tomato

I see several folks prepared to have a go here on SGL for no payment, but who offers a service for a fee, people like Adam Block, Warren Keller? How do they charge, by the hour or a fixed fee? What’s in it for the purchaser is a finished image processed by acknowledged experts using all of their experience and the latest software with as near as you can get to a guarantee that there is no better image possible from their data. If I had 25+ hrs of first class data on a hard to process target, I might be tempted.

It’s interesting that there are lots of resources available where you can pay someone to provide you with good data, but unless I’m missing something, paying someone to process your data to a quality final image appear to be much less popular.

Alas, local light pollution is getting worse for me too. When I moved to this new estate it was still under construction and I just had to put up with the LED street lights. Now every neighbour seems to have motion activated back garden flood lights and pets, so as soon as one switches off another one comes on. It does get quieter after midnight but at this time of year that’s almost 6 hrs of imaging time lost. Sorry, whinge over.

This is a fine start Dave. I tried again tonight but after the shutter closed twice due to cloudbursts I got the message and abandoned the session. Still thinking about trialling FLO’s remote imaging in the new year if they can provide an 8” RC rig.

Fortunately my rig is inside a dome so strong winds rarely give me a problem. However, some gusts last night did give me sausage stars during the focusing routines which was a headache.

Looks good to me, nice even background, round stars throughout the image and no joins visible. I admire your ambition and tenacity to see a project like this through in the UK on a single scope rig, keep going!👍🏼

Longer subs of several minutes will be more prone to guiding errors, and in the UK, passing cloud. These days I nearly always lose some subs to cloud, so shorter exposures minimise the pain. I used to do 5 min LRGB subs with CCD cameras but use 2 minutes with the CMOS cameras. This is a good compromise on data storage and processing power, thousands of subs per final image would be challenge, that’s for sure.

Well, I have patiently waited for the cloud edge to move East of me, it is just about there but lo! There is another front racing in over Ireland at break neck speed, giving me a clear corridor of around 30 minutes I reckon, so that's me done for this session, the seeing was cr*p anyway.

The Almighty is keeping the clouds nicely clear of Pixel Skies. "Put your hand in your pocket Tomato, you know it makes sense."

No moon tonight , blowing a gale but that's OK and it could be clear! But... The eye of the storm has decided to track South a little bit so the edge of the clouds refuses to clear my location. I wonder what the weather is like in Spain?

Thanks Wim, for high lighting the Type Cat script for Pixinsight, of which I was totally unaware. I went for an easy target first M33, but I will look at my more obscure galaxy images and see if I can find some GCs there.

An intriguing video indeed, thanks for posting. It's all about the observer's position (again!).

Sorry, don’t know my left from my right! I wasn’t familiar with the annotation label and discovered it was a minor planet. I do recall reading somewhere that NASA or some other institution was using RASAs for a sky survey for potential collision candidates.

Lots of detail and nicely rendered colours, and beautifully framed.👍 And that’s a minor planet in the top left hand corner for good measure?

Thanks for the posts guys, great to see this won’t be the first go at this. At the moment I’m proposing to cut the base tube right down, keep the mirror cell and frame it into a box for some altitude cradle bearings. Then make a rocker box out of box tube and alloy sheet a la the ES UL Dob or make one out of the SW boards. I’m thinking a 6 tube truss to use the existing alloy rings, and replace the steel sheet on the secondary housing with struts to make a lighter cage. The key objectives are make it lighter and more manoeuvrable to get it into the back garden in one piece while still making it easy to disassemble and transport in the back of the car to a dark site.

Thanks for the link, that’s a real minimalist design, I was shocked to see the accidental sun scorch damage.😳 I’ll check out the Albert Highe book, as as you point out the other book is a bit dated. The idea will be to use as much of the SW hardware as possible, but you are right, it will need to go on a serious weight loss programme.

No feedback on this one so it looks like it will be a pioneering project to turn this: Into this: I know, I could try and sell the flextube and source a used 16” ES UL but where is the fun in that? I’ll try and keep the thread updated.😊

Yes, but at least it will start up on a cold night.

I’m pretty sure that the data is already out there for a host of collaborative projects. I was in at the start of the BAT project but I just couldn’t keep up with the social media savvy banter on their Discord forum, probably an age thing. Having said that I’d be more than happy to contribute data, as a galaxy enthusiast, my suggestion for a project would be a multi panel image of the Virgo region that you could just keep zooming in on.

Good point, but I can’t see a -20 C night happening any time soon in semi rural Shropshire, too many warm moist fronts coming in from the West.

I would agree with the moisture comment. My ASI 178 cameras with retro fitted external coolers get condensation dripping off the adapters several centimetres away from the cooler but with the astro cameras with internal coolers the adapters stay dry. I shudder (appropriate word) to think how my vast array of cables up to the scopes would behave at -20.

Really nice M31. There does seem to be a preferred orientation to present this galaxy, at least for residents of the Northern hemisphere, which is how you have it.

I had some problems with walking noise when I first used CMOS cameras so I started dithering but when I set up a dual rig the time I was losing to the operation was horrendous. So I stopped dithering and didn’t notice any problems, I had moved on to more recently introduced CMOS cameras by then.

Some computer based tech has to work on the night, eg image download, electronic filter wheel, but as Olly points out some are nice to have like plate solving and electronic focusing. Personally I wouldn’t lose a precious clear night trying to fix any of the latter, they could wait for a more convenient time.

Stunning colour.👍