gorann

Fully agree! Data that does not include at least one surprise is not for me.

Great image Olly - it is surely dusty! I had missed this post so it was just by chance that I aimed my RASA rig at the Pacman a few nights ago. I needed something bright as the moon was out and I used the NBZ filter (Ha+Oiii) to suppress the moon effect as much as possible. Like you I found a lot of dust. It was interesting toe see that for every stretch I saw more and more dust and less and less Pacman, or the way we are used to see the Pacman. Cheers, Göran

Thanks Clarkey! Yes, it was a bit odd to see that for every stretch there was more and more dust and less and less Pacman the way we know it.

I usually try to aim for something rarely imaged but the moon is out so I aimed at something very bright, but at the same time it then have to be something very common and popular. It became the Pacman Nebula. I had to use the NBZ filter to suppress the Moon's influence. What struck me when I started processing the image was how much dust there was around. I did not expect that from other images I have seen of it. In all the dust the small reflection nebula LBN 1299 down in the right corner stood out a bit. Not many dusty images like this seem to exist of this area, so the dust-sucking RASA did it again. Dual RASA8 rig with ASI 2600MC and IDAS NBZ filters (so mainly Ha and Oiii). 72 x 5 min so 6 hours processed in PI and PS with the new XT tools of course. Comments most appreciated as always. Cheers, Göran

Thanks Chris! I see what you see😃 If I take a starless version and stretch it a bit more, I get an image that may not be pretty but it does suggest that there is a lot of dark nebulosity obscuring the Ha, for example making a red ball look like a red ring. So what we here see as discrete Ha objects may actually be a sea of Ha shining through holes in dark nebulosity.

Had some clear nights although I had to endure temperatures below -20°C, which is fine for a viking, and I now have a small treasure chest of data (I hope, but most of it still needs to be checked and stacked). Now within two days it tuned into rain, clouds and +5°C. Here are two quite faint objects from the Sharpless Catalogue. They are therefore also rarely imaged, especially Sh2-225. Sh2-225 is actually only the annotation of a rather small relatively bright structure (as seen by the annotations here), but by going deep (17.5 hours RASA data at f/2) this image clearly reveals that Sh2-225 is part of a very large ring-like structure. Or maybe not, I think I see that it is a large ball shaped Ha-emitting structure centrally obscured by dark nebulosity. Caught 19 Jan with my dual RASA8 rig equipped with ASI2600MCs and IDAS NBZ filters on a Mesu. 210 x 5 min. Processed in PI and PS with the new XT tools. Comments most welcome as always! Cheers, Göran

Great images both in the wider field with dust and dark nebulae nearby and in the outstanding detail of the NB close-up.

If you run the camera on a car battery you could of course mix up the red and black clamps. Maybe that is what Steve did?

Great forecast and green grass! I have now more that 50 cm of snow on the ground!

One would think that an expensive gear like this would have some built in protection for switching polarity, as I guess is what you did. I wonder if ZWO or QHY have it.

Thanks a lot, much appreciated Michael!

PS. Maybe a good idea to tell them that you have started a thread on a major astro forum about your experiences dealing with them.

Sorry to hear this Steve. I guess you have nothing to loose to send it to China. We are all eager to know what will happen.

This large (spanning 22 arc min) but rarely imaged and rather faint ancient planetary nebula in Perseus was discovered by Ishida and Weinberger in 1987. It also has the designations PNG 149.7-03.3 and PK 150-031. It is 1400 light years away, and has a diameter of 9 light years. If you zoom in you can see the little blue and very hot progenitor star that once created this PN. As a bonus I accidentally caught a possible planetary nebula near the bottom edge of the image, seen as a rather small red circular object to the right of the center line. It is PN G150.1-04.5 (or IPHASX J034659.8+484900). The rather pretty blue reflection nebula at 8 o'clock from IsWe 1 has apparently no designation. Caught 16 Jan with my dual-RASA8 rig and ASI 2600MC cameras with IDAS NBZ filters. 186 x 5 min, so 15.5 hours. Processed in PI and PS with the new XT tools. Comments of course welcome Cheers, Göran

Can anyone explain why USB cables are such sensitive devices and why they fail us repeatedly?

Great images both of them Rodd! As already said the second one does not give any impression of being overcooked, so I have hard to chose.

Great to see it in broadband Olly! Sh2-280 and 282 are actually not much imaged at all. They are a bit low on my horizon but I had a go at them a month ago with the NBZ filter. Cheers, Göran

We Scandinavians have adapted. I had -27°C here this morning when I closed the obsy roof. Have a look at this guy further north in Sweden:

Great! Good news for you and very reassuring for the rest of us, if we get unlucky one day!

Don't you have a Mk I with a Sitech II like me? In any case, I never looked much at the red leds - now I've got one more thing to worry about🤮

Nice image Olly! It is named after its discoverers: amateur astronomers Harold Lower and his son Charles, who spotted it in 1939. I aimed at it about a year ago with NBZ filter and RASA 8. Cheers, Göran

I am following this thriller. Hopefully it is "just" to replace the Sitech box. It is a bit expensive but it would be even worse if you had a Mesu 200 Mk I like I have with the Sitech II. It costs 1100 USD in the US. Fortunately I have had no problems with mine so far.

Beautiful image. You caught some really nice detail there Steve! You may also consider aiming your RASA at it as there is quite a lot of IFN around: https://www.astrobin.com/0jy6z6/

Got my dual-RASA 8 rig up and running in the obsy. Temperature is an agreeable -10°C after having been between -22° and -29°C for a week with Pu-in sending Siberian air flowing down over Scandinavia. My fingers really felt the difference.

The 14" f/10 Meade ACF that I have illuminates a full frame sensor (24 x 36 mm), and maybe most other Meade ACFs do the same. Meade says that the reducer will just about illuminate an APS-C sensor (so 18 x 24), so essentially what it will do is to allow one to use a APS-C camera instead of a full frame to get the same FOV, which will be a less expensive camera in many cases. But for those like me with a full frame sensor the reducer will be of no use (just creating a circular image on the sensor).