sammak127

Not officially a newcomer but stargazing has been dormant for about three years - coincidentally that’s also the age of my young daughter. Slowly hoping and planning to get back into it. That coincides with a move to south london... forest hill in particular. I read about the Flamsteed group monthly observing meeting on Blackheath which looks good. But I wondered about any super-local meet-ups in or around SE23. It looks to be a bit more use than my current more central london location and wondered if there were any other stargazers in that neck of the woods who had foun

Welcome to stargazer’s lounge Neal.

Good sleuthing guys.

Here is a picture I took with my wife on holiday in France. It was a rare evening of stargazing after 3 year toddler hiatus. We took it on a canon 6d with a 16mm wide angle sitting on the star adventurer. It’s based on 3 exposures where I stacked the sky part whilst only using 1 layer for the foreground. Maybe 20 second exposures I can’t quite recall now. Then bumped up the levels also in photoshop.

Agreed, such a brilliant idea. amazing what 2.1x mag can do... and thanks, yes a bit of both - a cool character and a cool constellation

Having just had a baby (called Lyra) 1 month ago, the telescope is somewhat of a dusty memory at the moment. It was my birthday 2 weeks after the baby was born and my partner bought me a gift on the baby's behalf, of a pair of Vixen SG 2.1x42 Widefield Binoculars. We live in London with all that entails astronomywise, but even so that is where they got their first test. They are really remarkable. I suppose where we live you can see about 50% of what you might call the main stars of each constellation, but I would say the Vixen's easily up that number by about 10 times. I read a review th

thanks paul, you have to work with what you have right? I'm sure you all know this, but I have found that if the target is more than about 30 degrees above the horizon, the light pollution is somewhat less of an obstruction. anyway light pollution is as nothing compared to the endless clouds!!!

though it also increases the sense of blur because of the amount of wobble on the various subs. 2 steps forward 1 step back!

Thanks for the advice. after reading a bit more I got hold of Deep Sky Stacker and tried combining the 2 sets of images I captured.. and it does seem to offer a bit more information to play with when output as a 32 bit tiff. SO much to learn. Anyway, I'll post the result for the sake of it.

hi will, thanks for commenting. very short, like 2secs, it's about all the supatrak can manage as it was windy too.. missed the clear skies last night.. but when I get another chance I'll try increasing the number of subs, see if that helps.. maybe some sandbags to weigh down the mount might help a bit too.

Clear skies in London last night, so I got out onto the flat roof with some new additions to my mak. I'm still struggling on with the supatrak + mak127 package - Always dreaming of an heq5pro or somesuch. First proper go using backyard eos, I also got to use my hand made Bahtinov mask. Definite improvements over previous attempts for which I used single exposures. This time I took about 10 lights which I stacked by hand in photoshop. I haven't got my head around darks and flats and so forth yet... that's got to be next. Oh and things are much improved by borrowing my partners Canon 6d which of

really fantastic. such detail. envious in the best possible way

That's an amazing picture.

Welcome to SGL. I can recommend the Skywatcher mak 127 as a good starter scope. Great for looking at the moon, which is a good place to start. You get a lot of bang for your buck. Equally Knighty2112's advice is a good bet too.

surely that's the eye of sauron! no but seriously that is an amazing picture.

really nice. we've just got a star adventurer and are waiting for a suitable time to give it a go

that looks great. I am also amateur. good luck

i really like that.. forgive my newbie question, but what makes the sort of starburst effect on some star images happen?

how fascinating. i wonder what that flash was.

reall great images

totally super.. that seems like a great place to view from

amazing.. as an animator, I really love the moving image version. so that is the amount of rotation saturn does in 3 hours... AMAZING!

wow, that's so clear and defined. gotta keep practicing

really lovely pictures.. I'm off to the mid-south france later in the year for a holiday and I'm bringing the telescope.. hopefully we can enjoy some fo the same seeing you get.