Grant

The theme for the 27th challenge - June 2019 - is DSLR / Mirrorless! Start Date: 1st June 2019 End Date: 31st August 2019 Rules: Very simple - any astronomical images taken with a DSLR or Mirrorless camera goes, be as creative as you like! Can be through a lens, telescope, pin hole! Videos, animations, single shots, stacks, guided, unguided all as you like but it must be captured using a DSLR or mirrorless (or point and shoot...) camera. Creative / unusual images always capture the judges eye! Have fun 📷 Prize: A personalised mug for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places featuring your image kindly provided by our sponsors FLO and a virtual trophy for your signature. -- RULES All data must be captured and processed by you (no collaborative entries). Data must be captured during the challenge start & end dates. Multiple entries are allowed but please start a new topic for each entry. Multiple submissions of the same image, processed differently, will not be accepted. -- To enter please start a new topic with your image in the ‘Imaging Challenge #27' forum (each challenge will have its own). Please post as much information as possible - when it was taken, how it was captured and processed, etc. The info won't necessarily be used for judging but will help fellow SGLers looking to learn and improve their knowledge and technique.

Nope - they are two totally different products. The iPolar installs as a USB HID device rather than a camera which means no driver is required, just the client software. I'm not sure if the device itself does some image processing before sending the results back to the computer - perhaps some basic edge / contrast detection to identify the stars in the image - I'm not sure, that's just speculation on my part.

the iPolar is physically smaller, here are the PoleMaster dimensions: The base part of the iPolar is 36mm diameter so around 4mm less. The lens part is 26mm diameter so around 11mm less. Height is similar, 49mm so just under 2mm less. That's for the standard version - plus the adapter parts are separate. I am going to be using it on my NEQ6. The CEM40 I am currently playing with learning my way around has the iPolar built in already which is really neat and means the wiring is all integrated into the mount itself.

Two different things - iOptron used to sell a branded version of the PoleMaster which was identical, apart from the branding. The iPolar is a completely new product that uses a different methodology and software to do the polar alignment.

The latest beta software for the ASIair has added a polar alignment routine - I tried it for the first time Tuesday night and it works great! Made polar alignment a lot quicker, simpler and ultimately, I think more accurate!

+1 for some Radio astronomy workshop / talks from me as well. I'd also like some Pixinsight workshops - pretty please

I'm easily getting a full disk with the 25mm eyepiece supplied with it and with a Hyperion Zoom at 24mm but I remember it being a tighter fov than the fov simulator would suggest so I will double check that next time I use it.

I have the bundle and, in all honesty think it's probably better to buy the scope and add other bits as you need them - e.g. the powertank is useful, but only if you don't have one already. The diagonal and eyepiece are nothing special...

Initial reaction - very positive, nice build quality and a great size. I had a brief first light with it yesterday and directly compared to a Lunt 60, B1200 Pressure tuned and I could see some very faint / small prominence through the DayStar that I could not see in the Lunt. This was a very quick peak between clouds and there is very little on the sun at the moment so I will repeat the test for longer when I get a chance and will keep comparing the two. One thing I am going to have to get used to is powering it and waiting for 5-10 minutes when adjusting the tuning for the temperature to stabilise - I am used to instant tuning results on the Lunt. I suspect when I am used to it, I will know what setting works best and start from that and the need for messing with adjustment will be less. Two things strike me already though - the helical focuser works way better than I expected at getting a nice tight fine focus without moving anything and secondly, it's nice to be able to adjust the tuning without needing to brace the scope / mount as the pressure tuner on the Lunt does take a fair bit of torque to adjust. For reference - I am using both on a Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount - I love this mount!

That's looking great! Interesting to see how it all pans out and how stable it is - looks like it will be pretty solid!

Well done!

Wow - I know I say this every time but this was another tough one to judge with three people sharing third place! Great to see some sketches and some unusual compositions in this challenge - keep them coming Winners are: Large moon mosaic, full saturaded colors By wouterdhoye I won't be back ! - My 2nd Terminator Image By PembrokeSteve Luna 14-2-2019 By Ibbo! Chalk-/charcoal sketch from Grimaldi to Cavalerius, Feb 17th By acr_astro Terminator Challenge #23 By Lurcher

Less entries in this challenge so we will rethink the format of this one next Christmas. Tough judging - shared 2nd and 3rd places this time! Well done everyone for entering, the winners are: M100 By Nigel G M51 with my new guiding setup By discardedastro M3 with Santa's gift. By Nigel G Nodal Ninja By MartinB lunar eclipse By clarkpm4242 https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/329357-lunar-eclipse/

I can’t see any reason why they would sometimes load and sometimes not - those files are there and no other reports of this so far - bit of an odd one. I will keep my eyes open.

FLO doesn’t share hosting with SGL so any speed improvements there are coincidental or perhaps something else changed for your internet speed.

It's significant, there website will give you some idea but it's not really something I feel comfortable discussing publicly. Luckily for us, our sponsor FLO takes care of these bills so we don't have to fill the site with loads of flashing banner ads!

Digital Ocean is the data center / platform we are using but the host we are using are: https://stablepoint.com/ They are a great bunch of guys, really helpful and I've been working with them for probably 10+ years at this point. They offer all sorts of hosting, so even if you just need to host a blog or your astro images, they will have a package to suit. They put together something pretty custom for us and so far the speeds I am seeing on SGL are fantastic!

I'm not sure this is avoidable as there are so many emoticons in the list which just take awhile to load, especially on some browsers / internet connections. I confess, I never use this feature I just type the smilieys in but I will have a look.

The banner flash issue is sorted 🙂

I'll look at the banner issue - if you notice, it only does it (I think..) on the latest banner because the forum software has changed the way it handles these - I think because it now does the lazy load thing it puts a white square in initially which then gets updated with the image. Previous banners didn't work like this.

Welcome to the new server 🙂 Everything looks good so far - the search index is rebuilding so may be slower than normal and you may get some odd results in your activity field until it completes. Otherwise, any problems please let me know.

Exactly - a copy of SGL is technically already running on the new server. We will do a final sync and db transfer later so hopefully, it should be less than an hour but you never know.

Cent OS but moving to Cloud Linux. Moving from 32gb to 64gb of memory and 12x CPU to 16x CPU with full SSD drive (currently only the database sits on an SSD drive).

SGL is getting a shiny new server - double the memory, more processors and all SSD space so it should be even faster than what we currently have. We are also moving to a different host run by people who we've used before - our current host was brought out quietly by GoDaddy some time back and the support / response / quality hasn't been the same hence the decision to move. This also gives us chance to refresh the operating system as well as the hardware. The site will be down from 9pm tonight (9th May) for hopefully only a couple of hours. Once we are back, please give everything chance to settle back down and the search indexes / caches to rebuild but I am confident SGL will be zipping along faster than ever in no time. Cheers, Grant

There's some network issues at the data center causing this issue this morning. It's hopefully settled down a bit now but it's still being looked at.