alacant

Hi everyone Over 90% moon so the faint gas and dust stuff was off the menu. Our summer challenge of m7-or-bust remains exactly that with dense haze blocking our 3 hour window that far south. Higher up was doable so... Thanks for looking and hey, blue stars. Yeahhh.

Hi I think only you can decide that but if you're an ap and want to fix the aberration and allow the telescope to hold collimtaion: -remove the mirror clips -remove the main mirror and 'glue' in place with neutral weather sealant silicone -loosen the mirror cell locking bolts and add strong passive springs to them. Leave the locking bolts loose. -add m6 washers between the mirror cell and the main spring adjusters. The idea is to obtain greater spring compression. -replace the secondary mirror with this one and blacken its edge -replace the dovetail bar with a 50cm long Losmandy version -tie the top of the the tube rings with strong aluminium box section. We used 4x2x60 2.5mm wall aluminium window frame stuff. -remove the focuser and bolt and glue a 0.6mm blackened aluminium sheet around the tube. A paper template helps. Inside the tube is elegant but we gave up and went outside. -affix a 30cx30cm square of black canvas(?) -sorry, forgotten what it's called in English- inside the tube opposite the focuser. Double sided tape is good. -fit a proper focuser -decide you've had enough of sw products for ever and make a big loss on the resale, just to see the back of it. The only alternative I can find which may work out of the box is the priced-like-a-small-refractor cr ontc. Please note that i am not an expert on this stuff and must credit @laser_jock99, our resident Newtonian modification expert, for the influence on the above. Cheers and HTH but do tell us what you decide to do.

Hi A works-for-me suggestion. Fit a second dovetail plate along the top of the rings and bolt this to it: Guide telescope + guide camera HTH

Hi. Yeah. Good idea. I'll have a go.

Hi. Yeah, GIMP will do it. Also, if the op is ok with apps, there's Siril's (among many) sqrt or asinh stretching and StarTools' FWOABW 'second-AutoDev' module. Then there's... aahgghh stop! Cheers

Ah, ok. Stretch the bottom layer less until the witch star is acceptable (the rest of the image will be too dark) then with your normallly stretched (but masked) layer on top, use a fuzzy black brush to punch through the mask directly on top of the offending star. Try different opacities until it's seasoned to your taste. HTH

Hi Do you mean without a dedicated processing app? There's a tried and tested method from way back which consists of stretching your image with an inverted star mask layer over the top of a duplicated image. This guy explains it. Not very elegant, but it maybe worth a try. Cheers and HTH.

Hi. Another way of doing this is to add another washer. HTH

Siril, StarTools, DarkTable under Ubuntu. Relief when my pi trial finally expired;) Cheers

Phew. History and the heady days of getting started. Still getting started but have since moved to INDI. Cheers everyone.

Hi again. There are many different solutions to get a DSLR in focus on a 130p. The Barlow is among them. Only you can decide what's acceptable and no amount of reading or research online is going to join the dots you need. My advice would be go along to an astro club and let them show you first hand the results you'd get with a DSLR, Barlow and your 130. Armed with that experience, you can then make an informed decision on DSLR purchase or otherwise... Cheers

Hi Most cameras designed for astrophotography will focus fine. If you want to use a DSLR, that's where you'd need a Barlow, but unless you've changed the focuser, a 2" version won't fit. Try instead a 1 1/4" version. There was most likely one supplied with the telescope. You'll also need a t adaptor for your camera into which the Barlow screws. HTH

Hi JTOL... It's only another €160 or so for a 130pds. That along with the 200 would cover you for both planets and (between the two of them) deep sky objects. HTH

Hi File a mm or so from the top end of the central threaded rod. The one you tighten from below. HTH

Hi everyone Tropical rain-forest conditions in Alicante last night with the humid easterlies ensuring no one without ac slept and no one with a telescope got a decent image. As owls gave way to gulls, I saw to my horror that the mount hadn't parked. There's always something to investigate... So with the self pity and excuse section out of the way, here's the image taken with an eos700d at ISO800. It's an uneven -ugly- patch of sky. I found that if you denoise, you lose the patchiness, so I used StarTools' gentlest of gentle post tracking modules to keep at least a bit of detail. Oh, and those awful foreground stars! Anyway, thanks for looking and do post your images of the same. I learn a lot from comparison.

Hi Most of our telescope wielding UK visitors come over will ill fitting mains plug adaptors. Tip: buy them in Spain. I see that @feverdreamer1 has already told you how wonderful Spain is, but do allow me to confirm his enthusiasm:) ¡Saludos!

Hi Not sure what ISO you used but the 100d works best at 400. Maybe keep the exposures the same but at ISO400? To see an improvement, keep taking frames until you just can't bear it any longer! Cheers

Ok. Got the blue out of it...

Hi Lovely shot. I find colour by far the most difficult part of astro processing. The Baader MPCC needs 57.5 mm from the shoulder of the m48 thread on the corrector to the camera sensor. I suspect you have only 55mm. FWIW, I found the t2 route a bodge. Get a proper 48mm adaptor and eiether a 3mm or 4mm m48 spacer. A low profile filter ring without the glass is fine. Cheers and HTH

Hi Lovely shot. You probably could get similar results with photoshop, but it's going to take hours of trial and error to get close. Have a go with the StarTools denoise Non-linear Response. Each shot is different in it's requirements but the final denoise is usually the icing on the cake. I had a go with the png but there's not much colour information in it. Then again, I'm hopeless with colour. Post -a link to- the stack if you like. HTH.

Hi Anything in Sagittarius. HTH

Alicante, 38º N Hi Wim, everyone I'd forgotten the thing about astro darkness being latitude dependent. Here we get around 5 hours, The main enemy at this time of year being the heat and the haze, the latter depending on wind direction. Luckily this year we're free of the other variable, the tourists. Apart from those who come, telescope in hand, for the clear nights of course! Cheers.

Colour ->Velvia ->Parametric mask (choose the edge of Deneb or Sadr) -> Invert -> