DaveS

On at 9 O/C BBC4 NOTE. Planetary formation with Maggie Aderin-Pocock. Also. starting on Monday at 7 o/c on BBC2 a re-run of "The Planets" with Brian Cox. This is each day this week.

Yep, got dad's set of BA taps all the way from 0BA down to some ridiculous number, including the odd numbers that you don't see very often. Also have some of his BSP taper taps. Not surprising that he had all that stuff as he was a toolmaker.

Had to learn all that gobbledygook at primary school. So damn glad we went metric. Yes, the camera tripod screw is 1/4" Whitworth, and just to compound the felony, the tripod screw itself to connect the head is 3/8" whitworth, Argh! I still have dad's collection of imperial taps and dies.

Something like This?

Time for another quick update. The telescope has been mounted after considerable huff-and-puff And I have had some deliveries, finally got the breathable membrane and, after much wrestling with the Wickes website, the cladding. Had to get T&G instead of shiplap, at more cost. What a surprise. Not Now I guess I have to get off my increasingly fat backside and do a bit more work.

I'll add that Steve is a mod on here,AKA "steppenwolf". A ZOOM talk is now available here

If you have ANY thoughts about getting into AP, either now or in the future, then buy This Book and read it at least twice before spending any serious money. AP is so counter-intuitive that you could end up spending serious money and still have to go back and start again.

If you are even thinking about astrophotography, even if you don't plan to be doing it for maybe a couple of years then you WILL need a motorised equatorial, with GOTO. Although getting something "That Just Works" is difficult in AP, mounts at the HEQ5 level (Other mounts are available at thc price) are where it starts to happen.

I recently had my heating engineer knock on my door and ask for advice on a beginner telescope (He was just passing and thought to ask my advice) after seeing his first ISS passover. so I pointed him in the direction of the FLO beginner telescope page and SGL.

I'm not planning on buying anything serious for the foreseeable, having dropped something like £20k last year on DDM85, ODK12, G3 16200, all of which is still waiting to be installed due to multiplying delays. Hopefully not too long. The only major thing planned and on the horizon is a Sony IMX 455 based camera, but that won't be for a couple of years while manufacturers shake out their designs. My current TS 130 f/7 triplet / DDM60 / and either SC694 or ASI1600 does me very well indeed.

Make sure your mount has GOTO, imaging time is too short and precious to be wasting it faffing around trying to find the target manually. The Dob Mob might go on about "The thrill of the chase" as they hunt their faint fuzzies, but it really has no place in imaging.

Yes, very, very good. Keeping the stars in the core from burning out while revealing the outer stars is a real test.

Very, VERY, good Carole, love the colours.

Not sure of the scaling, though I found that opening a RGB FITS resulted in three 16 bit mono images.

Brilliant talk, opened my eyes to more advanced aspects of image processing, especially Selective Colour which had been off my radar. Just downloaded a trial of Affinity, and will be playing with it more (Already had a go with Selective Colour) and will be reading through Nik's articles in AN. As a BTW, I found the latest version of GIMP (10.18.2) will open FITS files.

Thanks Mark. Revealing the faint wispy bits while holding back the main bright structure is a real test. Thank heavens for DDP, I'd never do it with Histogram Stretch alone.

Second image does it for me, looks to have more definition.

Thanks Carole The first one I did a preliminary DDP to bring out the detail then used Histogram Stretch to pull up the levels, while the second just had a DDP to a lower threshold, giving a brighter but less burned out image.

Thanks Geof

Thanks Gina. Had a go at making a synthetic green from 50% each H and O but not entirely convinced. This is just DDP and Gradient Reduction with a bit of fiddling with White Balance.

Very well done John, I think the more laid back HST palette works well.

Or possibly the Witch's Broom. 6 hours each HII and [OIII] in 10 min subs. TS Photoline 130mm f/7 apo, ASI1600MM-cool, 3nm Astrodon filters withy significant moonlight. Processing in AstroArt, Sigma Add stacking of each 3 hour session then added. Gradient Removal, Trichromy DDP and Histogram Stretch. Saved as JPEG. This will have to stand for the moment until I can get [SII] which may have to wait until teh moon is out of the way. I think i've pushed the levels a bit so will have another look.

Agreed, unless you are a PN specialist I have found my [NII] top be of questionable utility. Will give it an outing on M27 though, as it has a strong [NII] signal.

HII and [OIII] definitely, plus [SII] for a Hubble Palette perhaps. The other good filter for PN is [NII] but is only available from Astrodon at silly money, and needs a 3nm HII for separation.

I think it will really come alive in NB.