Paul M

As above, theses are beautifully presented observations.

A joy to peruse. I'm no double star observer but enjoy reading the excitement of the hunt.

landed on wrong thread!

Stars! Lots of stars!

Got some tweaking to do. But need more dark sky. It seems my rushed mounting of the camera today had me get it 90 deg of the orientation I'd intended. I wanted the North/South line along the long axis (ASI178 doesn't get the whole image circle). It'll be next week before I can turn it. Software tweaks are via RealVNC, so doable anytime.

I'm having trouble with my RasPi 5 which also lives remotely. It was acting as a server for my other general surveillance IP cameras and was going to be serving the images from the Allsky Pi. Unfortunately, I can't get RealVNC running on a Pi5 running Ubuntu (known issue) so installed Bookworm (Ras Pi native language) but, and thrice but, Agent DVR doesn't run in Bookworm (known issue). So I've left it with Bookworm and RealVNC so I might trouble shoot that remotely, though it's unlikely. People more competent than me have thrown the towel in. RealVNC are working on a fix for Ubuntu/Wayland but it's flawed and flakey just now.

Not to worry, I've got a couple of N100 mini PC winging their way to me. One of those will do the server job up there nicely! Windows, I hate that it just works...

I was only just power watching some of his recent videos last week. He'd been less productive on YouTube since moving the Turkey and he'd slipped off my radar. 

I saw Dylan O'Donnell's youtube message earlier and was blown away   

His knowledge and experience will continue to inspire for years to come.

Here is a timelapse from dawn yesterday to dawn today. It was just sat on a shed awaiting proper mounting. Some real stars in this one.

Now, I know anyone arriving in this hobby since last June may might not have seen any stars yet. So this will particularly exciting for them... the best 134 seconds of their life.

Today, before heading back home, I fixed it to a corner of the Luxury Cumbroan Villa to give it a whole sky view

The wayward cable will be rerouted if this location works. But there are some tall and overhanging trees just over your right shoulder as you look at this. Maybe a bummer.

17 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

no image that I've seen from this thing is "astounding". In fact, most of them are of a quality that I would deem "needs more subs" and would never be shared anywhere.

That's where I am. I've spent £thousands to get there!!

I still share'em though!

For years I've wanted an allsky camera. Late last year I started putting a plan together and bought some bits.

I used my existing Raspberry Pi 4 and ASI 178MC camera with the included 2.5mm lens.

I chose the prefabricated case from dewcontrol.com, along with the 2.9" acrylic dome and heater element. The case blurb says it will house a Raspberry Pi, but at the time my Pi was out of town so I took their word for it. The Pi does ft, but not with any leads connected.

Plan A was to run it via PoE, but no room for a Pi and PoE splitter in the box, let alone the SSD I also wanted to use.

Plan B was to house only the camera in the enclosure, and run a long USB vable and 12v heater supply back indoors. My intended siting for the camera eventually precluded those ideas.

Plan C was to go back to PoE but replace the case. That's where I ended up. With the SSD, and Pi cooking away, I'm not expecting to need the heater element. It's there ready and waiting, just needs connecting.

It's been a mash up, with some of my worst brain work, ever. Unfortunately it's been one of the worst years of my life. With the loss of the mother-in-law in mid-February, that wasn't foreseen as recently as December. I've picked and poked at this project as an attempted distraction. 

Anyway, after the enforced layoff, we're finally back at our Luxury Cumbrian Villa, where the camera is intended to be sited. Even the simple job of connecting the PoE injector proved difficult today. It's been on soak test at home for a week or so. But got it up here, routed a cable made off the RJ45 plugs, and nothing worked. I brought it back inside to test on a proper supply and all was well. I remade the connectors (eyes aren't what they used to be) just in case. Still no good. Then I noticed that I'd plugged the Ethernet cables into the wrong in/out sides of the injector. A great way to burn off a spare hour or so!

The case still needs siting, it's just sat outside after finally getting the dome bonded and weather proof. A bit more soak testing while I work out how to get it past the MB! 🤣

Anyway, here it is, the first published image from the world's first "Paulsky" camera. Looks familiar? 

With imagination, you can seen the Milky-way arching across the image, the stars!! Just look at those stars...

