wimvb

Over here it’s clouded 24/7. No need to switch shifts unfortunately. ☁️

Feathertouch is an alternative to MoonLite. They can supply a collar that fits the baseplate of the original focuser. But beware, the manufacturer has a long lead time. I ordered mine in August. ETA sometime after New Year.

The dual speed focuser is held in its base plate by four small allen (grub) screws. They are oriented along the length of the scope, two on each side. Easiest is to loosen those and rotate the whole focuser to your desired orientation. If you loosen just the focuser axle, you will need to adjust the tension afterwards. If you rotate the entire focuser, you don't need to adjust anything. You should NEVER EVER move or remove the base plate of the focuser, because the focuser position is critical. Neither should you ever move the secondary mirror up or down the scope tube. Either can mess up collimation.

IC 5070, or the Pelican Nebula, is part of the North America Nebula complex, which also includes ngc 7000 and ic 5068. This vast hydrogen cloud hosts several star forming regions. Iconic in the Pelican's neck is the Herbig-Haro object HH 555 which shows the telltale signs of a proto star, two jets of high velocity matter ejected from behind a dark filament. The dark patches in this image are cooler clouds. Even in these clouds, stars form. This image consists of 79 4 minutes exposures, with a total integration time of 5 hrs and 16 minutes. Data was collected during two nights under a near full moon. Gear used: SkyWatcher 190MN and ZWO ASI294MM camera with Baader 7 nm H-alpha filter Processed in PixInsight. I've had problems with PixInsight freezing on my Windows computer, so I installed Kubuntu as a dual boot system and processed this image with PI running under Kubuntu. That's a first for me. If further tests go well, I will make the switch permanent.

This image shows that if you push the data hard enough, a box like structure starts to emerge. This is the starless boosted image and the same with the stars brought back in. One could argue that some ifn is visible, but imo the star halos that remain after StarNet has done its thing (and enhanced by the boosting treatment) interfere too much to make that assumption.

Quite obvious, actually

The title isn't the most obvious, probably. 🙂 As for the reason why this scope isn't more popular, people generally complain about its weight. But it actually weighs less than a refractor of smaller (156 - 180 mm) aperture. It certainly lightens ones wallet less. An astrophotographer in Northern Sweden used a 190MN for one astroseason, but decided it was too heavy to carry in 1 m snow, which I can understand. This scope performs best in a permanent setup in an observatory. Much lika a 180 mm apochromatic refractor. 😁

Thanks, Alan. If I use PixInsight Multiscale Median Transformation to push the diffuse, large scale field of the galaxy really hard, it gets kind of a rectangular shape, which could coincide with the onset of the tidal stream. But this is very uncertain, because weak halos of the star field interfere with the halo from the galaxy. But if the weather clears up before the galaxy is too low in the sky, I plan to add more data to this image. With the data I have, I can also just about see some ifn. Probably. The big problem for me is that the weather just isn't good enough in autumn, to capture very faint signal. The high moisture content of the air results in low transparency, and on several occassions I've had to abort my imaging sessions due to ground fog, despite my observatory being situated some 7 meters or so above the surroundings to the south.

After that very weak Andromeda dwarf galaxy And XXX, it is now time to tackle its larger and vastly brighter sibling, ngc 147. This is also a spheroidal dwarf galaxy, but with an absolute magniture of -15 (rather than -8 for And XXX). Its apparent magnitude is 9.5 Ngc 147, or Caldwell 17, is situated in the constellation Cassiopeia, at an approximate distance of 2.5 Mly. It was discovered by John Herschel in 1829. Ngc 147 is host to several globular clusters, some of which are indicated in the annotated Luminance image. Technical data: Gear: SkyWatcher 190MN on SW AZ-EQ6, ZWO ASI294MM with Optolong LRGB filters Total integration time approximately 6 hrs, of which L 2.5 hrs Processed in PixInsight

You can walk Kungsleden from Abisko to Kiruna (Nikkaluokta, actually), it will only take you about a week. Been there, done that, can still feel the blisters. Mind you, that's only a small section of Kungsleden. But it's totally worth a few blisters.

They should be bnamed houdini flies. The backside of my Mak-Newt is closed, and I only use the scope for imaging. The camera only comes off at the end of astro season, unless I need to fix mechanical issues. And if the camera comes off, I close the focuser tube with a plastic cap. The only gaps are around the focuser draw tube and where the collimation screws pass through the back plate near the primary. (I've replaced the stock screws with Bob's knobs.) The holes at the front are covered with a fine mesh just to keep bugs and dirt out. The 2" to 1.25" adapter that is visible in the photo is not in my setup. I attach my camera directly to the 2" draw tube. But with the draw tube at best focus position, there is a very narrow gap around it.

Tonight was a night of surprises: 1. A gap in the cloud cover 2. a few snow flakes on the corrector of my Mak-Newt when I closed the roof of my observatory 3. Two winter guests I don’t know how these two lacewings got in my scope, because a Mak-Newt is supposed to be a closed tube design. For the time being, these two critters can stay where they are. Most likely they will die when it gets really cold, and the bodies will end up behind the primary mirror. If I ever get the Feathertouch focuser that I ordered, I will need to open the tube anyway, at which time I will try to remove them.

According to Clear Outside, we're supposed to have it clear outside on friday. During the day. 😒

You all may find this old thread interesting. From across the pond https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/495707-spider-and-secondary-diffraction-what-to-do-what-to-avoid/

Agreed, both Göran and you use a similar cable management with good result. I just commented on Göran's question. Your and Adam's suggestion that this might be the scope itself is very plausible. The OP also has a slight tilt issue, because stars in the right hand side corners are elongated and radiating outward.

This is a fantastic image with the soap bubble clearly defined. And lots of other detail as well.

I think you can see the shadow of the semicircle that holds the cables in the halo of the bright star. Looks very much like your solution, Göran. very nice image @Catanonia

T'wasn't me. (I wish.) https://www.teleskop-spezialisten.de/shop/Astro-Blog-Erfahrungsberichte-Testaufnahmen/Rudi-Rakete-Erfahrungen-Astrofotografie/Heute-moechten-wir-euch-ein-Unikat-vorstellen-was-der-Astrofotograf-Andreas-Zirke-komplett-selber-gebaut-hat::4611.html

Space is still the best vacuum we know, with only an atom per cubic meter, afaIk. The reason that we see all that hydrogen is that there are a LOT of cubic meters stacked along our line of sight. Each stack literally goes on for lightyears and lightyears.

If it can be done with yellow tubes, it should be possible with gray tubes.

Considering that you can run everything from a raspberry pi, including the capture software, guiding and platesolving (takes no more than a second or so), with 4 GB RAM and only a 64 GB SD card, I'd think that a proper mini pc would be more than capable of running everything. Having everything on the scope's pc takes away the risk of a crash, should you lose the network connection. If you have the capture software on your indoor computer, losing the network connection means your imaging session will crash. My advice, run everything local on the scope's pc and download the data after the session is finished. If the remote computer has enough storage space, you can copy the data, so you always have that backed up.

I was star gazing. Didn't think it would be written in ink.

Very nice image. You made good use of those moonlit nights. But I can't see any "love". 😉

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. You just have to decide what you are willing to sacrifice. With a small enough stamp tool, you could probably save most of the nebula.

Sure you can. It's called CloneStamp. You can even use it to clone in another image into the one you want to correct.