Paul M

I've followed this thread from the very beginning, Malcolm, and I'm still impressed with your skill and inginuity. I've done quite a lot of electronics in the past but not digital and not SMD. Well I did a bit of a hack on my brother's game box thing, back in the day for him. I had components floating away in a sea of solder.. 😳 As an increasingly clumsy NEQ6 owner, I suspect I'll be needing your services, eventually

I think the sleigh travels at hypersonic speed, thereby causing ionic ripples in the sub-temporal, orthogonal phase field. It's a simple matter of tuning a suitably cooled Turbo Encabulator to said filed.

I think I've said this already, but anyway; it's a though the Seestar was designed to showcase M42. Maybe ZWO did exactly, that? Whether or not, you've captured what I call the Classic Orion Nebula. Nicely done too!

I think that's misinformation from Norad. They have Santa over Norway at the time of writing but Flight radar has him in the mid Atlantic having just passed abeam Cape Verde: https://www.flightradar24.com/7.72,-23.68/5 The Sleigh is surely suborbital, that is, it's an aircraft. So I'd give Flight Radar the vote on this.

Ok, I've solved my asteroid problem. I'd replaced the MPCORB.DAT file with an obscure Trans Neptunian Object file while tracking down one of those a couple of weeks ago. So I just reverted back to the proper file and all is well. You also got a few pixels of 1998 KU48.

I'd also taken the liberty of downloading and plate solving your image with ASTAP, and also got a no show for asteroids down to mag 21. Weird. I'll have another look at it when I get the chance. I'd specifically gone looking for asteroids and missed a nice one!

Great! I can't imagine there being a better, more intense, method of studying a subject than to draw or sketch it. It must be a very salifying undertaking.

Small but perfectly formed, I say. Very nice capture.

It looks like a fairly straight forward mechanical repair to me. It looks like that plate connects the internal, sprung contacts with the outer chassis of the DC socket, which in turn is soldered to the PCB. That's why it won't power up without the plate. So it needs to be a sound electrical connection. Looking on line, that seems to be the way that a lot of PCB mounted barrel plug sockets are constructed. I don't think it needs a new part nor even specialist repair and a like for like part might be difficult to get hold of, if it was needed. Found this online though (as an example of what is available), though you'd need to buy a thousand of them!!! : https://www.globalsources.com/product/audio-phone-jack-connector-components_1195474899f.htm If you have a friend or family member that tinkers with electronics I'm sure they'd be able to get it going for you. A professional, like a TV repair engineer would be able to help but their starting price might be a bit of an issue!

My only notable achievement through this dreadful year was a nice comet animation of comet C/2020 V2 (ZTF) from way back in January: From this thread: Watching the Met O's weekly "Deep Dive" weather vid on YouTube today, it looks like there will probably be a westerly influence on UK weather at least until Christmas. No details really but for me "westerly" = cloudy

Some very impressive dips in those graphs in the link above!

It's quiet on this thread, Me thinks hundreds of SGL imagers are no all over The Squid hoping to submit their supernova claim I think it should be called SN 2023SGL , to recognise the collaboration.

Might be some kind of laser interferometry/range finding thing. Observatories sometimes fire lasers at the nights sky to measure the steadiness of the atmosphere and adjust telescope optics in real time to improve the image. That could give a streak and a spot at infinity or the perspective vanishing point.

Not sure about streaks, there wouldn't usually be streaks emanating from a supernova explosion. Supernovae usually brighten over hours and days. But I can't see what you can! Does the star appear on any photos or star charts?

I've read that the only important numerical value for RC optics is the secondary to primary distance. It it is too far from optimum then good collimation will be difficult. How to find the correct distance? There are diverging views. One view is to adjust the inter-mirror distance so that the Scopes f/l, as given by plates solving an image, is that given in the scope spec. I.E if the scope spec says it's 1600 f/l then adjust the mirror distance until this is true. Then complete the rest of the collimation process. Other views are that the design spec is just approximate and that the distance should be adjusted to perfect the star image seen through the scope + a lot of extremely technical stuff: Just to cheer you along: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/702687-rc-mirror-distances/ I've never measure the inter-mirror distance on y RC10. I just point the laser collimator down the focuser, hit the center spot on the secondary and return through to the target on the laser collimator. I have a fancy collimator thingy for the rest of the process but after getting it right, still found it needed a tweak on a real star!! So I could have saved myself a bit of cash

My first thought is that a 6 year old would struggle to use a telescope without experienced adult assistance and would then be disappointed with the view. If her imagination is fed by exciting pictures of the planets in books, any telescope within a sensible price range and that's usable by a novice will disappoint. But I don't know the child and she may well enjoy just seeing things through the telescope. So the recommendation above is as good a place to start as any! Wide field of view, low magnification, would be good for the Moon and star clusters and the brighter "fuzzy" nebulae. Just avoid the toy telescopes from high street stores that claim outrageous capabilities. I just found this from the sponsors of this forum. Simple, just point and focus! For the money it's worth a gamble?? https://www.firstlightoptics.com/beginner-telescopes/celestron-firstscope-signature-series-moon-by-robert-reeves.html I think mum will need a few starter books!

Nice book idea and a fun project! I'm a romantic so like to see the Milky Way, at least where the scale is appropriate. Plainly, it's not needed and brings nothing to the usefulness of the charts. So I'd ignore me One thing I look for every now and again is the conjunction of asteroids on highly divergent paths, such that it would make a dramatic animation. Unfortunately there is a dearth of relatively bright, high inclination asteroids to feed my idea but plenty of main belters, just waiting. Good luck with the book, are you publishing it, or is it just a personal project?

It seems entirely possible to me that the 3 nights I got a week ago or so were likely my last of the year! I'm just ending an 18 day shift break and was hoping for bit more than that while I'm off work. I can't even maintain match fitness, let alone advance my imaging. Remote imaging sounds great, and I've looked into it. But I like making things work for myself and perhaps I'd feel that any remote data I collect would be a collaboration. Maintaining and managing the equipment is a big part of it, the hard part maybe. But I find the acquisition more enjoyable than the processing, therefore I'd be denying myself the best part!

Thanks Paul, I tried that already. ASTAP has that function available but my one attempt with this data so far didn't go right. I've used it in the past with success so maybe worth another, less rushed attempt. Anyway, other than play with the data already collected, I'll leave this one alone. Upwards and onwards! An obscure Jovian satellite next, maybe

WoW, you certainly do some mind blowing imaging with that scope! They seem to be a bit out of fashion now. There is a Youtuber in your part of the world "Northern Panorama" who was using one, with great results, for a while. He's since gone onto reflactors, or some such.; telescopes without mirrors, apparently. That's another stunning image of an object I've never heard of and I'm sure there is no point in my wasting electricity trying to find it myself! The threat title caused me some consternation initially, I imaged IC342 last week, so got confused with your image. I had to go back and read what you'd actually written!

No just another Crab! As a warm up before starting on my main target yesterday evening/this morning, I grabbed a few subs of M1, my favorite DSO. I need to go over the collimation of this RC250. Focusing was a labour, which isn't normal! Out of focus stars became spikey crescents. Enough excuses, I just grabbed 10 x 300 subs with the ASI071 with gain @240. The sky was good, guiding on the NEQ6 Pro was consistently in the region of 0.65", quite good for the big load. This was stacked in DSS and further tortured in PS. One of these days I'll get on board with star reduction/removal etc... one of these days.

Like a dog with a bone, I'm in this for the long run. Lat night (this morning) was forecast to be and turned out to be a very good night. So I had another go at !Gunk, sorry, that's the only way I'll remember my tussle with this object. But remember it I will. Another 30 x 300 sec, in a moonless sky, but more importantly, the right bit of sky!! I did have trouble with focus, Collimation seems to have been abruptly disturbed but at best focus the stars look ok, just ok. I have an anxiety issue with flat calibration frames. So, from the warmth of my bed at 07:30, I used the twilit sky as a flat reference. It works well but, yet again, I've got some condensation on the sensor, I really should leave the camera cooled after the imaging run ends to avoid this. So there is still a residual watermark off center. For consistency I used random processing routes. First is a stack and stretch, entirely from ASTAP. The annotation is from ASTAP to, which uses MPCORB.DAT as a reference file. So looking good so far as astrometrics are concerned: At upper left it looks like some light leakage. I think it's from the neighbour's IR night vision security camera. But it looks to me like there is something in the middle of the box. Although over the time range, the subject should be slightly elongated. The above image goes down to mag 19.8 according to a photometric calibration. and !Gunk is 19. 2 or something. Next exhibit is a stack form DSS, stretched in PS and annotated back in ASTAP. I'm going to claim a win. Cross referencing with DSS imagery, there are some bits an pieces in that area but I think they are fainter. This is obviously the very limit of my urban sky. I'm beginning to understand why Clyde Tombaugh wore his trousers so high, no explanation, just an understanding...

No! Don't overcook it! That's M31 as it was intended to be seen. Sometimes an image is presented for science, sometimes for awesomeness of the subject. Here we have the latter

I've looked at oacapture in the past but not really used it. My memory is telling me that it's written by an active member of SGL. Perhaps a search of the forum would bring up some info and reveal who the writer is (I can't remember with certainty).

So, in my recent shakedown, post cloudemic on the 30th Nov, I needed to image a comet. My obvious choice was 12P/Pons-Brooks, just alongside Vega. Unfortunately west isn't my best direction, and by the time I was up and running, the comet was diving into the neighbours roof. I got one sub that indicated an active comet, well worth imaging. But then it was gone: This is a single 200 sec sub. the mad gradient is the roof Looking round, the next best candidate was 144P/ Not excitingly bright, and a bright Moon, but well placed. I ran off a bunch of 200 sec subs. The comet is almost stellar in appearance. Here it is drifting across the field: It's the faint track above and left of center. For those of you that are: 1) still reading 2) like white-knuckle rides Here is a short, very short animation. I hope you both like it. This is created via the Blink tool in ASTAP, which can save out the blinked subs as an animation/video, but it uses Y4M video format, which doesn't embed in this forum. Had to jump through some hoops as VLC just returns an empty file when it supposedly converts to MP4. Did it via an online converter. Works well, but £10,000,000 of Bitcoin has since dissapeared from my laptop... 😂🙊 L_4214_Bin2x2_200s_@20231130_205657.mp4