Yawning Angel

These are pretty good and not horribly expensive, and remotely controllable: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/dew-prevention/lynx-astro-2-port-dew-controller.html

I went with the 7 port USB 3, 12v powered StarTech : https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00SCE4E0I/ - It's aluminium bodied and well made. You might need to cover the tell-tail LEDs, depending on how annoying you find them I then replaced the mains power brick with a feed from a 12v PDU, the same as powers the rest of my kit

Thank you! It didn't feel fantastic when I fitted them together, so I nipped it down with the cross head. I'll dig a couple of hex bolts out and nail it down

In my defence, it was already cloudy.... Sorting the cable runs out will keep me quiet for a while 🙂

Very nice! I had a crack at this a couple of seasons back, and this reminds me I need to revisit it

The principle is that you keep the optical surface just above the dew point temperature, so it doesn't fog. The air volume inside the tube isn't heated, and so is close to ambient temperature, reducing air currents in the tube I'm not a reflector user, but you'll likely want to heat the secondary, the finder and maybe the eye piece

I think the usual solution is dew heater bands on the appropriate optics, but the obs itself at ambient temperature Everything ends up soaked at the end of a session, so a dehumidifier (or very good ventilation) reduces the risk of mould and rust when you close up

Hello, I've had a Celestron AVX for about 6 years now, and it's served / serving me quite well, but it is clearly a limiting factor in my AP, so I'm looking to switch up to a more capable and reliable mount for my observatory. The AVX is not hopeless, but is the world of backlash and quite inconsistent in performance - plus, a bit noisy in a residential setting (I've had to limit the slew speed to keep it to a polite level) At the moment I mount a Skywatcher ED80 + camera, EFW and associated kit, but may one need to take more load or longer focal lengths in the future. The shortlist is currently between a Skywatcher EQ6-R pro and the iOptron CEM60 (nonEC), both fall inside the budget of 'sub £2000' and seem perfectly capable. I'd prefer new from a retailer, rather than pre-owned for the peace of mind Whatever I go for, it'll be pier mounted, PC controlled from off the mount and parked horizontally. I run SGP or Sharpcap depending on target and CPWI for pointing / sky-model. "Celestron"PWI would have to go, likely replaced by Stellarium? So, I'm looking for thoughts and experiences, help and advice as I want the mount to feel like a significant upgrade, and be reasonable future proof Help! I have analysis paralysis!

Lego International Space Station, coming 1st of Feb - Not horribly expensive either https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/international-space-station-21321 Just enough time between now and then to find some shelf space 🙂

Thanks Pete, kind of you to say

The moon rose into view on the evening of the 12th with a stunning multi coloured moonbow, and clearly showing that the weather forecast was wrong yet again 🙂 Since there were some patches of clear, I thought I'd do some cloud dodging and see what I could get. Rolled the roof off, fired up the gear and the sky had cleared a little. My intended target of the Horsehead nebula was, in soup, and glancing around with the Mk-I eyeball showed much of the same elsewhere. So I pointed to the moon and settled in to watched the fuzz stream past on Sharpcap Not long after, the right bit of sky came clear and I was able to grab about 20 mins on target. The best of which gave me 5000 frames @ 4ms per frame, Evostar ED80, zwo asi1600mm-pro / Baader red filter. Focused with Sharpcap's autofocus controlling my SESTO SENSO focus motor, which worked very well Ran the .SER through PIPP for quality sorting then 10% stack in AS!3. A gentle hand with wavelets in registax and a final balancing pass in Photoshop's Camera Raw filter First image of 2020. Not what I set out to capture, but I'm happy nonetheless Had another try for the Horsehead once the clouds shifted and murked up the moon, but only managed one framing sub then the sky duvet was pulled up tight for the night Action shot, I like to call "Moonlight failing on the Horsehead"

Good luck!

Solutions aside, it's possible to clean up: You can tweek the rgb alignment in Registax, but any fix for the edges tends to introduce CA in the lower parts. I've brought the colours together in a compromise, which has sharpened it up a little. Then converted to B&W to drop the remaining distracting fringing For a single shot, I'd keep the ISO fairly low to keep the noise under control and manage the exposure with shutter speed. You will find a single shot softer than a stacked video, as you're at the mercy of seeing

I seem to recall there are some grub screws around the collar that allow it to be centered and will aid it gripping - one opposite the clamp, and one on the bottom. It will also need a bit of fine tuning to the shaft alignment, with the grub screws on the bush, to remove the wobble Good luck, it's a great focuser

You can run Starnet to extract the star layer, then clean up the debris left over before recombination. Not fully automatic, but it’s an option that can give good results

Some general and sometimes light hearted guidance here:

For comparison, this is with the older ZWO filters

Starnet (not star tools). Yes, there is a plugin: pixinsight.com/forum/Starnet++

Could be the compression?

Nothing other than removing the stars. These are the 2 'raw' files out of Starnet++ (starnet setting 64)

Sorry, it clicks through for me. I didn't reduce the size

I opened the jpg in PixInsight, duplicated it the ran Starnet++ on both. One to extract the star mask, the other to remove the stars. Those 2 I saved and opened in paint.net (photoshop, but freeeeeee). I set the star mash on top, blend set to image burn then used a very low flow / transparent brush to drop the )( shaped light echos from the stars layer. Finally I used a small amount of clone stamp on the background layer to remove the remaining more obvious bits. The background looks different, because using burn, the stars are quite reduced

I hope you don't mind, but I pulled the stars out of the 1600 image, dusted the microlensing artifact (not perfect, but less distracting?), then added them back, slightly de-emphasised. It's starting to suffering a little from repeated compression. The 8300 image is still a winner, I think

The last time I caught Saturn with the 120mc-s, I think it was sub 1sec exposures with maybe 50 gain . Getting it on chip is the hardest part by far. For ref, the below is one of the capture videos (tracking ended up pointing at a street light!) Celestron C8 with an ADC, as it was low low in the murk 😕 Keep the exposure length short, high gain and pan around methodically till you get on target, then you can tweak the settings Good hunting!

Here's my take on the Elephant's trunk nebula in Ha, along with some of the output from Starnet++. I was just trying to understand it a bit better. The extraction of the stars seems very clean to my eyes 19 x 5mins, Skywatcher ED80 x0.85 / Baader 7nm Ha Starless (PixInsight w Starnet++, default settings) Starmap from Star Starless + Starmap layer (colour dodge, 80%)