alacant

Done. Cheers

Hi everyone New moon so of course the conditions were rubbish with easterlies creating the usual haze as the night air cooled. Anyway, no excuses. Three telescopes, 4 guys with an assortment of miners' lamps, torches, laptop screens, cheap supermarket beers and cables. Everywhere. I was in charge of the f4 and actually got to take some frames. As always, colour remains elusive; there seems no right or wrong way of doing it. So, and against all the odds, here is a photograph of a galaxy. Do say what you think and post your dslr version. You can learn so much by comparison:) 700d @ ISO800

Thanks. Could it be that astrometry.net doesn't do sh objects?

Hi everyone Here's a nebula which it seems doesn't have a catalogue number. Quite nice though. If I'd known, I'd have thrown more time at it rather than rushing over to the galaxies to the NE. Thanks for looking. We think it's Ha emission... Any ideas?

And Siril... Yeah, I think I get it. It's just that I can have as much colour as I like -artistic- but that doesn't agree with what the database colour says it should be. Dilemma!

Hi everyone Waiting for Leo to get it's act together last night, we thought we'd fill in with what looked in Kstars to be an attractive cluster pairing. I think underwhelmed is an overstatement. Where the second cluster is located, I've no idea. Anyway, we used the time wisely to check collimation on the reflector which had survived a journey in a sling-over-the-shoulder style guitar case affair. So here we have it. Hold your breath... 700d @ ISO800

Hi everyone We've a fast reflector for the weekend which despite having been bounced around on the train from Madrid yesterday, needed only a quick tweak to satisfy our Cheshire. Last week, we posted in the beginners' section about galaxy colour, but drew a blank. I wonder if there are any guidelines as to their colour? In this example we let Siril's star database -it makes all stars almost colourless- do the colour and let the galaxies look after themselves. It's quite confusing looking at the colour variations during a google image search so for now, we're giving up! All comments, colour or otherwise most gratefully received. Cheers and thanks for looking. eos700d

Hi If you've built on soil and have had a lot of rain or it's been especially dry for long periods, ground movement? Especially noticeable here in summer when the ground dries to quite a depth.

Hi and thanks for the comment. In fact we used an 8" f4. I think the cluster is too small to be captured at this scale even with our 300mm Tair. Here's the fov:

Hi everyone The subtitle (?) for this cluster is salt and pepper. I suppose it's a bit salty, although my original theory of reference to the sense taste was soon corrected by those who by now I should know know better. Longest ever for a cluster; 2 hours before the haze attacked. Ran it through Siril's NOMAD colour database thingy which made what was a pretty orange and blue cluster, almost colourless. Wonderful! All comments most gratefully received. Please do post your images too. eos700d @ ISO800

This is why your stars are poor; you do not have the magic 75mm backfocus. You need a 15mm t2 extension. Get a set maybe? You need this t-ring. So you should now have: Camera - t ring - 15mm extension tube - m48 to t2 adaptor - cc - telescope focuser. Note, you must unscrew the eyepiece holder form the cc. You do not need the 1.25 adaptor. Here it is setup ready to mount on our 700d. Otherwise please post a photo of your setup.

Hi OK, so you need: camera - t ring - 15mm (at least) spacer - coma corrector - focuser Your starting target is 75mm from camera sensor to shoulder of the cc; without the m48 to t2 adaptor. What do you have? Maybe a photo would be better.

Hi The camera is tilted and is too close to the coma corrector. Probably best to collimate again but using a Cheshire sight tube instead. If you have a centre mark of the primary mirror, a Cheshire with cross hairs would be even better. If you post camera and cc information, we may be able to help further. If you can't get a Cheshire, have a go at the laser. Cheers and clear skies.

Hi. Thanks. It's 33 frames; getting on for 3 hours.

Hi We successfully guide a 6" f8 with a t7m (a 120mm mini clone) on our oag. Never yet had to abandon for lack of suitable stars. Is the mc much less sensitive? The disadvantage of the 120 is that unless it's the new mini model, you can't use it with a helical focuser. Unlike a short focus guide telescope, the oag camera focus must be exact. A non rotating focuser makes this easy. HTH

Hi everyone Forgot about the half moon rising in the early hours to generously add light gradient to the frames. Struggled for a while with the background before deciding enough is enough. Anyway, first galaxy of the year, so it must be spring. Wikipedia has it that this galaxy is similar to the Milky Way. I wonder if we look like this to the observers over there? Or maybe we're edge on... Nice example of a bar (red?) barred spiral. No idea about galaxy colour. The catalogs seem only to have data available for stars. Thanks for looking. 700d @ ISO800

Hi everyone An opportunity to test StarTools' new entropy module, AKA Ivo's latest algorithm wizardry. It's quite easy to get to grips with it and it works well at pulling out subtle detail without having to resort to hours of layering. Cheers and thanks for looking. 700d nt150s 3 hours ISO800 *ST users, do feedback if you've had a go with the module.

Hi IIRC from my windows days: - Remove the card from the camera. - Remove or disable all software that can 'grab' the camera before APT. You e.g. mention qdslrdashboard, but another culprit is the canon download and control software. HTH

Hi Another advantage is the wider field of view: 585mm over 650mm. Any (rare) reflections are easily treated in post processing. The best of the bunch IMHO is the 4 element cc available in two guises: the SW aplanatic or the GPU. HTH

Hi I think that if you went with the 130 instead you'd be in business. Cheers

...and FWIW, here's the photometric colour corrected version, complete with milky background...

Hi. eos700d @Iso800. 4 minute frames. Processed with Siril and StarTools. HTH

Hi everyone Full moon, so keep the dslr well away. This was using the mysteriously named Moon and Skyglow filter. All it seems to do is make everything blue, so had a struggle to make everything not blue. Learned a few more curves tricks along the way so maybe it was worth it. Thanks for looking and do post your full moon shots. 700d @ ISO800

Hi. Do you mean that you cannot currently bring your camera to focus? We have an old blue tube SW 10" and it focuses fine with a DSLR. If you did bring the mirrors closer, you would also need a larger secondary to intercept the now increased diameter light cone. FWIW, we replaced the original 58mm secondary with a 63mm when we discovered the original was missing light around its edges. Cheers and HTH.

Mmm. Not sure. So an 80mm Skywatcher refractor f7 is faster than the 2000mm f10 telescope at La Palma? Maybe this is a case of the need to specify what we mean by speed. Cheers and clear skies.