tomato

Great achievement, keep going! I share your love of faint galaxies although I image them rather than visually observe, but I do have a 16” SW flextube Dobsonian for when the the observing urge comes along. I dislike the term faint fuzzies, to me it seems demeaning somehow to use this label to describe immense island universes, many much larger than our own galaxy and which are unimaginably distant. I admire your dedication to observe from dark sites, I’m puffing and blowing after moving the dob from the garage to the back garden, never mind driving for an hour or more to a dark location, especially with our hit and miss weather forecasts.

Great post! So now I’m looking in every skip I see hoping to find a discarded 17” PlaneWave…😉

Last night I was able to add another 180 mins integration to this FOV originally captured 12 months ago, so now 5.65 hrs in total, all captured with the RASA8/QHY268c/NBZ combination. I'm not sure how much of the interstellar murk is real or just due to the poor atmospheric conditions that are currently prevailing, but hey, it's clear enough to image so mustn't complain. Thanks for looking.

Very nice, but I still prefer the 14” Celestron in Barbados method…😊

This run of “clear” nights are indeed frustrating. I have always advocated to image under less than ideal conditions but these recent nights are near the bottom of the pile in my experience. This was confirmed when I recently got the 16” Dob out to evaluate the Celestron Starsense unit. It put M13 right in the FOV but I couldn’t find M51 in the scope.

Great result for a first DSO image! As other posters have said the Andromeda Galaxy will be high in the sky in the Autumn with a darker sky and will give you a more pleasing result with the same kit. There will also be some bright nebulae and star clusters through the winter that will be easier targets than M101. Keep looking for a tracking mount, that will be a big step forward for DSO imaging with your existing set up.

Thanks for the link, now looking at a DIY second unit to take a phone.

I purchased a second hand StarSense 80mm Explorer Achro. I obviously registered the app with a different email address to the original owner and mounted the unit on my 16” SW Flextube Dobsonian and it works fine, so that’s counter to the Cloudy Nights findings.

The Starsense unit has been transferred to the 16" SW Flextube Dob, works fine on there even though it is mounted slightly to one side of the vertical axis of the OTA. Now looking at options to not disappoint my grand daughter when I hand over the Celestron 80mm Achro...

I’m sure you are right but in the mostly damp and turbulent atmosphere above the UK, good seeing is even more rare than a clear moonless night.

I agree the TOA 130 is the better image. I was convinced by @ollypenrice’s article regarding using a 6” 1m FL refractor vs 2m+ FL reflector for galaxy imaging and do not regret going with Esprit 150s for this purpose. I do change my set up at least once per year and it is an added bonus that the refractor is much more robust to accommodate this.

Outstanding video, such a striking variation in brightness.👍

The Summer Solstice just 19 days away and a full moon, so this forecast will probably come to pass…

Here is the closest thing I have to an animation, a two frame before and after, the before image from two years ago. I have tried to unscientifically equalise the exposures across the the two frames, still far from perfect. The two on/off stars in the top RH corner are due to cropping and a 23 degree rotation angle between the two images, sorry! I won't get any images of it fading, my galaxy rig has now been dismantled and replaced with my widefield "summertime" rig.

Great result for such a Southerly object. I would love to image M83, the Southern Pinwheel galaxy but have no chance from my home location.

Tried it out under a bright moon last night, the StarSense function is brilliant, platesolve is fast and reliable except when close to the moon, the user interface is first class, very intuitive and informative. I suppose newcomers might be disappointed with the views through the scope compared to the pictures displayed on the App, but that’s an inherent issue, nothing to do with StarSense. The ability to lift the scope and place it somewhere more convenient without any impact on the push to functionality is a revelation, perfect for outreach events. The tripod is light and a bit rickety, but I was impressed with the views through the 80mm Achro, given the poor observing conditions. It doesn’t seem right to take the StarSense unit off the scope before giving it to my granddaughter , the ability to find objects easily with the phone app is what makes it so good as a starter scope.

Fortunately my used StarSense Explorer on eBay was being sold by a vendor just down the road from me so I paid them a visit this morning to check the App was still functioning. All good, worked with my email address and the supplied code so I’m now the proud owner of this scope. I’ll try it out tonight and if it is as good as folks say, will move the StarSense holder to my SW Dob and my youngest granddaughter will be getting an early birthday present of the 80 mm achromatic. I’ll put a Telrad on it so I’m afraid I will need to show her how to find objects the hard way.☺️

I have looked through quite a few of my images of M31 and this one appears to show it most clearly, so please excuse the star artefacts.

Astro darkness has long gone, but the competition doesn't close until the end of June, and with a recent run of clear, albeit bright skies, I am going to try to keep knocking them out. This is NGC 5905 and NGC 5908, some 160 million light years distant, but only separated by 600 thousand light years so they must be quite a sight in the skies of each respective galaxy. Captured with the Esprit 150/ASI178/binned 2x2 dual rig, total integration 11.67 hrs. Calibrated and stacked in APP, colour calibration in APP, further processing in PI and Affinity Photo. The odd looking seahorse shaped galaxy in the top left is PGC 54557, but that is all I know about it.

Here is NGC 4559, Caldwell 6 or the "Koi Carp Galaxy" as it is aptly named in Stellarium. 90% of the subs taken in Nautical Darkness with the Esprit150/ASI178/LRGB dual rig, binned 2x2, as follows: L 141 x 2 mins R 41 x 2 mins G 38 x 2 mins B 42 x 2 mins 8.73 hrs total Integration. Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in PI and Affinity Photo.

Stunning!

Great post! I have quite a bit of data on Andromeda so I will go looking for it as soon as this run of UK clear nights is over.

Yes, good point I only need one I suppose but it would be a wasted purchase if they have all been used.

Thanks for the review, I was going to wait and see if Celestron would market this as a stand alone device but it sounds so good think I will be tempted to go ahead and buy the entry level scope just so I can get my hands on one for my SW Dob. Just found a used 80mm version on eBay, so I’ve pushed the button.👍😊

Thanks for the review, I was going to wait and see if Celestron would market this as a stand alone device but it sounds so good think I will be tempted to go ahead and buy the entry level scope just so I can get my hands on one for my SW Dob.