fireballxl5

On 08/03/2023 at 18:20, mikeDnight said:

Yellow snow is always bad

Yes,  never eat yellow snow is my advice😉

My 15x50 IS have been great for tracking progress of the "green comet"

Yes,  for public outreach it's almost all visual though we have started to get some imaging gear together for society use.  Still missing a camera...  There are a few members who are keen imagers using their own kit, myself included😗

3 minutes ago, YusufS said:

Can I WhatsApp you or Instagram?

There's a messaging system on this forum. It's just for details of how to get your car down to the observatory if you have your scope...

5 hours ago, YusufS said:

have you been to one before

Oh yes,  I'm on the committee of the society and so an active member.  I'll be there tomorrow. DM me for details.

Hi there,  if you're local to Preston you could take your scope to the next public outreach event at Moor Park on Thursday evening,  16th Feb.

Details on PADAS website,  http://www.padas.org.uk/padas-home/padas-diary/

I'm sure that there'll be someone there keen to help you get to grips with your new scope. 

CS, Andy

2 hours ago, Sunshine said:

Wonderful!

Thanks!

I caught a goldfish in my back garden and named it IC 1795😜

Narrowband OSC capture, processed using Paulyman Astro's instructions for the Foraxx palette in PI. I see that there is a PI Script for this now.

7h10m (43x600s subs) using my 4" refractor (Borg101ED) and OSC camera (ASI533MC) with a dual-band filter (IDAS NBZ).

CS, Andy

Travelling down on the train (hopefully) tomorrow from Preston with a couple of astro buddies. Always enjoy the show and it's been 4 years since our last. 

On 28/01/2023 at 12:23, petevasey said:

The processing you used has certainly done an excellent job, great image.

On 28/01/2023 at 12:23, petevasey said:

But is it possible for anyone to gain access to this process, and how?

 

Thanks Peter🙂

The process that I followed is not so sophisticated really but does reply on having PixInsight I think, but possibly only if you wish to use BlurXterminator which, to be honest, didn't do too much for the comet here, only the stars really. As you can see from the basic process flow below, it was all done making significant use of Russell Croman's toolset. 

The basic flow was

1. Subs calibrated , registered and stacked using WBPP

2. SXT batch process on all calibrated / registered subs to create 2 sets of images with the comet and stars only

3. CometAlign on the Comet-only subs

4. ImageIntegration of all the Comet-only subs

5. DBE on the Comet stack

6. NXT on Comet stack

7. GHS to stretch the Comet

8. ImageIntegration of all of the Star-only subs

9. SPCC on the Star stack

10. GHS to stretch the Stars

11. Convolution on Star stack

12. ColSat on Star stack

13. PixelMath to combine the Comet and Star stacks

14. BXT on the combined image

15. NXT on the combined image

16. Gentle Curves applied twice to light the tail and coma

HTH, Andy

1 hour ago, Uplooker said:

Excellent capture!

well thanks Ian!

My 2nd attempt at imaging the 'green comet' during late evening of Wed 25th.

I used the SXT Batch Process to allow a separate process the comet and stars and then CometAlign as part of integration of the comet subs. SXT on 75 subs took approx 10 hours on my 8-year old 6 core i7, with a previous process of 154 subs taking double this😬

Borg 101ED / ASI533MC unfiltered / 75x60s subs

Some shots of comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) late on Friday evening/Saturday morning to create this time-lapse animation showing its motion against the background stars over approx 2.5hours.

Borg 101ED / ASI533MC / 154x60s subs

Now uploaded to Youtube...

Blink.avi

Hi Miguel, thanks for the reminder of this activity.

The first time using my SDRplay receiver and a MLA-30+ loop antenna for this kind of detection but I've captured a couple of recordings this afternoon, streams of 2s and 3s chirps at 9.6MHz. 

Are you able to confirm that these are HAARP transmissions?

Regards, Andy

1 hour ago, windjammer said:

BXT is Blur Xterminator ?

 

Yes,  it makes deconvolution child's play,  well almost!

