Whistlin Bob

Just had a really nice surprise session. Finally got a clear night, but I'm off out this evening, so I grabbed a quick hour at dusk. From my log:

Jupiter- terrific views in 4mm. Io just by the disc. Gannymede hiding (is this right? I couldn't see it, but SkySafari implied it was in front of the planet). Multiple bands visible, with detail towards both poles

Mars- again great views- lots of surface detail present. Ice visible at pole 

Vega - very bright low in a blue sky.

Epsilon Lyra - drive a bus through there at 300x!

Albireo- colours standing out against a blue sky. It's the true Winter Albireo!! 🤣

Up to Cass...

Achird- fine view, white main star, deep orange companion

Castule and wide companion both deep orange

Owl cluster lovely view

Ngc663- very sparse, not sure I got it

Iota cass- super sharp view with nice clear separation

I was thinking how odd it was to be sitting outside in the snow in January observing these summer targets, then came on here to find exactly the same sentiment from @paulastro!

Yeah- I tried my SW 0.9x CC, that I use when imaging, with an Aero 30mm eyepiece and there was a nice improvement in my 14" f4.6 dob.

I always enjoyed John's posts, and apparently like a bunch of others on here, I had the enjoyable experiencing of popping over to his house to purchase a telescope from him. Instead of feeling like a commercial transaction it turned into a show and tell of John's astro gear, conducted by his conservatory as we both tried to remain covid safe.  A really enjoyable experience that I'm very sorry will not now be repeated. A lovely man with infectious enthusiasm- may you rest in peace sir.

On 01/01/2023 at 15:38, Louis D said:

I was out observing the moon last night with my 8" Dob without coma corrector (to eliminate its SA), the 3-8mm Svbony zoom, and the 5-8mm Speer-Waler varifocal

I have to say this really is an excellent review. I think any experienced observer would glean a lot of information from it and have a very good idea if what they're getting. 

Thanks very much for the feedback- I think I'll have a go at the cross fade 😀. @tomato I think it's more the amount I've saturated them- probably just a little too carried away!!! 

With a few other members of my local astro club I'm in a syndicate at Roboscopes. December has been pretty sparse, so we've not seen much come through. However, we were gifted a rather chunky 50hr data set on the starfield around the Cocoon nebula. Now, most of my images consist of a few hours of data, grabbed between clouds in light polluted Staffordshire and I like to think that I've developed a bit of proficiency in compensating for the conditions I'm imaging in. Working with a rich gorgeous data set turns out to be a different beast entirely. Let me show you what I mean- here's 35 hours of broadband data with a simple stretch on it:

This took no skill at all on my part: it's just a calibration and stretch- most of my effort was devoted to hanging my jaw open at the number of stars in it. Once you get past the staggering richness of the star field though, it's obvious that there's a heap of structure here, so I set Star Xterminator to work on both this and the Ha data. Somehow, in the gaps between all of those stars it managed to pull out this structure:

I always have a lot of trouble capturing dust at home, so this had me very excited. I also have to take my hat off to the software- that point and click star removal is one clever bit of computing.  I didn't want  to lose sight of all of this, so I dimmed the stars down as I combined the stars back in, so as not to lose the structure of the nebulosity

I'll hold my hands up at this point and admit that I'm very much in the pretty pictures school of Astrophotography, I'm not too concerned with making my images appear natural. My question is really to find out whether others also find this attractive, or would you prefer it toned down a bit- perhaps something closer to the original RGB?

Terrific 90 minutes tonight on Jupiter, Mars and then a long sweep down the terminator of the moon. Interesting to read @Mr Spock's view of the Nirvana. I had a 4mm Nirvana in my SW200p and the two just seem to get on like a house on fire for planetary and lunar whenever the seeing will support 300x. The sharpness and clarity will match/beat my 14inch dob on all but the very best nights, and also edge out my Bresser 127l, which is no slacker when it comes to looking at the moon.  I've got a page of observing notes, but the the highlight was the sight of a tiny craterlet (I think on the edge of Kirchner crater) , picked out by the sun, just past the terminator that gave the appearance of a tiny ring of light suspended in the void. Breathtaking  .

9 hours ago, Rustang said:

gentle hammering

🤣

Yeah- got to take my hat off to the processing here. It cannot have been easy, but to my eyes you've struck a really nice balance between bringing out the detail and retaining a natural look. Really nice image.

Here's Caroline's Rose in Cassiopeia. This one is a favourite visual target for me, but always seem to struggle to quite capture the magic in a camera. I think the dark lanes are in this if you squint a bit!!! This is 2 hours of 60s exposures, filterless, with a 130pds and an SVBony 405cc. 

Edit: On looking at this again, I really wasn't keen on the colour balance- so have tried to fx.

That is odd. Like @inFINNity Deck my first thought would be to look at the spider- or more specifically, to measure it precisely. I had some problems with non aligned spikes and it was simply that they were loose, but then when I tightened them (only a little bit), the secondary was slightly off centre. The answer was to get some cheap callipers and measure the distances precisely- which left me with beautiful perpendicular tapering spikes.

I took a chance on an ex-demo SVBony 405cc in the summer for a second rig alongside my mono setup.  It also uses the 294 sensor and sells at less then £700. I've mainly been using it paired with an Altair 4nm filter on a 130pds. The flats have been tricky, but setting the gain really low and exposing for 10 seconds seems to work well. If budget is important, then I think it's a great combination.

