ollypenrice

The critical bit is the sole. Most of the heat gets out though those. Don't worry about fancy-looking furry uppers, etc. You need a thick, insulated sole. The cheapest trick is to buy a piece of closed cell camping mat and stand on that rather than the cold ground. And buy the boots a size too big. Restricted circulation is a disaster. Olly

Formby, eh? That takes me back. I lived in Southport when very young and my first taste of school was in Ainsdale. Olly

Lovely LMC. Orion (or, at least, M42,) is one of the very few objects which does require different exposure lengths because no camera has an adequate dynamic range for that. If you use Photoshop, paste the short exposure on top of the long, make a layer mask and copy the long onto it. Greatly exaggerate the contrasts on the mask and give it a massive Gaussian blur. I'm sure you'll find detailed tutorials out there but the one I normally recommend has been deleted. Olly

As an absolute minimum you need three, small, medium and large. That much is obvious to anybody. Plus one for solar. Oh, and to avoid having to faff around taking cameras on and off and re-balancing between AP and visual, you need two copies of the first three. Still, that's only seven. You'll obviously need a spotter for wildlife, so that's eight. Plus three guidescopes, making eleven. And a brass antique for the lounge. Twelve. And there we are, the round dozen. Plus a spare. Olly

I'd settle for 'detect' something...!!! lly

Now there you have it: someone starting out has, in my view, enough to think about without setting themselves up for further preventable mistakes. Keep it simple. By the way, the first email I opened this morning was from an owner with kit in our robotic shed. It contained the phrase, 'I failed to get plate solving to work!' (True, not a joke.) Olly

I recently responded to another thread in which the OP had used plate solving to make a mosaic and couldn't see why his two plate solved panels were rejected by the stitching software. When I applied them over my own image I got this: Although it was a young thread another member had experienced something similar. I have two reactions to this. 1) Plate solving clearly didn't just work for these members. 2) More importantly, an imager actually looking at their captures would see that the two panels were not going to overlap. If software encourages us to 'disengage brain' then this cannot be a good thing. I've participated in a 35 panel mosaic in which no plate solving was used at all. Therefore it never went wrong. 👹 Olly

The universe didn't become transparent to light till it was about 380,000 years old (very young in cosmological terms) so we won't see anything before that. I think that, if you're struggling with the idea for the BB starting everywhere, 1) you're not alone and 2) you're thinking of it as being like an explosion. I think it's vital to rid your mind of this notion because it is utterly misleading. An explosion has a centre and moves out from it. Lots of TV documentaries are guilty of perpetuating this fallacy in their graphics, which show an explosion seen from the outside. Personally I think the trick is understand that there is no outside. It doesn't exist. Only allow yourself to think of the expanding universe from the inside. Pick a point in it and think of space expanding around you. Now pick a different point in it and think of space expanding around you. And then yet another point... What is the difference between these points? There is no difference. Each of these points will feel like the centre of the expansion but this simply demonstrates that there is no centre. Olly

I've never been persuaded by DSLRs as the 'obligatory' entry route into imaging. CMOS astro cameras are way cheaper than were CCDs and, alternatively, older CCDs are now cheaper on the used market. Personally, I don't think the case for starting with a DSLR has ever been weaker. This will make mine a minority opinion but it remains my opinion! I'm also of the opinion that the less you do via software, the less likely you are to have problems. Things like plate solving are fine when they work but, for heaven's sake, do you really need software to point at your target? I'd consider introducing it when you're up and running but the priority is to get nicely guided, nicely focused subs in the can first. Don't become a computer-maniac! lly

The bright spike running roughly up-down is not normal and will probably be due to something in the light path. The dark bars at right angles to the that are classic Takahashi. I originally called them 'inverse lighthouse beams' because they look light dark versions of a lighthouse's beams. I've had them on all the FSQs I've used and can't say they bother me. According to Greg Parker they're caused by pinching. I always think of pinching as causing triangular stars but I'm not a retired Professor of photonics and Greg is! Olly

One of my robotic clients returned a defective new iOptron mount and, interestingly, the person at Telescope Service who dealt with the return said he wouldn't recommend iOptron mounts for robotic use. I can't give you any more information than that. Olly

This is a fast frame camera, however, which again changes the situation. A fast frame camera beats the average seeing while a long exposure one does not. I won't dispute your observations on planetary observing. Olly

Lead the way...

Do we see more or less with our eyes than the camera sees? That depends very much on what we're looking at, I suspect. As a rule of thumb I'd suggest that the brighter it is, the better is the eye and the fainter it is, the better is the camera. In a given scope - say a 4 inch refractor. It's ludicrously easy to photograph the Horsehead nebula and ludicrously difficult to see it. But it's ludicrously easy, at the eyepiece, to resolve four stars in the neighbouring Trapezium while it's moderately tricky to resolve it in images. The moment you want to observe the fifth and sixth stars you'll find it easier at the eyepiece than the camera, where you'll need an exceptional site and, probably, a tight H alpha filter. In amateur instruments I'd rather observe stars than photograph them but I'd rather photograph the faint things. Olly

I think the moment you here a phrase like, 'You just mess around with the sliders till you like what you see,' turn off the video! Nobody who knows what they are doing ever says that. Olly

I agree, but there have been a lot of quality control issues afflicting both types of FSQ in the last couple of years. Olly

