Whistlin Bob

Came back from a nice family night out on Friday to a lovely clear view of 95%ish moon- had a lovely hour taking some pictures. After doing lots of DSO lately, where the pursuit of greater quality is leading to ever longer integration times it was nice to just wander round the disc of the moon and take (relatively) quick captures. These are my 3 favourites- the same technique was used on all three- a one minute video using ASI224 camera, then Autostakkert to identify and stack the best 5% of frames and finally Pixinsight to crop and sharpen using the Multiscale tool (similar to Wavelets in Registax) and then tweak the levels. First one is the Copernicus crater and associated impact debris. I tweaked the curves quite a lot to bring out the spoil from the impact. From Wikipedia, the crater itself is 93km wide, using the Pixel scale I make the main disk of debris around it 400km wide, whilst Wikipedia thinks the rays extend for twice that. That’s quite an impact!!! Next up is another impact- here’s the smaller Proclus crater, with the rays of the impact spreading out over Mare Crisium: Finally- here’s the Aristarchus Crater with Schroter’s Valley (which is the sinuous rille extending up from Aristarchus in the middle of the image) being really nicely illuminated on its southern wall.

After 2 or 3 attempts at pre-processing with PI which took whole evenings and didn't seem to yield anything much better than what DSS gave me I went for that approach.

Just going through them now- pleased with this one 😁. Makes a really nice change from Deep Sky Imaging.

Thanks for the prompt gents- this is fun!

If you loosen the alignment screws the whole thing comes out- it's quite easy then 👍

That's a beauty! A great reward for so many hours spent. I especially like the strong Ha signal that you've captured- it really lifts the whole image. I'm always slightly bemused by the category 'Grand Design' and what the name seems to imply- does anyone know the origins of it? Am I reading something into it that I shouldn't?

Welcome- and congratulations on some wonderful images. My favourite there is the widefield- the detail is exquisite.

I'd say go for it. These were taken with a 550d with DIY cooling added and a range of filters. It's a good camera.

Wow- that's a terrific collection- some stunning images in there. I wouldn't, in your position, be too worried about spending more time on individual images if you're getting results like that. I especially like the variety of focal lengths you're using to give interesting presentations of familiar objects. I totally concur on the use of tools to speed things up- plate solving on APT has made an enormous difference for me.

That's very well done!

Excellent thread. Skies cleared 90 minutes later then forecast last night, too late for any imaging or a proper session so plonked the 8" on the lawn and worked my way through the Orion list on page 1- getting as far as eta before the equipment and seeing stopped me. Really nice little session. Diffraction was causing me a few problems, and the aperture mask is too small for this sort of thing, but I found by holding my hand over half the aperture it greatly improved things. When there's a bit more time I'll definitely come back and have a go with better equipment 😊

I bought a 600d from Camera Jungle 18 months ago- it's been really good, I'd happily get another. The nifty fifty recommended above can give great photos, but it's a beggar to manually focus it at night.

Have you 'trimmed' the drawtube of your focuser at all? Sometimes it can protrude it over the primary and affect star shapes. When it's a big problem it affects stars all over the image and is very obvious, but when it's a small problem it only affects one side/corner. To check this get your camera to it's focus point and then have a look down the front of the tube- see how far the drawtube protrudes over the primary mirror. I had this problem quite severely (stars like yours in the middle steadily getting worse until they liked like Pacman at the top left corner) and trimmed around 10mm off. This fixed it, but I have to be careful not to wind the focuser out too far!

Welcome to the forum! Lovely picture- a 200p and a DSLR are a brilliant combo for full disc pictures of the moon. You might find a faster exposure will give you a little more detail. I bought my 200p Dob at the start of my interest in this hobby 5 years ago and it's a wonderful scope. The views it renders of the moon in the eyepiece are epic, it's pretty good on planets and has enough aperture to go after DSOs- especially at a dark site. The only danger is that in my case it fuelled an unexpected and hopeless addiction with the night sky. I now own 5 scopes, 3 cameras and countless bits and pieces. I am both poorer and happier. You have been warned! 😉😁

+1 for APT. I find it a bit clunky and it takes a good few sessions to get used to it, but it really has it all.

