The Admiral

When I want to image the same target another night, I open a sub from the previous imaging, plate solve, and goto. Seems to work. How do you effect that when using the plan mode? Ian

Is there any advantage of plan mode if you only image one target a night and have no automated flats? To me there's no point in doing darks each time when you can take them at any time? You can command meridian flip, re-focus, go to home, and shut down in auto mode. Seems to work for me (or at least, at the moment go to home is dodgy because I've had it not stop at the home position, so I would rather be there!). I don't leave the gear unattended. Ian

Personally, when imaging I just do the lights and sequence just for that. With a cooled set-point camera I do all the darks in a batch and just re-use them. I take flats and dark-flats in the house, after taking the scope off the mount, being careful not to change the focus or camera rotation. The sequencing is up to you, although because there isn't a dark-flats option I call them bias. Ian

Today's broadcast was about superconductivity. What I managed to hear was interesting, and will have to catch up. You have to hand it to Melvin, he's prepared to tackle any obstruse topic. Ian

Ha! I didn't realise it was a reflector (despite the spikes!). It's working well for you. Ian

What a super picture, such a 3D quality about it, which I think starless images can bring. The resolution a 130mm can bring is clear. Ian

Thanks all for your comments and 'likes'. I'm not sure how its colour will change when the Ha is added in, as it appears to be quite bright in Ha too. Ian

It certainly gives the nebula a more solid appearance, though I do tend to like structures anchored by stars, but not too many of 'em! Nice captures Steve. Ian

And why not? It's a stunning object which demands attention! The first image is wideband, taken with an Askar FRA400 and ZWO ASI553. Alnitak is quite dominant, and I am wondering if the blue spots on NGC2024 (Flame Nebula) are real or come from spurious reflections from Alnitak. This is a result of 100x2m subs (3.3h) after discarding the rogue ones. The next night I used an L-eXtreme dual band filter. The following is an Ha extracted image. It's a result of 50x3m subs (2.5h). The filter does induce rather harsh star halos. All processing is performed in APP, with final tweaking in Lightroom. Both need more data of course. Now all I need to do is blend them . Thanks for looking. Ian

Thanks Steve. Somewhere between 4 and 5, nearer to 5 I guess. I don't measure it. Given the amount of cloud passing through and the interruptions with guiding, I suspect that transparency wasn't great. Ian

That's nice! I had a go at this with a dual passband filter and 533mc, but could only dedicate one evening to it, and that was blighted by intermittent cloud and poor seeing. 15 hours plus is great. It makes a difference! Ian

Thanks for that detailed reply Leo. I've no axe to grind here, I'm only going on 3rd party information. In fact, the other morning I was looking out of the window at the dawn sky and noticed how distant contrails could be mistaken for something else. When I suggested that to my wife she was not convinced, but then, she is not familiar with how meteors look. It was our son who found the newspaper article through the wonders of the internet. He did have a look at FlightRadarat the time but said he couldn't see anything it might have been, but I don't know over what distance he was checking. I'm not sure whether FR covers all military flights either. Ian

Thanks for detailing all this. When you say 'reported', by whom and to whom? Do you really think the object in the photo in the newspaper article is a contrail? Of course, I didn't observe it myself, unfortunately. I'm going by what my family were saying. Ian

The last time I imaged this object was six years ago, using Alt-Az imaging, a Fuji camera, and 102mm APO. I've not been very prolific in the intervening years, but I now have lighter weight gear, an AM5 EQ mount and Askar FRA400, and am learning to process dual band images. Here is an HOO rendition of NGC2244, produced by APP and finished in Lightroom. There were 54 x 3m subs (2.7hr) with the ASI533 and Optolong L-eXtreme. A series of darks, flats and dark-flats were also taken. During the sequence I was plagued by cloud! Thanks for looking. Ian

Looking at my Android settings, I see that I am supposed to be on v2. I concur with this. I never found PA to be very quick, and generally I use the all sky PA as I don't have a decent view of Polaris. But now, iterating to alignment seems erratic, and often it reports solving failed. I am wondering if the fact that tracking doesn't seem very sticky now is causing problems. I often give up nowhere near decent alignment, and just carry on, leaving the guiding to make up for it. Can't waste that much time. Strangely, when I am aligned to a target, tracking stays on. Ian

Don't be put off by its low weight. It has the high torque of a harmonic drive, and can shift heavy-weights about without a problem. I think the real question is, is weight a necessary representation of ability? And, what weight are you able to manage? A more modern approach to manufacturing can help to keep weight lower. I think that there are two issues you need to consider, the weight and focal length of the scope that you are going to put on it, and the guiding limit of current harmonic mounts. Some folk like to use a pier or a heavier tripod to add stability, particularly with heavier gear. The AZ EQ6 has 3x the head weight, and has a tripod 3x the weight, and performance is really not directly comparable. I think that the issues I've found are really a problem with the software of the ASIAir, not the mount, but I haven't got to the bottom of it yet. Ian

My wife, our son and his wife, noticed a light coloured object moving at a steep angle in the Eastern sky this morning, moving towards the ground, when it went behind some trees. This was from the Cotswolds between about 7am and 8am. Our son says he saw it again about between 9am and 10am. I wouldn't have expected to be able to see a meteor in daylight (or perhaps dawn), but given this report of a similar object over Clifton I guess it's possible, though may be space junk. https://westbridgfordwire.com/object-seen-in-the-sky-over-clifton/ Has anyone heard of today's event or have seen any reports of today's sighting? Ian

Thanks Olly, perhaps I should get to grips with Affinity. I have extracted the Ha from the dual band output, which of course is grey scale. Presumably that will have to be assigned as red. The L-Extreme has given me ugly halos around Alnitak and another star, so I wouldn't want them polluting the broadband image. Would I be correct in that a starless Ha image would allow me to achieve that and give better star colours? APP can remove stars, apparently, though how it would deal with the halos I'd need to investigate. Ian

Yeah, so that they can be relaxed later by the government to aid profitability. Just look at the lip-service paid by the water authorities when it comes to sewage discharge. Don't get me started 🤐. I'll get me coat. Ian

I think that is very sad for future populations. Problem is, it seems to be difficult enough trying to deal with global warming, it is hard to see much effort being devoted to this, even if there are in fact ramifications for energy consumption. I suppose at a national level, it should be possible to reverse the trend, but don't hold your breath! Ian

OK, thanks. APP has a routine for extracting just the Ha, which is what I have done. Ian

Something you experienced imagers do all the time, but I'm new to processing narrow-band images, so a bit of guidance would be much appreciated. I fully expect, though, that there'll be as many ways as there are imagers! I've just acquired an RGB image of the Horsehead and Flame nebulæ and environs, using a OSC, and I've also got my data for Ha using a dual band filter (L-Extreme). Note that I do not have Pixinsight or Photoshop. I do have Affinity Photo, but I'm pretty new to that and wouldn't call it familiar. I stack and process using AstroPixel Processor. The most logical way would seem to treat the Ha as an L layer, but what would be the most effective way of combining these two datasets? Ian