tomato

Thanks Steve, they ended up like that to support the ducting, plus some other off cuts from making the shed warm room base. They significantly reduced the number of mixes needed to fill the base section.

Fantastic image, as ever, full use of your rig, location and the data captured is being made.

Great result, the Deer Lick cluster is nicely framed also. I’m trying to be patient while construction of my permanent observatory continues, but having the 150 stuck in it’s case now the dark nights are back is frustrating to say the least.

Nice one, any plans for a mosaic at this scale?

Blimey, that must be annoying, apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere, but can this element of Win 10 updates be blocked permanently somehow?

Cable ducting, block ballast and rebar installed, initial fill of concrete completed today.

A digital enhanced image of a 50 min exposed photographic plate of M42 taken by George Ritchey in 1901, no less. Remarkable. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190817.html

HI Ben, Did you try the mask back on the scope when you thought you had the camera pretty much at focus? If you have the scope centred on a bright star, you should be able to see the diffraction spikes without magnifying the star. There seems to be a lot of colour fringes on the magnified image, is your software debayering the image correctly before displaying, I’m not familiar with APT, but I assume you can configure it to use this colour CCD camera? If the nose piece of the camera is someways out of the focuser tube to achieve focus, this could introduce tilt which could create elongated stars. Best to add some screw in extension pieces to the camera body to get full engagement, or better still get the correct length threaded adapter so the camera is attached to the scope by a fully screwed together assembly. Keep persevering with the CCD, you should find it way more sensitive than your DSLR for AP. Steve

Myself and Mrs Tomato are planning a trip down under next year, it’s my cunning plan to save on the flights.

Great result, Lovely framing and processing. Regarding your observations on the green nebulae, I had a go at M33 last season in LRGB, using Baader filters and a CCD camera, see attached. It had less total integration time but a larger aperture refractor. I captured the individual nebulae on my image but they turned out distinctly blue. On other images I have looked at they appear white to pink, or blue/green. Very interesting, I must go back and look at my processing.

Nice one, I love the detail in the dust lanes.

First class result, great colour and lots of detail.

The hole is now at the required depth (1 metre) sides just need to be made vertical. I now struggle to climb out of it. Conduit trench also dug, hopefully concrete mixing and filling later this week.👍🏼

I’ve just finished a 42 year career in chemical manufacturing, as I recall I got into it as the chemical works was the closest site to me offering a job at the time. However, I have harboured a passion for internal combustion engines which run on nitromethane, so I must have the explosives gene in me somewhere.

Lovely mosaic, APP doing it’s stuff I take it? Lots of dust there, I think this region looks great in monochrome. Lots of images being posted of these subjects at the moment, I can see why.

A one cubic metre hole has generated 3 big bags of spoil, need to hire a skip!

I agree Gina, it looks half way to Australia but the tape measure does not lie! The sides are currently tapered inwards which gives it the illusion of being deeper, these will be made vertical just prior to filling and knocking in the rebar.

Good progress on the pier base hole, only another 150 mm to go! The Shropshire subsoil (at least where I live) is great for digging out, easily cleaved clay and no stones. We have estimated 30-40 mixer loads to fill it, a new v belt has been fitted to it in preparation.

There will be a substantial dual rig bolted to the block, and we certainly don’t want to dig it out to put a bigger one in.

Warm room main construction complete, still needs power to it and fitting out internally but we can at last begin dome construction. 😜 Pier base former constructed and pegged in location, now for some hard labour, having decided on 1 cubic metre of concrete to go down. 🥵

That’s a beautiful image, I must say I also admire the clarity of your approach to AP. The subject is so vast and complex, it does make sense to me to have thought through what it is you are trying to achieve. Looking forward to seeing more of your work.

Interesting but, I’m sure, very frustrating. Having previously set up and took down every session, I’m sure my balance of the Esprit 150 on the Mesu is not perfect, but PHD2 when calibrating (which I did every session) does 3 “clearing backlash” steps each time them moves on, no problem. I haven’t unchecked the Backlash option, I confess I didn’t know it existed. How are you checking the balance, will the mount “fall” in the Dec axis when powered off? I would certainly get the balance closer if that is the case, also check the connections and test you can move in all for directions manually. Hope you can get it fixed. Steve

That’s a mighty fine image, I would think the Ghost Nebula benefits from really dark skies, Olly has recorded 22 SQM on occasions at his location so don’t be too hard on yourself. 👍

One got inside my mount flightcase once and filled it with cobwebs. The Arachnid’s way of saying you should use this piece of kit more often.🙄

Another successful imaging request, this time from the 2 metre Faulkes Telescope South at Siding Springs. This is 3 single exposures of RGB, totalling 250 secs. The images were aligned in APP and processed using Startools. Data was provided by the Las Cumbres Observatory, accessed via Perton Library Astronomy Group. Some information about this galaxy, lifted from the 'The Cambridge Photographic Atlas of Galaxies'. NGC 151 is a SB(r)bc galaxy mag 12.8, in the constellation of Cetus, some 170 million light years from our own Milky Way galaxy. It is an "M51" type galaxy in that it is binary galaxy system, the small companion being 2MASXJ00340814, located in the outer left spiral arm in the image. Spectroscopic analysis of the spiral arms to determine rotational velocities have indeed confirmed that they form an M51 type system. This data, excellent as it is, is making me miss capturing my own backyard images. I need to get my back into digging holes and laying some concrete....😉