Knight of Clear Skies

Sorry to hear about this, time, money and hassle you could do without. At least it sounds like it can be repaired from the tips above. Can the neighbour send you a pic so you have some idea of what to expect?

Probably not the right place to share this but I've just found out that Antares was imaged by the VLTI. "Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer astronomers have constructed this remarkable image of the red supergiant star Antares. This is the most detailed image ever of this object, or any other star apart from the Sun." I might have a go at scaling the above and pasting it into my image when I've finished processing it (making sure I credit it properly to ESO/K. Ohnaka).

My expectations aren't high but I did shoot a bit of Ha on it too which should help bring out the structure, I'd be happy with a desaturated version. The RGB subs have a big gradient across them and colour balance is going to be a nightmare I think. Ran a 2 minute sub through GradEx and got this. M4 looks promising despite its small size and I can see hints of yellow, blue and red nebulosity. Didn't frame it terribly well so I've cropped out the left hand side. For comparison, this is 2 minutes on Cygnus with a rough colour balance and no other processing. This is with the old Takumar lens at f3.5, I used the Samyang lens to shoot Ha at f2.

Yes, I hadn't realised quite how high it got in May although this was at about 3:00AM. I had been planning a trip to the south coast one day to shoot the core but perhaps that's not necessary. Will be interesting to see how the Rho Ophiuchi complex comes out.

Saw some very peculiar clouds on Wednesday night. There was lots of high, thin cloud hanging around during the evening with plenty more on its way on the satellite image. But as soon as it got dark they made a run over the horizon and stayed there, in defience of normal astronomical logic. I'm not much of a meteorologist, is there a variety of cloud that goes to bed when the Sun goes down? Here's a panorama taken from the Caradon Observatory site. The strongest light sources are Callington, just right of centre, and Plymouth to the right of that. Saturn and Jupiter are visible just above Plymouth. The red lights on the right are from the Caradon Hill TV mast. It's darker in the other direction as Bodmin Moor is that way. 20 second exposures with the 6D and 14mm lens stitched together in Microsoft ICE. Also shot a two pane mosaic of central Cygnus and had a go at Rho Ophiuchi, hopefully I'll get around to processing it before too long.

Probably top of the list is the Samyang/Rokinon 135mm f2, there are lots of example images in this thread.

Very nice indeed.

@swag72 kindly gave me some tips and after quite a bit of messing about blending in layers I got this. I raided the blue and green channels of the DSLR image to make a bit of a synthetic OIII layer. The end result isn't great, I think I've accidentally done some damage to the background and stars while blending but it was a very useful learning exercise.

Thanks for sharing, always interesting to hear what's lurking in the background.

Fingers crossed, that's a promising development but we'll see. The initial spin coming out of Space X was disappointing but perhaps they are taking it seriously now.

Or... "Redshift my behind! Those are tobacco stains Hubble!"

Have you never been tempted Olly? Or with your skies and data collection time is f2.8 not so important to you?

Looking good, the pillar structure in the head of the Pelican is starting to show so you're capturing some true detail on your target.

Recognised the name and had another look at his site, really top notch. Maybe one day I could think about a Tak Epsilon but i don't know how much of a maintenance hog it would be.

Kind of, yes, but the Sandero would genuinely manage better over the speedbumps. Proposed in the spirit of fun but there are some serious points hiding in there. It can do, yes, but my cheap simple kit gets more use as I can be up and running in 5 minutes and packed away in even less time.

If you wanted a real challenge Olly, what could you do with just 5 or 10 minutes of data? In those circumstances I suspect my budget rig and idiosyncratic methods could win out. You have a permanent setup and less cloud to contend with than UK imagers, but many of us have limited imaging opportunities for various reasons. This is just 5 seconds of integration time from a couple nights ago but I'm thinking in terms of enough focal length to show some DSO features....

Caught a fairly bright meteor last night, with the 6D and 14mm lens. This was just a 5 second framing shot at ISO 16,000, surprised at how well it's come out after a bit of a de-noise. The meteor seems quite yellow, possibly from sodium?

Amazing vista, but is the background a touch green?

Taken last night, thought I'd have a go at the Milky Way before Summer twilight glares it out. Canon 6D and 14mm lens, this is three frames stitched together in ICE but heavily cropped in the end. Runs from Cassiopeia to Aquila & Scutum. Cleaned up with GradEx and processed in PS. Bottom right hand corner is a little weak as it's close to the strongest source of local light pollution. Edit: Replaced the image as I somehow lost the orange stars in the final stage. Also took the opportunity to make it a bit more panoramic.

I'm detecting evil here (even before I get to the smiley) as the Ha around the Double Cluster is exceedingly faint. The honourable course would be something bright like the NA nebula or Sadr region.

Think that could be a great subject, I suspect smartphones have a lot more to give when it comes to AP. Came across this image of Jupiter with the GRS in reddit-land (capture details and author in link). But what could a cheap smartphone do on the Milky Way? Got my Mum a smartphone with a triple camera on the back for £80 the other day. Can they be pushed past 30 second exposures so they can be used with trackers (including barn door trackers)? If not, has anyone tried stacking smartphone images?

Yes, is that possible with current apps and models?

After quite a lot of playing around in Photoshop, here's my RGB Ha California Nebula. Hope you like it. Found this a challenge due to the enormous dynamic range of this object, the central area is just so bright compared to the outlying regions. Made use of layers in PS to blend in the brighter shock fronts. Used a lum layer from a blend of the Ha and RGB. My workflow probably made little sense but this is a learning curve for me. Looking at the above on my second too-bright monitor the background has gone a little odd somewhere, not sure if that will be a problem on other people's devices. Here's the capture details for the RGB and Ha data. Looking at the old RGB image again I have some background dust, might have to blend that in if I can work out how.

This could be the way to go. I was lucky enough to pick up a Prinzgalaxy 400mm f6.3 M42 lens for £10 and got this with it. On the other hand, focusing could be tricky on a 350D without liveview. Have you considered a second hand zoom lens? MPB Photographic are well thought of and have a large stock. I put together a bit of a guide for using old M42 lenses for AP that you might find useful.

The redshift parameter (z(spectroscopic) 0.03376) can be converted into a distance estimate, using online calculators.