bomberbaz

I thought I would have a go at something a little different. Only about 40 minutes data and had to manually process it although Siril did help with background. Quite tricky. Anyone identify it?

Buy mine of me and use it to fix yours ! 👌 😂 (see my other post just above) 😉

what is with this mount of my, poor Ags above is developing a hiccup whereas mine, after months of poor tracking (average would have been 1.5) is running at under 1 for most of tonight. I am doing nothing different. I would point out I have also just ordered a new one, fgs 😱🤣 Steve

Hi Lawrence, have you looked at the Kitakaru eyepiece. StellaLyra 30mm 2" KITAKARU RPL Eyepiece | First Light Optics Now it might not have a fantastic FOV at 62 degree but I have not heard anything bad about these. The reviews I found refer to extremely flat and colour free results at the eyepiece. And your DOB at F6 will be a perfect match giving 1.5 degrees at mag 40. Slightly over budget but you might struggle getting one 2nd hand. There is also the superview eyepiece also by stella lyra but I believe this is a copy of the GSO although should still work well in an F6 and better still, under budget. However I am not able to offer any more info about it but might be worth pursuing further. StellaLyra 30mm 2" SuperView Eyepiece | First Light Optics I would like and may yet get a Kitakaru 18mm for the DOB for use on smaller targets. I love my 102 eyepiece but sometimes smaller objects look better framed in a smaller fov.

Brief garden session last night trying to cut through the murk of a near full moon, although it was low the glow was still very noticeable. For those that don't know I have a hotel to the right of me that kindly uses more lighting than Blackpool illuminations as well as streetlighting to the front and rear which both encroach upon my garden so getting anything from here is a bonus. I did also place out the imaging rig to grab another 90 minutes of data from my previous night in the trough of bowland and a quick ten minute process of my Andromeda data is shown below. Anyway, last night was a mission to do some double stars, so armed with the scopetech F12 80, my (legal) laser and Skysafari 6 which was pre loaded with cambridge list of doubles I headed for Cassiopeia which was not too low and North so away from the worst of the glow to start. There were 4 listed doubles for Cas (I know there are many more) but this is all the download brought through, it was the first of these on the list, eta cas that gave me the biggest ooh in this area, a very pretty pairing with a lightly contrasting pair of quite tight stars. The other satisfying aspect of the whole of last night is using a laser. It is a legal laser which is collimated to the finder and used in a flash on/find/off type way to get the rig close to the target object used in conjunction with SS6. It is very accurate and far quicker to use than just a finder, for me at least. Moving on I went for a couple of globulars, open clusters, several more doubles and even a quick bash at Jupiter which to be fair was too low although nice to get a quick view of it but there was a sting in the tail of my night. The scopetech will not come to focus at high power using any of my zooms (Baader/OVL/TV). My intention had been to use a Baader zoom/barlow combination but nope. In the end I used the OVL 21-7 but that would go around 2/3 of the way before the focuser bottomed out of inward travel so I had to use my fixed focal length glass for higher power. Currently exploring options for sorting this out but I noticed this recently on my pimped up frac which also ran out of inward travel until I trimmed an inch off the length, something I desperately want to avoid on the scopetech. So an otherwise very enjoyable night had the gloss taken off by this. Instead I used a Svbony 6mm and BST 5mm for my high powered views. Not as planned but at least the night wasn't ruined. One last point to report on is the views in the scopetech, they are simply sublime. Well apart from the focus issue with zooms,. At low power it offers a rich and deep view of star fields (using a relatively cheap OVL zoom) and at higher power the fixed focal Svbony 6mm and BST 5mm gave super views of Almach at x167 and x200 respectively. I did a drift for both eyepiece of the double across the full FOV and they remained sharp as a pin with no false colour across the entire fov. Very impressed.

cheap zoom eyepieces like the OVL are the way for outreach. Went to one recently and the first punter who was after a gander must have been rimmel's main customer. I wouldn't want that on my Nikon/TV glass.

thought I would put up my latest data captured on M31, as suspected my results have improved immensely by gathering a decent amount. So we have 2.15 hours with just a ir/uv cut filter. The AZ was tracking so so but as it's a widefield I get away with it. Camera ZWO 183mc cooled, stacked in DSS, quick blast through Siril and tidy up in Gimp. Stars are a bit bloated, think it might look a little less busy if I had run it through starnet, processed then merged but nevermind, I am very pleased with the result for a ten minute process and it gives me a benchmark. I shall have another play down the line to see if I can improve on it.

Not just nebula either, I still say this (ET/OWL) looks like a bat in flight.

Cracking chair and workmanship that a craftsman would be envious of. As per @Shimrod mentioned, it would be great if we could design a way to mount bigger bins. I would happily fork out for such a design.

Yes we are getting a spell of clear weather and what do we have, a flipping full moon. OK if your imaging I suppose or a lunar fanatic, but I really fancy having a proper bash at my new dark site on the wonders in and around Sagittarius. I blame sod!

I think you may have a case to answer. Even if it's current name remains, nothing to stop you (and anyone else) using that name.

Ok so went out to a dark (ish) site the other night and a mate was there imaging with his AZ Gti, his mount had no free play like mine has. So contacted FLO to check they have a mount that is threaded and going to get a new one, this will hopefully tighten up my tracking. I will use my iffy one for solar viewing.

Cracking images them, lot of detail. Where abouts were you to get your data?

nothing wrong with that , quite impressive actually.

