DaveS

I think I managed 1 more star in Orion this year, 23 vs 22 last year but well within my personal variability. I heard the snippet on the R4 Toady program. Why the stupid music? Not needed in a factual piece about science.

Not sure about the transparency here, and TBH the sky did have that milky blue look to it earlier. When I went out a bit earlier I could see M44, but it was a struggle, normally it's stand-out obvious, and just now I've ben out and there's no trace of the stars of Coma, again normally pretty obvious. Still imaging but I think I'll turn in and leave the automation to it.

I have the ODK 12 running a long sequence on M106, 4 hours Blue, and 2 hours H-alpha, though I expect the last few subs to be affected by dawn light. The TS Apo is running 4 1/2 hours RGB (3 x 90 min) on the Leo Triplet which will be getting low by the time the sequence ends.

A bit of a cheat, this is the control room with two monitors connected to the remote PCs The one on the left is the ODK imaging M106, the right is the TS apo imaging the Leo Triplet.

That would put me in the middle of Bortle 2, however, from the appearance of clouds (Low cloud is a dark hole, high cloud picks up the LP from Bridport and Weymouth) and the Milky Way (Bright and detailed at the zenith with structure down to the horizon), I would say it agrees with the cleardarkssky.com description, of the dark end of Bortle 4. Ophiuchus is far too low to show much of anything, let alone a bulge. In any case, in comparison to Ruislip where I moved from, it has been a revelation. I need a SQM.

According to CO I have 21.66 and it says Bortle 4, edging towards 3. down the road in West Bexington it reckons 21.72 and just over the line into Bortle 3. Probably about right according to description on cleardarksky.com

Or QHY from Astrograph

Here

But Olly, don't you have *two* Taks there... ?

I think the file size is around 124 MB .

Took 3 hours Luminance with the 268 last night to start building a HaLRGB image. last year I managed 29 hours with the ASI 1600, I'm hoping for better with the QHY.

I'll have to see what I can start with the 130 apo, as I already have a project going with the ODK from last month, and don't want to start yet another.

I use the AAG Cloudwatcher with its associated Anemometer from Astrograph.

I have a UPS in the obsy. My Talon roof automation has two mains leads, one is connected to the UPS, the other monitors the mains. In the event of a power cut it will stop the sequence, set the 'scope to park and close the roof, as it will in the event of cloud / rain/ high wind. The PCs have "Active Hours" set for daylight so unlikely to be a Win-Dross restart. Cable issues are the big bug-bear, though my USB connection run through the hub in the mount. The mount itself is connected to the obsy PC through RS232 for mount control.

I do that a lot, especially when it doesn't get dark until stupid o/c. I do have an automated obsy though with weather monitoring, and the software I use will schedule the meridian flip if needed plus the shut down sequence when a run is finished. I have left the little rig running overnight but only if the forecast is for it to stay dry until I surface. I do, however live in a fairly low-crime rural location, with a well secured garden.

Yeah, we've all had nights like that. And if it's any consolation (Perhaps not much) even stupidly expensive kit can still fall over for no apparent reason. And don't even mention network connection issues with laptops not seeing the remote PCs, again for no obvious reason. Just Sodd's Law at work.

I don't want to go haring off after more targets that will end up as half-completed projects for next year, M106 has a good bit of H-Alpha for the ODK, as I already have that started. Maybe point the TS Apo at the Leo Triplet and see if the H-Alpha in that looks doable.

M81 / 82 should be far enough away from the moon that gradients won't be too bad. Will still be horrible though.

We've got clear skies forecast. Unfortunately, as is too often the case, we also have pretty much a full moon. A counsel of perfection would say don't even bother, a counsel of not-quite-perfection would say maybe some H-Alpha well away from the moon. However, the bright NB targets of winter are now getting well out of the way, and may not even be visible from your back garden, Galaxy Season is well under way and guess what? Yep, galaxies need dark nights with no moon. Some galaxies show well defined H-Alpha, but need a fairly long FL and small-ish pixels. So unless you have a narrow, narrow-band filter for your modded Canon 1200, you're pretty much stuffed, as we all are. For myself I will only be doing some technical stuff, calibration of the autofocus etc until the moon gets well out of the way.

Some interesting options for Direct Fusion Drives in the wings. Plus VASMR for near earth.

Interesting recent mutterings about a "workable" (Year, right) "Warp Drive" that doesn't require exotic forms of mass or energy.

Sounds familiar!

I am running a QHY 268M on a SX wheel using an M54 threaded adaptor. Not had much chance to play with it though as clear skies have been few and far between, and I've been spending most of my time sorting out borks between Sequence and the Sesto Senso on the ODK. In my case the camera is on the TS apo rig, I run the FW into the ASA hub on the mount, and run a separate USB3 cable to the computer. Although there appears to be some vignetting it not major, and in any case flats take care of the problem.

I'll chuck this idea into the mix. If you're running mono then you can cycle your filters RGB, RGB, etc so you will have a reasonable chance of getting a complete data set during your night. Or.... If you have a moon that's going to rise at some point in the night, or is going to set, then you can schedule your exposurs so your red data is captured with the moon as it's more likely to record without too much gradient, then get your green and blue once the moon is out of the way. Either RRRR, GGGG, BBBB if the moon is setting, or BBBB, GGGG, RRRR if the moon is rising. Of course, if the moon is going to be up all night then shoot H-alpha in as narrow a bandwidth as you can manage, 3 nm ideally. Edit: forgot to add, that if you're running OSC then you'll be stuffed, as all your exposures will have moon affected B and G, and even H-alpha will be less than ideal.

If you haven't got dark skies then Galaxy Season is dead time. I dreaded it when I lived in Ruislip.