I entirely understand this because, before Covid, I was an astronomy provider, offering farmhouse holidays which included use of our observatories and help with both capture and processing. A hands-on and face-to-face arrangement lets you make spectacular progress compared with learning from text. (For all that, do try Making Every Photon Count.) Before 'teaching' this stuff, I learned it myself in the same way from our guests, at a time before we offered astrophotography here. However, SGL offers a great 'buddy' environment even if not in real time. In order to make the most of it I would offer these pointers: - Seek to understand the underlying principles behind every single thing you do in AP. That doesn't mean drown in the technical details. It means understand the abstract principles before engaging with the details. - Believe that no one thing in AP is truly difficult. It consists of a large number of inter-connected but fairly easy challenges. The only hard part is that you need them all in place at the same time, so don't be overwhelmed, take it one step at a time. Tick them off as you go. Polar alignment. Autoguiding. Focus. Framing. Calibrating. Stacking. Post processing. - Avoid using too much software and automation. It is often very confusing, unreliable, conflict-prone and USB-reliant. (Nothing causes more headaches than USB.) It also gets in the way of your learning because doing things manually teaches you a lot about them. I would start with a Go-To mount, capture software and PHD guiding with an ST4 cable, not pulse guiding. And that's it. No plate solving, no robotic focus. Keep it simple, meaning manual. - When it comes to videos on the capture side, most are sound. However, there is an incredible amount of nonsense on U tube when it comes to processing. People seem to think it acceptable to post-as-they-learn, which strikes me as bizarre. Trust Adam Block and Warren Keller even if that means buying a video course. One step at a time. And breathe... lly

This is an interesting conundrum because, although the eye can indeed focus continuously, we still need to focus an eyepiece carefully. They eye clearly has its limits. In nature it is not required to handle steep light cones, which is why I now need specs to see anything less than a hundred yards away . I'm not up on EP ray diagrams but the light cone must be very steep, so how far can the eye adjust its focus? A question for an eye expert. Fortunately I will be able to ask the affable Jim next time I see him: he was an eye surgeon and will doubtless know the answer. Olly

Careful how you do that... 😬

As a provider, I can't say I've noticed a particularly large number of musical astronomers. Some, certainly, like Peter Vasey who is an accomplished singer. What I have noticed is a remarkable number of flyers who enjoy astronomy. We've had a fast jet pilot, airline captains, helicopter pilots, lots of PPLs, glider, hang glider and parapente pilots. We've had five people here who've built their own aircraft (with no connection between them other than that fact.) It's a connection which really does stand out - and I can think of a good few SGL members who fly as well. Two ways of enjoying the sky? Who knows? Sorry for the diversion, John, though I think your post is more about people and their motivation than it is about telescopes. Olly

I think that's a fair definition since a design can be classic even when still in production. I was going to offer, 'A perfect or defining example of...' as my definition. If we say is ' x is a classic example of' whatever it is, we mean that it embodies the essence of that something in its purest form. A classic British sports car, for instance, must be front engined and rear wheel driven. A mid engined British sports car might be better and might be old and it might even be a classic of its type, but it cannot be a classic British sports car - in my view. So the Genesis is an interesting test case. It broke the mold when it came out into the 4 inch refractor market so it was anything but a classic. A 4 element Petzval (which is a photographic design in origin) at an unprecedented F5, it was radical rather than classic. However, TeleVue have made a habit of developing wide field optics but as scopes and as eyepieces so you could argue that the Genesis is 'classic TeleVue.' I don't think the word will let us pin it down, really. Such is language. 'Silly' comes from a term meaning almost its opposite, for instance. Olly

Well, you may be right but this short thread contains two failures already, the OP's and Tomato's. At least look at the panels to see if the overlap is credible (unless you've gone to bed, of course...) Olly

Knight is perfectly correct. Here's the proof. (I overlaid your two panels onto my camera lens image of Orion using the incomparable Registar and there is a wide gap between them.) Like 50% of problems in astrophotography, this probably comes from a software malfunction. (The other 50% come from USB errors. ) My own view is, Why introduce software to do simple things you can do manually and, therefore, reliably? The more software we introduce, the more problems we will have. The 35 panel Orion telescopic mosaic which Tom O'Donoghue and I did was put together without plate solving or mosaic wizards, etc. Anyone doing your project manually would see straight away that the bright star 2/3 of the way down the left hand panel is absent from the right hand panel. I'm in danger of going off on a rant so I'll stop there!!! lly

Be very careful over this 'cropped sensor' business. It produces more nonsense per square inch than any other topic and, in astrophotography, it is best avoided. In astrophotography the 'real numbers' from a camera are pixel size and chip size. 'Resolution' does not arise from the camera alone and certainly has nothing whatever to do with sensor size or pixel count. Resolution refers to the amount of detail which can be resolved, in theory, by the scope-camera system and is measured in arcseconds per pixel. This is the key term and is never mentioned, to my knowledge, in the daytime photography world. It defines how much sky lands on each pixel. The more sky per pixel, the less the detail in the image - except that the 'seeing' (the blurring effect of the atmosphere) limits the real resolution to something between 1 arcsecond per pixel and 2 arcseconds per pixel (or worse) depending on location and air conditions. The term 'crop factor' implies that a smaller sensor 'zooms you in' to a target - but it doesn't. It just captures less sky around it. What matters is pixel size (not pixel count) because that tells you how many pixels you put under the scope's projected image of your target. If you put more pixels under it you'll get a bigger and more resolved image provided the seeing, guiding and focus allow it. They often don't! Very few telescopes can cover a full frame (35mm) camera and the few that can are easily recognized by their price! Olly

It's easy to make a smartphone, as everyone my age knows from their childhood. You get two old bean tins, bosh a hole in the bottom of each, connect them via a long length of string, pull it tight and talk to each other. Olly