Whistlin Bob

I know this is a super popular target, but its position in the sky makes it super tricky to get any decent time on at home. I'm in a group that hires a pier at Roboscopes in southern Spain and obtained this data through that route. The scope we use is a WO 132 Frac with an ASI294MM. This image is an hour of Ha and then 2 hours from 3 of Oiii and 1.5 from 3 of Sii. Even Spain has clouds!!! Here's an SHO version, composed with Narrowband Normalisation utility in Pixinsight:

And here's a version that has Ha in the red channel and then combines 50/50 Oiii and Sii for blue and green. I think I prefer this  

This is the last one from me, I promise! Everyone raves about Orion, but for me, Cygnus has a bit of everything- I never get bored exploring its riches.

This is an SHO treatment of the Butterfly Nebula, with some RGB Stars, including Sadr. This was taken over 2 nights in early September, and I managed to get 3 hours per channel (plus 30 minutes for the stars). I used the same kit for acquisition as my Tulip above, so a 150 Quattro on an NEQ6 with an ASI1600mm and Baader UNB filters. 

Here's my Tulip nebula. I took this with in the last week of August, but wasn't very happy with the processing. So I've left it- in the interim I downloaded the Narrowband Normalization utility for PI that @Luke Newbould highlights on his YouTube channel which really helped with bringing out the Oiii in this image and highlighting the bow wave from Cygnus x1 that you can see just above the Tulip. So, thanks Luke! I'm much happier with this version. I captured this over 2 nights- it's 30 mins of RGB for the stars, 90 mins of Ha, which came through lovely and strong, plus 2.5 hrs each of Oiii and Sii, which were more of a battle, as usual! Kit used was a 150 Quattro, with an ASI1600mm and Baader UNB filters.

2 hours ago, JeremyS said:

Changing the setting on the control knob can help a lot.

What? It's a control knob? I thought it was for generating clouds over the face of the sun. That's what mine does!

At this point I'm also in the Quark club for poor purchases- I bought one second hand a few years ago, but the views I've had through it have been pretty rubbish. I've never had the chance to invest much time on it and cling on to the hope that at some point I'll get it working well.

Like a few others, my most acute moment of regret was with a purchase that turned out brilliantly. I bought my 14" dob used, and when driving back I was overwhelmed by the size and huge weight of it. First light was even worse: it took ages to set up, I couldn't collimate it, and the views through the ep that came with it were very poor. Luckily, I persisted, and once dialled in, it was the start of a love that's still going strong years later.

I do like a play with vintage glass in astrophotography- latest one is a 1970s (probably) Japanese wide effort- a rare Ensinor 24mm. Daytime photographers talk about lack of aberration and edge to edge sharpness on these so that always makes it promising- and when they turn up for a few quid on eBay I can't resist. Unfortunately, the m42 threads didn't agree with my astro equipment, and the jury rigged attachment I tried gave me some wicked tilt. Hence starless!!!

This is an astro first light for the rig, covering the whole of Cygnus (hopefully cropped to keep it in the bounds on the competition), 60*60 seconds with a 4nm dual band filter on an SVBony SV405 camera.

Yeah- beautiful shot of one of my favourite bits of sky. And I often find myself reverting to GIMP for the final stage, despite being a PI fan for for nearly 3 years and also owning an Affinity license.

Wonderful session tonight. Several obvious targets, but I got really stuck on the Wild Duck Cluster until it went behind some trees. I tried it at 200x and it was fine, but swapped the zoom for my 30mm aero+ cc, giving me 50x in the dob, and that made it really interesting 😀!  Seeing was steady and transparency was excellent, meaning the cluster resolved to very fine detail, despite the low mag. As my eyes adapted I started to see very faint clouds of stars and dark lanes around it- the cluster didn't have a definite border but gradually merged into the stars beyond. A really special "wow" moment, but one that I had to work a bit for. Really don't get many nights like this in a year- just wonderful.

