Whistlin Bob

Congratulations on your 300p @BiggarDigger- sounds brilliant. I umm'ed and aaah'ed about a bigger scope for ages before taking the plunge. I've never regretted it for a second. @procky1845 many people said the same to me- "you'll just pick up more light pollution" and of course this is true. But everything increases at the same rate and so on fainter objects, there's more light altogether and you still see more of the object. I have a 200p and a 350. In equal conditions (and I've used both scopes in Bortle 2 up to 6, home is Bortle 5) the 200p, good though it is, gets blown away by the bigger scope. The downside is that it's a big beast and takes a while to assemble and collimate, other than that it's brilliant!

Love M33 as both a visual and imaging target. This is from two years ago, I think 3 hours of 5 minute exposures on a 130pds with a Canon 600d and an IDAS D2 filter.

It has taken me ages to get this one into a state where I'm happy with it. I think part of the problem is that the IKI observatory published their data on the same target on the same night I was imaging this. I've been having a lot of fun playing with their data, and when I started on my own data, my little reflector felt a bit outgunned. Think about it: Not only that- they've got 80 hours of integration time under a dark sky. I've got 3 hours in suburbia. With LED streetlights. You can pop over to the IKI thread to see how their data turned out, but all things considered I think the 130pds acquitted itself pretty well. My data was: 20*30 secs each of RGB for the stars, 60*60 secs Ha and 90x60ses Oiii all at gain 250. The channels were mixed HOO, with the Blue at 150% to give the oxygen envelope around the nebula a blue tone. I had a lot of trouble trying to balance the brightness of the crescent with the background nebulosity- in the end I did two versions in Pixinsight, one for the Crescent and one for the rest and then merged them as layers in GIMP.

I have a 200p that I use for imaging and I use Skywatchers own coma corrector- for visual the coma isn't really had enough to trouble me, although others don't like it. It works well with both DSLR and dedicated astro cameras, plus gets me imaging at f4.5. I do sometimes have reflection issues with NB filters and very bright stars that are worse when the cc is in the image train.

This. It doesn't make an enormous amount of sense to me, but I have found it to be completely true. M33 was an object that I failed to see at home for a very long time, despite pretty strong equipment and many attempts. Then when I did find it, it was quite underwhelming. But over time I've had a few really good views, and I'm pretty fond of it as a target. I guess it must be simply that you learn what works and what you can expect from the sky conditions on any particular night.

Well done to the winners and everyone who took part 👍

I use very think heat holders gloves with the tips of the thumbs and right first finger snipped off and sealed with duct tape (!) Cheap and works very well!

What a brilliant project and beautiful scope. Thank you very much for sharing.

Couple of different processes of the Wizard nebula. The acquisition details are: R,G,B – each 20x 30s (Stars) Ha,Oiii,Sii – each 100x 60s (Nebula). All at Gain 250 on ASI1600mm with ZWO filters, HEQ5 with, of course, 130pds using SW Coma Corrector. There’s 2 presentations: the first is SHO, but with the green channel then mostly re-distributed into yellow and blue, the second is more naturalistic with Ha and Sii fed into Red and Oiii into blue and green, with a 50% multiplier on blue and a reduction in Red where Oiii is present. So not very naturalistic!

Here's my HOO effort. Exactly the same technique as my SHO version above, but with the channels fed as follows: Red= Ha at 100% Green = Oiii at 75% Blue - Oiii at 150% Plus I didn't desaturate the stars. I was happy with the colour mix compared with other combinations I tried, but then looking again at some of the others here, have I made mine too blue? I think you could process and re-process this indefinitely with different tones and hues!

Great write up... making me wish my bins had filter threads!

