tomato

Maybe somebody (a non Astro person?) wants the garden space back. Looks like it needs fixing up a little but a real bargain for someone.

Just looked up the details on the camera, that’s nice!

Great job, as good as any Pillars of Creation that I have seen captured from the ground.👍

Great image, plenty of sharp detail and colour.

Great list. Noting your location, I think you can add a key W word, namely Weather Watching!

Probably a question for the BAT forum, but will there be a nominated single target to image? Presumably that will be required if we are going to get sufficient data on one target, but that is going to be tricky if the imagers signed up are all over the globe. And M106 will be poorly placed from the UK when Astro darkness returns.

Not too bumpy I hope, that will play havoc with the F2 RASA collimation.😉

Great news Olly, Best of luck to the both of you with the project. I knew it was only a matter of time after you saw Gorann's RASA OSC Squid Nebula....

It will be quite a challenge. Looking at the list of kit already signed up I don’t think there are two setups the same.☺️ But hey, “We choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”.

+1 for Cuiv’s NINA vids, they helped me out a lot.

Just for the record, the delighted and very grateful SGL members that Malcolm has helped out are myself and @Tomatobro. We had a plan B if the boards were not fixable, but might have known that @malc-c would score the winner in extra time. We should now have a Syncscan/Alt/Az RF switchable controlled Dob.

I agree if you are prepared for the financial outlay and long lead time you will get a superb observatory at the end of it. It’s quite sad to hear that he cannot find anybody to employ that shares his work ethic. Good luck Keith with the website, great to see you have one in the making, which is more than can be said for me.👍 Steve

Dare I say that none of the images on the BBC item fall into the ‘How on earth can that be a winning Astro image?’ category, unlike previous years.

I think the approach is designed to at least partly, get around the poor seeing conditions most amateur imagers encounter compared to professional telescopes located on the top of mountains. I totally respect the theory behind the limitations attributed to the Lucky Imaging approach to DSOs, but having watched the Astrobiscuit video I have been sufficiently impressed with the results of Rory’s experiment to try and make a contribution. Uploading the humongous amounts of data generated will probably be my biggest challenge (after the weather of course)😊

Great video, your results with the lucky imaging show real promise, but getting our atmosphere to behave itself even for just 5 seconds at a time is asking a lot. I have a similar fledgling project underway with @Tomatobro entitled the SNSLA (the Shropshire Not So Large Array), but I’d be happy to contribute to the BAT if my kit is compatible. My Esprit 150/ASI 178 combo can image down to 0.47 arcsec per pixel, but small targets only.

Joking aside, I have done precisely that, folks will still get some good deals when I expire, but Mrs Tomato won’t get taken for a ride.

Personally, in this day and age, I wouldn’t attempt this. You will probably get added to some terrorist watch list when you try to source the chemicals. Also, based on my 42 years of experience working in the chemical industry, you don’t want to be handling nitric acid in your shed.

A few years back I needed a large flight case to take my mount. After a bit of research I visited Flightcase UK in Bradford, they make large bespoke cases but had a range of smaller and used cases. I picked this used one up with a bag of foam in fills for £40, first photo was in it’s as seen condition, second is after I smartened it up a bit.

Glad you sorted it out. My NINA focus routines on my Esprit 150s are currently not as robust as they normally are, but then I’m trying to use them in a twilight sky which I’m sure isn’t helping. Incidentally I recently discovered NINA has a number of curve fitting functions for the focus routine, other than the simple V profile.

First class M101, I also like the composition.

Does astrophotography have to have scientific value to be a worthwhile pastime? Folks do portrait or landscape photography and nobody asks where is the science. For sure AP requires technical know how and equipment, but you can spend thousands on a complex ‘terrestrial’ camera and lenses if you want to. There is a lot of proper science done by amateur astrophotographers, e.g. SN, minor planet, comet hunting, photometry etc, but I’m willing to bet most set ups are used just to take pretty pictures.

Is the sheet on the floor ready to collect the glass fragments? File this alongside someone standing on a Mesu 200.😄

Don’t forget the cable connections coming straight out of the back of the camera. If formed into a circle I think there is a risk that they could be rigid enough on a cold night to impart sufficient force onto the corrector plate to break it if they hit the roof. 90 degree connectors would be good if you can get them. I have the 8” so can’t help with the dimensions, but I did find this photo of the RASA11 in use that you might be able to get an estimate from.

If the incredible Saturn V is your thing, I recommend the Haynes Manual on this subject, full of facts, figures and great photos on this triumph of 20th century engineering.

Thanks Marv, I watched a review of the SW 16” Dob on YouTube, the reviewer cautioned anyone living in a first floor flat against buying one. Now making that one Grab ‘n Go would be a real challenge…