alan potts

It is a shame you are not near me, I have a length of 6 inch plastic sewer pipe I could cut to length and put in the mount to have a realistic dummy run before buying. Alan

A couple of my fellow Mods have SW Esprit 150's and they turn out some stunning images. I wish I had bought one when I could have out here for 3400, the dealer here is a friend, sadly he is not in business now. Olly has done some stunning captures with his TEC 140's too I have also heard very good reports for the 120mm too, which if I am honest would be more my upgrade now for F/L reasons. Alan

Sadly no H alpha available. If you wish to have a go at a longer Tif file I posted 14 hours of M33 about 10 days or so back, feel free to download that, so good result from people on that one. You have done well on this M31 though. Just checked the M33 data is 12 pages back. Alan

Mick I feel it was just very poor condition. Prior to taking the gradient out the whole image looked very poor really which was clearly hazy thin cloud passing, even I am surprised it turned out as it has. Think I will try the OAG though as I also ordered a focuser to fit on it to make it easier. Must try not to drop things on the obsey floor. Recently I clocked up 20 hours on this at a longer focal length, I have always stuck to 3-4 minutes subs, just habit really but I still have a tendency to want to move on after 2 hours. I wanted to combine this year and last but I lost all the data in a drive crash. I didn't do longer this night because it was clear that cloud was amassing, it's been awful ever since, damp cold and cloudy. Alan

A few months ago I dropped my SW ED guidescope which I have to say I rate for fit finish and quality. After it kissed the concrete floor there was an internal chip in the front element, not massive but big enough to cause concern. I later blacked it out altogether with paint but stars still had odd shapes, especially bright one. Guides seem decent though and sometimes even stunningly good. So I change over the the guidescope for the new one I bought in front of 31st Dec and well enough in front Christmas. Did all the calibrations after a rough alignment and the guiding last night was absolutely awful, hope it wasn't the razor sharp stars I now have. Didn't know what to shoot as cloud was moving in from the east, so 25 x 4mins on M33 with the Borg 77EDll and the 071 OSC, darks and flats and a 100% selection of captures. Going to try the OAG I bought back in February soon so maybe it was money wasted Seems I missed the crop from the righthand edge but on the whole this gradient trick that Trevor on Backyard posted some time ago, seems to work reasonably well, just no good for very big targets and big nebulae, Olly spotted I had used it on M31 the other day, he don't miss much, but then that's why he's so good. Alan

Had a quick play, sounds like you spent ages on it reading that, most of which I am sad to say i don't understand. A very nice result though and the pick of those done in my opinion. Thanks for posting. Alan

Made mistake of buying gear in front of 31st, you know the rest, maybe by 21st I will be forgiven. Alan

I have looked at both these and I am not very IT minded though I know my way around PS, I found the crop for example in Startools ridiculous, I will have a play with it another time after all PS is able to pretty much anything if you press the right buttons and it wasn't cheap. Thanks for pointing me in that direction, it will just take me time. I think this IDAS filter is a slightly better option for LED light, if I don't like it well, on the shelf I guess. Alan

I must have a look into gradient removal Olly, I know it can lift any shot to the next level, I know a few way to do grads but these is always a target that fools them. I tried to take your advice given a good while back now on spend 3 nights on a target, not 3 targets in one night. I rarely stay more than 3-4 hours outside but have now managed 20 hours on M33, which is quite something for me. I was going to add to data from last year which I had all foldered together but the drive crashed and I lost the lot. Now after buying a few things before brexit throws a spanner in the works, weather is set poor for a week. Hope to improve my guiding too with a OAG, at least on the 800mm APO. Alan

You don't miss anything do you. First this was taken with my 071 which is of course a OSC. I am only trying this filter from IDAS as it is meant to filter out LED and in the south east I have an LED glow from the town, but nowhere else, it's just easier for me to image that way as my walnut trees reduce south west time on objects. The reason why there is the cutoff that you picked out is that I don't have any graduation software so I use the healing tool technique in PS to graduate the background, which I thought I had got away with, but not from you. So it may well be there but I could have covered it. It is a good technique but maybe this galaxy is a bit too big to use it, works a treat on smaller ones. I can easily go to 5 minute subs here and probably longer It could also be a tad darker so I agree with you, I tend to hurry processing and that is not a good thing, Many thanks Alan

Thanks Olly, a nice rendition as one would expect from you. You talk of integration time, any pointers of which way to go on this. The Borg is F4.3, a devil to focus and not giving the results I would expect for a scope costing close to 2000 usd, not that I paid that. It also is not ideally matched with the 071 but I do that purely for the wide field. No matter what I do you do seem to get these orange stars coming through in the images more than I would like. I have tried the two different IR/UV filter, L2 & 3 and now have a IDAS D2 filter to see if that helps with all my scopes. I have a bit of LED glow to the SE sky from the town, they call it progress. As luck would have it all other directions are free of any LP for many miles I had another play about and turned it up what I feel is the right way and it does I think look a bit better Thanks for you efforts Alan

It was just out of DSS, How can you convert them, I will try a FITS DSS stack a bit later. This free software, do you know how long it lasts? Alan

I have no idea, the same file you had a play with and produced this rather nice image. Alan

Can't get a single Tiff file to open in this program. Alan

I am amazed how many really different colour castes there are going on in one set of data and how different tools change things, PS is easy to add or remover different colours, maybe more so than any other program. I really like the version Alacant has done with the small tight stars but ideally, and only personal taste, would like a bit more colour in the galaxy. Great to see what you all do though. As per normal, I have just received a delivery from FLO, checked the forecast and it give 8 days of rain cloud, snow and more rain. Alan

How did you process it, you appear to have much smaller stars than I managed? Alan

If anyone else wishes to have a play feel free to download it. Alan

I will dig it out. I have used the super pixel mode in DSS to reduce the file size but it is still useable Autosave007.tif Alan

Toned the yellow down a shade or two. Alan

I keep looking at APP but I do not like using cards on line. I did lift the yellow a bit may well have over egged the pudding Michael, feel guiding could have been better, which has been very up and down of late, night before last it was stunningly calm below .2 of a pixel. Alan

I am still fighting this Borg 77ED ll which though it looks cute and pretty I am not in love with. Since last years poor efforts I have spent more time focusing and had bought a Astronomik L3 IR/UV filter for it, something quite a few suggested. Still can't say I like the results I get though. I have recently tried the PS gradients technique as outlined by Trevor Jones on Backyard. Though I didn't really spend a lot of time on the process the gradient removal for most subjects seems to work well. I have also got a LED LP filter on the way to hopefully remove some of the sky glow from the town. When I started 14 years ago you couldn't really see any light from the town at all but in recent years with low quality badly shielded LED's it does cause a small problem in the most import area of the sky SE, rising area and now where Orion is sitting. This I normally wait for it to move west of south, where it is black. Anyway, here is 2 hours of 3 minute subs with calibration frames taken at minus 5C with a 071. Not very cold I hear you say but I have studied a number of my images at different temperature and can't see any real difference.

Must give that a try on the 183mc, never seen or heard of it before. Alan

I have that plane tracker on the computer and opened it last night whilst in the observatory to see there was just the one plane in the airspace around here for many miles, you guessed it flew right through the middle of my first sub. Lord knows what the string of lines would have done, very interesting sight though. Alan

I have to admit I wondered for a split second, then though i didn't know what they were remember a comment a while back saying about these going through someones astro photo frame, I got my wife and son out to see them. Alan

In the main they were spaced pretty much even but a few were out on order, I would say it was a string of 30 or so. Alan