Luke

I think this is one of my better efforts, taken with an Edge 8 and ZWO ASI174 and sharpened with ImPPG. I started using ImPPG recently and enjoy using it. I used to use Smart Sharpen in Photoshop mostly but I switched to GIMP and the thing I most missed for lunar and solar processing was Smart Sharpen. I'm really happy to have found something I find as fast and predictable as Smart Sharpen.

The seeing seemed decent our way two nights ago for the moon! Nice clear views at 300x mag. Even with 85mm aperture I could see so much detail! Some of the DSO stuff is mindblowing but also pretty faint and I really like being able to see the moon with such clarity.

Nice haul! I was looking at the moon the other night and thinking to myself that the amount of detail is staggering! And it's so cool how the angle of sunlight alters, giving things a very different look.

Great write-up and well done evading the serial killers! Hope Uncle Visa is fighting fit!

Thanks for the kind comments!

Kon, best of luck with catching the Veil, it's so exciting seeing these things for the first time and thankfully it doesn't seem to wear off much!

Lovely, and nice to see a piccy having observed it earlier tonight.

I enjoyed a daytime moon today, taking care to place the scope well in the shade so it was impossible to accidentally catch the sun. I used my ED100 and 8mm, 5mm and 3mm Tele Vue Radian eyepieces.

Contrast was a bit low but I seemed to get used to it and it was a relaxing experience out in nice weather.

The 3mm gave me 300x mag and I was especially happy with it. I could then resolve the craters at the top of the crescent easily. I hadn't used the 3mm Radian much before.

I bought it later than the 5mm and 8mm having enjoyed those so much for solar especially and lunar. And the 3mm looks lovely for my ED100.

Gosh, clear forecast again tonight. Hope to get the 85mm out as well!

A nice plus, while sitting out I noticed a bird of prey gliding overhead and grabbed my bins which I haven't used for years. The bird was beautiful, I hope to ID it later, and then I watched a human bird later performing inverted loop the loops etc in the distance. Very entertaining! My son had fun with the bins too and had a look at the moon with them.

4 hours ago, Telescope40 said:

Hello. Gone big so to speak on the RDF front. Very impressed. Fancied one for quite a while. Purchased via ABS website. 
John 

Nice! I'd forgotten I had one of these and very much enjoyed using it the other night with my ED120. I normally used a Rigel Quikfinder, which is ace too, but looks less military grade! 💥

Welcome to SGL, Astro Noodles! Have fun with your astrophotography journey, it's amazing what's possible!

Welcome to SGL, Gary! Look forward to seeing your images, would a handstand do?

Looks a good phone shot to me, I can never get anything with my phone! Though I can imagine your Tak is sharper 

I will be temped to have a peek today at the moon if the opportunity is there, probably with my 100mm and 85mm dual-mounted, then into the night session with the pair. If it's clear!

I was wondering about Mars too, sounds like not to expect too much!

It's nice to have a good portable setup! I got a lot of use from a Tele Vue 60, Lunt 1.25" wedge, and Quark on a Manfrotto tripod (I forget which one - it was fairly solid with my setup) with a mini giro. Some drift imaging was even possible using what was a relatively large chip at the time, the ASI174, and a lappy.

Clear night #7 of the month, what to do? My wife Sarah fancied a brief observing session – a few globs would do! - before leaving it to me to carry on into the wee hours. Mindful of my wife’s limited time and taking into account my navigation skills - I once got lost going to the local garage picking up some milk for visitors (“Where is he?”) - I placed my faith in the goto mount.

I’ve grown fond of the HEQ5 since it complimented me last time out. “Alignment may be inaccurate”, it had commented. A few words of encouragement can mean a lot from our electronic friends. My HEQ5 has never been as rude to me as that coffee machine at a local pub. Then, no coffee had been forthcoming after I had made my selection. So I tapped a few other buttons to try and get my coffee out of the stubborn thing! “I’m not a pinball machine”, it objected. I got a coke instead from the soft drinks machine. It may not be very talkative, but at least it gets the job done.

