callump

Another target I have been try to get for a few nights.

Mayall II is a globular cluster of M31, sometimes catalogued as M31 G1. It is the only GC of M31 that appears non-stellar. It is thought to be about twice as massive as Omega Centauri.

Actually it is quite easy to find - there is a an easily identifiable group of three stars - G1 is the leftmost of those as shown on the following:

There is a fuzziness to it that the stars do not possess. 

There is a nice list galaxy to the left - UGC 330 - I could not find out much information on this, though it does appear in a few papers.

Callum

I tried to find Jones 1 in Pegasus a couple of weeks back without success. I persisted with locating it last night, but even with 30s exposures there was just a hint of it 'live' on screen.

Registered and stacked it is a bit more obvious in this result. It was toward the end of last nights session and the sky was deteriorating - will try again if/when we get a better night...

James 1 was discovered in 1941 by Rebecca Jones at Harvard. 

Callum

17 hours ago, Monty said:

This is your pic processed using Topaz DeNoiseAI to give you an idea of options.

Thanks for this - i'll have a look!

Callum

I've looked into this, but not actually tried it...

Certainly for YouTube live streaming you cannot do a screen share to present or show an application. There are tools like BeLive and Restream  that let you screen share and direct the video to YouTube and Facebook live.

Also Vimeo has a livestream facility.

Some of these need to be a paid subscription to use.

Would be interested to hear about other solutions to this problem, and from anyone that has actually done it..

Callum

Last night (2020-09-17) was not too bad a sky for me (SQM 20.3), but it was a rather frustrating session. Telescope alignment problems meant I had to re-do that mid-session. Some software problems. And then leaving the filter wheel on Blue for the last couple of objects.

First up here though, is NGC 7662 - the blue snowball planetary nebula - in fact it was really too bright! I tried this LRGB composite, which has a tinge of blue...
C11 on G11, f/6.3, ZWO ASI174MM mini
LRGB 2x30s each. 
Siril + Affinity Photo

M76 - this is just the Luminance frame - same equipment as above, 10 x 30s exposures. I tried a quick LRGB but the background noise was too horrible to make the image worth sharing. There is a star at the centre of the nebula, but I am not 100% sure if this is the central star, which is quoted at mag. 16.6.

Forecast for tonight is promising, so I hope I might be able to revisit last night list.

Callum

Gerg,

I think it is worth while trying a few of the popular or 'easy' objects first,  to gather experience in the techniques that you need to use. Probably better than trying to delve into difficult faint objects which you might be frustrated in not finding. 

My first goto resource at the moment is the Interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas - it has excellent maps, and the objects are labelled according to their brightness, so you can judge how faint they are quite easily. It is a bit pricey though.
I would normally spend a while looking at a constellation that is well placed for observing tonight (say) and selecting a number of possible targets. As Mike and Martin have said, your scope / mount will be more forgiving if you limit your slews to short jumps from one object to the next (syncing as you go).

Callum

Astrofest rumoured to be cancelled in 2021 - but no official confirmation.

/callump

The British Astronomical Associations programme of autumn webinars has been finalised, and the first is tomorrow. Wednesday 16th Spetember, at 7 pm.

Nick James, the BAA Comet Section director will present a roundup of the observations of Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE.

The webinar can be joined by Zoom or watched on YouTube.

Details about how to view this talk, and the others scheduled for the rest of the year can be found at: https://britastro.org/node/24212

Please come along to the webinar - they are open to all.

/callump

Great image Mike - this one was on my list for last night, but I did not get a chance to get out (and the sky was crummy).

Callum

I've used the RGB Compositing tool in Siril (Image Processing menu) - gives you file selectors for each of LRGB. Has an alignment tool too, and you can mess with the colour balance. But you might want to do that all in PS or whatever.

Callum

Finally finished processing images from Wednesday (2020 09 09), and a few more galaxies.

All taken with the C11, G11, 0.63 FR, ASI174MM mini.

Skies deteriorating, so some frames in the runs were rejected from registration.

NGC 7479 - The 'Superman' galaxy - 11x20s exposures.

NGC 7814 - sometimes call the 'little sombrero'- lovely dark lane down the middle of this galaxy. 3 x 20s exposures

NGC 7578 - also known as ARP 170, and Hickson 94 - fascinating cluster of galaxies. Only 4 x 20s exposures

Callum

Hi Martin - no, this was just an RGB - here is a re-try as LRGB. Tighter stars, but no more detail on the nebula though, i think. I've flipped this image so north is up.

Callum

From Wednesday night this is NGC 7094 in Pegasus - a nice planetary not far from M15.

Internet colour images show this as a blueish ring. Below are a luminance image and my first attempt at an RGB.

Taken with C11 on G11, 0.63 FR, ASI174MM mini camera. All layers 6x20s exposures.

Quite a faint object though the central star is a bright 13th mag. Some hints of the structure you see in deeper images.

Callum

Here is a much better M15 from Wednesday night. 

Equipment details. Celestron C11 on G11 mount with 0.63 FR and ASI174MM mini camera.

5 x 20s exposures this time.

