DaveS

That is a fabulous image Peter.

But the biggest question is: Will it be delivered by Postman Pat?

Low battery?

RA clutch not fully tightened?

Video blocked in the UK

Yep, that's a great image Wim. I've been thinking about getting more data, that might just be the kick I need. I *should* be able to get the IFN from my site.

OK, to lower the tone of the discussion...

The game we call "noughts and crosses~" the yanks call (I believe) "Tic Tak Toe"... so...

You get a nervous Tic while carrying your Tak, and drop it on your Toe...

Ouch!  

My (Second) version after working in AstroArt 8

Split RGB

Individual gradient removal

Recombine in Trichromy so AA could rebalance the chanels

DDP of the combined RGB with saturation boost and high pass filtering (May have left the latter a bit too high)

Richardson-Lucy deconvolution for the slightly out of focus stars.

Slight hue and saturation adjustment

Unsharp mask with dark halo control.

I'm sure there's more in the data

Which raises the question of how much of the KE of DART was transferred to Dimorphos, and how much to the debris cloud?

Or a dormant volcano 🌋. With a retractable roof.

They also don't know how solid Didymous is. It could be a barely consolidated rubble pile.

From what I understand SpaceX will use the Boca Chica site for development and testing, with regular launches from KSC. I think they have another launch tower in construction there as well.

There's the energy of a small atomic bomb in a fully fueled Booster and Starship. If it went bang, chances are it would take the Tank Farm with it, and I would fear for Boca Chica. "Over Pressure" being the understatement of the century.

There was another thread on the subject here

Similar conclusions.

Haha, yes it does a bit.

I'm going to put this on the back burner for the time being as the Autumn galaxies are becoming well placed with the moon out of the way.

I may keep this as a target for when the moon is too bright for galaxies.

I think it's a perspective effect, they are further away than they look. But yes, it is something of a concern as a fully fueled Starship / Booster could set them off it it went bang.

Meanwhile, in Boca Chica

I'm putting this up now as I don't know when I'll be able to get more data.

Over the last two clear nights I captured 20 x 900 sec subs of [OIII] and H-Alpha with the ODK rig, timed so that the [OIII] would be captured before the moon rose too high. The best 18 out of the 20 were stacked in DSS  and then given  the heavy hammer in AstroArt 8

Saved as a JPEG

It's still as noisy as hell, and needs a shed load more data, especially the weak [OIII]. It is unlikely that I will bother to get any [SII] as I want to move on to galaxies, which are my main obsession.

This looks to be similar to the QHY 990. Not cheap!

I too found the "MOONS" segment irrelevant to the program, it's something that could have been included in a program about advances in astrophysics.

1 hour ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

Dave, "a fortune" is very subjective though really? A decent Star Tracker, tripod, camera, dew prevention and laptop to process images is how much? The next step up, for instance a 130PDS, camera, filters, mount, power supply etc is how much?

Bringing on someone on with a smart phone who's produced images of night scapes and the Orion nebula is surely the first step onto the ladder? I would think showing climbing that ladder to more sophisticated kit would take more time (and likely money) per episode than the team have at their disposal?

For some people even a smartphone with a halfway decent camera might be a "fortune".

Well, I did suggest that the first step above hand holding a smartphone and hoping for the best would be to put it on a star tracker. For some people this might be as far as they want to go. Though if they already have a DSLR / Mirrorless then that would be a good step up.

Processing could be DSS and GIMP, both of which are free. I would have thought that most folks have the odd laptop kicking around for basic processing. No need to buy a powerhouse PC to run PI.

4 hours ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

Dave you lost me after "CMOS"...😁

Why don't you write in, tweet the producers, or whatever preferred method you wish, and request a multi episode series on ap? Who knows what they have in the pipeline. Maybe something like you suggest is already planned?

It's worth a go..?

I don't think there's any need to go as far as a series on AP, but if you have a program that is advertised as being about AP, then I would have thought that showing non imagers how they could get into AP without spending a fortune, or heading down the rabbit hole would be part of the program.

Might be nice to occasionally showcase viewers photos / images though.

Yes, nothing like enough time given to amateur AP.

They could have started with a smartphone, then put it on a tracker, possibly also bringing in a DSLR and std lens on a tracker. This would have been the point to introduce the idea of multiple subs and stacking, while still keeping it simple.

Then move on to the cooled CMOS cameras starting with OSC, and mention (But don't elaborate) mono and LRGB or NB imaging, perhaps with examples of HST palette images, plus how and why they are made.

A dire warning should also be given that AP can be a) addictive, and b) a money pit. You start out with a smartphone on a tracker, and before you know what's happening you're drooling over big triplet apos, and mainlining Astrodon filters .

While accepting that we are not the intended audience I really did think that they missed an opportunity to show how people could get into AP without spending a fortune. There was far too much time spent looking at old clips and photos from the archive rather than actual AP.

Dr Becky did a much better job in less time when she showed how to do smartphone AP when she was on holiday in teh Maldives.