Prior to the trip I had arranged to meet up with some lads from the local astro society, 4 of us turned up although only two of us were doing anything visual. We all had imaging rigs but mine was laid out onto auto pilot and forgotten about until i left. For visual I was using my TS optics 82mm bins on the parallelogram mount (which I love) and really only used the 24 and 18 APM UFF eyepieces. Filters for nebula were TV bandmate. I had made a list of possible DSO but when I got there at least half went out of the window. I forgot we had a raised southern elevation but nevermind. (This killed lots of the Sagittarius part) I scratched all the globulars from the list and stuck with galaxies and nebula plus a few asterisms. (plus a brief peep at a low Jupiter) So I got to start off with the coathanger although at first this was difficult. Mainly due to the fact the (legal) laser pointer I was using needed collimating to the bins. After this finding things became somewhat easier. Using a laser (bins rough point, laser on, find and off) was a novel and fun way to find objects, not sure if I would use it on my dob though. This venue used to be very good but now on 50% of the horizon you get a lovely blue (LED Lamp) glow so as your evening doesn't get too dark. So this made my first set of other DSO (saggitarius nebulas) harder to find as A. they were quite washed out in the middle of the glow and B. I struggled even in full darkness to find stars to guide me. I would point out the milky way was clearly visible overhead and struck a lovely sight but that darn blue horizon glow. This is no longer a horsehead type venue sadly although still 8/10 overall. Moving on, yes I got M's 8,16,17 & 20 and 8, the lagoon was a maiden find, very chuffed with this although all 4 were pretty "meh!" in the gloop. The veil was superb in the east but lacklustre, although visible to the west strangely enough. Historically i have always found it the other way around but maybe it works differently when viewed through bino's! Moving on again NGC 7000 was exquisite, like a fluff of candy floss sprinkled in star dust. I spent quite a while on this even though at zenith it was hard work but it was the best view I have had of this little gem. I tried the heart and soul as well, I got one of those am I seeing it definately maybe moments, spent ages blinking, tapping the mount, eventually swearing under my breath but in the end I gave up unconvinced I had bagged either. Other good hits made were M81 & 82 easily in one fov, M51, M31 & M33 as well as the merest of smudges to bag the elusive M101. This last one really took some finding and confirming. M33 and M31 both showed sign's of structure, particularly andromeda which had the bonus of M110 to the top. None of the other galaxies offered much detail to speak of. I now wish I had had a go with the 10mm APM on the galaxy DSO's but I was so absorbed in my viewing that I forgot to change. I think the dimmer ones, well all of them really would have responded well to the extra push in magnification. (x26 to x49) So in all it was a cracking little session, a couple of wow moments and I am finding out that bins have a bigger part to play than I first thought and a worthwhile evening but at 8C in August, I was glad I took my extra jacket. Cheers all Steve

Cheers Steve. I have to admit my near dark sky site (which is around an half hours drive) is a little wishy washy in the south, however the next decent location, which has a cracking southern horizon is an hour and a half away, so I will give it a shout at the near place first. TBF I have managed M33 from it with my bins but then again that wasn't in the south.

great list for August, the Sagittarius targets are amazing, still never had the lagoon, hopefully this month. Thanks Steve 👌

top image is indeed at 30 seconds, stronger signal for sure but more noise. As you say, more time (data) will hopefully give a more conclusive result.

Just thought I would add some no cooled files from different exposure times, as mentioned it was at the start of my own learning curve and up until now I had not done a process of comparable files using a measureable process. Anyway, did it earlier, basic processing using siril. Both pictures very noisy as only 5 minutes data each. 10x30 seconds and 30x10 seconds. Going off these results I think next decent nights worth of imaging I will try to obtain some decent amounts of (semi cooled) data on a bright-ish object such as the owl/dumbbell to run a better comparison but run at longer times. 30 seconds and 60 seconds with a total at minimum of 30 minutes minimum but ideally 1 hour I think. I am only using a 50mm scope to grab data so as results stand they are inconclusive. 10 x 30 30 x 10

This is my effort from uncooled although ti was from the starting point of my learning curve. The OP may remember it from the AZ Gti thread. NGC7380 (Wizard) - ZWO 224mc - 200 x 10sec and 10 x 30sec starting at an ambient of 18C dropping to about 11C, working camera at average 18C, it cooled as the night went on. It's quite red I know. Only a rough effort. However I think 30 seconds is a good starting exposure length for this camera, gain trial and error. Going forward I shall reserve this camera for colder nights and smaller targets. I will also make use of a USB smartphone cooler going forward, the one I have lowers the temp of camera by around 6 -10 degree C, depending on ambient. The warmer it is, the more it cools. (I forgot it on the night I grabbed the data from the attached). Anyway, the 224MC (uncooled) still has a place in my bag.

Well done michael, I didn't manage to image it, it was right in a position where a street lamp is in the way. When I tried moving the rig to a position where it was just out of line of sight of the lamp, the comet (or where it should have been) disappeared behind the wall too. 🙄

Cheers Alan, I thought as much. Like I said, something of an experiment and no major amount of data involved thankfully. thanks for the reply. Steve

Tonight I decided to bin my files of IC5076 as my tracking was a bit wobbly, I was given to believe this helps with the image quality and tbh I was just experimenting a little. I use a OSC 183MC Pro. What I wasn't aware of was that the image data would become B&W. Thinking about it, it is obvious. Anyway, I know PIPP will debayer the files but is this the best way to resurrect the colour within the data. I have access to PIPP, DSS, Registax, Siril and Gimp

I am hoping the skies hold out long enough for me to grab some data on it too!

Make sure you let us see your results. I am looking forward to it. @StuartT, your "go" at the carina nebula is superb.