lukebl

I'd highly recommend the free stacking and photometry software ASTAP. Not only does it stack images really well and quickly, it will plate solve and label your image with details such as asteroids, comets, magnitudes, deep sky objects. Here's your image with all the DSOs labelled. Yours is a lovely image!

I rarely do any imaging these days and rashly sold off a lot of my astro gear, so I'm pretty rusty. However, I'm getting my mojo back and captured this image of M101 The Pinwheel over the past couple of nights, and I'm reasonably pleased with it considering. Captured with an ATIK 383L+, 200PDS Newtonian. 65 x 5 minute exposures Luminance. Just 22 x 2 minute exposures for R & B, binned 2x. Sythesised Green channel, which seems to have worked fairly well. Processed using ASTAP for the first time, which I must say is a vast improvement on DSS. Images seem to suffer far less from gradients with it. And it's much faster. Here it is with all the galaxies labelled using the neat astrometry function of ASTAP. It's telling me that I've captured some objects down to about mag 21.

Whoops! Sorry. Found it. Working now!

Ah yes. I've found the files folder, and there's a SkySafari folder in there However, I put the png file in there but it doesn't come up in the 'Horizon Panorama' menu. In fact there are only two other files in that folder.

I remember that's how I did it last time, but how do you find the folder? That's the problem. Mine's on an IPad. I think it's a piece of cake with an android phone.

Having now installed the latest version of SkySafari, I'm now trying to insert my custom horizon which I had in my original version. The instruction say go to the 'Apps' section in iTunes and import the png file from there. However, I find the iTunes app a nightmare and there's no sign anywhere of an 'Apps' section. Does anyone know how to install a horizon?

I was offered a promotion a few days ago, which I ignored, and which now appears to have expired! Always the way. Anyway, I've now bought version 7 and the asteroids are in their correct positions. Now to get used to the different interface. Despite the cost, it is undoubtedly the best app around.

Admittedly, it is version 5, and I see we're now on version 7. Perhaps they've got built-in obsolescence! I guess I'll have to splash out on the latest version. £44.99. Ouch! Worth every penny though, Isuppose.

Hi, does anyone know how to correct the incorrect asteroid positions in Sky Safari Pro, as they are way out for me. See the screen grab below. The view on left shows the position of asteroid (2648) Owa in Carte du Ciel. I know this position is correct as I've checked it on the JPL Database. The view on the right is from Sky Safari Pro, where the asteroid is over one degree from it's real position. I know that the Minor Body Orbit data has been updated in SSP, so how can it get it so wrong? Completely useless, in fact, for planning an observation.

These look pretty impressive. Will they work with Ritchey-Chretiens?

Hey, I'm surprised that no-one else has mentioned that today is the 92nd anniversary of the discovery of Pluto. Let's raise a glass to Clyde Tombaugh, and to Pluto. I always make an effort to image it once a year. Always a planet to me.

Don't think so. It hasn't blown away yet!

It's no consolation, but I too have a PST and am also very disappointed with the view visually. However, it can be very effective for imaging, and I often set it up with a basic QHY5 cam and just view the sun on the laptop. You can make various adjustments to see either the prominences or the surface features. Here's an animation I did with it last year (colourised, as the QHY5 is mono).

Here's a further animation of 50 frames. 10 second exposures from 18:57 to 19:08 on 19th January, during which time it traversed approximately 15 arc minutes (half the visual width of the moon). Atik 383L+, binned 2x, 200PDS Newtonian, Baader coma corrector. Here's the start and the finish, showing the moon to the same scale.

It's in the wrong position for me in Sky Safari Pro too! However, Carte du Ciel had it correctly, which was how I found it.

Here's a quick animation of 10 x 10 second exposures, captured at round 18:58 this evening (19th Jan) Norfolk, UK. Atik 383L, binned 2x, 200mm Newtonian. Field of view 61.9 x 46.6 arcmin. The brightest star at the bottom is around mag 7.9, and the asteroid must be around 11.5

Excellent result. Well done! It was clear all day here, then clouded and fogged over immediately after sunset! Last night it was motoring along at 122 arc seconds per minute. Tonight it'll still be doing 75 arc secs/min, so should be still noticeable.

Well, here's the replacement. It's just a 4' x 4' shed bought for £400. I know it's not the TARDIS and just looks like an outdoor khazi, but it's pretty sturdy and, best of all, is waterproof!

Fortunately, it’ll be heading rapidly northwards and the following nights it’ll still be around 11th magnitude and at a much higher altitude in Pegasus, then Cygnus. Better for us northerners.

I rarely do lunar imaging but I stayed up late last night (well, late for me) to try and capture a transit of the ISS across the moon. It was predicted to be a good transit, with the ISS at its closest and consequently quite big. I had it set up perfectly, and did a bit of lunar imaging to while away the time. I then realised I'd got the day wrong, it was tonight, not last night! So tonight I got ready again, only to find that the ISS has done one of its orbit corrections (to stop it falling to earth, basically), and there's not going to be a transit after all! Anyway, I thought I may as well process the captures from last night and I was quite pleased with the result. This is a mosaic of 8 captures with a ZWO ASI290MM Mini, 2x TAL Barlow, 200mm f/5 Newt. 1000-frame AVIs, best 50% processed in Autostakkert. And a detail of Copernicus:

Knowing my luck, I’d end up with Bradley Walsh, rather than Jenna Coleman.

Ok, this isn't going to win any prizes, but it was an interesting experiment. I thought I'd have a go at getting a detailed view of the Trapezium using a planetary camera, Barlow and lots of very short exposures. There are some issues with the star shape (maybe the cheap barlow), but the result was interesting. There are stars down to about magnitude 15 here. This is the result of around 700 x 200 millisecond exposures. Yes, 700 x 1/5 second exposures. ASI290MM Mini cam, Tal 2x barlow, 200mm f/5/ Newtonian. Stacked in DSS.

Some of you might recall my Tardis roll-away observatory, which I had made a few years ago. Here it is in its heyday. Sadly, the elements haven't been kind to it. It was never really waterproof, and serious rot has set in in the base, so it's time to say goodbye to it and build something more practical. Anyway, my eldest son , who's now 18, is rather embarrassed by it. He thinks that having that thing standing in the garden made us look like a family of nerds, when in fact the only nerd is me. So here's the first stage. Now to build its replacement.

Happy New Year, folks, and Blwyddyn Newydd Dda as my Grandfather would say. I captured this view of the lovely 2.2% illuminated crescent of Venus at exactly midday today, 12.5 degrees from the sun. Banham, Norfolk. ASI290MM Mini Cam, Baader U-Filter, Tal 2x Barlow, 200mm f/5 Newt. It was a really lovely sight through the eyepiece. I couldn't see it at first due to the extreme brightness of the sky, but I stopped the scope down with the hole in the front dust cap and it was much clearer.

It was nice to see Venus this evening in a rare bit of clear sky, just over a week till Inferior Conjunction, with the 60 sec disc only 2.6% illuminated. The crescent looked pretty big through my 8 x 32 bins. This is a capture with a Canon 700d, and basic 75-300mm canon zoom at 300mm, plus an enlargement from one of the frames