DaveS

Here we go, Copeland's Septet in your 0.7M dia, 8.4M fl 'scope

Well, I wouldn't want to *shoot* anything, but I might try imaging some of the smaller HCGs. Stephan's Quintet might be high on my list.

Well, if you * really* want a 6x6 cm sensor.. https://www.baader-planetarium.com/de/kameras/qhyccd-kameras/wissenschaftliche-kameras/qhy6060-bsi-fsi-cooled-scientific-cameras.html Be sure to be sitting down before looking at the price !

Having a look at the Astrograph site I saw a couple of very interesting cameras based around the sony IMX 461 medium format sensor From QHY bundled with a 7 position FW and OAG and Moravian with integrated 7 position FW. No, they're not cheap but not as pricey as the ZWO version, and better made, by the looks of things. Would make a nice pairing with a Tak FSQ106

I'm not sure how well it's showing on here, but in the original FITS on my 32" 4K monitor I can see a few knots of structure in the outer rings. Whether those are genuine galactic structures or foreground stars I'm not sure.

Indeed. It's also made a bit of a mess of NGC 1055.

Following a suggestion by @geoflewis on our WA group I applied a touch of Levels and Curves in AstoArt. I don't know, it's made the outer ring of Cetus A a bit noisy. Need more data!

Thanks Bob

Thanks Geof.

Thanks Peter.

I started this 2 years ago, but the first run of subs had a different cropping (And rotation) to the main lot so were unuseable. Many, many thanks to @silentrunning who passed the luminance stack through Blur XT. Gonna have to buy a PI and Blur XT licence! Anyway, this is the Cetus A / NGC 1055 group. Cetus A is the closest and brightest Seyfert galaxy, but "close" and "bright" are relative! I collected 24 x 10 min and 48 x 5 min Bin 1 Luminance subs, but only 23 and 46 made it into the stack. The RGB is a bit of a hodge-podge of 11 Blue, 19 Green, and 17 Red subs in G2v calibration (600 sec R, G, 1050 sec B ) but some of the subs were collected in Bin 1 by mistake, so it's difficult to quantify the relative exposures. The Luminance data was stacked with a calibrated Flat and Bias only with the whole lot in the stack to average them. Cetus A is bottom right, North is to the left. I won't collect any more data this year (Maybe some better RGB next year) but will concentrate on improving my processing of what I have already.

Casting my mind back to Astrofest 2019 and putting down a £500 deposit on my ODK 12. It's not even the most splurgy thing in my obsy .

Angry is right to be sceptical. Only brain-dead morons believe *anything* they read (If they can read) in the Excess.

As a kid I remember seeing the milky way from Acton in West London. OK, it wasn't a river of gems, but it was there, and all the stars of UMi were visible. I think the last time I saw anything of the MW (As a thin ribbon of light) was on a superlative night in the mid '80s

It doesn't help that certain "newspapers" (Gutter rags more like) have long known that fear sells papers and pump out headlines cranking up the fear. "We'll all be murdered in our beds" by the current bogeymen.

Yep, it's the monkey brain. As soon as it gets dark it starts running around in little circles gibbering about leopards.

First sub in and photobombed, NGC 2903. Uncalibrated autostretch.

And still not happy

I think it's not worth making plans with our rubbish weather. Having said which I want to collect more data on the Cetus A group, a project which has been going for too long. NGC 2903 is starting to become well placed, so is NGC 3718. Galaxy Season starting early 😂.

DSO imaging puts the most stringent requirements on a mount, so any mount that will be good for DSO will be brilliant for planetary.

I think of the dictum of Ansell Adams, that the negative is the score, and the print is the performance. If we substitute negative for our linear file(s) then perhaps we can extend his darkroom skills / magic to our postprocessing. Maybe taking a "Group f/64" attitude. Or maybe I'm talking cobblers. Won't be the first time 😂.

This image of the Cetus A group is where I've got to so far. The shadows can still be seen but much reduced from what I had previously, and the negative vignetting has gone. I'm tagging @peter shah on this as he knows the ODK inside out.

I've tried using flatbox Flats with an ADU in the 31k-35k range, calibrated with Master Bias only and there is an improvement. The diagonal shadows can still be seen but need an unhealthy stretch to be visible. The situation now arises: If I have a go at the solution indicated above then I could end up with all the data collected previously rendered unusable, and there's a hell of a lot of data. I will likely have to keep two sets of calibration frames for Before and After treatment.

Thanks. I will have to dismantle the imaging train and have a look at the spacing adaptors. As I recall they are the ones supplied by OOUK and have knife-edge baffles machined into them. I wonder if a spray with Black V3 might be more successful than trying to flock such a complex surface. I will try again with my flats, calibrating with just a Master Bias frame.

A problem may well come from using a T-Shirt stretched over the end of the OTA for flats. I'm trying flats from a flat box.