DirkSteele

Great report. Makes me anticipate my next session under the stars

That sucks, sorry to hear that. We cancelled our plans for the year back in April as I was rather pessimistic about how this year would play out. We are doing a staycation later this year. Hoping we do not fall foul of local lockdowns, as will be packing a scope. Won’t be the Bortle Class 1/2 that the island above benefits from but will be nice to escape central London light pollution.

Amazing!! @mikeDnight

Been digging though old photos of trips away (unsurprising in the current difficult environment) and found myself looking at our 2015 trip to Benguerra Island in Mozambique. On the beach is an old Dhow fishing vessel which came ashore during a typhoon and they converted it into a bar. It is pretty amazing place to have a drink. We also visited in 2019 and this time much earlier in the year when the central Milky Way was rising rather than setting. Provides a nice contrast. The canvass has expanded over those 4 years and the girl at the bar was now my wife rather than girlfriend. Both images are composites with foreground and background images taking moments apart. The 2015 image was 2 sec foreground at ISO800 and the background was 20 secs at ISO5000. Both at f/2.8 and 22mm focal length. I think I pushed the ISO a bit much and the sky is a bit grainy. The 2019 image was 2 sec foreground and 25 sec background at ISO3200 with the same camera and lens. All processing in Lightroom and combined with a layers mask in photoshop.

Taken about 55 mins after sunset, this is a 4 pane panorama of the Zodiacal Light on vacation on Benguerra Island in Mozambique in early July 2019. There was a tourist fishing vessel moored in the bay which had a bright light point towards the beach which was illuminating the sand. Each image was 25 seconds at ISO3200 and f/2.8 using a Canon 70D and a 14mm L lens (equivalent to 22mm on the crop sensor). Stitched using Microsoft ICE and processed in Lightroom.

My wife not only selects places around the world with access to very dark skies, but she will ensure we travel between 3/4 and 1/4 moon to minimise its impact on my stargazing. Its a win - win in her mind, as she gets to go to amazing places, and I get to stargaze under Bortle Class 1 and 2 skies. Even our honeymoon was timed to match that lunar calendar (and by extension our wedding as that was a week early around full moon)! Worth it though....View above our villa.

California Nebula as well. i own a 2” Thousand Oaks H-Beta. Used to spot the HH with an 11”.

I am not sure I possess the superlative in my vocabulary to praise this image adequately.

That is great. Where did you source the 16" pillar from?

Yep. I saw it too. Perhaps I have also been licking one two many (if that is possible) lenses.😁

Ha! Snap. Been there, got the T-shirt. Certainly panic for a second or two until the penny drops.

I do similar when I am down there. Once I am orientated I can usually work my way into the Southern constellations. Though I will never get used to Orion being upside down!

The reality is there is a lot more than 5 galaxies in this image. This second image below was quite painstaking to put together as Astrometry.net refused to work on either the Pano or each individual frame. So, iPad in hand, I used Sky Safari 5 Pro to trace out each visible constellation (tricky when thousands of stars are visible), picking out as many DSOs as I could locate as I moved along the image. No doubt I missed one or two, but at final count there were 43 identified. I hope SGL does not compress too much otherwise some of them may vanish from view. If you want a lost of everything I found, there is a table on the link: http://alpha-lyrae.co.uk/2020/08/01/there-are-five-galaxies-visible-in-this-panorama/

I am quite pleased how this turned out as it is only my second attempt at a panorama, and I know I did not really level the tripod that well. Taken last year on holiday in Mozambique in mid-July around 4am local time, this is a 10-pane panorama using an unmodified Canon 70D, 14mm lens (22mm equivalent on the crop sensor) at f/2.8, ISO 3,200 and each exposure was 25 seconds. Three of the galaxies are easy, one a little trickier, and one might need a closer look. The image was stiched using Microsoft ICE and then processed in Lightroom.

And a couple more. One with the central Milky Way setting in the west, and another looking east just before sunrise. Both from the same session which started at 2am and went to dawn. I had just tracked the HST across the sky at 80x when I took the second image.

My Tak FC-76 under the Carina region of the Milky Way in the very early evening on Benguerra Island in Mozambique last year. Shorts and t-shirt astronomy. I can always get behind that (and those skies!)

This might be the smallest one to appear in this thread, but it deserves to be here for one very good reason. The best coatings I have seen on anything, ever. Should that be not seen as if it were not for the small particles of dust, this thing is invisible. The Takahashi 1.7x CQ module which turns the FS-60 in the f/10 quadruplet FS-60Q.

One could almost imagine looking out a porthole on an instellar spacecraft travelling through the depths of space.

Oh here is the camera balanced very carefully across the ledge and my table.

Forgive the hyperbole, it was only 580mph but also 37,000 feet. In late June 19, I took an overnight flight from London Heathrow to Johannesburg in South Africa for a two-week island vacation in Mozambique. I had packed a small telescope and a widefield camera lens to take advantage of the Bortle Class 1 skies on the island, and fortunately had the equipment in the cabin with me. After dinner the cabin lights were dimmed and most passengers it started to drift off to sleep, but not me. I could not resist some stargazing out of the window. At this point we were located somewhere over north Chad and it was rather dark and the view quite beautiful. I grabbed my camera and a small tripod out of the overhead bin and managed to precariously balance the camera across my tray table and a narrow ledge under the window. I had a choice of 3 windows with my seat but one was very dirty, another badly scratched, while the third was passable and would have to do. While the A380 is one of the smoothest planes I have flown on, there was a small amount of turbulence on this flight which limited exposures to 3 seconds. I used a Canon 70D (crop sensor) and 14mm Canon lens (22mm equivalent focal length), set to f/2.8 and ISO 6400. I was able to focus the camera on Altair using 10x live view on the rear of the camera. I set an intervalometer to the required timings, and then used the airline supplied blanket to shield the window from the cabin lights which were reflecting back towards the camera. I could have done slightly better here as some light still crept in, and I think the red flashing light on the intervalometer also reflected on the window. The best 10 images were stacked in DSS and processed in Lightroom. Considering passenger aircraft windows are not known for their optical quality, I am surprised by what could be captured. Several DSOs are pretty obvious, in particular M2 and M27. I do very much wish I had been sitting on the other side of the aircraft, as about an hour later, the Sagittarius region of the Milky Way would have been coming into view. Maybe next time…

I find it amazing that a scope can be put into production that has such low sales numbers. A shame more have not been sold as many more astronomers need to experience what can be described as LZOS’ 9th symphony.

And so the Japanese don’t feel left out, the Takahashi 76mm f/7.5

Time for some Russian LZOS glass. my oldest refractor (2004), the 115 f/7 The 105 f/6.2 bought in 2012. The 130mm f/9.24 bought in 2019. I will need to get a photo of the 180mm f/7 later.

Not that central London is the best for spotting anything but on Thursday night I was unable to get it naked eye, but found it quite easily in 60mm binoculars. But it’s glory is well in the past now unfortunately.

Its a fair cop guv, you caught me. I believe (if I am under oath) that I told my wife I would sell one when I bought the most recent (the 130mm)....That did not happen. Of course for that comic to be even more accurate, there should be a third pane, which shows clouds have rolled in.