DaveS

It would have to be my ODK 12 which is my most used 'scope. It's probably also the highest quality.

Scott Manley already has a preliminary assessment / analysis.

2 hours ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Lovely image of one of my favourite galaxies

1 hour ago, assouptro said:

It’s a shame you had 

 There is some lovely data in there and loads of distant galaxies! 
 

hopefully we’ll get a good spell of weather soon! Please!? 🙏

Thanks for sharing 

Bryan 😊

48 minutes ago, tomato said:

You have done a great job, but I share your frustration on the lack of new imaging opportunities. You can only revisit old data so many times.

Thanks guys for the votes of confidence.

It's well worth having a look in the background, there are a lot of faint fuzzies lurking there.

For sure this was a lot more successful than most people expected. 

Didn't make it through reentry and the booster landed hard, so there will have to be a mishap investigation, but hopefully not too much of a delay.

Crazy reentry footage.

Looking good so far 🤞

Yup, yet another reprocess, blame the rubbish weather.

M106 with data captured in 2022, before I cured the reflections from OOUK's rubbish anodising that was giving un-calibratable reflections, so trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Making a complete pig's ear from a silk purse is easy for me lol.

Originally I captured a load of LRGB data in bin 1 but in the end combined all the LRGB data into a synthetic luminance and captured fresh RGB data in bin 2 I needed to be brutal in the processing to kill the irregularities in the background, GraXpert helped, and BlurX in PI brought out the detail.

Dunno, I've been kicking this around so much I've lost track of what I've been doing but there's an Unsharp Mask in there somewhere and several rounds of single colour attenuation to clean up the background.

It doesn't take much effort to find horrors in the background, but I'm done with this rubbish data. In the unlikely event that I get enough clear nights I may revisit this target with completely new data, but until then...

I remembered this from a year ago

Did someone say "diffraction spikes" lol. This is with an OOUK ODK which has a spider that's machined from the solid. Yes, I can see the spikes aren't quite even. No, I'm not 100% sure of the cause.

That searchlight is actually mag 6.3 I think.

I've finally brought this to some kind of a conclusion (For now LOL).

Between the 7th Jan and 5th Mar I captured:

54 600 sec Luminance subs at Bin1, of which 49 made it into the stack

20 each RGB 600 sec subs at Bin 2 using Baader Bessel filters, of which 16 B, 19 V, and 19 R made it through QC

With the ODK 12 and ASI 533 for a totally bonkers 0.38"/px native and nominal 19' square.

Stacked and Gradient Reduction in AstroArt 8 and initial work-up in PI with SPCC on the RGB stack, then BlurX on Luminance at 85% non-stellar with 25% star reduction, and NoiseX, BlurX at 50% on the RGB and again ArcSinH stretch and NoiseX. The Luminance was given DDP stretch in AstroArt 8 (I found it better than ASH for this job). The stretched RGB was given a slight Histo Stretch to bring it into the AA range.

Finally LRGB synthesis was done in AstroArt. Saved as FITS and PNG

C&C welcome as usual, I think the saturation may be too high, though it as it came out of SPCC and ArcSinH.

A mug of hot chocolate with a splash of rum. Appleton Estate 12 year.

Saying that Bortle 5 is "suburban sky" is just plain daft. I can tell you that I lived in suburban London in Ruislip and would have cheerfully murdered for Bortle 5 skies! In the end I moved house and got mid Bortle 3

Also, saying that the centre of the Milky Way casts shadows in Bortle 1 is equally daft, since the centre of the Milky Way barely makes it out of the horizon murk even from the South Coast here.

Bournemouth Hospital has been sending me texts with a link to online letters rather than rely on RM.

Sorry, that's getting OT

When astro kit arrives late-ish that's just a bit annoying, but when hospital appointment letters arrive after the appointment or not at all, that's disastrous and happens too often. Once is too often.

5 minutes ago, MalcolmP said:

and  say soder when they are solderng their electrical bits 

That's what I say when a drop falls of the iron and onto my hand lol

My mojo.

I remember, I remember,.... many years ago, living in Acton (West London, about 8 miles from the centre) when I could see all the main stars of Umi.... *sigh*. And I gave up astronomy due to the light pollution...

12 minutes ago, josefk said:

for the purpose of quantifying sky quality for your own observing notes - not identifying a site to travel to obviously - you can also use Ursa Minor.

This was a tip for Auto League observing notes where sky quality is a "required" metric. The sky quality you log is the first numeral.

It doesn't add anything you don't know on the night instinctively but adds another "data point" into your log...

My eyes have deteriorated in recent years due to developing cataracts, so stars aren't as pinpoint sharp as they used to be, having a slight blur around them. Even so, on a good night I would go to 7 on that scale easily.

1 hour ago, JOC said:

Is there a way of easily taking a SQM reading - do mobile phones do it - is there an app for that?  They seem to be quite ubiquitous these days 😄

1 hour ago, josefk said:

Hi @JOC there is indeed an app to take SQM readings. I'm not sure how absolutely accurate it can be but as a relative record i find it useful. I use an app called "Dark Sky Meter" on an iPhone and take several readings per night and average them for my observing log. Its definitely sensitive to moon phase and atmospheric moisture (sky glow) so its reading something...

The smartphone app is, I think Apple specific as Android 'phones have so many different cameras that it's impossible to quantify them between brands.

FLO have several Sky Quality meters on their site.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/unihedron-sky-quality-meters.html

I don't know TBH, and it may just be a rumer. I think I read it in a thread here ut it was quite a while ago and may be just recycled rumer / conspiracy.

But if it's true then it's a slap in the face for UK amateur astronomers.

The big advantage of square sensors is, once you've set them orthogonal to RA and Dec you can leave them.

Unfortunately there's nothing between the small 533 and the professional 4040 sensors at professional prices, unless you're willing to find a S/H 4022 camera, but it's noisy and insensitive.

I heard it said that the team decamp to Aus for a Stargazing Live that we can't see because it's for ABC television.