DaveS

Narrow band can be done during nautical dark. Edit: Globs are also viable targets,, some are very bright, so run lots of short subs to avoid excessive background.

The moon. The number of clear nights trashed by the Devil's Lightbulb is beyond a joke.

I had a look at the M13 that I did last year, and realised that, although I had captured 15 subs each of RGB in G2v calibration, I only had 8 subs Luminance. With a brief clear slot I decided to collect another 4 hours Luminance, but in 300 sec subs instead of the 600 sec that I did previously. Unfortunately I had odd trailing in some of the subs (Not sure why) so only 3 hours worth made it into the stack. Still, I combined what I had and made a new LRGB. I also restacked the RGB and combined them before doing a DDP and deconvolution. The Luminance also had a deconvolution applied. A slight histogram adjustment was performed to bring up the background a little, and hold back the brightest star cores, and a modest saturation boost to bring out the star colours. If I should revisit this I will pull the subs down further, probably 180 sec Lum, and 300 / 300 / 525 sec G2v RGB subs.

21.65 is pretty dark. I have supposedly 21.66 and have seen M33 naked eye, and my eyes are pretty rubbish. My summer milky way is bright and structured down to the horizon (Helps that the nearest town to the south is in France, 350 km away).

I would be thinking of a location that was fairly central so nobody has an excruciatingly long journey.

Anyone else seen this?

Couple of photos of the DDM 85 carrying the ODK 12.

HCG 68, NGC 5371, and fuzzies. And a gert light streak, gah! Yet another Hickson Compact Group, this time HCG 68 which is at lower right, NGC 5731 is the pretty little spiral top right. The framing was chosen so as to include a lot of faint fuzzies to the left. North is to the right. The light streak is from a bright star just out of frame. I'm going to post this now as I can't see any clear night before the Devil's Searchlight ruins the sky again. This is 32 x 10 min bin 1 Luminance, 11 x 10 min Bin 2 Red, 12 x 10 min Bin 2 Green, and 11 x 17.5 min Bin 2 Blue (G2v calibration). I actually captured 42 Lum and 14 each RGB, but a lot of subs were rejected. The individual stacks were cropped to remove alignment edges and given gradient reductions. The Luminance was given a DDP with high-pass filter, and Richardson-Lucy deconvolution. The individual RGB stacks were combined into a RGB image which was given a DDP without high-pass (To preserve star cores), but with a modest saturation boost. After another crop it was upscaled to match the Lum. The LRGB was then synthesised and a light unsharp mask applied to bring out the spiral arms. The cropping for edge removal has resulted in NGC 5371 almost being cropped., unfortunately.

I've just had a look at my AA8, clicked on "Star Atlas" and see a lot of UCAC4 data. I don't recall doing anything specific to download the data.

That would be the ODK 12 on DDM 85, though that's mainly because the TS 130 apo / DDM 60 has been in a state of flux for a while. I think I may be developing a bit of an obsession with galaxies, especially the Hickson Compact Groups, though I really need a bigger 'scope for those. Hubble would be ideal lol.

This is the result of stacking 31 x 10 min bin 1 Luminance, 10 x 10 min Red, 12 x 10 min Green, and 8 x 17.5 min Blue, all bin 2 with the ODK rig. The odd figures are due to having subs that were rejected by the AstroArt stacking routine, and by G2v calibration giving longer blue subs. I actually captured 36 x Luminance, and 12 each RGB. After stacking with Flat, Dark Flat and Dark frames, the stacks were cropped to remove alignment edges and given a gradient reduction. The Luminance was given a DDP with high pass filter and Richardson-Lucy deconvolution. The RGB stacks were aligned, and combined in Trichromy before DDP without high pass, but given a saturation boost. The RGB was upscaled to match the bin 1 Luminance before the Luminance was coregisterd and the LRGB synthesised. Finally a light unsharp mask was applied. The streak on the right is from a star off frame to the north. I'm posting now as the clear sky slots that had been forecast have disappeared, and I have no idea whether or when I will be able to get data to fill in the blanks.

Damn right. To me it just smacks of obfuscation with a distinct whiff of snake oil. The Vidicon tube sizes might have made sense in the days of Vidicon tubes, but those days have long gone, unless you run a TV museum.

It's just along the coast road from me, I could go and have a look, but Weymouth is a light pollution hell.

Now Listed on the FLO site.

Version 2 for me, though both are too magenta. Viewing on a calibrated wide-gamut monitor.

It is a fabulous area, and you've managed to get more of it than I did.

Sorry, both question and statement lol. PNG, portable network graphic (I think). You should see it as an option under "save as". Although it's compressed it can be 16 bit, so much better than jpeg. But much bigger file sizes.

Save as a PNG?

Although not an observer as such, so can't advise on specific eyepieces, I do just enough visual with bins to have my optician provide me with a set of non-varifocal distance glasses, since everything I want to look at is at infinity. I have quite a complex prescription and find that even for casual "just looking around" they provide a sharper view than my varifocals.

This is my effort (Sorry it took so long) . Import into AstroArt, split RGB channels so I could recombine with WB adjustment. DDP on the recombined RGB followed by Richardson Lucy deconvolution, and a slight saturation boost.

Thanks, downloading. That's odd. maybe something that AstroArt doesn't like but I'm only seeing the green channel.

I think I would go with the ASI 533, it's just newer technology. Don't get too hung up over pixel scale.

I'd have a look, but typical of PI's arrogance and determination to be as unlike anything else, cannot open a wretched Xisf file. Why can't it save a FITS like everyone else.

The ODK isn't a newt, it's a Dall-Kirkham derivative with a three element corrector, and is at a whole different level as regarding complexity, and with opportunities for things to be stuffed up. TBH this story is giving me cause for concern, although so far (Touch wood, fingers crossed) my ODK 12 has been giving me good images. I will though check defocused stars for roundness, though what I've seen so far looks OK. Maybe I've just been lucky, though being lucky isn't something I'm familiar with. Maybe I should have gone with my first thought of a 12" GSO RC and focal reducer.

I managed to get a bit of RGB last night. Not nearly enough for a finished image, but enough to give an idea. By rights I should reframe yet again, but I'm rapidly running out of astro dark. Will leave the framing here, and at some point revisit HCG 68 on its own with an ASI533.