DaveS

Well, the ODK spider is machined from the solid, so the vanes are thicker than the usual 0.5 mm or so, so more likely to cast a shadow. I had thought that the problem was down to dodgy focus (Which I did have in the early days), but the focus is dead on, and the Flats were taken at the same focus as the Lights. So I'm as mystified as you.

As Olly says, I have an electric pet bed to keep condensation at bay. It's 12V and I have run it 24/7 for long periods.

@wimvb With new Luminance calibration, and a deeper stretch. I cannot get rid of those diagonal shadows which are from the ODK spider vanes. The streak of light is from a 8.35 mag star just out of field. I may stump up for an OOUK carbon fibre dew shield.

Yes, a new set of Luminance Flats are on my to-do list.

thanks Wim. I'll check again in Stellarium, and check the coordinates I wrote down, and what I typed into the target page in Sequence. maybe by pushing the centre a little I can get both. And lose that annoying streak.

Those filters are cheap as chips in 1.25", and in stock at FLO

Yes. it was a good program. I recognised Stacy from another forum. Mind you, installing a telescope and mount (AP 3600) in Antarctica looked....shall we say...interesting!

10 o/c BBC 4 tonight. No, I don't know why it's on tonight instead of the usual Sunday.

Thanks Jim OK, so that's two votes in favour of continuing. Will have another look when the moon's out of the way.

Thanks Craig. It's going to need a heap more data though. May turn out to be yet another multi-year project.

That blazing searchlight in the middle of HCG 68 is mag 6.45 And there are a *lot* of even fainter fuzzies in the background.

Just 2 hours of 300 sec Luminance subs, calibrated and given a basic stretch. As I wasn't sure about this target, and with the moon quite close, I wasn't going to spend more time on it. As expected the galaxies are *very* small in the field of view, so much so that I'm debating whether to continue. The centre is also way off from what I thought I had set, something for me to check. Rotated so North is up. Comments and suggestions please. What do people think? Is the off-centre framing disturbing or a "happy accident"? The light streak in the upper border is coming from an 8.35 mag star just out of field.

"And today's Darwin Award goes to..."

I export as PNG for printing, but the files have been pushing the 80 MB point.

PNG is great, but file sizes can be rather big.

For upload to the forum I export a JPEG directly from the editing software. I have a wide gamut monitor which is calibrated for my processing.

M44 is easy routine naked eye from my back garden. Or even from the road outside my front door. No streetlights for at least 4 miles, possibly more.

I very good image of what looks like an interesting and difficult target. Having checked in Stellarium I think it would be a good fit on the ODK / 16200 system.

Looking closely at the brighter stars especially I can see some red - green fringing due to slight errors in the RGB alignment before Trichromy. I've been cheating the alignment by a pixel here, a pixel there but it's proving fiddly and tricky to get it "just so". If I *do* manage to solve the problem I will post an update.

Ooh, that's lovely Carole, well worth the trip I'd say.

When I was living in Ruislip with a SQI (On a good night) of 18.25 I planned a few holidays to darker locations and timed for the new moon. Since then I've retired and moved to a location that the LP map suggests is 21.66, and certainly I've seen the milky way structured and "glittering" right down to the southern horizon. I've also seen M33 naked eye, straight on and the Auriga clusters when I've surfaced to shut down my imaging, with my eyes dark adapted from my bedroom.

Hickson 44 or the Leo Quartet from my ODK rig. This is 5 hours Bin 1 Luminance plus 2 hours each Red and Green, and 3 3/4 hours Blue in Bin 2 and G2v calibration for a total of 12 3/4 hours. Not nearly enough. Stacked in AstroArt 8, Sigma+Add with full calibration then each stack cropped and reduced gradient. Luminance given a hard DDP with High Pass filtering to bring out differences in brightness, then a Richardson-Lucy deconvolution. RGB stacks upscaled to match the luminance then given a soft DDP with no High Pass. Then a light denoise. The individual RGB plates were co-registered with the the Luminance before being combined into a RGB plate. This was given a modest Saturation Boost and a slight Hue adjustment before LRGB synthesis. There were also several crops to remove alignment edges. This is the whole image, a cropped and rotated version is in the Galaxy Cluster competition. Yep, there are some dodgy star cores (From the High Pass DDP). Nope, I can't be asked to "fix" them.

Oh dear, yet another Hickson 44, sorry. I already had this underway so decided to take it to some kind of completion rather than start another target with rapidly diminishing night / encroaching moon and weather. This is 5 hours Bin 1 Luminance in 10 min subs, plus 12 subs each RGB Bin 2 in 10 : 10 : 17.5 mins for a total of 12 3/4 hours. Yep, not nearly enough. In addition to the four main galaxies, there are another four not-too-faint fuzzies. This is a centre crop of the image, so you won't have to squint to see anything.

I just use Stellarium. Had a google for the Interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas. £135 on the long river place . No doubt worth it, but more than I want to spend.

There's This but currently unavailable, and un-cheap.