Stub Mandrel

In my dark field that wasn't very dark because of the big lump of LP orbiting some 250,000 miles to the South... Taken with phone flash so a bit iffy...

We need a cloudless night first...

As another frustrated new 130P-DS owner I think this thread must be largely responsible for the ongoing cloudiness of 2016 :-(

Hello Steve, This is the equipment I use, besides the 'new' 130P-DS I have a larger 150PL for planteary and lunar work, a small refractors now for solar work and a selection of camera lenses two of which (400mm and 135mm) I use a fair bit: Canon 450D NEQ3-2 mount (probably a minimum EQ mount) EQ5 tripod (the standard EQ3 one is a bit wobbly unless heavily modified) RA drive (this allows the mount to follow stars as they drift across the sky) A wired remote shutter release that lets me program in a series of exposures A polarscope to ease aligning the mount with earth's axis so it follows the stars accurately A bahtionov mask for focusing I also have a skywatcher coma corrector for the 130P-DS, without this stars in the corners will look smeared - but you can crop the images until you get a CC. That's probably near to a minimum list, but an alternative is a neat mount that will take a camera with a long lens and track the sky. If you have £££ consider buying a goto mount that will find things for you AND track them. There are lots of bright things in the sky you can hunt down with that kit, but in time you may be tempted deeper in with specialist cameras and narrowband filters that demand longer exposures and therefore an additional guide camera (usually fitted to a smaller scope on the same mount). You will also need some image processing software. The cheapest (free) option is Deep Sky Stacker to stack your images and GIMP to process them. There are also free programs for planetary work such as PIPP, Registax and Autostakkert!2 - these work best with a dedicated planetary cam or even a cheap webcam using a capture program such as Sharpcap. The 130P-DS is a bit short in the focal length for planets, they will come out rather small.

Why does that photo make me think Bruce Willis is about to appear at any moment?

What about the Dumbbell M27? Unmodified Canon 10D - 30 second exposures at ASA1600 in 2015: Modified Canon 450D - 30 second exposures at ASA1600 in 2015 OK, not the same camera and my processing is better than it was, but same scope, same place and the first picture was done on 5 May the second on 5 July so much less favourable conditions...

Sent a while trying to get the Veil to emerge from a stack. Thought it looked a bit short on stars. Put the result into Astometry.net and it turns out the scope had made the goto move exactly twice - I think I know what I did wrong. There are two tiny galaxies right on the edge, but I can barely see them. I was tempted to start a new thread "The No DSO EQ Challenge"

My first proper DSO with the 130P-DS. A sitting duck target, M13. This should not have worked! 50 30-second subs taken as the light was fading before 11:00pm. Yet here is not just M13 but up and to the left is the active galaxy NGC6207 and even a hint of Mag 15.3 IC4617.

Great star colour as well. I think I prefer the one with unreduced stars; perhaps blend the two together to get around 60:40 the first one?

A great thread from before me joining SGL. I would only add: I found iso 1600 gives good results with the 450D on the moon - the very short exposure helps cut through bad seeing. I found a site somewhere that showed that 1600 is actually very low noise on the 450D but all cameras are not the same. I use AS!2 instead of registax for the moon, it seems to give better results although Regitax is usually better for the sun. I sharpen in Astra Image usually, registax does work well but more controls makes it harder or figure out what is happening. White rings usually mean over-sharpening, I sharpen until they appear than back off, but Registax has a de-ringing feature that can help get rid of them.

I remember that with film, even using a UV or Skyulight filter I used to have to underexpose things like buttercups by at least a stop to avoid the UV bleaching out on the honey guides.

Sounds like a challenge!

I wonder if I could get UV photos by subtracting a v-blocked frame from a full spectrum one.

It's interesting to speculate what the sources of inaccuracy might be. The quality of the bearings (i.e. how accurate they are and how well they allow small movements) is not the same as their load-bearing capacity. I doubt that even my plain bearing EQ3 mount droops measurably under the overhanging weight of the gear, certainly less than the EQ5 tripod flexes. In fact the scope tube probably flexes more than the mount as its attitude changes. I bet periodic errors in the worm of entry-level mounts swamp everything else.

Not overly convinced there is an issue. Think of the overhung loads on a car wheel bearing which is of comparable size.

Anyone who wo Absolutely true, if lat/long co-ordinates were that crucial, then you would need to input altitude as well! And recalculate to allow for the earth's oblate shape. Any error will be exactly the difference between a line through your position that's parallel to a line through the position in the handset. I can't see it making a problem for anything beyond Mars, even if you get the location 180 degrees out.

Put your mum first, but don't feel guilty about posting here - I know from experience it can be a big help to have a something to occupy you when you feel you should be 'doing something' to help but ether isn't anything you really can do.

Cheap lens ideas; Zeiss Sonnar 135mm x f3.5 lenses go for about £20 on ebay. I have had one since the 80s and its incredibly sharp at full aperture. This was taken with an unmodded Canon D10 (which is not a brilliant astro camera as its only 12 bit). Prinz Galaxy 400mm, a very cheap telephoto readily available on the bay, not as high quality as the Zeiss by a few furlongs, but still capable: Excuse the processing, I can do better now, but its the star sharpness across the image you need to be looking at. andromeda X.tif

My mother in law has diverticulitis, it took six months to get a diagnosis but she's improving now. I'm sure that the early diagnosis will help ensure things go well.

Best wishes to both of you.

Ozone is ground level ozone and it is valuable information for asthmatics - plus CO is handy as a weather site in the day too! Leave it in.

Look at the threads showcasing the 130P-DS and the 'no-eq challenge' and I think that becomes a no-brainer :-)

Watch this space... I've found a second hand 130PDS :-)

Nice - will pay more attention to doubles!

And it fires fuzzy green cannonballs too!