Sounds like we've all had similar experiences: transparency had been pretty poor all evening with clouds gradually thickening. But it didn't matter, I had the big dob out for the first time since early July. M13 was ok, The Wild Duck Cluster (one of the odder astro names in my book) was really good, despite the murk. I've not seen it in ages, so it was great too sit and watch it twinkle. Then moved onto Saturn. My first view this year, and wow, those rings have flattened! Played spot the moon at 200x, and I got Dione, Titan, Phoebe, Hyperion and Rhea, which was really pleasing. 4mm (400x) was a bit much for tonight's seeing, so I backed off to 264x with the binoviewers and put a 160mm mask on, and this was the highlight of the night. I'm not sure how many times I watched it float across the fov, but it was lots! Some detail on the disk, and really good views of the Cassini division. Mesmerising 😀

Finished with a nice wander up and down the lunar terminator. 

Yep- go! go! go! We have a clear sky!

It's not quite dark yet, I've already had the blue beauty of Vega and a nice split of the double double in the eyepiece. The weather's warm, the beer is cold, no work tomorrow, and suddenly this is the best hobby in the world again 😃😃😃

Not been around much lately, but just caught this video. Bless him, it takes a while, but the penny eventually drops with Dylan O'Donnell and diffraction spikes...

Good point about the balance- I'd forgotten about that, but I can't quite balance mine properly with the vixen- however it's on a solid old eq6, which is guiding at around 0.6-7 RMS, so I haven't worried about it, but it's not ideal. 

I'm also glad I didn't need a hacksaw on the focuser! 

I guess you're right: fast newts are always going to need a little tweaking- hopefully now it's bedded in, it'll only be small adjustments.

Short review it may have been, but it helped me decide to pull the trigger- and I'm very happy with the decision. Hope you don't mind me adding to your thread, but I thought it would be more helpful than starting a new one. 

Interested to know whether your experience matches, this would be my summarised view. The good:

- f3.45 is terrific, really noticeable step up from my f4.5 130pds

- Optics in general are really good.

- I'm impressed with the included coma corrector stars are a good shape to the edges of a 4/3" sensor and no chromatic or spherical aberration to speak of.

- focuser is better than the 130pds too, and can hold a mono asi1600 + filter wheels with no tilt.

The bad:

- chronic light leaks from the bottom (fixed with a shower cap)

- internal reflections galore (fixed with blackboard paint on all non black internal surfaces)

- noticeable diffraction from the mirror clips (fixed with a primary mirror mask)

Others also report huge difficulty in getting the secondary collimated, and staying collimated, but that hasn't been my experience. 

My verdict would be that it's a good scope and with a bit of tinkering (which you shouldn't really have to do) it becomes superb. 

Here's a couple of pics from mine.

On 28/07/2023 at 13:23, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Its a bit like comparing Sailing, speed boating and wind surfing. They all involve water, they all provide entertainment and thrills for participants but all so different.

This discussion might be an old chestnut, but this could be one of the best analogies I've come across for imaging vs observing.

I'm very enthusiastic about both, but to me they're such completely different pursuits. I agree with many of the descriptions on here.

Observing for me is perhaps 30% the chase (I like star hopping) and 70% the serenity, intimacy and beauty of laying my eyes on these incredible objects. Yes, the moment is fleeting, but so am I in comparison to the stuff I'm looking at. This is very different to anything else I do in life. 

Imaging is much more about overcoming technical challenges, and then the pleasure of trying to create something beautiful and lasting from them that I can share and compare. I really enjoy it, but also have more frustration and have to accept that sometimes I can spend hours on something and it turns out rubbish. Also, what thrilled me a couple of years ago is probably disappointing to me now: I need to feel the illusion of progress.

If I was the OP and wanted to choose, I think the best way would be to reflect on what I find most pleasurable, but also to understand that you also don't have to choose: they're not mutually exclusive. Try a bit of both with second hand kit (that you can sell without too much loss): you may find, as I did, that both work for you in different ways. 

