The Admiral

The simple answer to that is to try it. Startools trial version is fully functioning apart from saving. Ian

Pity if you can't get it to work, as it seems to give good results for our sort of imaging, and at a reasonable price. Mind you, Startools and PI have quite different approaches, as I'm sure you are aware. Ian

Folk do use Gimp though I don't. Best let them advise. But why won't Startools run as a matter of interest? Ian

Here are a few of the more spectacular ones from the archive. These are Geminids from 2015. Here's an image triggered by a meteor, but fortuitously including the ISS. Ian

Indeed it does, as it's often that one picks up the backscatter from the ISS. The doppler shift goes from +6kHz to -6kHz for that. Mind you, that is a 'large' piece of orbiting hardware, whether we amateurs would be able to detect space junk I don't know. In theory, perhaps if it's large enough I suppose. Ian

OK Richard, I understand. I'm not familiar with your logging software. I agree with Neil, the short pings certainly look like meteor scatters. Your last post, it does look like a meteor scatter, but to be of so long a duration outside of a shower shower surprises me. We are in the run up to the Perseids though. Still, given that I generally only ran my meteor set-up during showers perhaps I shouldn't really comment. I'm not running at the moment so I am unable to correlate any event. Perhaps others can. What is your strike rate at the moment? Ian

Hi Biggardigger, welcome. Hmm, I'm not wholly convinced that they are meteor scatters, somehow they just don't look the ticket. One does occasionally see interference close to the Graves frequency. It's normal practice to offset tune the receiver, say to 143.048MHz, so that the scatter signals are audible, in this case at 2kHz. But if you are tuned to 143.050, you shouldn't be getting a constant signal at 143.0525MHz. Echoes as long as 61s would be pretty rare, I've never seen one that long, but in any event they wouldn't have that cyclic character. Your set up should give you results, if they are possible at all, but you are a long way north. Most observers use a 2 or 3 element Yagi, or bigger in some cases, I don't know how that compares with your HB9CV. Have you taken a look at this thread? Ian

Me too. Ian

A good start. You don't say whether the Ring Neb is just one picture, or is a result of a stack of many. If you aren't aware, it's customary to take a set of images and then combine them in software such as Deep Sky Stacker (DSS), and process the result. That enhances the weak signals and cuts down the noise, giving you a much stronger image. Also, you might find that with increasing exposure you run into other problems with mount tracking etc. On the other hand, lots of 30s exposures can make up for such a short exposure, but in any event you should be looking for a total exposure ideally of many tens of minutes. Mind you, the Ring is surprisingly bright and you can get away with less; I got a reasonable result with just 2-1/2 minutes, using a 102 mm scope at about f/5. I don't think auto white balance will be very effective in these situations. If you stack the RAW frames then you can modify the white balance during processing. Ian

Thanks happy-kat. This is a bit confusing, as the 'latest version' thread on the ST forum hasn't been updated since Oct 2017. Having looked on the download site though I see Ivo refers to a 1.4.332 alpha version! He really ought to keep his version lists up to date. Ian

The latest one? Is that v1.4, issued almost a year ago, or has there been a later edition I've not spotted? Ian

Not at all. Think of it as a sky chart, with N-S parallel to the horizontal axis and E-W parallel to the vertical axis, and vertically above you is the zenith, at the centre of the chart. And as happy-kat says, each of the coloured lines corresponds to an exposure time in seconds to give a 0.1° field rotation; the colour key is shown on the side. Ian

And why not! Sounds good to me. Mind you, having just checked on goggle I see that such a word is in use for much the same thing! Ian

Perhaps what hasn't been highlighted sufficiently is why folk use scopes like the ED80. It's really down to focal length. For astro photography, the longer the focal length the more demanding it will be on mount performance, i.e. on your wallet! An SCT with a fl over 1500mm is certainly not easy, for DSOs especially, and will add complication. 500mm -700mm is certainly a lot more manageable. I don't want to put you off, but be prepared for quite a learning curve, too. I recommend reading around the subject as well before you part with hard earned cash. There are a lot of recommendations for "Making Every Photon Count", by Steve Richards, though I haven't read it to be honest. I found "Astrophotography" by Thiery Legault to be a good introduction. Do come back to the forum if you want to ask any questions, there are plenty only too pleased to help. Ian

I'm planning on using that one too, to transfer my OS from a small SSD to a larger one. This looks a useful guide. Ian