tomato

Yes, I’ve seen the installed protector bars on the latest mounts, a useful mod as this motor/encoder is indeed quite vulnerable.

Most Astro kit is fragile if you drop it or clatter it in to something solid, and the setting up and taking down is tedious for sure. However, in the quest for the best dark skies in the UK, I will be considering transporting the Mesu and an Esprit 150 to mid-Wales, a 100 mile round trip from my soon to be new home location, I’ll keep you posted!

I’m sorry Olly, but I’m not with you on this one. I might agree if I routinely collected quality subs every session, but until I do, processing for me is very much a ‘trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’ type of activity, from which I rarely derive much enjoyment. That much repeated phrase from the early programming days ‘Garbage in, Garbage out’ keeps ringing in my ears. There are a number of posts on SGL where very accomplished imagers have said something like “the data made processing a breeze”, or words to that effect, that’s where I want to be. Unfortunately, I still want to do it from the UK, that’s the challenge for me.

Here is my two penn’orth analogy: Who won last year’s F1 Championship, Lewis Hamilton or the CEOs of all the sponsoring companies who sunk money into the team? I think the driver and the team who built and raced the car deserve the credit, rather than those who bankrolled it. Any UK based imager knows how frustrating this hobby can be so if I comment on an image that happens to have been captured from our cloudy climes rather than, say, New Mexico, Arizona or Spain, I try to acknowledge the fact in the post, because in my opinion that makes it that little bit more special.

That’s a great ‘static’ widefield shot, way better than any I took when I first started out. M31 will show up in your widefield shot, be patient, it will be much better placed when Sept/Oct roll around.👍

The Mk1 is portable, I’ve been putting mine up and taking it down every session for 5 years, you just need: 1. A sturdy, large flightcase. 2. A strong back, or some willing helpers. 3. A vehicle with a decent amount of space if transporting it to a dark site. 4. A fair degree of motivation to want to do this.

I’m planning a dome and a 10 x 6 shed for the warm room, after 5 years of setting up and taking down, I can’t wait.😊

Superb image, great detail and colour. You have made full use of your good location.👍

I guess that’s why they are called the Wanderers. That’s why I like galaxies, so reliable, location wise.

Contrary to a lot of imagers, I don’t get a buzz from the processing, I breath a big sigh of relief if my raw subs are of sufficient quality that I won’t have to delve too much into the deep and dark art of image processing. This invariably means that my end results are never as good as they could be than if they were in the hands of a capable processor and maybe this will change when I have more time on my hands, but at the moment, image capture is what it’s all about.

And right now, you are observing in the absence of Astro darkness, that is going to make it harder to see diffuse, faint objects.

It’s a tough call, but I think I prefer the diffuse silvery hue of the second, both are fine images, M33/M31 season is not far away!

I really like it, lots of detail captured. Maybe the colour is a little strong for some tastes, I agree the red channel is predominating as I view it on an iPad. And imaged from the cloudy UK, nice one!👍

Very nice image of this iconic subject. Like the equally famous Nebula M42, it is a target all imagers have a go at but I think both are quite challenging to get a result that you can be 100% satisfied with. Hope to get my Observatory built in time to have a go at a 6 pane mosaic of M31 when Autumn comes around (I know, 6 panes and the UK weather, it will take me 6 years...)

Thanks Mick, really looking forward to building the Observatory and getting some proper integration times on these targets.

I’m suffering from imaging deprivation, light skies, and all my gear packed anyway, ready for the house move, so I put APP to the test and combined some 8300 data with subs taken with an ASI178. Total integration time of 187 mins, made up of 57 mins of CMOS data and the rest from the CCD, all through an Esprit 150. It is definitely less noisy than the 178 image, but still struggling to get the right colours. I also noticed on the full combined image that the 178 FOV has cut off a complete outer spiral arm! Thanks for looking.

An extract and image from the IDSA statement on the impact of Starlink on the night sky: An image of the NGC 5353/4 galaxy group made with a telescope at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, U.S., on the night of Saturday, May 25, 2019. The diagonal lines running across the image are light trails left by the Starlink satellite group as it passed through the telescope’s field of view. Image courtesy of Victoria Girgis (Lowell Observatory). From my point of view (literally), the question is how many subs will be affected in any given imaging session. Quite a few if/when all 12000 are up there.

I love the size of the dome relative to the scope, if only. And a long FL refractor and a PC on the desk, maybe he/she was a planetary imager...

Perhaps Mr Musk will have the dubious honour of having a specific rejection filter algorithm named after him in future versions of PI and APP?

Just came across this, might be worth looking out for on future DSLRs. https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/amp/news/canon-patents-moon-shooting-mode-for-astrophotography

Very good point, I recently put an ASI120 on the end of an Esprit 150, my Telrad was a bit off and it took me the best part of 2 hours to align on a reference star, never mind the DSO target. Not where you want to be when first starting out, the buzz of capturing your first image of a DSO, irrespective of quality, is a huge boost in keeping the motivation going.

Hmmm, the monthly rental might be a bit steep.

I cannot see the astronomy community winning out over the lure of streaming cute kitten video clips at ever increasing rates...

Astronomers raising concerns: https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/28/spacex-satellites-could-blight-the-night-sky-warn-astronomers

If you want to get into DSO imaging I strongly recommend you get a copy of this: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/making-every-photon-count-steve-richards.html