Like a few others I found this one a bit trickier to process than the M16 from last month- despite the strength of the data. I've played with SHO and HOO on this; I preferred the SHO, but might try and do a HOO as well if I get some time. The process I used is below; this is all in Pixinsight: - Rotated Ha image to the direction I prefer then registered the other images to it. - Clone each channel and stretch them to mask for Noise Reduction (though noise was fairly minimal) - Use Multiscale Linear Transform for noise reduction, quite strongly at single and double pixel scale (threshold of 3 and 3 iterations) and gently ay 4 pixel scale (1 and 1) - Masked Stretch on each channel - Bit of curves to enhance them further. - Clone each channel, create a star mask, invert it to protect the stars and then remove the nebulae and smaller stars. - Apply Starnet to the original channels to create Starless version - Combine the Channels as SHO - I usually try and use Hue and SCNR to give a less green / more golden appearance, but it really didn't seem to improve this data. - Instead, I held the green and red (there's not much Sii in any case) and boosted the blue to stop the green being completely dominant and try to enhance the lovely oxygen envelope around the Wolf-Rayet shockwaves. - Luminance mask and another round of noise reduction similar to before. - Invert the mask and enhance detail; I found the MLT didn't work well on this data and so used a mild Local Histogram Equalisation instead. To be fair- it's pretty sharp already! - Finally, add the stars back in- I couldn't get colours I was happy with on this, so I mostly de-saturated them instead. Again- it's been a pleasure to process such strong data and to compare what I've come up with to other peoples images. It's really interesting to see how different peoples preferences are. Looking forward to the next data release!

Thanks Gents 😀 @Mark at Beaufort the planetary observations were largely in the WO Binoviewers that you sold to me. They can just about focus in the Dob with both Barlows and give really terrific high magnification views.

I really wasn’t expecting much last night after our local club zoom meeting (Tom Field from Seattle talking about spectroscopy- very recommended), as the forecast was iffy and I was tired. It was only my son nagging that got me out really. I’m very glad he did. Got the 14″ out (in for a penny…) and started off with some broken cloud and a nice view of Mars- it really is very good at the moment. Polar caps and surface shading were very prominent- and that colour- wow! Decided to try and do an imaging run in the Dob on it- it’s harder than it looks!!! I barlowed it up to get some detail, and at 5m focal length keeping it on the screen, never mind in the middle, is not easy!!! Eventually realised that the seeing wasn’t going to support anything special so we abandoned that idea and started observing instead. Next went for the Pleiades, and at that point the penny dropped that seeing might be a bit wobbly, but the sky was very transparent. The nebulosity was evident all over the place, a bright electric blue around the brighter stars. We both found that by gently wobbling the scope you could bring out the granularity right across the cluster. Moved across to Andromeda, and just sat taking turns drinking it in- with the bright core centred the disk reached out beyond the fov of the 30mm EP. Even m110 was pretty straightforward. Time for my son to go to bed, so I said goodnight and then took a break to set an imaging run going. Next up- Uranus- clear green disk. Lovely view. M33 best ever view from home. Superb in 30mm. Core was clear with hints of the outer regions. Ngc752 lovely rich cluster. Almost rose like. Gorgeous. NGC 891 – Nope- even with this sky I couldn’t catch this at home. I fancied some more galaxies so next up was Mirach and its ghost. At around 200x this was clearly visible. NGC 7814 in the corner of Pegasus was really faint but there. Ngc7331 above the north west arm of Pegasus was nice and obvious. Worth going for Stephans quintet? YES! First sight at home in 30mm just a smudge, but definitely seen. Spent a long time on this one. I must have tried for this 10+ times but I’ve only seen it once before on a special night in Cumbria. It was only the faintest lightening of the sky without real shape, but the concept of seeing this galaxy cluster with my own eyes blows my mind. Over to Cepheus for the Garnet star- like a glowing coal, with hints of nebulosity around it. Ngc7380- my imaging target for the night. No nebulosity seen but a nice v shaped cluster. Caroline’s Rose. This was inspired a bit by a clubmates picture. On hazy nights I find this cluster can be a bit meh- but tonight the hundreds of faint stars were a wonderful sight. Time for bed now, but went back for a last peak at Mars. Just a terrific sight. I spent a while looking for the moons without any joy- the planet was just too bright, the glow prominent even when the disk was edged out of view. Tearing myself away from the eyepiece on a night like this was not easy!

I actually would take a Star Adventurer, DSLR and a couple of lenses and try to get some 135mm'ish images of the core of our galaxy, the bits that are just too low for me to get at home. Then I'd just scan the skies and drink in the view whilst it clicked away. I'd probably get tempted by a closer up view at some point, so I'd need some binoculars. It'd either be Cygnus that did this to me, or that run down from Altair through the Wild Ducks to M17. Then I'd lose it altogether and need a big Dob. Probably that same area- it's really hard to get from home, and some quality time with a bit of light grasp and height in the sky around that bit would be really something. Did you say we could take a truck?

