FenlandPaul

Thanks Dave. Very kind. Ideally I’d have been a bit more “under” the lock, but I got as far out over the drainage channel as I dare given it was dark and I was by myself!! I was pleased with the star colours though given the strong gibbous moon. Shooting through the bushes was just “have a go”! I think it helped having a short focal length lens (I was using a 14mm Samyang) so focus was straightforward. The breeze blurred out some of the twigs unfortunately, but it’s a composition I think I’ll enjoy playing with. I did a portrait version as well, which I think on reflection has a more pleasing line to draw the eye. Basically what I’ve learned so far is: just give something a go!!

I spent a magical night of solitude at a nature reserve near my home in the Cambridgeshire Fens. The moonlight glistened off the ripples in the lakes and draped the trees in a lovely silvery hue. I captured this star trail shot in front of an old lock gate that kept the floodwaters from the River Great Ouse out of the former gravel pit workings that have now been handed over to wildlife. I also found this lovely fallen tree trunk that extended out into one of the lakes with the stars of Aquila, Delphinus and Sagitta overhead (would love to get a shot without the moonlight to show the Milky Way arching upwards). I'm new to this landscape stuff, but I'm finding it a really enjoyable way to spend an evening!

Thank you Iain. That’s who I’d thought of but didn’t want to presume!!

My sister-in-law has been asked to write a piece for VisitCairngorms on stargazing in that part of the world and why it’s so good there. I suggested it would be a nice idea to have some quotes from some actual Cairngorm-dwelling astronomers for it. If you’d be happy to have a short chat with her (remotely, of course!) please would you DM me and I can put you in touch? She is passionate about the positive impact that the natural world can have on our wellbeing and I couldn’t think of a better outplaying of that than a night under the stars! I think there’s a copy deadline of this Saturday so ideally in the next day or two. Thanks in advance!! Paul

@davew just wanted to say a big thank you for the YouTube link above. His channel is a goldmine!!

Thank you - 450D now reading out beautifully!! 🤦‍♂️

Hmmmm, that’s a very good point. Will need to check that out because it is taking roughly twice the exposure time to read out to PC. Will report back when home!!

I’m hoping I can tap into some of the amazing expertise on here, and my experience is SGLers are usually excellent at helping people spend money wisely! Over the last 4 months or so I have had my Astro-mojo restored via simple DSLR imaging and landscape astrophotography. I’ve also really enjoyed doing nighttime and daytime timelapses. But I have limited imaging equipment at the moment, so I’m looking to make some purchases. I’m selling on my (much loved, but currently underused) visual kit and hope to build a versatile imaging setup that’ll help me to progress with Astro and also daytime time lapses. My interests lie in wide field (incl Astro-landscapes) and deep sky. I’d like to be able to dabble with some lunar as well, but I’m happy if this setup can’t handle planetary at this stage. I’d still like to do some visual, but am happy to have less firepower for that for now. Conservatively, my budget is £1,800. I could stretch to £2,000, but want to do this in a cost-neutral way so it will depend on whether I sell all the kit I’m expecting. So here’s what I currently have, after selling my visual kit: Canon EOS 1000D (standard) Canon EOD 450D (modded) Samyang 16mm f/2 lens Altair Astro Starwave 70ED Skywatcher Star Adventurer pro pack SW AZ5 One things that bugs me about the 450D is the readout time, which seems to effectively halve my imaging time. [FIXED - SEE BELOW!!] So I’m interested in combinations of kit, mostly used, that might accommodate my requirements, including: EQ mount Fixed lenses (got my eye on the Samyang 135) Alternative scope(s) Alternative camera (original 6D?) Or alternatively a method to narrow things down!! Very grateful for any thoughts!!

