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13 GoodAbout AstroMum
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Rank
Star Forming
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Gender
Female
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Location
Rural Mid-Suffolk
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Portability and better optics won out for me over aperture. I downgraded from a 120mm achromatic refractor to an 80mm apo and a less sturdy mount as it was all too heavy for me to cart around. I spend more time observing with my smaller setup simply because it's less of a chore to have everything ready. I would love to have something with more aperture one day, but I know it won't be used anywhere near as often as my little "grab 'n go" kit, so that will always stay with me. I've noticed that a lot of members here have smaller scopes in addition to their main one(s), so they certainly have the
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I've always wanted to live by the sea, but looks like sand and stars don't go together well (at least not here in the UK). That said, I do love the north Suffolk coast and would jump at the change to have a home there.
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Aha! Culprit found! And with a scope that size, we're not going to be seeing anything for at least a month!
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So I wasn't planning on doing any stargazing tonight, but looking out of the window after my toddler had gone to bed revealed a nice clear sky. Not exactly perfect conditions, but good enough and not too chilly either. I spent about an hour setting up, aligning and viewing a few objects. Then I popped back indoors for a hot cuppa and to make myself a little itinerary of things to see. I'm not usually very organised, so was quite pleased with the resulting list I'd made and headed back outside to get started. Only I couldn't see a blasted thing. I assumed my night vision was completely shot and
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Auto guiding with a digital camera
AstroMum replied to AstroMum's topic in Getting Started General Help and Advice
Cheers guys. Just wondered if it would be worth a go as I have all the necessary kit and it wouldn't cost me anything. I'll have a play and see if PHD likes it, if not I'll just go back to my original plan of using my Evostar 120 and a modded xbox livecam for guiding. -
This may be a daft question, but would it be possible to use a regular digital camera with a reasonable magnification as a guide scope? I have a Panasonic FZ-38 with an 18x optical zoom. I've mounted it on top of my scope a couple of times to take basic wide field photos and it's adequate for this simple function. Just wondered if I could make use of it this way?
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Thank you, I'll give that a go next time the clouds depart.
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Once the GOTO handset is aligned, I've found it works brilliantly. It's so much nicer being able to select a target on screen and have the scope slew to it, no more fiddling about in the handset menu. I'm afraid there's no charging ability whilst the Skywire is connected.
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Another vote for SkySafari. The differences between the versions can be found here: Southern Stars SkySafari: Versions I use the Plus version as I wanted to use it to control my scope with the matching Skywire cable.
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OK, have just used the tutorial and RGB Align and this one has come out a bit better. Is it just my imagination, or can a dark band be made out towards the southern pole?
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Your Saturn picture is stunning, I can only dream of achieving something that good. People often struggle with Mars, I don't think I'm going to attempt to image it myself until I've gained a lot more experience. I'm intending to do mainly DSOs with my kit, but I figured I may as well have a go at some planets when the opportunity arises.
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Thank you! I'm going to have another play with the file this evening and see if I can get a better looking image. I simply have all the options in the drop-down list, from BULB down to 1/4000. Are you able to use faster exposures when using the camera directly?
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New Forum software, a quick taster!
AstroMum replied to Ant's topic in Official SGL Announcements and Events
I have run forums for a few years, though mainly phpBB. I would be more than happy to help test if you still need volunteers. -
Thank you for the kind comments everyone.
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Thank you. It does seem tough doing planets, I felt I had much better success with my first attempt at M42. Have bookmarked your links, the tutorial I used last night was for an older version of Registax and didn't make a great deal of sense!