I've got some (a lot of) elongation of stars at the edges. I think I need to review my focal reducer working distance again (I added a manual camera rotator ring, which although low profile has pushed it out too long).

Callum

Palomar 13 in Pegasus last night - one exposure did not make the grade 17x20s.
(C11, G11, 0.63FR, ASI174MM Mini. Bias and dark subtraction)

It was by far the hardest of those objects that I actually found, and spent quite some time confirming this was the right place.

Callum

A fairly cloud free sky last night, but not very transparent. But a good opportunity to tackle a dozen or so targets in Pegasus. 

Here are the first two - NGC 7331 (the Deer Lick Galaxy), with the four 'fleas' visible, and Stephan's Quintet (NGC 7320 and friends) which is also known as Hickson Compact Group 92, Arp 319, and VV 28.

Taken with Celestron C11 on G11 mount, with ASI174MM mini camera. 6 x 20s exposures. Processed with bias and darks subtracted in Siril.

Probably need a few more exposures on these for more signal.

Callum

15 hours ago, Martin Meredith said:

Callum, I hope you don't mind if others post their setups on this thread? I'd certainly be interested to see what everyone's rig is like. 

 

Sure thing - no problem. Yes, I'll look forward to seeing other peoples setups too.

Callum

Thanks Martin - I used the auto-stretch function of Siril, and then some minor curves and levels in Affinity. 

Cheers,
Callum

20200905: Like Mike, I thought there seemed to be a slot of clearish sky last night before the Moon got in the way, but the cloud built up so much so quickly, and by the time I was really getting going, it had closed in completely 😞

This M15 was all I got, and only 5 of the 12 frames were usable. Hoping we might get some better nights as New Moon approaches...

EDIT: sorry - equipment details. Celestron C11 on G11 mount with 0.63 FR and ASI174MM mini camera. 5 x 10s exposures.

Callum

Fantastic image Martin - perhaps you can send some clear skies this way...

Callum

13 hours ago, jadcx said:

Looks great!  What are the advantages of splitting the indigo controls across two machines?

It really is just about cable management - so one set of cables fixed on the mount that don't move, and one set fixed around the OTA. The only moving cable on the OTA is the power to the Pi.  Having said that, I have just added a dew heater, so that is another power cable... But there are not a lot of usb cables flopping around, and I still have a couple of usb ports available. 

Callum

I ran an armoured Cat6 cable (50m) down the line of the fence / hedge of my garden to a Ubiquiti Picostation set up as just an access point. The Picostation is POE so no power worries. It connects to a Netgear gigabit switch (overkill, but what i had), that connects to my home network.

/callump

Last night was pretty grotty from my neck of the woods, but did manage some telescope time. Clouds kept scudding through before closing in completely. Here are results - all C11 with 0.63 reducer, ASI 174MM mini camera. All 12x10s exposures. Captured using AstroImager for MacOS. Processed using Siril and Affinity Photo. I've cropped down the centre due to some pretty bad edge of field aberrations.

NGC 7006  GC in Delphinus

NGC 6934 GC in Delphinus (Webb soc cluster of the month)

NGC 6905 in Delphinus (Webb soc nebula of the month)

Conditions for all these were pretty poor, so will have to revisit.

Callum

Hi Lee,

you will almost certainly want to use the 0.63 focal reducer - the wider field will make it a lot more easy to capture dso's.

I have tried the ZWO ASI290MM mini (which I had bought as a guide camera), but it has quite small pixels and small size. I recently changed to a ZWO ASI174MM mini - which has a larger sensor and bigger pixels.  You can see some pics I took with this camera on the EEVA Reports area here.

I've not done any comparisons with the Starlight Express cameras, but they give great results too.

Callum

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ADD YOUR OWN EAA SETUP TO THIS THREAD

In case anyone is interested, I thought I'd note down my current setup for EAA.

The drive on my old scope (Meade LX200 classic) failed completely and did not prove to be easily repairable, so I took the opportunity to 'upgrade'.

So currently the rig is:

Losmandy G11 mount with Gemini 7 controller

Celestron C11

Hirsch f6.3 focal reducer

Flip mirror

Xagyl filter wheel (just installed to replace a manual Celestron one)

ZWO ASI174MM Mini camera

[ I had some problems getting to the correct back focus for the focal reducer - using the flip mirror takes up a big wadge of it. Had to use an ultra-low profile T to SCT adapter to save a couple of cm ]

Skywatcher Evoguide 50ED guider / finder with ZWO ASI 290MM Mini 

I have two Raspberry Pi's running IndigoSky - one is fixed to the mount and controls the mount and the takes input from a joystick controller, the other is fixed to the OTA and runs the cameras and the filter wheel.

Both Pi's connect to my garden WiFi network, and I just need to take my laptop (MacBook Air) out to the observatory for a session.

On the MacBook I control the scope and camera using Cloudmakers Astrotelescope and Astroimager. I also use their Astrometry server (which is just a packaged local install of astrometry.net).

For processing of images after the capture, i've used Jocualr (thanks Martin) and more recently Siril.

Final image tweaking in Affinity Photo.

Happy to answer any questions anyone might have.

Thanks,
Callum