PhotoGav

At last, something to image!!! You've done it justice too. 👍

Beautiful image. The sky seems to be so much clearer as a consequence of lockdown. I have a virtually identical image of the Moon from the same night as this and it is as crisp as I ever remember seeing the Moon. More clear nights too. Thank goodness for small mercies.

Thanks Ian, that's useful information. I have the SA and it is good for what it is. I completely agree that it needs the app interface though, the buttons on the mount are almost impossible to programme anything beyond just simple tracking!

I went out to watch the ISS going overhead earlier this evening and saw the train of Muskallites streaming across the sky. It’s quite a sight, but totally horrendous. You can see when they are going to pass by on heavens-above.com.

I am putting together a little video of my recent Messier Marathon attempt (don't worry... pre-lockdown! I managed 96 / 110 in the night, though I cheated and used GoTo) and made these two screens to go in it. My collection of Messier objects imaged over the last few years. Can you name and number them all?! Should give you something to do for a while in these viral times! Stay safe folks.

Does anyone have experience of these two mounts to be able to compare and contrast, please? I have the ‘old’ Star Adventurer and find it is very good, within its limits. I have a friend who wants to buy one, but the Pro Pack seems to be out of stock everywhere. Suppliers have the Mini package, but how good is it? Can it handle longer focal lengths, e.g. a 300mm lens on a 5D MkIV? I look forward to hearing your advice. Thanks, Gav.

It's been great. My colleague and I did the Messier Marathon on Sunday night up at the College Observatory - we managed 96 / 110 objects. My observatory has been whirring away gathering data on NGC 2903 and I'm just starting to turn it towards NGC 4725 now. I've been live streaming solar views from the observatory by day to the GCSE Astronomy pupils (and their parents!) by Zoom during their lessons. I could get very used to day after day of Sun and night after night of clear, Moon free skies!!

Excellent images, Dave. I really like the wider image, putting NGC 4725 into some very galactic context. Did you try for Ha with this? This is my next target and my initial experiments with it last night (one sub in each of LRGB & Ha) didn't show much in the main galaxy area, but there appeared to be some blobs further out into the depths of the spiral arm(s). Also, thank you for posting as I hadn't spotted the little neighbouring galaxy above NGC 4725 and will now tweak my framing to bring that into view! Clear skies and stay safe. Gav.

Interesting Rodd, thank you. Ultimately it is just personal taste. My taste happens to be to remain ‘faithful’ to the data I collect and use saturation techniques to avoid too much colour loss rather than to pump the colour up to eyeball watering levels! I firmly believe that with processing, less is more, unlike with data collection! I really like APP and Photoshop, they allow the data to be presented without too much cooking. Meanwhile, other viewers will think that this image lacks punch and colour!

Thank you Rodd!

Thanks Geof. Good luck with your next attempt. There's no substitute for volume of half decent data! Thank you Ruud.

Thank you Bob. Thank you Alan. I am yet to find the point at which I have too much data for one image! The more you collect the easier it is to process and the better the result. I’m down to one image per New Moon, if the weather allows. I was out showing one of my GCSE pupils how to do astrophotography recently and we took one 60 second frame of six different objects. Quite a different approach! The shriek of delight when the image of M42 popped up on the camera back was priceless!

Thank you @Wiu-Wiu - that’s an excellent time lapse, well done!

I spent some time observing this comet at the end of a good session last night. It is a hazy blob at the moment, but definitely comet like. It would be interesting to follow up the observations to see how it has moved / changed. I did wonder whether there was the suggestion of a tail, but my observing partner and I didn't agree on the direction of this potential tail, so we decided it was probably a case of averted imagination. I would love to see a time lapse of it - anyone?!

That’s not good. Straight to supplier. It must be well within warranty if purchased new.

Argh, these kind of nights are sent to us by the Sky Gods to test who is serious and suitable to receive good data in the future! Don’t lose heart. Try out the camera again today indoors having restarted everything - you will probably find it is a small silly issue and all is fine. Losing out on a rare clear sky is the most frustrating thing though. Good luck.