Anyway, last time out with the Edge 8 had been lovely, but I had not given the open clusters much time. “Save them for when you use the 0.7x reducer”, I thought. Also, last time I had put a 1.25" diagonal on. This time I put on the reducer and a chunky 2” Baader diagonal, the latter so that I could also use my 21mm Ethos eyepiece if I wish. Tonight, I wanted to really impress the HEQ5 with my alignment skills. Instead of using the 40mm Plossl this time, I decided to use an instrument of higher precision: a cheapy 7-21mm zoom. “Alignment successful” said the delighted HEQ5. Why, thank you! And may I say, you slewed very nicely yourself.

Our polite conversation was interrupted by a noise. Was it the hedgehog? Surely too early. Ah no, it was my wife. Off to the globs we go! We take in I think M13, M92, M10, M3 and M5. My wife enjoyed M5 the most, loving some of the brighter stars in the middle of it. We had started out with the 10mm Delos eyepiece, at 140x mag. But we ended up with the 6mm Delos, yielding 233x mag – we both preferred the views with the 6mm. Happy with the globs, we darted off to a few other targets, including the Blinking Planetary nebula (“It’s been years since I’ve seen it!”), and a few of the brighter galaxies – the highlight galaxy-wise for my wife was M82, the Cigar galaxy.

Once my wife had gone in, I fancied turning to some open clusters. M44, perhaps? But the view had been so good and nicely framed with my ED120 the other night. Why ask this poor SCT to show such a wide target? Well, let’s give it a go with the 21mm Ethos… “Oh my!” It’s one of my favourite clusters, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by how enchanting the view was. I felt quite emotional seeing it, for some reason, and I hadn't even had any single malt or put on War of the Worlds. Not as nicely framed as with the ED120, but it was one of my favourite views of the night. Thank you, 0.7x reducer and 2” diagonal!

I didn’t notice anything negative about using the reducer through the night. The stars looked sharp to me across the entire view with the 21mm Ethos. And at the other end of the mag scale, I didn’t feel high power was suffering at all. Our 6mm Delos was now in play frequently, whereas I had topped out with the 8mm last time. So it was nice to have increased our eyepiece selection by one. Could be at some point I’ll go higher still, but the 6mm felt a nice balance between being close in and feeling like the stars were still reasonably sharp and not too tricky to focus.

I took in about a dozen open clusters, including M29 and M39 in beautiful Cygnus. I particularly enjoyed M67 over in Cancer, which I don’t think I have viewed that much in the past! I think that’s partly because until recently I couldn’t pick out Cancer in the night sky, though I'm not sure why. I find it fairly easy currently. I was enjoying the 21mm Ethos so much that I revisited some earlier targets to see them in a wider context, such as M81 and M82 in the same field of view. One of the highlights though was the Dumbell Nebula, which took on a lot of depth once I popped on a UHC filter. Using a filter reminded me of a challenge I had failed at last time out with the Edge 8 – seeing the Veil nebula!

That night, I had manually slewed to the Veil, as I didn’t have a number to hand to punch into the handset. Tonight, after popping on the OIII filter, I entered “6992” into the handset. Hmmm. There might be something there. Maybe. I pan around slowly a bit, which sometimes helps to tease out details for me. Yes! I can see it. I can see the orientation of it and I know that if I head this-away, it will take me to the Witch’s Broom. Let’s pan over there now!

And into view comes the bright star that sits on the broom, 52 Cygni. It’s funny how bright the brightest star can seem when it’s near a fancy object. I pan around and try to see the broom. I think I can make out some detail, but it’s very hard to tell. It’s borderline and I can’t be certain. I will have to revisit on another night. Still, I am pretty chuffed I have bagged the Eastern Veil! I head back to the Eastern Veil and I try to see it with three other options: no filter, UHC and Neodymium. I’m tempted to say I see it with the UHC, but it’s a blank for sans filter and Neodymium.

Over the night, a few other things that stood out were seeing Alberio – the colours of this double star really zinged out. And the pair of galaxies M65 and M66 are really growing on me this year. It’s been a lovely night again. It was great Sarah popped out for a bit and I hope next season she’ll be able to join in the fun more often. Bagging the Veil seems like a decent stopping point – it’s about 3am. I think I’ll call it a night, though I haven’t seen any meteors, and have seen a couple of great ones in April. But little do I know that there is one final lovely sight in store!

I go to unplug my extension lead from the external power socket, and there is a little rustle. Just a few feet from the plug is Hedge! Hedge has stopped and curled up a little. Hedge is just a few feet from home. “Night, Hedge, have a good kip!” It’s a perfect way to end the night.

