StuartJPP

As a young kid I always wanted some "Sea Monkeys", remember them? They were little bejeweled and crowned aquatic monkeys that lived in a small plastic aquarium.... Reality is that they are just brine shrimp...sounds like a similar type of advertising tactic to me 😀

There are two main types of DC plug/socket connectors like that: 5.5x2.1mm and 5.5x2.5mm (the 2.1 and 2.5 is the diameter of the centre pin). Obviously the bigger plug won't fit into the smaller socket but the reverse can happen which results in a very poor/intermittent connection. I also bought 10 similar from eBay a while ago, and they were a mix so you may get lucky. The seller wasn't even aware. Just a note, they are pretty poor quality connectors, don't keep your soldering iron on them for too long otherwise they will melt, just dab them quickly. In the end I ended up paying the same price per connector from a different seller and never regretted it.

This was my reply on another astro forum relating to this issue.... Looks like all my images are gone...oh well it wasn't like I used the site anymore. None of the subscriptions on offer suited me as a very casual user so I just abandoned it. The 30 or so images I had on "ate" into the free allowance which meant that I couldn't upload any new images for over 3 years after the subscription model was introduced. Sorry to hear others have lost data.

Thanks for the review. It is things like this that make me remember why I haven't been to La Palma (yet). I do have the OH well trained in moon cycles (an app on her phone) so that will definitely not be a problem for me. However the driving part will be. I have been driving for 25 years but there's no way I want to drive on holiday under those conditions, holidays are for enjoying not for inducing stress. The other thing is that I could quite easily survive on bread and water for a week, sleeping during the day and doing astrophotography at night, however the OH wouldn't be too happy with that. In the past we have been to Fuerteventura and after midnight I would venture off and do my thing, but there was plenty of things for her to do during the day. It isn't easy is all I can say.

I'm not anti-Meade, just anti VC. Vulture Capitalists are the bane of any company, on the surface they can inject new money and shake up a business but not often, most of the time they are a cancer. I used to work for a company that still make insane profits on certain items, I'm talking 1000s of percent...yet there was/is an endless drive to reduce the cost of the item, shaving off fractions of a pence. A race to the bottom. The VC were hoping to offload the business years ago but can't as they invested in the peak of 2008 so the only option they have is to keep shaving the pennies off. Death by a thousand cuts. Eventually it will fold.

Nice to see the results under these bad conditions, well done. Like vlaiv did (and Carole, just as I was about to press "Submit Reply"), I had a bit of a play with the M45 JPG above and found there's much more hidden in there than originally exposed. Processing the JPG file is not ideal of course as much faint detail is already lost. This is a bit of tweaking in PI and PS.

Nice! I like these dark dusty regions...

Thank you... Thanks Dave. Glad you like it... Thank you 👍 Thanks... Yes, DBE is a powerful tool and should be used sparingly. Thank you... Thanks Martin. I was quite surprised how little processing I had to do on this, I think that a few more hours and it would almost be complete right after stacking and stretching.

Thank you... Thanks Geof, this is the preview window in Adobe Bridge. It doesn't display all 4 corners like in this image, just a single zoomed section. This image is a composite of 5 screen grabs where I have zoomed in to each corner as well as the centre. Regarding the "test data" I ended up with about 1.5 hours on each evening waiting for the main target to rise, so although it is test data, but of course still usable data, 1.5 hours worth of data probably wouldn't have been worth it, but 3 hours over the two days is.

I use my Muck Boots and some thick socks, didn't buy them specifically for that purpose but seem to do a decent job. I also find them extremely grippy on ice.

I captured some M45 data last Friday and Saturday while I was waiting for my main imaging target, VdB29 and VdB31, to rise and clear some trees. I wasn't really too bothered about the M45 data that I had captured as it was more a case of ensuring things were working properly for the main target. However after inspection the subs appeared to be fairly decent and there was enough of them to warrant processing to see what was there. M45 has been done to death, but it is still a very nice region of the sky and brings back fond memories of my early imaging attempts. Equipment: Baader modified Canon EOS 6D Canon 500mm f/4 L IS Lens @ f/4 Avalon Instruments M-Zero Mount QHY5L-II-M and QHY miniGuideScope for guiding DIY PoleMaster for polar alignment APT for Data Acquisition + Dithering + Framing PHD2 for guiding Acquisition Details: 45x 5 minute subs @ ISO800 (~3.75 hours) 72x Bias 37x Flats No Darks Conditions: SQM ~20.75 Temperature -4°C Imaged just outside Horncastle in Lincolnshire on the evening of the 29th and 30th November 2019. Thanks for looking......... What the subs generally looked like.

