CraigT82

My guess... evidence for life in the Venusian atmosphere.

Sounds like the scope has taken a knock or the cell has somehow come loose? It's probably going to be a specialist job to inspect and repair.

I spent a good 40 minutes setting up last night in the hope of getting something through holes in the cloud and managed to at least get a couple of red runs with the Altair 290m before giving up. I really need a permanent set up! Seeing seemed reasonable but some real low frequency wobbles were present. The sky was too light to star-check the collimation and I didn't have time to set the ADC properly but it turned out OK I think. This is the first time I've managed to get a hint of surface detail on Ganymede. 8.75" Fullerscope, 2.7x APM barlow, Altair GPCAM3 290m and Baader Red filter 2x 60s captures - approx 10k frames captured with 50% stacked. Thanks for looking.

A stunning result Peter, really well done!

Thats really nice lots of detail like you say. You can get rid of the green cast really easily in registax, just open it up and click on RGB balance then click auto... it will align the histograms of the channels and give you a good red colour. P.S. this is the observing section, I'm sure one of the lovely mods will move it to imaging for you!

And therein lies the issue. Most of us here would like the competition to be for documentary style astrophotography, whereas it now really seems to be a competition for astro-themed general photography.

Simply defocus on a star, if the diffraction pattern is skewed and not concentric you've got work to do!

Ideally it would align however I think what you've got there is good enough, as I think perfect collimation will never be possible considering that this is a flex tube with a plastic helical focuser (if you turn the focuser the collimation will probably change, same as if you put light pressure on the cheshire with a finger - it's just the slack in the focuser) Don't worry too much about it though as the difference between perfect collimation and good enough, in terms of damage to image quality, is dwarfed by the damage caused by our atmosphere! A common mod on this focuser is to put a wrap or two of PTFE tape around the threads, this helps to take up some of that slack.

Yeah that looks OK, if we are being really picky the secondary may need shifting towards the 10 o'clock position very slightly but that slight misalignment may just be from the focuser sagging a little. Personally I would leave the secondary alone here. How does the primary collimation look? Is the dot in the donut?

It can face any way you want, you want the shiny angled face in the cheshire to catch the light, so I usually face it up to the sky or to a nearby light soirce if at night. You may want to pull it out of the focuser until you can just see the edges of the secondary mirror, can't quite tell if you can or not from the photos?

The scope on marketplace for £270 is a bad deal, especially if it has no rings, but being on Facebook with a lot of astro beginners someone will probably pay it. My own experience of selling things on Facebook is to think of an asking price and double it, as everyone always messages and offers half of what you're asking anyway! Seems to be some sort of unwritten rule?! Also your VX8L will pee all over it on any target, and it won't be any easier to use being just as long and about as heavy. The ad on UKABS is fishy as it clearly shows two different scopes!

Beautiful! Excellent work 👍

Fantastic resolution Peter, the SPC is so well defined. Really well done.

A big box of 200 Zeiss lens wipes can be had online for around a tenner. The Baader fluid is good stuff and so is the cloth, but you need to be sure the cloth stays clean and free of foreign material. No such problem with the Zeiss wipes.

I think the photographer used in camera tilt shift to produce the effect. I agree it's astro based art rather than astrophotography. All the winners were a bit underwhelming to me and I think the majority of them were of an arty nature, although perhaps the solar winner was the exception. I think the make up of the judges, being mostly media figures and personalities, and conventional photographers has led to this? Ther seems to be little to celebrate technical challenging 'proper' astrophotography! I think I would rather win Astrobin's image of the day (if it came with a £10k prize that is 😉).

Thats weird, on my EFW mini I can move the carousel easily with my finger in all positions. I have no idea about the mechanics and workings of the FW itself so can't help there sorry! If I were you I would try to find an extension tube with shorter threads to replace the current one. I dont know why it would suddenly start fouling now, has it had a knock at all?? Maybe the carousel is tilted?

By the sounds of it, something behind filter 4 is sitting proud and is scraping on the T thread on the backside of the FW as it rotates past? Try slightly unthreading whatever that is on the back of the FW and see if the noise disappears.

I use this large motorbike cove for my big newt. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002RB0KLO/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_apa_i_vmYwFb75GYGB2 It was £29 and I've had it since 2016 and it's still completely waterproof, it is heavy and has a soft, brushed inside lining. Plenty of loops etc for tying down. Currently unavailable on there but will be others.

Looks OK to me, but get it pointing upwards towards a real star and check it again. As it's a moving mirror scope you might find the collimation changes when you angle it upwards.

You can overlay a circular reticle onto the display in firecapture, and you can customise it (adding circles, changing size). It's ideal for checking collimation, it's the second check box up in that narrow vertical strip of options to the left of the preview.

Very nice! The light patch is the orographic cloid over Arsia Mons which has developed nicely over the past few days. I agree with the Olympus Mons shadow development too, lovely stuff!

Plenty of detail there in the first image. That's interesting about the improvements without the IR cut filter, I wonder if the QHY 290c has an IR cut window already installed in front of the sensor?

Cracking! How did you capture the Neptune image? I tried for it last night but the one area of sky that was cloudy was right where Neptune was.

Great start, nice one! Can you really not set the ROI capture size to less than 800x600 on the ASI1600?

That looks to be the orographic cloud over Arsia Mons, the southern most of the three Tharsis volcanoes