AbsolutelyN

2 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Oh my, that meridian flip was fast

 

Yes, looks like it should fly off the mount. 7 hours compressed into 1 minute.

This is a bit of an experiment and a bit of fun - my Esprit 80 attempting to image M42 through high cloud last night. The results were very predictably completely unusable but at least I got this little sequence out of it. Yes - my cable management is non-existent at this point - I don't know where to start on that one. 

That's interesting, I must make the effort and take a serious look at APT.  At the moment I don't want to potentially waste a (very rare) clear night trying problem solve all the things I'll almost certainly get wrong with APT. 

I'm not as accurate - I set plate solving to 50px. Occasionally it fails to be that accurate but I've always put it down to my setup with cables hanging all over.  It usually takes 3 or 4 attempts but is certainly accurate enough for my needs. I've never done a multi-plate image before so I can't comment on that. 

1 minute ago, symmetal said:

Just tried it and same here.  Looks like the remote image server isn't working. A similar thing happened a year or so ago when the server changed the search string format slightly leading to the same problem. SGP developers then released a program patch to fix it.

Alan

Brilliant thanks, I was thinking of un-installing and re-installing so will hold off that

Yes, it will bring up images it's already found for me too but nothing new. I've never known if fail before but a quick google suggests it might not be SGP but a service its using. I can't find much info on it. Platesolve itself seemed to work fine last night though. 
I love SGP, its just got a nice standard windows interface, learning something like APT I find daunting mostly as the user interface seems really odd and unfamiliar. I just wish SGP would implement multi-camera dithering.  It's generally stable for me. I crashed for first time during the night last week but I think it was my PC that locked up rather than SGP as it's done it a few times during the day when not using SGP. 
 

Is anyone having issues with Framing and Mosaic Wizard in SGP? Could not get it working last night, still not working, not sure if I've broken something or there is a remote server that's not working causing the error. It finds the RA/DEC for searching for an object but after a long time pops-up a message "Error!  Failed". Any ideas much appreciated. 

My thought is an editor will most likely go with the best images submitted based on various factors. One might be high image quality and composition. Another might be uniqueness - just being different to usual images - or perhaps an image with a narrative or story. I had two images published back when I had only a very basic 60mm refractor and no camera at the time.  I simply drew what I saw and those little sketches clearly stood out enough to be included in the gallery amongst what to me were amazing images taken with scopes I could only dream of. I guess because they were just different.

Get a sesto senso and your sorted

Could not resist a very quick snap as the sun is kind of shining here. Very turbulent atmosphere. Esprit 100 with Sony A7R3 with my ancient home made solar filter. Not really setup for this kind of image, looking forward to seeing some amazing images here. 

That's really handy to know thank you. It was back in Jan 2005 so long time ago. I ran down my car battery powering the mount so ended up having to jump start the car :-) Nice to see local images on here, keep the time lapses coming, they are amazing.

1 minute ago, Ouroboros said:

Yeah, Lovely that. The galaxy almost has texture the way it stands out.  Personally I think you've got the colour about right. You could make the blues slightly bluer. But I'm not so keen on the bright fluorescent blues that others prefer. I think those look unnatural. (Though what is? 🙂 ) 

It might look better framed along the diagonal. I made the same 'error' myself in the last M31 I did and cursed that I had. 

Did you use a mono 1600 or is this the colour version? Maybe you said somewhere and I missed it. 

Thank you . Completely agree about the diagonal, would make for a stronger composition. Could possibly be cropped but ideally needs the camera at the right rotation. I find getting the right angle very hit and miss and once set don't want to move it and have to re-do flats every time etc. It's taken with the mono zwo 1600mm and zwo 1.25"lrgb filters. 

Thanks, I'd be slightly worried of unsavoury activity in the carpark. I setup in Grimwith carpark years ago. They sky was stunningly dark up there but in the middle of the night some yorkshire water guy turned up in a landrover and threatened me with the police unless I left immediately. 

18 minutes ago, MartinB said:

Maybe a tad more blue in there????

Thank you. Yes agree on the blue lacking a bit. I struggled to get it as blue as prominent as it is here so will perhaps revisit and try to extract more blue next time.  

I'd aim for somewhere in-between the two. If possible try to be gentle with the darks/blacks so as not to clip them.

This is one taken early Sept, 5.7 hours  (171 x2 min exposures) with Esprit 80 and 1600mm. Reprocessed with hopefully better colour.
High res - https://www.astrobin.com/x3skzl/C/?nc=user 

Really nice. Do you people wandering around (or hanging around) there in the night or are the lights from yourself?  

4 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Excellent! This is my favourite target. How dark are your skies?

Thank you. Skies here are bortle 5. I thought I'd have need much more exposure to bring out fainter nebulosity. 

Thanks Adrian. I thought it might be an 'easy' target for last cloud free night for a while as it's so bright and familiar but the zwo1600 gets loads of micro-lensing issues on most of the bright stars and dynamic range is massive. 

Quick one from last night, looks like clouds are now set in for while. 6.5 hours, Esprit 80, 1600mm.
Full res - https://www.astrobin.com/m9wdxp/0/

 

Version 2 - slightly more detail parsed out of the core

Thanks Dave - it's so very easy to go too far with saturation. After staring at it for hours find I can no longer judge it it's under or over saturated! So good to know not obviously too far either way. Yes, will add HA if we get more clear skies. 

This is a 15.9 hour exposure of M33 taken over the last 3 days with little Esprit 80. The weather was not very cooperative, bad seeing and intermittent clouds, plus a few issues with tracking and sesto senso so all round quite pleased how this has come out given the circumstances.  478 two min exposures - approx 10 hours of luminence with 1600MM Pro. Any feedback much appreciated ... especially curious on views of more or less saturation? 

https://www.astrobin.com/smounk/0/

Thanks for the encouragement - much appreciated. 

16.3 hours of exposure over two nights with Esprit 80 and ZWO 1600mm.  

HA 10.6 hours
OIII 5.6 hours

https://www.astrobin.com/m9oov7/

Thanks Carole, that's much appreciated, I'll search for that thread. Thank you!