Very nice Göran, Love those stars and the star colours. Just did a quick animation of the two images, if you are not happy with it, let me know and I will remove it. https://ezgif.com/maker

The sacrifices we make for these astro images... Oh yes, their skies are much, much darker than mine at home so I don't mind visiting them 😉. First time I saw my lovely lens frosted up like that I certainly freaked out, but not any more. What I do is put a moisture trap like below into the lens hood (keeping it horizontal so as not to touch the front objective), and put a lens cap over the hood. By the time I get up the next morning the lens has warmed up slowly and the front element and hood is dry.

Very nice indeed.

With all the talk about Black Friday, I decided to do some dark nebulae hunting. I seem to be drawn to dark nebulae objects of the night sky, just something about them. I also like the challenge as they require quite a lot of captured data. Love the Van den Bergh and Barnard Objects. Weather prediction was a bit ambiguous, but since it was roughly new moon I decided to give it a go and set off for the in-laws in deepest, though not so darkest, Lincolnshire, glad that I did. Things were not ideal, but were pretty decent. Two very frosty nights on the trot during new moon...unheard of. Equipment: Baader modified Canon EOS 6D Canon 500mm f/4 L IS Lens @ f/4 Avalon Instruments M-Zero Mount QHY5L-II-M and QHY miniGuideScope for guiding DIY PoleMaster for polar alignment APT for Data Acquisition + Dithering + Framing PHD2 for guiding Acquisition Details: 79x 5 minute subs @ ISO800 (~6.5 hours) 72x Bias 37x Flats No Darks Conditions: SQM ~20.75 Temperature -4°C Imaged just outside Horncastle in Lincolnshire on the evening of the 29th and 30th November 2019. Thanks for looking......... VdB29, VdB31, B26, B27, B28 Annotated: What the lens looked like after each night...nice and sparkly. SQM ~20.75

....well not quite, just the frost on and in the lens hood. Finished imaging around 4:30am where it was a cool -4°C. Subs on the Canon 6D were roughly 7°C. Makes me wonder if the ice forming inside the hood has a detrimental effect on the flocking effectiveness, I can only think it can't be helping. The dew strap is positioned where the front objective lens is located and was doing its job as there was no dew/frost on the lens element at all.

I'm still imaging just outside Horncastle, it is -3C according to the temp sensor. Can never be too cold to image...camera, lens and mount is covered in frost, going to be a pain taking it indoors soon. I'm alternating between being outside and being indoors next to the fire.

How deep is your dew shield? Mine is about 25cm deep on a 125mm objective lens and my dew heater is barely warm to the touch, it will keep the dew (and frost) at bay for an entire evening drawing about 3 watts (0.25 amps). You only have to keep the air above the mirror/objective above the dew point, not burn it off 😁

I do the same. Once I started to dither my subs I ditched darks, good riddance I say. I did experiment and found they did nothing for me other than waste time and disk space. You have to make sure that your dithering is adequate though.

I know this club and some of the members very well David and yes, the site is like you describe it, and a bunch of great guys they are. It is very generous of you to lend your dob to them to try and perk up some interest in visual astronomy. I have been threatening to visit on a dark moonless night, but they have eluded me so far but I am sure that it will be a fairly dark site (within reason) and will take an SQM reading when I get a chance. There is a car depot close by with a lot of security lighting but still much darker then where I live and I know the Milky Way is clearly visible from there. It would certainly be nice to set up an observatory and I have also spotted the same radome begging to be used for another purpose.

I have bought APT and upgraded a few times as well, well worth it. The free version does the majority of what I need it to (other than give me clear skies) but it is still good to give Ivo the equivalent of a six pack of fine beers for his efforts. I tend to not update software on my imaging netbook unless I have to so only really upgrade when I either get a new camera or there's a bug fix that's directly affecting me or there's a new feature I can't possibly live without.

A cracking image, love these galaxy shots.

I agree with above that you should continue. I always remember what a wildlife photographer told me a long, long time ago...."Rather spend the time to get one awesome image than spend the time getting lots of nice images". I think it applies to astrophotography (and many other things in life). Not that I am saying that your image is "nice", it is very, very good, but could be awesome with some colour 😉

Well I had another go at processing, I had totally forgotten that I used to use parts of the DSLR-LLRGB processing method, just goes to show how forgetful I am! I have totally reprocessed this data but not sure if it is any better that the original or not. All I know is that I definitely need more data on this target. @Gorann, I did try Olly's "Inverse Lighthouse" correction method, but it just seemed to smear the stars in my image (perhaps I followed the instructions incorrectly) so decided against using it. Click for a larger version:

I tried the Canon Banding reduction script but somehow it seems to have made things worse. So I didn't use it, I have reprocessed the image completely and can't see any banding, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Thank you Carole. Thanks, good to be imagining again! I am not being too hard on myself, it just seem that I choose a target and shortly after posting it Olly (or one of the other top imagers) seem to post an image of the same region 😁 Thanks Olly! I was aware of the "inverse lighthouse" artefacts on these lenses and Olly's corrections but couldn't find the method to correct them, I will try them when I reprocess the image later... Thank you....