bomberbaz

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.

Still learning at this game, at some point I will take more time to try to learn a little more by reading stuff, haha. (not really) First effort is M42, 10 minutes of data, enjoyed playing around with the settings but finally settled on 8 second at 300 gain, quite happy with my play around effort. Just about got running man too Now the flame and horsey, never seen the horsey in any way before except on here from others images. I have stretched this to hell and back. I could probably get a better result but the fact is the HH is there. 20 minutes worth of data = 16 seconds x 75 fits at 325 gain. Both stacked in DSS and messed with in Gimp. Very happy

I found another free video to watch which I know some of you will find interesting, especially the ones who are into their solar viewing/imaging. I watched this the other day and like any documentary, it can be a little slow at times but there is some very interesting content and fascinating cgi based on science fact. It is 50 minutes so not overly long either. There also appears to be links to a lot of other astronomy related content on there as well. Enjoy Solar Superstorms

I watched it on amazon prime too, I found the link above after so everyone could watch it for free. Anyway, prime threw me links to loads of other stuff as suggetions as well. I tagged about 20 of them and I am slowly going threw them. One I watched yesterday I am linking to as well called solar superstorms, some very interesting stuff in it.

I am not sure if I have seen these so good effort with the links. I am still a sponge with astro related stuff, sadly these days it's a sponge that dries out a little too quickly but I still persist.

Think I saw it in options, thanks for the heads up 👍

I watched it on prime, then it threw up 30 more options to me. I shall watch them in my own time and there may be other recommendations 😉👍

I have just watched this documentary about Voyager's 1 & 2. Starts from conception, to launch, through the solar system and onto inter stellar space. It has many of the original people who worked on it as contributors and personally I found it very interesting and at times, profoundly emotional. 2 hours long, early on a little slow but once it gets going it is superb. https://watchdocumentaries.com/the-farthest/

Nice work michael, I was (have now) going to do the same when I saw yours. My efforts are a patch on these but it's the taking part isn't it 😉 😅

Hello all. I only started playing around this year at EEVA and at the same time I am playing at imaging a little, so I have attached my efforts for 2020. Comet ones taken with my nikon camera, the rest mainly using a ZWO 224mc, P-DS 130 and wifi gti mount. The last M45 using a ZWO183 but with my new EQM 35 -Pro. Much tighter stars with this mount, tracks exceedingly well too. Excuse my attempts at processing. I have been getting better with gimp although it is a steep learning curve. I don't profess to be the best, but I do enjoy what I am doing. Ethereal Moon Neowise Mars The ring with lots of hot pixels Andromeda M34 Starfish cluster M82 The ring slightly improved although colour redish Conjunction data rescued Pleiades on wifi mount Pleiades taken on EQM mount