Yoddha

Hi Brendan, Many thanks! Looking in the log, there are no signs that you have used Sync. How do you make GoTo alignment?

Hi Brendan, Could you take a screenshot of the Meridian Flip settings and send me the log file? 20 minutes delay is more than excessive.... Also what are the EQMOD limits? Do you have the right location coordinates set in EQMod? The big offset could be caused by misalignment, however the scope is expected to go to the right place as the object is from the same side of the meridian. EQMod doesn't like too much sync points located closely, so I would not suggest making solve/sync as part for the main imaging plan. It is critical where the initial sync is made. It must be away from the pole area, declination 85 degrees or less.

Many thanks, Dave!

Here is the recorded presentation. Hope you will find it useful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzvZCvz0t4Q&list=TLPQMDMwNzIwMjMFEsmCDJlZZQ&t=1s

Sunday, July 2nd will have a talk on "The Astro Imaging Channel" 9:30 pm eastern US time. It will be available on YouTube soon after that. The topic is "Focusing A to Z" and will discuss the focusing in astrophotography. TIAC address is - https://www.theastroimagingchannel.org/

The new version is available APT 4.20 comes with support for PlateSolve3 solver, many new cameras, a lot more improvements and fixes! If you will be attending NEAF 2023, come to our booth! We will be glad to meet in live The full list of novelties is available here: https://www.astrophotography.app/news

Hello Michael, Somehow didn't get email for the mentioning Yesterday I had a talk in AstroWorldTV that covers this topic Hope you will find it useful -

Hello, Over the years there were many requests to make the moving stars from the APT site as screen saver Here it is! You can get it from the “Screen Saver” tab of the downloads page: https://astrophotography.app/downloads.php Hope you will like this little charm for clear skies

Many thanks, Robin!

Hello, The Heart nebula is an emission nebula. On our sky it is in Cassiopeia constellation, in fact it is in the Perseus Arm of our galaxy, 7500ly away from Earth. Some of the brighter stars in the center are part of the Melotte 15 open cluster. It is a cluster of young stars, few of them are up to 50 times heavier than the Sun, but also there are others smaller than our star. All together they are producing solar winds that are blowing away and lighting up the surrounding clouds which contain Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulphur. When these elements are ionized, they produce a beautiful mixture of red, blue and orange colors. If you take a closer look (especially at the starless version) you will see the signs of continuing star formation – dark pillars and globules. Also, this is something very interesting in the left part of the image, near 9 o’clock – a small blue oval. This is the ring like planetary nebula WeBo 1 (PN G135.6+01.0). The current hypothesis that the nebula is around a barium star which is part of binary system with white dwarf. In short, the barium stars are special kind of red giants which in addition to their usual fusion process are producing elements heavier than iron via s-process using heavy elements delivered by older or even died donor star nearby. If you want to dive in more details about Barium stars you can start from here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barium_star And for the s-process from here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-process This is one of my images I like most! The Black Swan (ZS110) performed amazingly well in combination with the camera and the filters. They are 1.25” and I can’t use the full sensor size, but still provide a lot to see I have uploaded un-scaled images with a quality that hope thar you will consider as good, so click on the “Full Resolution” for both the main version https://www.astrobin.com/hjuwfz/0/ And the starless version https://www.astrobin.com/hjuwfz/B/ Total 34h in 408x30s, ZS110, ASI2600MM, SHO filters, PI, APT - https://www.astrophotography.app/ Hope you will enjoy the sight

It is stable, official version with tooltips and etc.

Christmas and the New Year are coming, so it is time for presents! Here is an early one from us – a new version of APT Nope, we will not reveal any details… Don’t wait, open the box now https://www.astrophotography.app/news Happy Holidays!

Hi Paul, Just sent you a workaround download link

Hello, The new beta APT 4.04 is available for all registered users It comes with Data Craft and other nice features and fixes. You can find the details at: https://aptforum.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=37032#p37032 or download it directly from : https://www.astrophotography.app/betaversion.php

BTW this is The Black Swan

Many thanks, Martin!

Many thanks, Peter!