That's familiar! One of my favourite astro upgrades was a blackout blinds for the bathroom! Really liking this thread. I started working through the Messier's myself a couple of years ago, but got stuck in the last 20 it so that are in the South during summer where it's hard for me to see them. Good luck with this and keep us posted 👍

Lots of debate on focusers here. My experience is that the standard one works well with DSLRs but struggles a little with the weight of camera and filter wheel in a dedicated set up. However, with a bit of fiddling (making sure everything is adjusted well and locked once focus is confirmed) I think it does cope. The photos below all came out of an ASI1600 with filter wheel on the standard focuser.

That's gorgeous. Lovely detail and very well processed.

Probably spent far too long processing this one, but I really wanted to try and bring out the dust. Still not quite happy with it, but been looking at it too long and need to walk away- for a while at least! Also noticed that there was a touch of tilt on the stars. I spent a while adjusting it… and I’ve made it worse!! So much for my DIY skills. This is an 1 hr 20 minutes data from 14th. 30 second subs at 250 gain in SW200p- 20 mins of Blue and Green and 40 mins of Red (it clouded over before I got to the blue and green second time around!)

That moment when your 130pds has been rattling round in a frequently moved box for four months, you get it out, stick it on the mount and find the collimation is still perfect 😁

I find that we're always our own harshest critics, so I can understand you may not be entirely happy, but I think that's an absolutely terrific image. The focus and framing seem bang on and I can pick out lots of my favourite targets for a summer nights observing, not least the veil and the crescent. I love the density of the stars through most of the image, how prominent the dark lanes are and the bokeh on the brightest stars. Perhaps a touch more saturation would be good, but I wouldn't change much. Looks like the nifty fifty has struck again!

Lots of good points made on here. Here's my experience: I've been the proud owner of a third hand (at least) 14" dob for two and a half years now. I spent a long time anxiously pondering whether to purchase it when it appeared on AB&S and spent the whole drive home looking at how big it was and thinking that I'd been a bit daft. 70 or so sessions later my love for it is completely undimmed. Yes- it takes up a ridiculous amount of space in my garage, I spend half an hour every session assembling, calibrating and putting it away again and once it is up you need two people to move it somewhere else in the garden. But the views... In the spring, in my aero 30mm EP, which is good but far from premium, it was able to deliver enough contrast in my Bortle 5 pocket of suburbia to show me seven galaxies in the vicinity of m86, the light, literally, of trillions of stars. It has enough oomph to push the Western veil through an Oiii filter so that I can see the whole creepy alien shape just hanging in the sky with it's ethereal beauty, green against the pitch darkness behind it. With a couple of Barlow's, my binoviewers can just about grab focus. In them, at 220x, m13 is a glorious glitterball of stars resolving deep into its heart. In the same setup I had Mars a few nights ago, gorgeous orange with surface textures and polar cap prominent. Ok... I'm getting carried away here, but my point is, I'm in amateur astronomy to be awed and big scopes deliver awesome views. Is this really a fever, or a rational desire to experience as closely as possible our tiny tiny scale in the scheme of things? I can completely understand the appeal of refractors and the sort of view they give- the exquisite background, the pinpoint stars, the beautiful colours. More then once I've had strokey chin moments hovering over the buy button for a nice achro and I'm sure I'll succumb one day. But they feel to me like a delicious hors d'oeuvres or a fine dessert- and right now I'm on the steak course! Of course, other views are available, but my advice on this would be to listen to Oscar Wilde: "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself"

This one has taken a while. Back in July I took a picture of the Pelican Nebula that was a combination of 30 minutes RGB and about 80 minutes of Ha. The plan was to add some Oiii and Sii and turn it into a full narrowband image. Almost 2 months later we’ve finally had a clear night that has enabled me to get those 2 other channels. I managed to get an hour on each filter. Looking at the data that came out of this, it really wasn’t quite enough as both are quite weak, but patience had run out and I put it all together anyway and tried to sort out the various defects in post-processing. So for the imgers- Oiii and Sii are both are 60x 1 minute subs, added to the 80 minutes of Ha and 30 minutes of RGB. All used gain 250 to keep the read noise down so that I could keep the subs short. In both of the images the RGB is only used for the stars. First here’s a more naturalised version in which the Oiii and Sii are both fed into blue and green, the effect of which is to bleach the Red Ha: Secondly here’s an SHO version. As usual it initially came out very green (because Hydrogen is dominant), and I then used the Hue and SCNR tools to distribute this out into Blue and Gold before adding the RGB stars: