Paul M

I got this!

A break in the clouds with a high cirrus but I still caught egress with the 10x50's

Venus was still an easy naked eye object. 

I've been soaking up the Allsky how-to info, and there is quite a lot of it!

No rush. My new Pi 5 is in the queue and I'm not expecting it until January at the earliest.

It seems that I will be able to integrate the Allsky imagery with the AgentDVR system that will be getting transfered to the Pi 5 eventually. 

I can create a new "camera" in Agent that can be pointed to a file as either image or video source. There seems to be an Allsky setting, relating to external websites, that can save out the latest image/timelapse under a fixed filename I.E. "current_timelapse.mpeg", or some such. Hopefully I'd be able to do that locally on the Allsky Pi and point Agent DVR to that file.

Right now, using AgentDVR to get Allsky imagery through the firewall(s) seems easier than setting up a domain/website and having full remote functionality. It's going to be based 70 odd miles from home on a peculiar Internet connection that has limitations and that I have no admin rights to. It would need to auto reboot after power loss etc. 

And if all else fails I'll just have to FTP that stuff out of there. 

Maybe in future I'd go the remote website route. Gotta get the thing running first!

My brain is already groaning.

Well, I gone dunnit. 

Heading down the ASI178 route and DewControl enclosure.

Have still ordered a Pi 5 and other bits from Pi Hut to free up my existing Pi 4, That's me in a waiting list, so maybe a while before I'm Allskying it.

48 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

What about the asi wide angle lens that come with most of those cameras that might already have

That's the one I'd be using:

Here is a timelapse I created with the ASI178MC and the included lense. Nice stars and the FOV is fine by me. From home I won't have a view anywhere near the horizon so 180 deg would be wasted.

I'm now wondering whether the Allsky software will be usable from my dark(ish) sky site, where I'd like to base an ASC. There are 2 routers that I'd have to port forward, neither of which I have access to the setting of!   Not sure if the Web Site that it generates will work from there for me.

The two general survelance cameras I monitor there use a paid for web service via AgentDVR. I could likley make an ASC look like an IP camera and plug it into my RasPi server up there, but I'd loose most of the features of the Allsky software, though AgentDVR would provide a timelapse function amongst other thing.

Very useful. I've currently got the full kit in a Pi Hut shopping basket, and a shopping basket with the enclosure for ASI cameras at Dew Control.

Trembling finger, but I had been wavering towards the Pi Hut enclosre and therefore the module 3 camera, simply for it's compactness and cuteness.

Now perhaps I'll go with my existing ASI178 in the Dew Control enclosure. The heater element is an attraction to me. 

But rather than buy another Pi4, I'm looking at going on the waiting list for a Pi 5 to replace the Pi 4 that is currently overstretched as a IP camera server. So The Pi 4 will be free to use in an ASC. That does delay things, maybe even until next year, though that's the case, wichever route I take.

I seem to remember this forum's late, dear friend, Gina, designed a servo driven focussing mechanism for her ASC lense. But that's complicating things beyond my attention span!

2 hours ago, glafnazur said:

Growing up with images similar to these in the Larousse encyclopaedia of astronomy is why I have always loved mono images.

I think all my early books had these images in. I don't think things move too much until in the (late?) 70's when I got, what was one of my favorite, books with images by David Malin; "Catalogue of The Universe" or something. It was an order of magnitude improvement in imaging.

Thet's a nicely executed mosaic, and a proper screenfull of galaxy!

It gets my vote as image-of-the-day... so far

11 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

I use a 178MM-cool as my ASC but am considering changing to the type posted above, to free up the camera for use on a scope. However it is an excellent performer with the 1.55mm F2 lens so I’m a little hesitant.

 

I've not used my 178mc for a long time but I've been thinking about using it for planetary imaging on my RC250. Should be good in the right hands but, experience shows that mine aren't the right hands!

Whereas, I'm sure an ASC would be more within my skill set.

29 minutes ago, baggywrinkle said:

 

 

I really like this one. M42 never gets old but I'm definitely a fan of this "old school" style. 

It's almost as though they had M42 in mind in the design stages of the Seestar

I work in a rain sensitive industry. This summer and autumn have been a nightmare. Every shift being a difficult one. But, the last couple of days has been dry . I've watched the rainfall radar as the various fronts and showers have passed round us or parted like a biblical sea as they approached. There is some heavy rain forecast for us tonight and in the early hours of Sunday. Which is a special night shift for me. We get an extra hour at work, so it's a 13 hour shift 

Might get to see the grazing Lunar eclipse between the clouds though.

A very timely thread!

I'm currently in the latter stages of thinking about planning an all sky camera. Been wanting one for years but never got round to it.

My plan is to utilise my trusty old ASI178MC camera. I've used it on a tripod with the included lenes and been happy with the results.  I've been eyeing up this case, the full case kit, unassembled option : https://www.dewcontrol.com/All_Sky_Camera_Enclosure/p3099125_20689629.aspx. But now I really like that little enclosure for the Pi Camera! 

I did have a RasPi 4 going spare but that's recently been reborn as a server for another project.

So my planned costs are a bit more than the list above. I currently have a fetish for PoE devices and envisaged getting a PoE hat for the yet-to-be-bought Pi. The down side is I'm struggling to find a sufficiently rated PoE hat to power everything, without frying.

My ASC would almost certainly live at our Luxury Cumbrian Villa, so long periods of being left to look after itself. Dark sky but a lot of overhanging trees at the rear, where I'd get least domestic friction for placing it. There is nowhere at home with an all-round view of the sky that wouldn't involve ladders and masts. Been there done that. I don't do ladders these days. 

So we've got a few days up at our Luxury Cumbrian Villa and the forecast for Sunday night was good. I've got a Mak 127 up here but no tracking mount. I decided to bring my Canon EOS 1200D along. I've used it with some success on my 250 PDS Newt but not really tried untracked widefiled. My day to day lens is a Tamron 18 to 200 zoom so that's what I used.

I brought my well used Windows Mini PC running APT to operate the camera. It took a while to get focussed, I couldn't get the auto focus routine to run because APT's "live view" insisted on refreshing in frames per second rather than seconds per frame... weird. So manual focus it was.

First was M42 (and M33, if you look hard) Wide open at 18mm, 19 x 20 sec. Stacked in ASTAP. It's junk, but represents my entire output since April

Then I "zoomed in" to about 5mm and pointed at the point between M45 (can't spell Pleiades) and Uranus. 6 x 10 sec. Even worse than M32, the coma in this lens is awful as you will see. But there it is, in all its glory. Uranus. With a little imagination you can see some surface detail and a few moons..

You too can produce images like this, you'd be surprised how little skill this required...

Certainly worth looking out for.

But, so sure am I that weather, pestilence, locusts, extinction event etc... will intefere, I've created a world class video of the event using HNSky on my coal fired Ubuntu lappy. Most of my astronomy is online these days so..Enjoy!!

PS. the middle 35 seconds is soooo boring...

The firmware of my old 120mm mini guide camera can't be upgraded using that tool. 

I had nothing but troubly trying to use Astroberry and I partly blame that on the joint USB foibles of the camera and the Ras Pi4. I later tried a Mini PC running Ubuntu and Ekos/KStars, that too was as crashy as a crashy thing in a crashy place. I dindn't dwell on it. I just used the same mini PC with W10 and its fine. So that certainly ruled out hardware issues. 

I hear that the newer 120mm with the USB3 interface is much better with Linux stuff.

Good luck with your upgrade, keep us posted! 

I've had success using a feature in ASTAP that annotates Simbad objects within your specified search area.

Here I just selected an object in an old, low quality JPEG of M33 I captured a while ago that looks Globular Clusterish and chose Simbad Annotation.

It is a Glob and then selecting Online querie gave me all the usual Simbad info.

https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-coo?Radius.unit=arcsec&Radius=10.079011&Coord=23.5297324401d%2B30.5341685257d&OutputMode=LIST&output.format=HTML

Another great result Paul, but I won't be trying my luck on this one. As I type, this object is culminating at an alt of 11 deg. Not that I can see it through the cloud layer...

To think that these specks, a few pixels, are huge masses of uncountable stars... 

That's nice, it's one of those images where I actually feel "dazzled" by the brightness of the stars. Brighter than the screen backlight!!!

Don't kill in the re-process!

That's a lovely image. I agree about the diffraction spikes too!

I'd be double chuffed to produce an M45 like that.

That's a nice image of C/Lemon and M106. Faint comets are one of my favorite targets! A very underrated class of objects by most imagers  

Great trip, great report, great sketches, but the best bit, for me, is the photo!

I love Tenerife, but not been there since before that virus cast its dark shadow over us all. I dream about spending a night up in the Caldera, doing nothing but looking up.

That will probably have to wait until we retire, early next decade, hopefully...

2 hours ago, Xilman said:

Congratulations.  You have picked up an individual star in an external galaxy.

Wow! Who'd have thunk it!

What a nuisance it is to lose the original subs. There would likely have been useful photometry data there. ASTAP did photometrically calibrate this image but it can't separate the object from the background to derive a spot magnitude. I did use the tool that measures total magnitude within a selection box and that returned 17.9

One last trick from ASTAP is to annotate SIMBAD objects within a selected area, and not that I doubted your identification, but it conformed the fix!

Definitely softer, and from a purely aesthetic viewpoint, the stars are even nicer. Great diffraction spikes; proper stars!!

Hi Paul, only just spotted your response.

Here is the image again but solved and saved as a FITS file, so that should have the solution in the header, I think?

1226034964_M332022-12-1455x60LEQMODHEQ56ZWOASI071MCPro_stacked.thumb.jpg.5a05d24a9e152b902a09306b3412634a.fits

While playing I also found R14 but I didn't annotate it. The yellow box in the attached image is not related to anything I just managed to pollute the JPG image with some clutter.

Very nicely processed. Only looking at it on my phone but it looks great.

Nice stars too.

I'm a recipient of your Globs list Paul but have had little chance to use it. But your image above got me thinking...

I imaged M33 about a year ago but lost the stacked FITS file in a spectacularly successful but entirely unintended wiping of my imaging drive in January. However, I did post a JPEG of that image and I've found it in my attachments list on the forum. It's not the best image but ASTAP did plate solve it, which allowed my to do some annotating of some of the globs on this list: 

 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/M33-GLOBULAR-CLUSTER-TARGET-LIST_tbl1_230984922

The last one one the list is within the confines of my image but seemingly too faint. Any others on the list but not annotated are outside the the frame.

I'm quite chuffed, and as always, thanks for posting your off-the beaten-track images.