Thank you all for your kind comments. In case anyone’s interested, here’s the clip from the local BBC news programme, Look East. The sharp-eyed among you will notice that most of the equipment on display had nothing at all to do with the image I captured! I was asked to get as much cool-looking kit out as possible for the magic of TV!! Unfortunately, as my wife pointed out, it meant that when I said that all I used was the kind of everyday equipment that a lot of people have lying around their house, I was standing in front of my OOUK VX12L!! Oh well. And finally, because I don’t think it comes across very well in this, the people in the UK who are really driving all of this work and research are the members of the NEMETODE network (nemetode.org) and SCAMP (https://ukmeteornetwork.co.uk/SCAMP/) - really they should have been the ones on this! 2F30EE36-BE9E-4201-9A0B-8BDF1663AC39.MP4

34km/s I'm told!!

So the best analogy is that of skimming a stone on a lake. It started to burn up, but then rebounded back into space. So it's not solar illumination (at only 1cm diameter, would be too small for that to be picked up with my 16mm lens).

Early last Tuesday morning the DSLR I’d set running all night in the garden and just before 5am captured a long streak, from one side of the 70 degree field to the other. I initially dismissed it as a fast moving satellite (the exposure time was 30 seconds so it was going at quite a clip). Anyway, it turns out it was a earth-grazing meteorite, and that apparently only a small handful of these have been accurately documented before. Last night, out of the blue, I was contacted by a researcher from the BBC Radio 4 Today programme and, along with an actual expert in the field (thank goodness!), was interviewed for a slot going out this morning. Dr Denis Vida is founder of the Global Meteor Network of video meteor cameras and he’s been one of the people analysing the images captured across Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK. So I just heard Justin Webb trailing the piece with “And as is 2020 weren’t already perilous enough, we’ll hear about a meteor that grazed the Earth.” I think it’s amazing that chancing amateurs like me are able to contribute to real science, even if accidentally! For interest, here’s the image I (fortuitously!) took, along with a trajectory that was calculated by Dr Marco Langbroek (the red bit is apparently the amount that my observation added to the recorded trail).

Lovely images. I’ve not tried light painting but I really like the effect!

I’ve been playing with the DSLR a lot more recently and scouting out local landmarks (in the very flat Fens - not easy to come by!) to act as foregrounds to images. I can get Over Church in Cambridgeshire in the foreground at azimuth from about 075 to 120, so it will hopefully be useful for some shots of objects rising. Not quiet for the Pleiades, unfortunately! Anyway, here are some images from a time lapse I’m putting together of last night’s Moon and Mars rise. Shot with a Canon EOS 1000D and an ancient Vivitar 200mm at about f/4 (I think!) at ISO200 and 0.8s exposure. Some light cropping and dabbling in Lightroom. Still new to this, but enjoying the chase!! 😃

Now THAT’s a proper tripod! Wish I’d gone for that!!

This thread had popped back into use and I wondered why I’d tagged it, noting the comment above. I can add to this now. The standard tripod is, in my opinion, one of SkyWatcher’s worst products. Flimsy, prone to parts breaking and the twist-locks for the legs are infuriatingly prone to just spinning rather than unlocking the legs. The AZ5 is a great little mount, but it is badly let down by its tripod.

Super read and great pics. The night of NeoWise with the NLC was one of the most memorable astronomical evenings of my life. The sky was just kicking off all over the place!!

Love this! Time lapse is something I’m having a lot of fun with right now.

The “rule of 400” is a great starting point. Keep your exposure to no longer than 400 divided by the focal length you’re using to avoid star trails. You could even push it to 500 for higher declination targets. And worth getting to the darkest site you can. Enjoy!!

