callump

The BAA are holding a real, in person, meeting on December 4th at Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street London W1G 0AE. All welcome, whether a BAA member or not, and free to all. Doors open at 14:00 Meeting starts at 14:30 in the lecture theatre and will be finished by 18:00 Speakers are : Prof Catherine Heymans, Astronomer Royal for Scotland - The Mysteries of the Multiverse Prof Sara Russell, Natural History Museum - Winchcombe Meteorite Nick James - Sky Notes For more information and to book on Eventbrite click HERE Pre-booking by 2nd Dec. is ESSENTIAL, you won't be able to just turn up on the day. /callump

Nytecam made a nice small dome - plywood ribs and aluminium sheet covering, if recall correctly. Here is a vid: /callump

FWIW - I use INDIGOSKY on two RPi3's in my observatory - one for the mount and auxiliaries and one for the cameras. I use the inbuilt wifi on both which works for my purposes. I use the Cloudmakers apps for MacOS on a MacBook to control - I prefer the Cloudmakers apps as they are rather less cluttered than EKOS which is difficult to use if you have any visual impairment. /callump

I'll be presenting on EAA/EEVA (Electronically Assisted Astronomy / Electronically Enhanced Visual Astronomy) at this months BAA webinar, Wednesday 11th August at 7pm. Join on Zoom or view on YouTube. Details at: https://britastro.org/node/26004 Free for all to attend - hope to see you there. /callump

Thanks to @JeremyS for the plug! Regarding the OP's question - imaging has been a growing in popularity for a lot long longer than 18 months (IMO). The Canon 300d, probably the first affordable consumer digital SLR, came out in 2003. Digital camera technology for the photography market and being re-used into the amateur imaging camera market has developed tremendously since then. Making images using the latest technology has never been easier, or more affordable. I used to be mainly a visual observer - don't really have the skies or patience to take multi-hour exposures of single objects. For me EAA and EEVA techniques have helped me get back into doing practical observing since my eyesight took a hit a couple of years ago. If you view my upcoming webinar you'll find out more about that. As others have mentioned it seems a lot easier for someone to post an image on a forum than write a short note about their visual observation. Although some people on SGL do post their visual observations, I expect 99.9% of visual observers never report their observations anywhere. And that's ok - they are just doing it for their own personal pleasure (and same probably goes for some proportion of imagers) - but it would be nice to read more observing reports. /callump

This months BAA Wednesday webinar is about Jupiter with John Rogers - the director of the BAA Jupiter Section. Wednesday 14th July at 7pm. You can join by Zoom or watch on YouTube - visit https://britastro.org/node/26004 for details. Enjoy! /callump

You can also use PHD2 which works pretty well for me. It has three variations - Polar Drift Alignment is the easiest to use. Works on MacOS (as well as Windoze). /callump

For this weeks BAA webinar we have Howard Banich, contributing editor of Sky & Telescope magazine talking about Deep Sky Sketching. Wed. 9th June at 7pm. Free and open to all - you can watch via Zoom or YouTube. Full details at https://britastro.org/node/25524 /callump

This weeks BAA Wednesday Webinar (7 pm) is presented by Richard Miles, Director BAA Asteroids & Remote Planets Section, about Comet 29P/Schwassmann–Wachmann. This 'comet' is one of the most bizarre objects in the Solar System, and the talk will also be about plans to send a space mission there. Amateur observations have been key in uncovering some of its mysteries but only by sending an unmanned mission to orbit this Centaur object will we discover its true nature. Open to all - you can watch on Zoom or YouTube - details at https://britastro.org/node/25879

Regarding the OP's question - i'd say that the gold standard printed atlas is now the Interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas. There are desk and field editions. They are both relatively expensive (though cheaper than a decent tablet! 🙂 /callump

