bomberbaz

Ahh I was refering to visual, thanks for the reply anyway

Do you find you get any granulation on white light with just the 80mm Nigella. I currently use a Bressier 102L F9.8 and thus far have not overly very impressed with results.

If you use a 0.85 SW reducer it gives you a F.6.4 which as peter says above drops into the quark sweet spot.

look at the star forming going on as a result of the ongoing merger, the gravitational tidal currents must be amazing. Great pic.

Marked version sorry

my image from Saturday night, just a little processing.

Got the little devil, quite easy in the end. 🤩 I would judge it to be around mag 8.9 as per the second star in the four star line between it and M52 Looking back I probably managed it the previous Tuesday but I wasn't 100% sure. No doubt tonight and got a brief image of it. I will pop the image up later as I haven't got time to process just now.

Not sure it is going to last until Monday then as that is when my next chance is going to be. I can still image it but nothing beats photons on the retina.

Right, so as I thought. Thanks. That probably explains the poor goto after alignment too. Wasn't a mile off, but enough.

We have all had them, some more than others but I have to say tonight was one of my best, worst nights ! So got to my chosen destination after a half hour drive and on arriving i noticed that conditions were getting a little murky. Not to worry I thought, it was supposed to clear later! Start assembling the truss, found that for some unknown reason one of the truss screws was not engaging properly. Fiddle and test then found it was the female part that was the issue. ( I shall refrain from inuendo) Anyway, i managed to get a partial lock of the offending connector which was sufficient to allow me to proceed and I have a spare part so can sort this out properly later. Next issue, the DSC was not connecting to the phone. The phone in question is a motorola and I hadn't used it before with the DSC. I switched the DSC on and off, same with phone. Played, fiddled and faffed and got either brief or no connection and plenty of frustration. Cutting to the chase it's the phone, it doesn't like motorola, or at least not mine. I tried at home later with the cracked screen samsung I had previously replaced because of it's damage and boom, no problems. looks like the knackered samsung has received a new lease of life. Cracked screen or not. So the nail in the evenings coffin, the skies didn't really clear, in fact they got murkier as I battled with the DSc issues and in the end all I managed was a low mag view of Mars and a split of an easy double. My aim had been the nova in Cassiopeia but I could barely make out the constellation, let alone find and confirm a nova. That was it, called it a day and came home. The only upshot is my issues are resolved and shouldn't happen again but dammed annoying. Having a stiff drink and then bed. Steve

Tried with a 127 mak, not sure if I saw it, there was a lot of fluffy cloud rushing through the fov constantly. Tomorrow night should be a better night if the forecast pans out as expected.

I was polar aligning tonight on my EQM 35 pro using a 127 mak, I don't go mad because it is visual mainly or short unguided type eeva/imaging. Anyway, got my rough polar alignment nice and easy. Then using the mak I checked for polaris in my eyepiece and it was a little bit shy of actually being in the FOV. (This being 0.6 degrees) I tweaked it to get polaris centred but then lost polar alignment, so returned it back to polar aligned. I have watched so many videos to try and figure my head is beginning to hurt. Anybody got any advice as to where i am potentially going wrong please.

That is actually a great little finder which I will use on monday all being well. I have the coords and will use my eqm35 to get me too it, cheers.

I have a chance on Monday night of getting to see it weather depending but signs are good. Has anyone any up to date information on it's current brightness?

I have had my gear out and ready to go for the last 7 days but conditions have simply not been up to it 🙄

Thanks for the advice Luke, I am very new to this and just like to have a play around but if I can improve things with easy steps then worth a go. I will make some flats and darks next time and see if it works out any better. Laziness stops me bothering but on longer exposure it is needed for sure. I might try with my coma corrector next time, again laziness. Guiding, tin of worms I am told so not sure I want to open it 😅 cheers Steve

Had a little bash at M33 tonight. A little low in the sky which didn't help. Anyway it's 15 x 23 seconds at 225 gain using a ZWO 183 colour camera on a SW EQM 35 pro goto. The image is unguided and I reckon it is close to it's maximum period before it will hit problems with the image drift. There are a couple of image issues, from the left there is glow which I think is because it isn't a cooled camera and the donut aberration at the bottom. No idea what that is. I am still quite pleased with this and next time I will try tweaking gain higher and shortening exposure to see if that works better. All good fun.

Absolutely outstanding science, amazing landing. I loved the technology of the landers data and accompanying graphics, felt like I was almost there watching it land in person. I filled up a little as the emotion was so powerful on touchdown, the release of emotion was palpable. Well done again all the teams involved, truly inspiring result for all your dedication.

fantastic, I love all the star forming regions in the bottom right section.

Do we have an indication of how long this is likely to last before fading. Weather here is awful for at least another week .

just had a look in stellarium, pretty low in the sky and at mag 13.4 going to need pretty dark skies. My nearest dark sky at about sqm 19.5 - 20 is 12 miles away. With the current situation I don't know if it's wise to drive there.

I will measure when I get back but if suitable then I shall take you up on that keV thanks.

Hi all. My granddaughter got a SW 90az for Xmas. Her mother put it together for her. I went up the other day to tweak the mount as it was very slack and noticed the loose finder scope, think it is 6x30. Anyway, reason it is loose is mum accidentally threw the rubber O ring away. But of a long shot but wondered if anyone has a spare O ring they could let me have. Regards

At a loose end this morning so decided to reprocess some data I got the other night whilst playing around in Orion. I am struggling with Live Stacking, for some reason my laptop doesn't like sharpcap for livestacking, I might try the ZWO ASIstudio next time. Anyway, as my live stacking skills are a bit naff I am taking stills and stacking but all good fun. So I have been playing around in GIMP and slowly getting better results (in my eyes anyway). The HH part is only just visible and this is the one I really want to try live stacking on. First effort Reprocess

Had a play around with the M42 data and managed to drag out a little more detail and get it a tad darker although now loosing detail from heart of the nebula.