PhotoGav

So… I am still not completely clear as to how these events occur, what exactly is going on? (The video you linked to is amazing!) Is this correct: The rocket stage in question activates an engine burn to alter its orbit to bring it back down to Earth. The burn involves production of a substantial quantity of exhaust gases that are illuminated by sunlight and hang eerily in the sky, shining away to create a display for us here on Earth?!

I caught this event on my all sky camera too, here are the composite still and the whole night's video. Amazing to hear that it was the deorbit burn / fuel dump from the Russian Angara rocket mission to place the Kosmos 2555 satellite in orbit. So, what exactly has happened here? Has the third stage of the Angara lit its engines to consume all the fuel before reentering the atmosphere or has it just dumped its fuel to make it less dangerous as it comes back to Earth? 2022-04-29to2022-04-30.mp4

Perfect, thank you. Exactly what I was hoping for. Good old SGL!!

Looking through the captures with my All Sky Eye from Friday night (29th April 2022), I found this trail. What do you think it is?? It is very bright and slow... taking about 6 minutes to travel the distance seen. It is strange in that it doesn't travel from one side of the field of view to the other, like an airplane or helicopter would. Furthermore, it is a constant light, not flashing - breaks in the trail are the gaps between frames, not an intermittent light. It is brighter than the ISS and travelling from south to north, so isn't the ISS, which wasn't predicted at that time anyway. Any thoughts would be gratefully received. and here is the complete video of the night: 2022-04-29to2022-04-30.mp4 I look forward to hearing what you reckon it could be. Thanks, Gav.

Thanks Rob. Looks like an interesting and useful app 👍

Nice report Rob. I find a neutral density Moon filter (or two!) is essential at the fuller phases. What is the app that you mention? I have searched ‘Moon Maps’, but the closest it brings up is ‘Moon Phase Photo Maps’ - is that the one you used? Thanks, Gav.

Thanks for this. I have an old 12” that needs a lot of care, but could be a good project for them. Have messaged the person.

Thank you @peter shah, @Space Hopper & @simmo39 - I'm with you on this, I much prefer the starry version. Starless versions of images are kind of interesting, but, personally, I'm trying to show what an object would be like if we could see it 'properly' with our eyes... that needs stars! Still kind of fun to see the more abstract starless version though.

Thank you @Chefgage, @teoria_del_big_bang & @Dummy for your kind comments.

Here is my rendition of The Butterfly Nebula (IC 1318), aka the area around Sadr (the bright star to the right of the image). It seems to have taken me an age to gather the data for this, I started the project at the end of August and collected the final couple of hours last night. It is a total of 24 hours integration time, consisting of 24 x 1800s subs in both Ha and OIII. I used an Esprit 100ED with QSI-683 and Astrodon 5nm filters all on a Mesu-200 mount. Stacking in APP and HOO bi-colour put together in PhotoShop. I couldn't resist a starless version with StarNet++. I hope you like it and thank you for looking. Clear skies to you all...!

And a slightly iffy time lapse of the occultation of Europa:

Wow! The quality of the images entered so far is extraordinary. I am not going to let that put me off... so, here is my attempt at Jupiter recently:

Finally, a close up of the meteor in the first shot, with a satellite trail photo-bombing!

And here’s another (same details as above)

A single Perseid above the Dome of the Blackett Observatory. Taken with a Canon R5 & 15mm f2.8 lens, clicking away taking 20 sec exposures at ISO1600 - caught a load of satellites and just a couple of meteors. That’s not say I didn’t see plenty - over 60 in about 1.5 hours, it was just the camera was rarely pointing in the right direction!

I have had a growing number of data sets sitting on my laptop, waiting to be processed for quite some time now. Today was the day... I finally started climbing the processing mountain. First up was the Propeller Nebula in Cygnus, the most recent data set, having been gathered in June this year. It consists of 43 x 1800s Ha and 25 x 300s in each of RGB - total integration time of 27 hours and 45 minutes. Captured with an Esprit 100ED and QSI 683-WSG8, using Astrodon RGB & 5nm Ha filters, all on top of a Mesu-200. Next up, the Elephant Trunk in Cepheus, which is the oldest data set, gathered last year in July! 48 x 1800s Ha and 47 x 1800s OIII, total of 47.5 hours! I also had some RGB data, but ended up not using it. Quite how I managed to get so much on this, I have no idea! Same kit as above. Not sure what I think of my processing of these two - all done with AstroPixelProcessor and Photoshop. I'm a bit rusty! It's good to be playing with data again though. More pics from old data to come soon, with not much more data being gathered courtesy of the English Summer weather... Clear skies to all!

Thank you Sky Gods! You were kind to me and I hope I didn't let you down. I couldn't believe it when the clouds started thinning just at the crucial moment this morning. I had pretty much given up on any chance of seeing this eclipse for myself, but wondered if I might be able to see something with the Lunt 50 in my obsy through the cloud. Absolutely no chance to begin with, so I missed the start, but then thick cloud slowly became thin cloud and then there were even a few momentary breaks in the cloud. Amazing! So, here is the best frame from the session, a bit after maximum. It is just a single frame capture as there was zero chance of grabbing a usable video - there were clouds scudding across pretty much the whole time... I also tried to upload an animated gif time lapse, but the upload keeps on failing with 'error -200' - anyone know what that is all about?!

Star parties... remind me, what are they?!!?

Here is my image of the Sun today from Wiltshire. A nice and sunny day, but hazy with not the best seeing. AR 2827 looking ever larger in the northern hemisphere and the nascent AR 2828 in the south.

I was in exactly your position just recently. I opted to purchase a Double Stack for my Lunt 50 as one came up on Astro Buy & Sell for a sensible price. I am absolutely delighted with the improvement that it has brought to my solar imaging. It seemed quite subtle to begin with, but now I’ve sussed out settings, the difference is what I had hoped for. Having said that, of course I would prefer a Lunt 60, double stacked! We all know that increased aperture is key to resolving power and the 50 is limited. Cost is prohibitive for this. While we are at it, the 80 would be even better! Having said that, I would also love a refractor plus Quark! I didn’t go down this route now as it would end up more expensive, given that I would need a suitable dedicated refractor too (my refractors are assigned to deep sky imaging duties). It would be less portable than the 50, which I also use for outreach observing and is just perfect on a small mount or my Star Adventurer. Ultimately, I will probably able end up purchasing a Quark system at some point, for close up views, leaving the 50 for whole disk views. Good luck with your research and eventual choice. Suffice to say that I can wholeheartedly recommend the double stack upgrade for the Lunt 50 - it is probably your easiest and cheapest first step. It will also hold its value very well and be very sellable once you decide to sell and upgrade your whole system.

I have been working on taking images of the Sun while it has some obvious active regions and overlaying a Stonyhurst disc to allow my astronomy GCSE pupils to calculate the different speeds of rotation at varying solar latitudes. Here are the images: I look forward to seeing what values you all get! Images taken through a Lunt LS50THa with Double Stack, using a Point Grey Chameleon3 camera. Isn't it wonderful to see some decent solar activity at loooooong last!

Ah ha! Thank you.

I used the day 115 frame from the animated gif that you posted towards the start of this thread. Quick question - why the two latitude scales on opposite sides that are reversed??

The wonderful clear sky this morning gave me the chance to try all of this out and here are the results: Very happy with that! All I need now is a clear sky in a few days time to get another shot... Thank you for your help folks.

Thank you @Merlin66 - that looks good. Shame it’s not for Mac too!