Paul M

Just wow!

57 minutes ago, uhb1966 said:

For me, just positioning a chair in the evening towards west and watch the stars rising did the trick! Use a chair that can be swept back

Definitely this!

My fondest astro memories are of watching the late summer constellations slowly set in an increasingly dark autumn sky. Just my own eyes. The milky way is lost to my home site with light pollution and aging eyes but the constellation are still captivating. Remembering old asterisms and guideposts to the less known Constellation...

It is difficult to work out what's going on, but I guess running it through Starnet or some such would leave a bland image!

As above, great job.

A big plus is that you haven't pushed it too far. It's a very pleasant image that reflects the low surface brightness of the outer arms. I know I'd have strangled it to death! 

That's great report of a very productive session.

All your images are excellent, but if I had to choose one as a favorite, it would be the first of your planetaries in Cygnus, NGC7048, very nicely captured.

That's brilliant. I don't think I've been introduced to this Arp previously.

My own experience with Arp objects hasn't been so good!

That's some image!

Gravitational lensing is the ultimate cosmic scale target for amateurs I think.

I had a go at the Cosmic Horseshoe earlier this year but my results were less spectacular!

My last outing was in April. Some weather got in the way in late spring, then the nice weather coincided with light summer nights. Now it's getting dark again, but the weather... It has been terrible lately but I'm beginning to think I'm using the weather as an excuse!

So today I decided I'd have a play with just my DSLR on a tripod, get some wide field shots, maybe. The sky had other ideas but I did blow off the cobwebs and played with Ekos to control the imaging. I'll be honest, as a session it was a total loss but as a few hours under the stars, playing with stuff, well, I'm happy. 

I will get the big toys out soon, no, I will!

11 hours ago, AstroNebulee said:

You don't think the image is a bit dark as I'm having trouble on various devices? 

I hadn't really noticed to be honest, but you've already posted a lightened version, which I'd agree is an improvement.

Nice to see simple and well executed constellation images. 

These days a lot of folk seem to refer to some constellations in terms of their brightest DSO; "Triangulum" for M33, "Andromeda" for M31 and, well I thought the list was longer... 😁

That's really nice!

Other than The Plough, I was also drawn to Bootes. It's there in all its glory! I remember Bootes as one of the larger, faint constellations that was easily recognisable as a boy. These days I rarely get to see it all from a dark site.

You captured it just perfectly. Not an over busy image that would otherwise drown the constellation.

Double post

4 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

OK, let's try it:

[...] I gained no pleasure whatever from producing it!!  It offered all the intellectual interest of stretching an elastic band. If that was all that astrophotography had to offer I wouldn't do it.

Olly

 

 

Well, that's my aspirations dashed on the rocks, rescued and thrown back in... 😂

1 hour ago, andrew s said:

Now look what you made me do!

thanks Andrew 

That's a cracking image!

Yeah, it'd be all about the location and usability for me.

My own 10" RC scope would be great on an observatory class mount, in a remote observatory, far away from cloudland UK.

It's not the scope that limits my enjoyment, it's the light pollution, weather and endless summer daylight that spoil it for me.

Doing anything right just feels wrong to me!

Y'all end up in a furrow...  🤣

And another thing, it's important that we remain happy to share our images/thoughts/problems, so that we can all continue to learn and not set such a high bar that newcomers are intimidated by other's efforts.

I'd like to think that I'm a trailblazer in that matter! I'll share images, however trashy they are, if only because there is some aspect that particularly interests me. An example being sharing an image that contains just a few pixels, barely above the visually painful noise, of a gravitationally lensed supernova. 

Surely there is something to be learned from every image? Whether that be some esoteric processing technique that might not interest astronomers, or something purely astronomical that doesn't interest imagers.

I'm not geared up for M31, but I'd be mighty pleased with this image.

The thing is, it's big, real big, but it ain't easy!

Brilliant images. My favorites are:

1) The Aurora

2) Sprites, (a particular interest of mine.)

3) Moon v Mars, but it's surely contrived. At that image scale, motions will have prohibited any kind of stacking for a single frame? Or it's one "lucky" image!

6 hours ago, Mandy D said:

So, by your percentage figure, only a single person in 10,000 billion has any interest in the exploration of other planets?

I didn't expect my silly figure to be mathematically analysed.

Let's just say, space exploration isn't important to most people.

I've followed space science all my life and even I think there are better ways to use our wealth and technology than messing up some other planet... because we can.

Mars, for sure, because it's there and doable within the realms of current technology.

Venus, no. 

Actually, maybe there's a way to pipe some of Venus' thick atmosphere to Mars? 😁

In any case, I prefer the money to be spent on society here and now. As a guess, I'd say 99.99999999999% of the global population have no interest in nor will benefit from exploring other planets.

I've no idea what or where this object is, but that blue star is mesmerising. It actually gives the impression of dazzling the eyes, as though it's brighter than my screens backlight!

That's a great image. Classic Dumbbell

8 hours ago, Stonecutter said:

Watching the result come in as stack built was very exciting,

I think that is much of the pleasure of imaging for me.

I don't have a smart scope... yet... but with my own big old imaging rig I usually sit and watch a live stack building up from my reclining armchair, even though I'll usually do a full process later, in the cold light of day!

Anyway, it all looks very promising from you early adopter guys! Certainly a new chapter in sharing and outreach. 

I've been playing with the latest ASTAP version again. I've got it going after selecting "ignore existing FITS header solution for astrometric stacking" in "Alignment" Tab.

This version auto arranges the frames without specifying how many rows it contains. 

9 hours ago, AstroKriss said:

Hi Paul, do you have link or details on steps to do this in ASTAP? Would like to try it, but not clear on how to. Thanks 

It's a while since I used it but here is the method given in the ASTAP user guide:http://www.hnsky.org/astap.htm

So, I'll do it again with the original stacked frames linked in my first post in this thread. See how I do!

Here are my 6 stacked frames (all calibration done in the stacking of each frame, don't apply flats, darks etc for this stage). Just load them in the "lights" tab and make sure they are all selected. Click analyse and it should look something like this:

In the "Alignment" tab select "Astrometric Alignment". Most of the other settings on that page are defaults for what we are doing now, but can look intimidating.   

In the Stack Method" tab select "Image Stitching Mode", and here I've opted to Equalise Background, Merge Overlapping Backgrounds. My mosaic is 2 rows high (the latest version of ASTAP does that automatically but I've had trouble with that development version just now), The 6% auto crop is just a number I liked the look of...

Then select "Stack (image stitching mode)" 

After a while my modest lappy gave this:

Which can be cropped by Right Clicking at one corner of the image and dragging out a crop box. 

Select Crop and hey presto, I have a whole world of gradients.

The gradients are my problem not ASTAPS.

The very latest version has a box to reduce overcorrection of gradients. But as above, that version wouldn't produce a mosaic on this occasion. 

Good Luck.

40 minutes ago, tomato said:

APP (and PI) do some clever gradient smoothing between the panels to manage the joins between them if taken under different sky conditions, does ASTAP do something similar?

It does indeed, but my gradients beat it!

Even Han, the developer of ASTAP, couldn't fix my gradients. But that's Blackpool Illuminations for ya!