Definitely the right move. Later models often come up cheaply and are far better- as several have mentioned the 450d is big step forward from the 400d.

Hmmm- it's touch and go I'd say. By my maths (not always my strong point) in a 1 minute sub it should be covering 902" and your model is doing 898". The max pixel scale I have with my SA kit is around 4" so it's right on the limit. However, I suspect that might be within practical tolerance (your polar alignment, unless perfect will probably cause at least the same error) - and they'd probably say they've already given you a solution with the option to guide. Was the test performed with batteries or mains power?

I have an 8" and 14" dob and Bottle 5 skies at home. In the 8" it's very rare I can see more than the core. With the 14 I can make out a much larger area, but it's faint and I can definitely see more with practice, but dark lanes are visible and there's a larger milky presence. On the other hand, last year, I took my 14 to a darker site (my guess is Bortle 2) and saw the whole thing... in my finderscope! I'm afraid the best upgrade for your scope is a dark sky.

Wow- that is simply stunning and a wonderful image. You've really captured some detail in there with some very skillful processing.

I think you deserve a medal for getting that under those conditions!

This is my first full colour picture from a mono camera 🙂 This nebula sits next to Navi in Cassiopeia (Gamma Cass)- apparently the star is gradually eroding the nebula. The nebula itself is both an emission and a reflection nebula, but I think I’ve only managed to capture the emission parts here. I took this over 2 nights on 15th and 17th Jan. It’s been a bit of a learning process to put this together: 40 mins of 2 minute subs in each of LRGB on 15th 100 mins of 5 minute subs in Ha on 17th It certainly takes a bit more effort to process mono, and it wasn’t helped by loads of problems with ice and fogging on my secondary. This led to not getting much Ha signal, and I’ve used layers in Gimp to bring it out (don’t tell Pixinsight- they’ll excommunicate me!). I think there’s probably more can be extracted from this data- especially around the body of the nebula- but I’m still pleased to have a full colour image! I had another go at this a few days later and the whole scope completely iced up- see picture at the bottom!

Excellent thread! Here's my 200p shooting the moon... ... and here it is with my Orion USA 14" at a club meet last year. On the topic of mods I've never got on very well with standard azimuth bearings. A cheap mod that works for me was to add a lazy Susan bearing (£15 on eBay) which removes nearly all the friction, then some chopped up bits of bath mat to put a bit back in. You can shim to taste 😁

I actually have one of each of these! I bought a 1.25" Baader Neodymium before I got into imaging as it works well as a visual LP filter- but I then found it also worked well with my ASI224 as an IR blocker and improved the image quite a lot. I managed quite well with this until the lights on my street were upgraded to LEDs (including an 8m monster right outside my house)- I decided to really bite the bullet and purchased a 2 inch IDAS D2. It felt like a hell of a lot of money for a small piece of glass (still does) but it made all the difference in the world to my setup - which is extremely close to yours (my 600d is modified and I use a SW Coma Corrector). Filterless, my subs fog out at less than a minute- with the filter they'll happily go out to 5 minutes ( @CloudMagnet's post shows the effect very well). I also picked up a 2nd hand CLS clip filter for combining with standard photography lenses (which the 2" format can't support)- it's pretty good, but not as good as the D2.

This is a really excellent and interesting report- thanks for sharing. Reports like this really help to give ideas for improving observing experiences... I'm very interested in your BV experience- I have a WO set, presumably the same as yours, but I can only bring it to focus on my 14" by using x1.6 and x2 Barlows. I've been pondering replacing the focuser with a low profile model to get more inward travel- I think you've just provided the final bit of inspiration for me to go ahead with that. It's also interesting to read about your 40mm experience. I've got 2 Meade 40mm super plossls- but I tried them in the BVs once and it was like looking down a couple of tunnels- not a good view at all. Perhaps if I can go to using the 1.6x Barlow only this will improve. Finally- I'm going to look into getting an observing hood!

I use the same camera model- also modded. By setting the iso to 6400 I can just about get a view of the very brightest stars in a 135 f4 lens- anything wider and no chance. Like @happy-kat I use an rdf in the hot shoe and set the focus position in daylight. It's a bit of a faf but I've gotten used to it and it's a workable approach