tooth_dr

Fantastic read. Well done.

At about 10pm I switched to the scope, and had a mare getting all running again. Guiding was excellent last night, with total RMS of 0.9, and then the computer crashed about 6 subs after I left it, shame as I had some lovely subs of M101. As for the F stop - I couldnt get focus, then ended up just stopping down to F8, I do have some at F2.8 F4 F5.6 that I can look at later. It was late last night when I wrapped up and am away doing an outreach even tonight at a local school.

My new lens arrived yesterday, and had some clear skies last night! A few high clouds but Im very happy with this. It was 3 x 150s at ISO400 F8. I am very new to widefield imaging, and it certainly seems harder than using the telescope due to the smaller scale of everything. This is a reduced size but uncropped stack of three subs on a full frame sensor.

Thanks! Clearish night too for first light. Orion and meteor

This came today:

This is really great Francis! I'm debating whether to get me SA out tonight, and try it with a 180mm lens also on a Nikon body, this is convincing me to try it!

Very informative guys. Thank you both for your replies ??????

I did google but thanks. I just didn’t understand James F saying a class 3b is ‘totally inappropriate’ but in fact astro lasers lie within the class 3b range? Obviously I understand you don’t want to be using 499mw lasers ?

For the not so well informed ... why? I’m interested in getting one myself and so am wondering the answer?

Looks great. Nice blue colour and the shelf is useful ?

I just done a public outreach event and the other guy helping me brought his green laser pointer. It was totally perfect for pointing out constellations and m42. It helped to show around 10-20 people simulateously the objects who all then queued to see it in the eyepiece. 100% go for it.

Keep us updated. Fascinating work.

My new camera arrived today

I thought I would come back to this thread and update it. Previously I had just checked the first few flats, they all looked the same, so I thought nothing more of it. Tonight I went through them all one by one, and I found 8 flats that looked differently exposed to the others. I have removed these and currently am stacking the data. Hopefully this will resolve the issue. I've attached examples if the outliers.

Fabulous. I’m debating whether to get a 135 or a 180mm lens. How much cropping did you do?

I even put skirting in my warm room ? and a laminate floor. It’s the small things

Here is my start on the HH nebula. So far this is 67 x 300s with UV-IR filter on a QHY9 camera, on an ED80. I wasn't choosey with the subs, it may have paid to have been more selective. I'm still learning. I have some colour to add to it, but as this has been sitting on my laptop for two weeks so I figured I better get around to at least starting it. Thanks for looking. Adam

Wow the detail in the full version is incredible.

The lens I have is fixed at 8mm, but it's very sensitive. I do have zoom lenses but they become much slower the more you zoom in. I bought a standard heated CCTV housing, it was about 25 pounds on ebay, has the 12v heating element built in. I wouldn't build one for that money.

Thanks Jeremy. I'm keeping the dates free, as the Michael mentioned something in Sept, and also a meeting in Dunsink? Adam

Thanks! That’s cool! William got me the pc and set it up and Michael O’Connell sourced me a Watec camera. I then found a computar lens online so am rightly set up now!

Here are a couple of meteors from last night. I picked up around 19 meteors between 3-5am, more than average. Here are the two best ones. Leo can be clear seen in the background of the first one! M20190210_034835_Cookstown_SW.avi M20190210_044918_Cookstown_SW.avi

Thanks Ciarán. I’ve quickly checked the new darks and bias and they have that value of -1 matching the flats. It must be the new APT settings. I only use APT for everything for data collection. I’m currently stacking 182 lights from 2 nights so will report back tomorrow (depending on laptop speed!)