Reading M106's entry on Wiki and I couldn't help but use this description😀

Messier 106 - Wikipedia

BXT has enabled me to find a processing workflow that quickly brings out detail that I knew was lurking from previous attempts at processing this and other Springtime galaxies that I was able to capture using my RC6 earlier this year. This is probably the last bright example but there are others...😉

SM RC6 - TS 2" RC Flattener - IDAS D2 - ASI533MC Pro - RST135E

130x180s (6.5 hours) over two nights

CS, Andy

M63 - The Sunflower Galaxy, located in Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs). Another Springtime galaxy image from March 2022, this time from my back garden in suburban Preston. Again using my StellaLyra RC6 scope with 533MC-P camera and IDAS D2 light pollution filter. Processed in PixInsight, including BXT.

There are some faint and distant galaxies also in the image, such as PGC 2194083 (mag +17.7) and PGC 2191787 (mag +18.1).

A much easier process than my recent M64. Not sure if the background in M64 was affected by cloud or that it was binned at BIN4, whereas this was BIN2. I now always BIN1 by default btw.

SM RC6 - Hotech SCA Flattener - IDAS D2 - ASI533MC Pro - RST135E

42x300s (3.5 hours) over two nights

CS, Andy

12 hours ago, MartinB said:

It has a tint of the dreaded green which is, to my eye, just distracting a little from the overall appearance

Thanks for the feedback @MartinB. I see this green now, especially on my phone display, though it doesn't seem so obvious in the original TIFF. I did include an SCNR G@0.5 step but it looks like I undid it. Will look at the colour balance in more detail...

M64 the Black Eye Galaxy located within the boundaries of Coma Berenices (Berenice's Hair), favourably positioned for observing in Springtime. I acquired the raw data on 25th March 2022 at our Astro Society's local 'dark-sky' site near to Dunsop Bridge. Conditions were difficult, with a strong gusting breeze and so I reduced the sampling rate of the image by binning pixels in software at point of capture to BIN4.

This is just 1hour 22mins of exposure processed in PixInsight, including BlurXTerminator which just does the detail business very well😉

RC6 - Flattener - IDAS D2 LPF - ASI533MC Pro

41x120s

CS, Andy

49 minutes ago, pipnina said:

150mm f8 RC would have a focal length of 1200mm.

and this is likely a slower f/9 scope, as most 150mm versions seem to be. 

I have a mobile rig that is based on a RC6 with OSC camera (533MC) and LPF for colour imaging. I use a 70mm guidescope with ASI120MM, all loaded on a harmonic drive mount, the RST135E, with no CW used. This seems to work well, see my latest image of M51 here...

CS, Andy

M51 imaged back in March using my RC6 and ASI533MC camera.

I left the raw data unprocessed until now as stacking the best 50 of 60 300s subs showed that it needed some work - there was a strong gradient and severe dust bunnies to deal with (flats taken but not so effective for some reason).

The release of BlurXTerminator (AI-based deconvolution tool) that is a current Hot Topic lol prompted me to find some data to test it with. So here's a cropped picture of M51 using this tool to bring out some fine detail. I think that it works rather well:)

RC6 - Flattener - ASI533MC Pro - IDAS D2 LPF - RST135E

50x300s

Processed in PI

Thanks @geoflewis👍

Yes,  I agree that my Jupiter image is slightly overdone - I often get carried away either with sharpening and/or colour saturation😁

Jupiter and Mars captured last night before the clouds rolled in. Visually both planets looked super but seeing was worsening as the bad weather approached so pretty pleased to get these shots.

Jupiter: best 10% of 30,000 3ms frames

Mars: best 10% of 60,000 3ms frames

150mm refractor with 2.5x PM, giving 2725mm focal length, so imaged at 0.22"/pixel.

2 hours ago, Dek Rowan Astro said:

The joystick is really only used for centering during alignment and fine positioning adjustment. It is not designed to drive the telescope across the sky.

Hi Derek,  thanks for the feedback and additional information on the details of mount operation. I recognise some aspects of the behaviour of the 'Push track window' you describe from this first use. 

To be clear,  I only tried using the joystick for small movements when re-centreing the target, not for general slewing. I resorted to using the slow motion controls only when struggling with joystick and SS for fine control. I feel I understand these controls better now with feedback provided from yourself,  @swsantos and others and so will try to avoid this in future. 

Thanks again. 

Regards,  Andy