Thank you @Whistlin Bob. As for the term grand design spiral galaxy and its origins, I have this for you: The term can be traced back to the theoretical work of C.C.Lin in explaining the spirals as due to density waves in galactic discs. A paper from 1970 discusses the "Existence of 'Grand Design'". Note the use of "scare quotes", suggesting that the term was new and would not be widely recognised by his readers. Chia-Chiao Lin was an important Chinese/American Mathematician. It is reasonable to believe that the term was coined by him or one of the mathematicians that he worked with at MIT. And was in use since about 1964, when the first of a series of papers "On the structure of Spiral Galaxies" was published.

Thank you Mick. It is a tricky customer, it took me several attempts to get a process that I was happy with. Still not totally convinced - it’s gone a bit pinky in the middle! Thanks Dave. QSI have been great and very responsive. They suggested that I send the camera in for repair. I can’t face being without my baby and while the weather is cold, the cooling is working fine. They are going to send me two replacement fans for me to swap out. Hopefully that will work and all will be good. If not, I will have to send it in... Fingers crossed!

Thank you @tomato - no doubt the Deep Sky West (Midlands) will do this target justice when you get to it! If the Depressions ever let you...

Thank you Dave, thank you Olly! I could never understand how people didn't process their data straight away and now I find myself in that category of hoarders for the future!

The Sombrero Galaxy is such a winner. I have observed it visually through a 10" refractor and just love it. Your image is very much the kind of view on offer (though this is a tad brighter, I admit!). Good luck with the continuing data collection and I enjoy seeing projects in progress, so don't hold back.

This is a data set that was captured during September and October last year that I have finally got round to processing. The target is Messier 74, The Phantom Galaxy. It is a Grand Design spiral galaxy about 30 million light years from Earth in the constellation of Pisces. It has an apparent magnitude of about +10 and has the second lowest surface brightness of all the Messier objects (the lowest is M101). This makes it difficult to observe visually, hence the name! After many hours of imaging, this is what it looks like to me. One of the things I particularly like with this image are all the little galaxies surrounding M74, especially to the right hand side. I'm struggling to identify them with great certainty, but Sky Safari is telling me that the majority of them are in the region of 2 billion light years away - can that really be true?! Technical Details Celestron EdgeHD 8" and QSI 683-WSG8 with 31mm Astrodon filters, all on a Mesu 200 mount B = 19 x 600s R & G = 13 x 600s L = 50 x 1200s Ha = 15 x 1800s Total Integration Time = 31 hours 40 minutes I didn't set out to capture that much data, but that is what I ended up with! I'm very happy with the detail that all that luminance has brought to the image. As I make each upgrade, so something else becomes the reason why the image is not as good as it could be. I still wonder about the Celestron Edge as an imaging scope - it's not bad, but the stars are pretty ugly (spherical aberration apparently). I'm happy to make that trade off to get the 2032 mm focal length, for now. Unfortunately, the biggest issue I keep coming up against is my local sky quality (and that's when I can see the sky, let's not talk about cloud right now...!). Even that's not too bad, but I know it could be better. Oh well, again, trade offs - I'm working on my crowd funding appeal to launch an imaging satellite along with all the Elon Musk satellites (but let's not talk about StarLink right now...!). All the data was calibrated, stacked and combined in Astro Pixel Processor. The finishing touches were applied in PhotoShop. I hope you like the image, all comments greatly received.

Argh...! I am in conversation with Support now and am just waiting for them to say ‘please can you send it in’. I just removed the fan screws, eased out the fans and had a look. There was a bit of general detritus in there, but not too bad. However, I did see that one of the fans has the red wire disconnected. That can’t be good. It seemed a bit corroded at the joint. Hopefully it’s quick, easy and cheap to fix. Yeah right, and we’ll have clear skies for two months straight too, starting tonight...

Oh dear, I hope they sort yours out. How long have they had it for? I hate the idea of being without a camera for any length of time!

Thanks Dave, interesting idea... I hope it’s that simple... I’m off to investigate...