Hello, This image is a kind of test. I can't say that it is first light - it is the first episode of a new season After ten years this particular scope returned to me and I was eager to spend some time with this old friend Quite rare scope with very good performance in my memories and am happy find out that that it is not just my nostalgia The plan is to use this scope for imaging during traveling, so decided that I have to build a package that doesn't use the scope in the obsy as donor - new USB hub, set of cables, power supply. Also moved the Pegasus Focus Cube from my WO 80 to it. After ten years and other new stuff - it was brand new scope to make running. It took time to find the approximate focus point, to get the sweet focusing step for the auto-focus, the actual focal length with the reducer... Everything was going slow with random hanging and/or disappearing devices in various configurations. It took more than 2 hours to eliminate the possible options - cables, power sources of the hub, focuser, camera... It happened that that reason was very curious. I have had a USB 3.0 repeater cable for a long time which works fine (the only thing not intended to be part of the traveling package). The new hub is fancy USB 3.2 with 12V power supply... It happened that these two don't like each other Connected the hub to the computer with regular USB3.0 cable and everything ran smooth till the end of the session. So, the hint that goes directly to the APT User's Guide - If you are using active USB cable (repeater) it is better to be with the same or newer USB protocol version as the connected USB Hub. Consider it as a possible source of problems! The Moon was in the last quarter so I knew that there would not be proper imaging time, also the forecast was not giving full clear night. A bright target with good Ha and OIII was needed, suitable to ~600-650mm FL. Decided that the Pelican is a good target for the Black Swan (a nick name used in the past for the black models of William Optics), even more it is my first time on the object. After a kind of nervous time getting to know each other, the Swan and Pelican had a nice dance. Nice, but short as I managed to gather only two hours before the sky became too bright and foggy, however the result looks pleasant to me. Hope that it looks pleasant to you too Total 2h - 24x300s, William Optics Zenith Star 110 triplet @ f/5.45, ASI533MC, CEM60, ZWO DuoBand filter. Acquisition : APT - Astro Photography Tool, PHD2 Processing: PixInsight Full details: https://www.astrobin.com/bksr9g/0/ P.S. The OIII part of the the filter gives massive halos around the bright stars... Never the less it is still giving nice level of detail...

Many thanks, FaB-Bo-Peep!

Many thanks!

Many thanks, Rob!

Hello, When I saw this object for the first time the initial thought was – It looks like a plasma ball! It caught my attention and it happened that it is in my reach. Still more than 5000 light years away from Earth in constellation Cancer, the Abell 30 is 2.1 arc minutes in diameter, big enough to image it with some details. The OIII signal is 15 times stronger than the Ha, filters I have. It happens that there is NII is much stronger than Ha, however no such filter around… So, it went near very top of my ToDo list and had luck to get some clear skies when this very peculiar nebula was still high above horizon. And yes, it is a very peculiar planetary nebula - one of just three known nebulae called born-again planetary nebulae! The usual long story in short: The stars with masses around 1-8 solar masses live for billions of years in stable form, fusing hydrogen into helium. After that the core contracts and starts fusing helium into carbon, while the outer shells will start to expand forming a reg giant star. When the helium is gone the core shrinks more into very condensed and hot white dwarf which cools down another round of billion years till it reach cool stage named black dwarf… During white dwarf formation and life, the emitted energy forms strong solar winds which blows the outer shells and are forming a planetary nebula. 15-20 billion years into 4 sentences. Good compression ratio I think 😃 not lose-less though... Somewhere in the fourth sentence, the interesting part happened with Abell 30, so let's unzip this part a bit. When the white dwarf is forming the core is not uniform soup of carbon, there are layers with majority of different elements. A thin hydrogen layer, below is helium layer, follows carbon and even possibly a small oxygen core. The hydrogen is lighter and is flows up above helium, which flows up above carbon… So, the contraction of the carbon could lead to fusing it into oxygen, not very sable process as the core is not big enough, but it generates a lot of additional energy and it happens that it could be enough to heat the outer thin hydrogen layer to start the basic star fusion - hydrogen to helium giving a star rebirth. This is named “very late thermal pulse”. The pulses happen multiple times, possibly with different intensity on the collapsing core “surface”. The solar winds from the pulses are much faster and energetic from the already expanding ex-red giant outer layers. The clashes are forming interesting features by condensing and lighting different parts. The result is close to a plasma ball Different technology of course, but close look… One more interesting fact is that measuring the expansion speed to ~83 km/s gives the age of the planetary nebula to be around 12 500 years. The thermal pulses happened something like 850 years ago! It is almost real-time observation The object can take more integration time in both OIII and Ha, it is curious what it shows in NII, however I’m happy with the result and hope you liked seeing it Total 17h in 6 nights - Ha (14x900s), OIII (54x900s), RC250 @ f/5.5, ASI2600MM, CEM60, Astrodon filters Acquisition : APT - Astro Photography Tool, PHD2 Processing: PixInsight Full details: https://www.astrobin.com/b4gkgi/

Many thanks, Tomato!

Many thanks Mariusz! If it is barbell then it is without weights

Many thanks!