Well done, John! That was a great read and impressive result.  I think if I had to have only one frac, it might be my 100mm. A really nice balance of weight to aperture. If we get another clear night in the next few days, I'm tempted to dual mount my 100 and 85 for a general looksy.

Very pretty image up top! I also like your gentle touch on it. I was curious to see how well such a faint prom would come out and this and the other captures are very impressive. The cameras seem to be very sensitive!

 And very interesting to see the movement in the active region over an hour. Thanks for the views.

Many thanks. I've started using ImPPG recently and I like how predictable and quick it is. I had switched from Photoshop to GIMP and was missing Smart Sharpen (also fast and predictable for me), and I like ImPPG even more so far. I find the curve adjustment handy too.

Cheers,

Luke

That's nuts in CaK! And a posh obsy too. Very refined!

🍾

Some very nice detail, well done! Thanks for the view.

Good name for the prom!!!

🤣

Wow, thanks for the view, Ken, that's come out very well. It looks like a Tintin rocket to me!

Well done Michael, thanks for the description, I did notice that brighter area too.

I managed another quick look at 11am. It looked less triangular to me and maybe a bit fainter. Still huge and a great sight! A quick look in white light too, I could see at least a dozen little spots though I thought it looked better yesterday. Seeing was not as good as yesterday though.

All this solar fun is making me think about life after Quark (mine is so-so and has a dirty view that was better suited to imaging, and my wife's has packed in - no idea how long mine will last) and wondering if I would feel more confident this time doing a PST mod. Some of the PST images I have seen are amazing and I think stretching to an 80mm, 90 or 100mm double-stacked scope is gonna be a big ask. Thank goodness white light is much cheaper!

Just been enjoying the large prom again this morning. It is quite faint with my ED100 and Quark and popping a towel over my head certainly helped with this one!

To me it looked about six to seven times as tall as the bright prom, and was sort of a triangle shape bending in a nice arc. Maybe a fusion of the Leaning Tower of Pisa with the Eiffel tower 

The active region is still showing a nice collection of small spots, but it's the prom that's the star at the mo for me. I'm very interested to see how it comes out on camera if anyone is lucky enough to grab it, how much the cam can see of a faint big one!

It's been a lovely month for me, a few decent proms and my fifth night session last night - focused mainly on the lovely globular clusters. But of course it's extra special to see a star close up!

😎

It could be my eyes are not as good as they used to be, but our skies don't look as dark here as they used to. We are in a small village but there's been lots of houses going up in several places around us, some in our village and a good few in the next one, which I think might be affecting things. And there are plans to build many more. On the plus, I like lunar and solar!

It took its time to clear here and at first in the little gaps I could see the bright prom only. Then as the bigger gaps came, I got to see a nice big sort of arc-shaped prom - a bit faint and it took me a mo until I could see it more clearly. I would guess it was about four to five times as tall as the bright prom. The AR looked interesting too. I had a look in white light after and it was sweet, some nice little sunspot "fragments".  Hopefully bigger and better spots to come this summer!

Well done getting some captures despite the difficulties! Thanks for the view.

My scope is out here but not much luck so far, a fleeting view of a prom. I wanted to see if there was a big faint prom, I wondered if there was something showing up on Gong at 9 o'clock, partly cropped off.

Very nice shot!

Is the camera fixed in place? I'm not 100% sure on how your setup looks. If it is fixed so you can get consistent same photos, I'd suggest take multiple shots over the course of a minute or so, then stack them using a program like AutoStakkert (https://www.autostakkert.com/), and sharpen up the result. The stacked image will probably look a bit blurry but should have much less noise, enabling you to push the sharpening.

For sharpening, you could try ImPPG (https://greatattractor.github.io/imppg/). There's a nice little write-up on ImPPG here: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-resources/astrophotography-tips/a-free-tool-for-lucky-imaging/

Good luck with your lunar imaging!

+1 for GIMP. I knew Photoshop pretty well having used it for 20 years and GIMP is a very capable replacement. You can also use many Photoshop plugins with it, and you can get a very nice free plugin directly for it, G'MIC-Qt (https://gmic.eu/), which has a mix of tools including for contrast, detail and sharpening.

The main downside I think to GIMP is that so many tutorials are for Photoshop. But the price point is sweeter!