Perhaps smart scopes will come of age when they produce images, from the app, that are at least superficially as good as those from whatever the current AP trend is at the time.

When  you consider that the great leaps now are from camera sensor technology and software/AI advances, that time might not be so far off.

The leap, in my view, will be with the first self-polar-aligning, equatorial smart telecopes. I Think that is only a few short years away. 

And it can't come soon enough! 🤣

12 hours ago, robin_astro said:

Do you have a reference for that?

It lurks in the depths of my decaying grey matter   I first read that, without getting further references, a long time ago. Perhaps from "Asimovs Guide to Science". The only metric I remember is that at one time an Earth day was only 18 hours long. That is probably the primordial Earth?

Your Quora reference was a surprise to me, but more current and reliable than my 45+ year old memory of the subject! I am now inclined to re-visit the this. I'd have thought that tidal friction would be precicley known nowadays and calculated without use of fossil records. But then again, continental drift and sea level change will make it a non-linear change over such a large timescale.

Leave it with me....

I think Ed Ting certainly stuck his neck out abit but, he actually covered all the reasons that I (still!) don't have a smart scope.

I smiled when he mentioned that the Seestar is great on M42 but things tail off soon after. I've made the point myself that it's almost as though it was designed to showcase M42!  But that's a bit unfair, I know. I'd love one but I think I'm holding out for one of the next geneartion from Vaonis,the Vespera Pro, perhaps. But Then I worry that, as Ed said, the next next thing will be along soon after with even better features, and I am firmly in the buy once camp. I don't have a huge astro budget and all purchases take me week/months/years to decide. In a new and rapidly advancing market I'm more cautious/anxious than ever.

The skill is knowing just when is the right time for ones self, and your budget

The Seestar is an awesome peice of equipment, but I worry that I've already seen everything it can do right here on this thread.

Due to the Earth/Moon tidal interaction. The Earth slowly dissipates rotational energy to the Moon's orbital energy. 

Therefore the Earth's axial rotation gradually slows and the Monn gets further away. There will be a time in the disant futer when the Moon won't ever be large enough in the sky to cover the Sun, in any eclipse circumstances.

The dinisaurs lived in an era of much shorter days and there were no annular solar eclipses.

That's stunning!

For what it's worth I prefer version 1, M42 just hanging there in all that sky, a work of art.

The pure astro image of the come is very nice to. Its a very nice comet but I've only glimpsed it briefly before it hit the neighbours roof.

In size order (where two scopes are the same size, beauty will be the trump card  )

My 18 month old baby:  10" RC

My 11 year old baby:   10" Newt

My 40 year old baby:  Fullerscopes 6.25" "Export Newtonian" 

Random acquisition 3 years ago: Celestron 127 Mak

A cutesy Borg 60mm ED Guidescope. It seems to work but got no mirrors ??

It is a magnificent image, and my favorite deep sky subject; mind boggling galaxy fields!

I might take the liberty of downloading and solving it myself, so I can look further into it.

Nothing but cloud and drizzle here soneeds must!

17 minutes ago, Geoff Lister said:

As requested, hot off the tablet from another part of North Somerset

I managed to see it at the same time that the Seestar was capturing - I just stood directly behind it and pointed my binoculars at the same angle as the alt. axis.

Whilst downloading this image, the Seestar app is stacking 13P/Olbers.

Geoff

 

I'm loving these images from your Seestar Geoff!

Ths is a fine looking comet and you do it great justice. Unfortunately, low in the west isn't good from home for me.

I think that if they isssue a firmwear that can stack on a comet or other "moving" object, astrophotography will enter a new era.... actually, it has already but, anyway, you get my train of thought!  

27 minutes ago, gorann said:

Impressed! Does this mean that mystery is solved?

Lets see what Mr Tomato can eek out of his subs. I love a good mystery. Processing pixels to death bores me to death but astrometry and solar system/ minor bodies gets my attention!

I'm stuck for ideas as to what might cause a moving object to follow offset paths in each data set??  Fair enough, offet along the line of motion, goes without saying, but not offet to adjacent tracks. Chromatic effects?? Who knows.

Anyway, I am leaning towards poor workmanship... 🙊 🤣😉

Just to add, imagine, waiting billions of years for it to be your time to shine... To be that Supernova....And then get sidelined and talked over! 🤣

Intresting image.

