PhotoGav

Just giving you the required space to squeeze in your tour bus....!!!

Definitely.

Thank you both. Mmm, I have high expectations of myself too! Chances are it will be cloudy like the last one. Just in case it's not, I need to sort a plan out...! This is my pic from 2016:

Thank you folks. Hopefully everything will be right for the next attempt...!

Ha ha, yeah, sort of!! By all accounts the driver upgrade is simply a step towards phasing out native support for QSI cameras in other software and moving entirely to ASCOM support. No improved feature set to warrant the change until absolutely necessary. I’ll be leaving my set up as is for now.

The sky was perfectly cloudy all day today, but it just threatened to show some breaks at around 15:45. I knew that there was an ISS transit of the Sun at 16:18 BST (thanks Dave for flagging it up!) and decided 'you snooze, you lose' so thought I would set up the kit anyway - you never know... Well, blow me down, the clouds thinned enough to be able to see something (along with bits of my neighbour's hedge... Titmarsh moment on the horizon). This is the first time I have ever caught an ISS transit, so I'm chuffed, despite it being pants really - not clear, bits in the way, slightly out of focus and in the wrong orientation. Never mind! Here it is: and a video: 2019-10-17_T_16-18-04-0401_L.ser_F1580-1760 (Converted).mov Kit used: Lunt LS50THa with Chameleon3 camera. I think it's a while before the next opportunity for me!

Get people to send in images by WeTransfer to the organiser - free and up to 2GB file size, which should satisfy even the keenest of data gatherers! All the images could then be put into a DropBox folder which is shared with the Judge, who can access the images from anywhere with internet access and judge the anonymous images in their own time. Again, this is a free service, but has a total file size limit of 2GB, so depends how big and how many images. Good luck!

Just simply - Yes!

I see that the new drivers are now available. Please let me know if you upgrade and how it goes! Thanks and good luck...

Beautiful work. Are these clever processing tricks newly acquired from your visit to the Penrice School of Astrophotography Wizardry?!

Rodd, this is superb!! It now has a fabulous 3D quality to it. The core doesn’t jump out at me now, it sucks me in to the image and deep into space. Sweet, well done!

I wish you all the very best of luck with the combined venture. As a customer of both FLO and IKI, I am delighted that you are working together to provide everything the hopeful astronomer could ever need, or, at least for most of the time, dream of! Ikarus... I presume you won't be dealing in solar products - wouldn't want to get too close to that now!!???!!!

Olly, I'm fascinated by your input to this thread and the techniques that you mention. What a shame that you don't have a YouTube channel with tutorial videos...! I'm inclined to agree with your suggestion that it is the outer bits that aren't 'in sync' with the core and I would love to see what you would do to recitfy the 'issue'. Just to reiterate, Rodd, this is a lovely image that has stimulated some really good discussion of processing techniques in the pursuit of perfection.

Interesting idea - though I fear the results for UK locations would be very depressing! I use the record function, but it has been to debug weird shut down events in the past.

I know you like to be hyper-critical with yourself and you haven't let us down this time Rodd! You are beating yourself up over a really lovely image. However......... I kind of know what you mean about there being something that doesn’t quite sit with this image. I am being hyper-critical here, so humour me, to me there appears to be a disconnect between the centre of the image and the outside areas. I like the outer parts - nice subtle processing, delicate colours, not overstretched, not over noise reduced, in fact a nice bit of natural noise, lovely stars... all looking good. It’s the core, ‘the main showcase’, that I struggle a little bit with. It just looks a bit over processed, like it’s just trying too hard to say ‘look at me!’, it’s overdone the lippy before the big night out with the girls and looks like a tart!! Perhaps if the same delicate touch that you have used with the outer areas were applied to the core it would all sit more comfortably together? On the other hand - what’s wrong with the occasional interlude with a tart?!!?

Thank you Andrew.

Next question - which processing software is best to use: RSpec or BASS? I haven't really investigated either, just aware that they both exist. Apologies for the rather lazy question, but I know you know!

And to be fair, £3k is very reasonable for specialised Astro kit! Suffice to say that it will be on my Wish List, but somewhere near the bottom for now!

Ok, thank you. I think I will rein in my expectations a little and look at the diversity of possible projects. Really what I need to do is just purchase an SA100 and get started!

Vlad, I believe you! (No idea...!!) I look forward to following your progress. If you get it to work, I’d be interested in buying one off you... if it’s cheap!

Robin, Found your post (not hard!) and it is very interesting. While it highlights the inaccuracies of the low resolution system, it actually fills me with hope that this is something worth pursuing. I think it will be possible to do something useful, even if not totally accurate. My aim is to introduce spectroscopy to Astronomy GCSE and Physics A level students at the school I work at, gathering data to use the distance-modulus equation for real. Inaccuracy is a useful thing to discuss and makes it ever clearer that accurate astronomy is difficult!! Thank you for your help so far. You aren’t coming to SGL SP2019 by any chance are you??!

Thank you again Robin. I’ll hunt down your post. What level of kit beyond the Star Analyser would be needed for a resolution suitable to get somewhere with this?

Robin. Thank you for your in depth answer. That is what I feared and expected. How useless will it be?! Would certain brighter stars be easier to classify or is it completely beyond the reach of the Star Analyser? Should I abandon all hope of spectral classification with this level of kit or is their some merit in targeted attempts? Thanks, Gav.

Thank you @Merlin66, yes keeping it simple and doing things step by step is key. Thanks for those links. More questions to follow!!

Thanks Vlaiv, I will try plugging in some numbers to that spread sheet.