Yeah- that's really helpful, thanks Roy. 👍😀

@Roy Foreman Nice pictures! I wondered how you're getting along with this scope as I'm debating getting one 😀

Bit of a processing binge tonight  

The trusty 130 currently has an SVBony 450cc with an Altair 4nm dual band filter in it. 

First up is Pacman - 4 hours of 5 min subs from last week. I've found the best way to process data from this is to separate the R, G and B channels - chuck away the blue because it's too weak, and then process the Red (Ha) and Green (Oiii) in the same way as mono output.

Then from this week is the Heart and Fish Head nebulae. A really clear forecast meant I was able to leave it running overnight and collect 5 hours of data. Really happy with this setup...

It's all cloudy tonight, so can't make it 4 nights running. Last night was a bit different- went down to Rosliston AG with my binoculars, and had some fun on m42 and the double cluster, but the big news of the evening was that we got first light in our club observatory. This project has been a lot of years in the making, and has been the hard work of a lot of people. The building was finished in March 2020 and then closed for a long time with the pandemic. 

Last night saw it finally come to light- with big cheers as first the owl cluster, then m42 appeared gloriously on the big screen! 😀😀😀

A work and clouds induced 6 week hiatus ended in spectacular fashion tonight 😀

Needed my thermals and big coat, but had a greatest hits type of evening, starting with a looong time on m42 (first of the season) with e and f stars showing nicely in the trapezium: very nice conditions. Then round to the flame, just about there in Oiii, and up to the Pleiades for the gorgeous diamonds on velvet thing they do. Next was m31, with m32 showing nicely and m110 just about there with some av. Went for a challenge on m33, and managed to just make out ngc604. Very happy now!!! Finished off by dropping to the 8mm ep for a squint at Mars (very bright and some surface detail) and a star hop to tiny green Uranus. 

Haven't had a session like that in a long time- really enjoyed it.

A friend at my astro club has set up a syndicate hiring time on a pier in Spain (with www.roboscopes.com) and this is proving a welcome respite from the lack of UK imaging opportunities. This is my first selection of target- something that has often defeated me both visually and in getting any sort of decent image from my back garden as they drift through the light pollution of Burton to the south of me. Rather wonderful then, to process a decent length of data from a dark site. Almost feels like cheating!!!

The data was acquired with a Williams Optics 132 with an ASI1600, and has 3 hours of luminance, and 1 hour of red and blue. We ran out of time on the green, so that's only 15 minutes, which made the colour balance a bit tricky to achieve. The thing that really blew me away with this data was the dust that was present. I just can't get it from home. I've tried hard to bring it out and also gone easy on the saturation as the colour data is a bit limited in the green channel. I've also tried to be gentle with the stars to try and get the bewildering numbers of galaxies to stand out. I've also attached the starless version of the luminance channel as I really liked the image of just dust and galaxies.

I hope you like it- feedback welcomed  

On 18/10/2022 at 17:26, josefk said:

I swear it added a sensation of cloudy 3D (some parts of the nebular protruding and other parts receding) and i know that optical effect isn’t even possible in reality

It's great isn't it 😁

I love this effect on globs. My brain has a little argument with itself:

"Wow - I can actually see it's a sphere"

"Don't be ridiculous, stereoscopic vision is limited to seven metres and that's 25,000 light years away"

"Don't care. Looks like a ball."

Who says observing on your own needs to be lonely when you can discuss things like that?

Great report by the way.👍

I wonder if your reaction to this image is a result of the level of investment that you've put into it? I can see the flaws you describe, but overall I really like it. You've captured a tremendous amount of signal from those galaxies- I love all the faint areas that come through strongly that are not usually seen.

10 hours ago, Ratlet said:

the lenses are also coated which the 3A wasn't.

Might help with the CA? I know mine isn't, so perhaps yours will be better 🤞

6 hours ago, Ratlet said:

Another day, another tair 3.  This time the photosniper.

Nice one. I love these things- a proper lump of a lens. I found quite a bit of chromatic aberration with mine, but stopping down to f5.6 helped a lot (so long as you don't mind funky star diffraction). Also pretty handy with narrowband filters  

Here's my effort from Monday night on the Cocoon nebula. This is 40x 3 minute subs using an Altair 4nm dual band filter and an SVBony SV405cc.

On 21/10/2022 at 10:41, RolandKol said:

test image came surprisingly nice

The coma looks really slight to me- and absolutely loving the star colour. I've been working with refractor data quite a bit over the last year- both my own off a 72ed and other peoples- and even when you refocus between colours they don't seem to give the naturally rich colour that reflectors have straight out of the box.  Also a reminder that when conditions are a bit dodgy, clusters still yield lovely images.

On 23/10/2022 at 10:07, Muc said:

I love checking out that Actual Astronomy podcast

Likewise! I've enjoyed reading this thread, and went off to check out the podcast, and it's a great listen!

Busy evening, and some imaging snags didn't leave much time for observing, but a very happy hour was had with 8 inch dob. Jupiter was very nice with some detail in the equatorial bands and hints of other bands North and South. Mars was just peeping over the neighbours house and giving the slightest hint of detail. M31 was well seen with even m110 showing up with av. Best of all was the Pleiades, where the nebulosity was visible, including some hints of texture, and so many gorgeous little coloured stars. Finished off by wandering around Cygnus at 36x just enjoying the huge fields of stars.