Managed to sneak an overnight run on the Iris nebula last week, after a bit of scope DIY. I've used blackboard paint on all of the interior shiny bits of my Quattro 150, plus fitted a primary mask. Note to Skywatcher: if you're choosing a colour for a piece of metal that sticks into the optical path, silver is the worst colour you could choose! It's like they got 98% of the way to building an awesome scope and then just chucked it out there. Fortunately, taking it the rest of the way isn't too hard... Anyway, where was I? This is the Iris, in a good direction for me at the moment. It's off a dual rig, the colour is 70x 2 mins from a 130pds & Canon 550d, and the luminance is 550x 15 seconds from Quattro 150 & asi1600. Pretty pleased with the L data, but it became obvious that I'd let the 130 get well out of collimation 🤦. Hopefully hidden in the processing!

Have to agree with @barkis - some terrific images here.

Here's my little contribution. Weather here has been pants so far in July- but I had a good night last Friday (7th) and managed to get 30 mins RGB, and 90 mins each of Ha and Oiii. This is Pickering's triangle in the magical Veil Supernova remnant. The image was captured with a SW 150 Quattro running at f3.45, with Baader UNB filters and an ASI1600mm. It's mixed R=Ha, G=50:50, B=Oiii.

Odd session last night. Lots of successful views of objects that normally really lift me, but somehow wasn't feeling it. Cygnus was great, but I got frustrated trying to get to targets below Altair, where the sky quality just wasn't up to it- not great views at all. 

Then, I had Almach in my eyepiece for the first time in ages and it was gorgeous- such strong and contrasting colours. And so I went to bed happy 😃.

4 hours ago, Ratlet said:

Stopping down the lens will help with chromatic aberration.  It won't be eliminated but will be much reduced at F5.6.

This. I experienced haloes due to CA (not the filter for me as I've used the filter successfully elsewhere), plus a bit of spherical aberration which were much better at f5.6. 

3 hours ago, Vroobel said:

I won't repeat the manual halos removal anymore. 

Yeah- it's a painful process isn't it. There are some image editor tools that work well for this- Affinity photo has a fringe removal filter which does it in seconds .

8 hours ago, Space Hopper said:

Same story for me over at our EMS darksite in Wymeswold

Not very far away- I bet it was the same flippin cloud!!! 

Got the 14" all set up by ten and sat around waiting. By ten thirty I could see enough to point at Epsilon Lyra and Izar both of which split nicely against the deep blue. Gave up for a while, came back out at eleven thirty, much more promising 😃.  Started with the ring nebula: showing really nicely, with a little bit of texture. Next up to m51- could only see cores at 50x, but jumping up to 235x gave me enough of the arms to see which was the big one and which was the small one.

Then it all went dark: yep, clouds! The previously clear forecast suddenly has 3 hours of clouds in the middle! Deep breath, count to ten 😭. At least I had a nice twenty minutes there!

Yep! Just sat waiting... Come on darkness!!!

Welcome to the world of playing with dobs! That looks like a great find. Reading the other comments is testimony that most dob owners have different views and preferences on what works best with their scope. My weapon of choice is a 14" truss by Orion USA, but it took me a while to get the azimuth as I wanted it. I tried teflon and furniture sliders, but still had too much stiction, and a lazy Susan on its own had too little: the scope wouldn't stay where I put it. However, I then cut up a bathroom mat with foam backing and mounted it inside the bearing- and that added the perfect amount of friction. 

It's not an elegant or pretty machine, and at 80kg you wouldn't call it grab and go. But the performance is terrific 😃

Before posting I always read through the recent threads- it's great to see others being inspired by similar stuff. Like @Nik271 I was hooked by the Quasar target that @Johnposted about. I was using a 14" dob, and eventually found it with 8-24 Baader zoom. Hard work to get it, but really thrilled to have caught something so distant.

I then went for a little light relief with big globs- M3, M92 and the grandaddy M13. In the dob, with binoviewers, it is the most bewitching target- gorgeous detail with strings of stars looping out from the core shimmering in the summer warmth. I don't think photos do it justice. Like @Mike Q, it was my view of the night.

Brilliant! I'll give that a try... although my eyes are less legendary and more myopic!! 🤣

Really nice report.  I'ev often looked for clouds on Venus, but not really convinced I've ever seen them- do you use any filter for this?