ollypenrice

Thanks you, Gina!

Indeed I have ridden my bicycle to an elevation of 14,000 feet.* Olly * Well don't just sit there reading. I want gasps of amazement!!! 🤣

I am not yet entirely ready to believe this story. I'd want to see a statement from the coroner before I'd even believe for certain that anyone was killed. Even if they were, I suspect that the Flat Earth stuff was possibly just a gimmick for obtaining funding. You know enough to build a rocket but not enough to know that 5000 feet isn't enough and that you can just buy a plane ticket to reach 35000 feet? To my mind this guy was/is just another Evel Knievel. Olly

Back on collimating of lasers for a second, there is an even easier way to make vee blocks though they won't look very professional! Just get a flat piece of wood and four 6 inch nails. Bang in one pair of nails to make an X shape. That's your first vee. Now make a second vee an appropriate distance away. Sit the laser in these and turn it. This will give a perfectly accurate result. Don't expect it to be easy to get this scope into perfect collimation and orthogonality. It is notoriously difficult because fast optics and budget mechanical construction are not natural bedfellows. However, getting the right distances will be a big help. Olly

I'd expect yours to be better but my grasp of 3D printing matches my grasp of 11th century Persian poetry... 🤪lly

They are a little fiddly to set up but do give fine control. The trick is to buy the smallest diameter which will fit your lens and then it feels less like repairing a watch using chopsticks... Olly

From Telescope Service in three sizes... Olly

What a great result. This lens-camera combination gives an almighty FOV and tight stars in NB. Do you know how well the lens controls RGB stars? Olly

There is no more light getting onto your scope. You have not increased the aperture, you have reduced the focal length. This is not the same as moving the aperture setting on a camera lens where you do open up the diaphragm and admit more light when you reduce the F number. However, something is clearly amiss here because each pixel receives a little more light, as Wim says, so exposure times should go down a little. They certainly shouldn't make the jump up in time which is surprising Vlaiv. You don't mention the light source you are using. Could it be this which was much, much dimmer when you tried the reducer flats? Olly

Bias as dark for flats is fine with CCD but proper 'matched' darks for flats is the best with CMOS. Olly

Somewhere 'out there' is an image showing what happens when too close/too far. This image is certainly on SGL if you have a rummage. Olly

I don't know but this information is needed. Olly

What's 'bd?' If it's a saturation booster it can be set to preserve colour balance or will be set to do so by default. Olly

You mention your 'wedge tripod.' I'm not sure what you mean by this. I know how wedges work with fork mounts (having fought with one no end of times!!!) but are you wishing to star align your fork mount in Alt-Az mode on a level tripod top? Or are you wanting to polar align a wedge-fork mount? Olly

As well as the numerical distribution of hotter and cooler stars you have to remember their relative magnitudes. Here's the H-R diagram for M67. (More accurately the colour-magnitude diagram.) The main sequence cutoff is at around B-V 0.58 which is significantly less red than the sun (0.65) There is also a concentration of stars of this colour at around Mag 13, which is mid-range for this cluster. Yes, there are also a great many much redder stars to the lower right but note the decline in their magnitudes. At the high end of the magnitudes there are both blue and red stars. I would say that this was a very good fit with your image. Stars bright enough to show strong colour are red or blue. The bulk of the stars are fairly neutral in colour, as the diagram would lead us to expect. It would be interesting to get an idea of your limiting magnitude in this image and also to see if longer exposures increased the number of faint red stars. I think it probably would. Olly

The double Tak is out of commission since Tom is now solo in his remote shed at my place. It's now a double TEC we share... Olly

Man on SGL claims sensational widefield image of Heart and Soul taken in just one hour. Scientists and elderly members say, 'impossible.' 😁 Damn, that's good!!! I know this part of the sky with a CCD and... damn that's good! Olly

Certainly true. Once my dear friend Tom O'Donoghue has found how much data is finally enough, by test-processing it, he....... doubles it and calls it a day! 🤣lly

You can't use all the same settings because your light panel is a hell of a lot brighter than the night sky! Olly

No, I did do some targets at high res with Tom for inclusion in his mosaic but not this one. That needs to change! Olly

A success! The quad band filter is interesting. What's your level of LP and how well do you find it works? While the image is very strong in the reds it seems that the filter has subdued the blues. Olly

Going very well, Rodd. Olly

A classic face-on spiral, indeed. Nice one. Olly

An interesting object! Olly

Depends on the camera and the scope. Don't shoot Newtonian flats in the daytime, do it in the dark. It's best in the dark with any scope but Newts often tend to leak light from the bottom. If using a DSLR make sure no light gets in through the viewfinder. If using a CMOS chip shoot darks for flats (AKA flat darks) at the same settings as used for the flats. If using CCD a master bias will do as a dark for flats. An even light source is needed. EL panels are good, sometimes dimmed with typing paper. For smaller apertures tablet and laptop screens will also work. Aim to get the histogram peak between 1/3 and 1/2 of the way from left to right. I use CCD so the best DSLR mode will be suggested by someone soon, I'm sure. Olly