I took the liberty of solving exhibit "A" in ASTAP and annotated position the position of the accused asteroid at times 22:00 ( top), 23:00 and 00:01 (bottom), last night.

It was observed to pass through the exact area of the alleged incident. Although there are no other witnesses, there is, in my view, sufficient evidence that the unidentifed object is some abberation or stacking artifact of the accused asteroid.

Given it's magnitude and that stars down to mag 18 are plainly resolved, yet no clear asteroid trail is present.... I rest my case.

Send him down!

Mr. Varitasium certainly likes to stir the hornets nest!

He recently did a video about electrical energy not flowing in conductors, but in the fields generated by the agitated electrons carried in them, or something to that effect. It caused a bit of a storm in the on-line community. 😀 

And that is its value. He's not teaching physicists, he's opening the average punters eyes to some astonishing subjects. In my limited view, the video posted  above is more a matter of devils advocate playing at semantics, stating the obvious in a provacative prose.

Anyway, he seems to have reduced output in recent times but his work is generally very watchable!

Thanks Han,

I just spotted the Track and Stack feature when I downloaded the latest version this afernoon. I'm looking for some data that I know contains an asteroid or 2 so I can try it out.

I've already played with the improved mosaic stitching. It made an excellent job of a recent 9 panel mosaic of M42 I did a few weeks ago.

2 hours ago, jjohnson3803 said:

Because if they hide behind the Internet, they won't get punched in the mouth?  😉

I think it's akin to road rage.  Some people think it's ok to act like jackaloons as long as they have a steel shield around them.  I prefer Qigong myself.

 

Hot heads, you indeed see them on the Internet as much as you see them on the roads.

It's a very common human trait. With that in mind, along with the knowledge that I've surely been at fault myself plenty of times in the past, I just shrug and go on my way when a thread goes south.

I was "brung up" in the rough end of a rough town. I learned how to survive at an early age 😁 

There are some extremely knowledgeable specialist on SGL. I respect that and may change my thinking on a given subject in deference to their experience and knowledge and expertise. A well presented argument is it's own proof.

Anyway, to stand on the shoulders of giants you first need to do some climbing!😇

4 hours ago, DefinitelyNotAnAIChatbot said:

Hi All,

First post here but I imaged this last night. I ran into some problems and only managed about 20 mins total on R and G but it's enough to capture the target. I'll try to return to collect more data at the next opportunity I get. Cool target for sure and I look forward to seeing what others produce!

_____
Planewave CDK14;  ZWO ASI2600MM; Chroma R,G; Paramount MEII; Rio Hurtado Valley, Chile

Great image. 

Just how I like it. Requires more imagination that processing skill!😁

37 minutes ago, Vallantho said:

Do a meet up in a planetarium. Guaranteed clear skies 😂😂

That's true, but I'm sure the projector software would be hung up on a Windows update on the day of my visit!

3 hours ago, Vallantho said:

I came for the community...

An important message well shared!

SGL is a wealth of technical information, knowledge and experience. That's what attracted me, returning to active astronomy after the life/balance hiatus. The landscape had changed a lot in my absence. It's been 10 or so years and I'm still here. The life/stuff hadn't ended though. My in-laws health became a big feature in our lives and becoming foster carers on top of working full time. It's been busier than ever with the MIL's recent sudden decline in health and then death just last week and the FIL's death 3 years ago. My wife asked just yesterday, "what will I do with my time?", referring to the hole left by her mother. As if she/we aren't still overloaded!!

So with the weather, and all, astronomy (or imaging, as it is for me now) has been getting pushed out. But it's still nice to pop in and see what's going on, share my very few imaging efforts, and maybe tell my own story. Like pubs of old, when folk used to pop out for a pint quite frequently, there would always be a familiar face to chat to and even let off the steam of the day.

SGL's social function, I feel, outweighs it's technical function for many and perhaps most members. 

1 hour ago, John Nodding said:

I saw this on the news yesterday, then at my sons football match last night (20th) another parent caught this on their phone. It would be around 5:45 heading north west ish.  I’ve tried online to see if there were other reports but nothing. Thoughts?

That looks like airliner contrail to me.

So I looked at Flight radar 24 to see if any big planes were heading NWish over that part of the world.

Not a perfect match, but I don't know the actual location: