Steve Ward

Quick grab in the small clear patch that lined itself up for me ...

Well having at long last got to play with the new Altair 174MM Hypercam I'm very pleased with its first taste of sunshine . A collection of close-ups from the 2nd July , all slightly different settings as I was finding my feet , and an AS!3 2x Resampled offering in the middle.

Finally got to play properly with the Altair Hypercan 174MM Fan-cooled camera ...

Thanks to the "must have the latest tech" folks there are some fantastic DSLR deals around as loads turn to mirrorless systems ... 😉 I've just snapped up an EOS 6D with only 16,000 on the clock for £220 for my whitelight solar imaging on the Evostar 150 ... WEX , MPB and Park Cameras are well worth checking on a regular basis ...

It's still a bit hit and miss here Michael . Even as recently as 10 minutes ago I've just been greeted with a page teling me the site doesn't exist ... forgot to screenshot it but if it goes again I'll do so next time. Thanks for al the hard work you continue to do for us all. Regards , Steve.

Thanks Russ , Looking at Sat24 I'd say you'll be under blue very soon ... 😏

What a difference a day makes ... 😉

No description regarding conditions necessary , a picture paints a thousand words ... 😄

Interestingly it's not that ... the striations appear in most of the frames upon inspection ... ? It may have something to do with the dreadful seeing that day , very hot and humid with very rapid shimmering I recall , on first look at the full disc shots a lot of them showed half of the long region relatively sharp and the other side near invisible and vice versa . A single uncropped , unstacked frame.

I'm guessing that it's due to the drift I'm getting at the moment (like walking noise in deep sky images) as I haven't polar-aligned since moving back to my old home , and that's the direction of drift at the moment with my "pick it up , carry it out and plonk it down" set-up ... 😆 Now I've replaced the focuser and attached the focus motor to the shiny new one PA is my next task , when I get a cloud free night which looks like not until the weekend.

Very glad to have captured the new AR that has grown incredibly overnight , had 24 sharp frames to stack but as you can see I had stacking issues thanks to the clouds in every frame. Can't always be blessed with clear blue , a quick animation here of the frames I was working with ... 😆

I just popped a 2x Barlow in the mix that luckily covered the more interesting bits ... 😏

Thanks Pete ...

When I fully opened up my Evostar 150 box yesterday ( having undone the lid in OVL's carpark to let the clouds out in Woolpit rather than here at home ) I found a glossy product flyer within that had this 'scope amongst the products. I can only assume that they had real intentions of making it to have it included in so many boxes , not sure of the date of the flyer and haven't checked the date of my OTA.

Quick grab before the clouds arrived , poor seeing but hey ...

I was tempted to mention it ... I just rattled off a few handheld frames for the hell of it , I'm a sucker for her against a pale blue sky . Didn't realise it was "X" time , I'll have to have a quick stack and see if the 150-600 picked it up ....

Picked a poor day for it with atrocious seeing and 32°C to swelter in , but I got a few images amongst all the faffing about , a few wrinkles to iron out but it's showing great potential. Even a hint of granulation amongst the noise in the closer view ?

Well I've fitted the focus motor , made a new Baader filter holder and I think I might have tweaked my 2" Barlow down from 1.4x to 1.2x ... There's a little too much wasted space on the sensor at the moment for my liking , no point jumping to 150mm aperture if I can't use every pixel ... 😆 Just waiting for the clouds to pass over and I can give it a test on the Moon and see how the disc sits before hot-melt glueing it in place , all things being well it'll have its first solar outing in the morning ...

Another slightly blotchy offering today , had to keep whittling down the pile of half decent frames until Mr Fussy AS!3 would stack them ... 😆

Luckily I've got an estate car , I'd have looked pretty silly if I had a Mini as the box was five and a half feet long ... ! It'll be on the mount full time so no case needed , just glad it hasn't got to go on top of my 14 foot high pier of old ... 😆

Was just about to pull the trigger on the Bresser 127/1200 yesterday when I noticed that the Evostar 150 was reduced by £100 in a couple of places ... As I'm only 25 minutes from Optical Vision's warehouse here in Suffolk I made a quick phonecall to my 'local' supplier TWC and an hour later it was home ... 😏

Whoops ...

Just managed to grab a few through the very thick grey blanket before it disappeared from view completely , very flat offering but there's only so much you can do ... 😆

A bit of a wait for the clouds to disperse , but well worth waiting ... And the SDO/HMI Continuum for comparison.

Thanks Pete , have fun ...