In this weeks Wednesday Webinar (April 14, 7pm), Nick Hewitt will be talking about "The Great Debate" - it's just 100 years (or so) since the hot topic of the day was whether some nebulae were distant island universes (galaxies) or just local fluff in our back yard. Joining details etc. at https://britastro.org/node/25879 You can watch on Zoom or YouTube. All welcome. Callum

Pete Lawrence and Paul Abel presented their 2021 Challenges at the BAA Winchester Webinar on Satruday 10th April. If you missed it live, you can watch again on the BAA YouTube channel https://youtu.be/IbkVSPdqruE and a pdf of the presentation can be found on the BAA website at https://britastro.org/node/25889 Other presentations from the day are also available on the BAA YouTube channel Callum

I use Cloudmakers too - AstroTelescope, AstroImager and Astrometry. Connect wirelessly to an RPi on the telescope running IndigoSky. All work well for me. Callum

Yes - this talk is available on YouTube now -

Tonights BAA Wednesday Webinar is "Two Eyes are better than one - Binocular Observing" by Stephen Tonkin ( @BinocularSky of this parish). Starting at 7 pm. Available on Zoom and YouTube - links at: https://britastro.org/node/25416 All welcome.

The BAA Deep Sky Section is holding a webinar version of its annual meeting on Saturday (6th March) from 2:30pm. Two guest speakers will talk about Hubble's Variable Nebula and Discovering Planetary Nebulae. Further details with Zoom and YouTube links at: https://britastro.org/node/24957 All welcome (you don't need to be a member of the section or the BAA). /callump

I have the Pro version - it works well with my C11 and f/6.3 reducer (you can find a few of my images on the EEVA observing reports forum). There are not many differences over the older version - reportedly faster download times and lower read noise. Also comes with a blue body (SX standard colour scheme now). Callum

Welcome @Cosmic Monk Too many years ago I visited San Diego and had great night out at Tierra Del Sol with SDAA.

I think the main problem with direct control of motors is that the RPi is running som variant of Linux which is not really very good for real-time control - your motors could get pre-empted by some other process, and then any tracking would be lost... The GPIO indi driver is probably best for switching relays, doing dome contol, or telescope cover opening, or the like... Probably your best approach would be to use OnStep to control the motors. Alternatively you could look at the new Raspberry Pico, which is more like an embedded controller - but you would need to write some software from scratch. /callump

Thanks - i may give that a try... Interestingly I was able to 'stack' a single file of the set of registered fits files (using Siril), just not the Siril stacked file. Maybe there is something in the FITS header Affinity does not like... /callump

I had tried this (and just tried again), but nothing seems to happen when pressing Stack, and the Apply button does not get activated. I was able to load a set of calibrated and registered lights (no darks, etc), and stack those. /callump

It's a pity it does not open just a single fits file - unless anyone has worked out a way of doing this? /callump

At this week's BAA Wednesday Webinar (7pm) we welcome Dr. Jacqueline Mitton to talk on "The astronomer Vera Rubin". Vera Rubin was one of the most important astronomers of recent times who discovered the 'galaxy rotation problem' which is taken to be evidence for dark matter. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) was formally named the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in recognition of her work. Full details at: https://britastro.org/node/25416 Open to all - available on Zoom and live streamed to YouTube. Callum

I have tried a wireless extender in the home, but it did not extend far into my back garden (a TP-Link). It was also a bit unsatisfactory when connecting to different devices, so in the end I abandoned it for a mesh solution (BT). I have a very long back garden, so I actually set up an external wireless access point (Ubiquiti Picostation) half way down the garden which is hard-wried to my router. It is powered by power over ethernet (PoE), so all self-contained. This access point gives me a range of about 50m but this model is only 2.4GHz band. There are probably newer dual band versions about. /callump

Hi Martin, Coincidently I have Magakian 82 (GN 04.41.8) on my observing list, but not had a chance to observe it yet. I did some light research, and both the Magakian and Galactic Nebulae catalogues have a lot of interesting things to look at. I noticed it when browsing my Interstellarum atlas, which notes it as Magakian 82. Cheers, Callum