperate.  Waiting for darkness. 

Really hoping you got a good run of it.

I think what I need is something like the robot.  Not sure if I've got the patience for a big astroimaging rig, but being able to put something like this down and get some decent images out would be fantastic.

Turned 40 today and got some really nice presents.  Got another copy of discovering double stars so I can do some @Mr Spockcolour coding and scrawling.

Also got tickets to go see Brian Cox next year which will be smashing.

53 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

You shouldn't have any fluid on the lens incase of any ingress into the lens spacing. Just slightly dampen the cotton bud with the cleaning fluid and any fluid on the lens should immediately evaporate. 

Aye, that's right.

1 hour ago, Naughty Neal said:

I would first use  a blower bulb, rather then go mad buying all sorts of other kit bits and then use some cotton buds dipped in isoprponol.

If ther is still muck after blowing wet the bud and starting from the centre of the lens lightly wipe to the edge in straight lines. 

This is what I do, although after the isopropanol I do it again with distilled water.

Damp not soggy is good advice.  I usually wet the bud then get the majority of the fluid off by touching it against a clean paper towel.

Change the buds often.  They are cheap, eyepieces are not.

2 hours ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

A couple of scopes … the first is a 6” Stellalyra CC from FLO … ideal for A but if Lunar and planetary . The second was a scope that “went on holiday “ from me to @Alan White and has now returned … welcome home , big red ! 

Is that a Sky T mount they're on?  Need to have a look at one.

5 hours ago, Smiller said:

Yes, I gave a presentation on The Astro Imaging Channel on this abs it is here:

 

That was a fantastic presentation.  Felt you hit all the major issues and concerns and covered them really well.  I've not got a guided dob but felt there was some useful info in there for me regardless.

I'm in the car just now, but I believe the astro imaging channel on YouTube have a comprehensive video on this too.

43 minutes ago, Coco said:

Good watching although you already may have seen it, if your starting out its worth a watch

 

The RASC do some fantastic YouTube content for visual observing.  

Every time I see @Mr Spock way of marking up his charts I think it should be a sticky.

I've got @Ags double star book and it's a great beginner resource for double stars.

Biggest problem for me with doubles is I've got reasonably dark skies and there is so much up there to look at.

Thinking back to when I started as a newbie, for me doubles suffer from the same issues as globular clusters:

They don't photograph so well. 

It took me the longest time to realise that visual is not the same as astrophotography and with astrohpotography being so prevalent it kind of skews the perception of what to look at.

Glad I realised my mistake though.

4 hours ago, Elp said:

Depends how much weight you've got on top, I simply ever so lightly hand tighten so they don't bind into the mount, polar alignment doesn't change much, still below 0.5 arc seconds.

Never had the green dot go red when tightening it down.  I did swap my Allen bolts for thumb screws so maybe I'm not getting it tight enough?

Mate, tell me about it.  What darkness there is is so late it's a fair punishment staying up for it.

That being said I'm glad I did.  The double double was really nice as I've failed to see it conclusively before.  Seeing the figure 8 initially and knowing I had loads more power to throw at it made me crack a smile.

First clear night in an age.  The missus wanted me out so she could sort her knitting bag.  I hadn't got high hopes as we are a few weeks from nautical twilight.  Decided to try for the double double with the 10" dob.

Calibrated the setting circles on Vega and did the wee jaunt over to the double double.  The 17.5mm Morpheus gave an incomplete spilt, the pairs being a bit mushed together, but dropping in the 12mm bst gave me the split comfortably.  Quite happy with that as I'm not sure I've actually managed the split before.

I'm a great believer in checking out albireo at every opportunity but managed to miss on my first attempt but landed on a red star which I think was hd181601.  I love finding red stars.  I find they sort of leap out at you.

I hung around on it for a while and swapped eyes as my right eye has astigmatism and I wanted to see the difference.  The star appeared more point like with my left eye or with my right with glasses which was a bit depressing but the difference was slight.  

Decided to try for some globulars in ophiuchus but the sky around the horizon was too bright.  Panned to Hercules but whilst I could make out a fuzzy blob it wasn't really worth it.

Wrapped up the session with the ring nebula and some filter testing.  Unaided was underwhelming and had very minimal contrast.  It was improved slightly with my svbony UHC, but not by a huge amount.  It's quite broadband so not too surprising.  My sv202 dual band imaging filter did a much better job although the image felt a little soft.  It completely nuked the stars so focus was a challenge.  That being said the contrast was miles better and I was able to pick see the wing quite clearly.

Quite a good, short session all in all.  Looking forward to getting some proper dark back as we get into the season!

Attached a quick image of albireo using my phone through the eyepiece.  The orange is quite faithful to what I observed but the blue seems a bit washed out compared to reality.

I don't generally get on with goto, it's a bit to hit and miss.  That being said tracking when viewing planets is really nice.  It does help that for my 130pds the azgti is much more stable than my az5.

For the dob I use setting circles and inclinometer which is basically goto but better, but alas no tracking.