I think that’s such a good question. Like many, I work quite long hours, have a youngish family and other responsibilities elsewhere. Ultimately my life is more complete for all of those things including astronomy, so it’s all about balance. The stars won’t be going anywhere. I used to feel guilty for not going out when it was a clear, moonless night -I would be torn between going out and enjoying things, and not getting overtired for family and work. But I’ve come to realise that it’s ok - this is a hobby, for enjoyment, and I should just go out when I feel I’m able to. Since deciding on that I’ve had much more relaxing and enjoyable observing sessions. All that said, I was out several nights on the trot recently for NEOWISE during my busiest time of year for work, so I found the short term answer was just more coffee!! 😂

I keep getting prompted to upgrade from the SkySafari 4+ version I’m using. Does anyone know what the 6-series has over the 4, which, by the way, I think is brilliant and a fine complement to using Interstellarum in the field.

This is my first ever time posting in the imaging section, so a little nervous, but I’ve recently been enjoying some time playing with my DSLR. Neowise couldn’t have come at a better time for that!! Here’s a handful of shots from Friday and Sunday nights, the former just capturing the NLC that brightened considerably over the following half hour, and the latter showing the comet’s reflection in a lake not far from home. I’ve also attached an attempt at a panning timelapse using the StarAdventurer mount set at 90 degrees latitude and at 6x rotation speed. Hope you enjoy!! Not a patch on the output from more seasoned folks here, but these pictures will, like my Hale Bopp shots from long ago, be treasured memories of some spectacular nights. 😃 B6D3521F-853E-4D81-BC91-E078CAC7E2E8.MP4

It was stunning here in Cambridgeshire for about an hour, starting rally early at 10pm (I’d set up to photograph the moonrise). Looked to the north and they were already very bright and quite high - maybe up to about 40 degrees altitude. Couldn’t believe how they shone through the twilight with ease. But within an hour, they’d died down and the real cloud had come rolling in.

Of course! Managed to get out last night with it for a couple of hours, with a DSLR and 135mm / 200mm lenses. Observations so far: The instruction manual could do with a proper proof read and sense check!! 🙄 It’s a nice solid unit - well built and with controls in sensible places, with a nice level of red illumination at night. The only thing I was disappointed with was the design of the illuminator for the polar scope, which basically means you have to unscrew the cap completely to turn it off - necessitating messing around with fiddly batteries and trying not to drop / lose them (fine at this time of year but in the winter that’ll get annoying!). I’ve attached mine to the lightweight skywatcher tripod that came with my AZ5. Initially I had it on the little extension pillar that comes as standard I think with that tripod. The tripod is bordering on hopeless - very wobbly when handled - but once I’d removed the extension pillar it has was robust enough for a dslr and heavy lens. I operate the dslr remotely so don’t need to handle it much. The whole arrangement felt a lot less secure when I attached my 70ed, star diagonal and Nagler eyepiece to do so some solar work yesterday. Touching the focusser would cause vibrations that lasted a while, but it was just about tolerable. It felt the whole arrangement was more strained, but I’ve not used it in anger with the camera and scope in tandem yet, so might be fine. It easily kept the sun at x45 dead centre for 5 minutes or more using the solar tracking speed and a general “point north” rather than polar align. Under the stars with the dslr it was a dream. Polar aligning (rough) was simple, the dslr felt sturdily held and it just did exactly what it said. I managed 60 second subs with the 200mm lens and they stacked with no problems, but didn’t try any longer. Interested how long I can do. Output from the evening was these two pictures of Lyra and Corona Borealis with the 135mm lens, with subs of 30 seconds each (I think for Lyra I stacked about 8 of them, from memory). As a complete newcomer to imaging, I’m excited where this might go - these won’t win any competitions, but they’ve definitely encouraged me that I can do this with some practice and patience!! One thing I do need to do is order a ball head for the dslr. In its native form, the Star Adventurer doesn’t allow you to alter the orientation of the frame - you just get whatever it spits out! So a ball head will solve this. Wouldn’t be a problem with my 70ed as the focusser can be rotated. Definitely glad I bought it. 😃

Thank you. I have two Canon EOSs (an unmodified 1000D and a modified 450D without the IR filter), my little Altair Starwave 70ed frac and a small collection of old Vivitar lenses. So that’s my starting line-up, but I’ll see how I get on!!