For imaging I largely do it so that my mum will give me a like on Facebook.  A fringe benefit is that someone else will see the image and like it or comment and just have their day lifted.  Don't forget we are here because we are all more or less equally weird.  Joe Average comments on a ratty image of Andromeda and they've had their world in a tiny way shifted.  "That guy I went to school with took a picture of another galaxy.". I spent an hour on WhatsApp last month video calling my sister and panning around the moon with my phone at the eyepiece.  She's no interest in space or the moon but she was absolutely delighted.

Visual though is entirely selfish.  I could stand here for a week with poets and not quite put into words what it was like when I saw M92 through my 10" dob and immediately had to look at 3 other globular clusters.  Or when @Louis D suggested a cheap filter combination that turned Jupiter and Mars from a washed out 'meh' to something that teleported me to being 8 and looking at a Voyager picture in Quest. I saw polar ice caps on Mars, on another fricking planet!

I say it's entirely selfish but the thing is, I know I can't describe anywhere near adequately what I've seen, but I know that you lot reading this know exactly what I mean and will do a little half smile and remember your own Jupiter on a cold November night when the seeing was perfect, or M33 when you realised that wasn't a thumb print on the eyepiece but was another galaxy.  Don't even get me started on sketching...

It weird that I've never felt more connected to other people but I'm  standing in the darkness on my own.

I round the best way to approach astrophotography is not to look at it as one thing but rather lots of little things combined.

Processing a DSLR image is hard because the built in filter damps the nebulosity.  You could try doing star removal before trying to tease out the detail from the nebulosity, which I've found works really well with DSLR images.

From a cursory glance at it though, I'd be delighted with the data you've captured.  There is very little chromatic aberration around the stars and they look nice and sharp.

This is a very successful image for a second attempt and you should be proud of it!

Towards the end of the planetary season I started using a combination of a yellow and moonglow filter for Jupiter with the advice that it would improve the contrast whilst giving the view a slightly yellow tint.  Apart from the (to me massively) improved contrast I found the yellow tint to be aesthetically very pleasing.  It reminded me of the old photos of Jupiter from Voyager, or at least the tone the images had after processing and printing in old science magazines and books.

On the imaging side of things, I like a bit of 'grain' in the image.  I'm not sure why I prefer it though.  Don't get me wrong, I love the images where you can see huge amounts of detail but I prefer that little hint of roughness you sometimes get as well in the fainter regions.  Also I prefer diffraction spikes in my images where possible.  This is almost certainly due to Hubble lol.

8 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

Found a couple of images which could shed some light on DSLR quality.

First one, shot at ISO 3200 and processed in DxO PhotoLab 6. Zero noise!

Second one - to show what's hidden in digital images and would not be available at all in film.
Top: straight out of camera. Bottom: image as processed to recover shadows and highlights.

That's incredible!

5 hours ago, Franklin said:

 

The general advice is to observe with both eyes open, keeping one shut, as you've found can be quite straining. If at a dark moonless site then this is all well and good but for most of us finding some way to blank off the non-observing eye whilst keeping it open will make for a much more comfortable session. It is possible to ignore what the non-observing eye is seeing by concentrating on what you are observing with the other, but if there is too much ambient light around your site this can be difficult. Solar observing comes to mind where you need an eyepatch or at the very least, cup your hand over your non-observing eye.

The absolute best advice is to get some binoviewers!

You're a bad man lol!  I really want to try a binoviewer out, but I'm saving myself,  Or trying too, for an ed refractor.

4 hours ago, Naughty Neal said:

I did just that bought an eye patch , I found it so much more comfortable then keeping an eye shut.

Cheaper than a binoviewer too 😂

45 minutes ago, Elp said:

Other than looking like a raving idiot, I think they do something. Using them in daylight, after one or two minutes and taking them off my eyesight is very temporarily overly bright. Haven't tried it during an observation as there's little point where I am as straight away my retinas will burn from led lights and reflections nearby. They're cheap as chips from usually online sites, no special equipment needed.

I've been using a hat to cover one eye whilst observing as I find it quite tiring looking through they eyepiece shutting the other eye.  Seriously considering getting an eye patch and swapping it over for observing and reading charts...

Yaaarrr

10 minutes ago, Stu said:

Did you manage to see them?

Still on the 'to do' list 😂.

Fortunately there is a proliferation of people doing great imaging with their phones.

Cheers for posting this.  Heard the guys on Actual Astronomy talk about the lunar X a lot but always put it on the 'to do' list.  Didn't realise it was quite as large as that.

1 hour ago, SteveNickolls said:

Can I enquire the version of the GEM28 software in use when you had these slew issues? It's good however to know that restting the zero position worked regardless of the hand controller firmware version.

Cheers,

Steve

I'll have a check once I get home.  I've not updated my software in ages so it's possibly an older version.  It's definitely a version 8 from about 9 months ago.

From memory the initial problem in february happened when I was using a side by side mount so the saddle was zero 90° from normal, something happened ( I can't remember what) and it wouldn't slew to target and went to random parts of the sky and I abandoned the session.  When I next used it about 4 months after that I used my 130pds so saddle orientate normally.  I didn't zero the mount at the start and when I tried to slew to target the power cable to my camera snagged on the mount and nearly pulled tight.  It's why I recently go 90° plugs for my power cables as it will pull out if pulled tight.

Edit: I'm also going to stick a "zero home position before use" sticker on the mount!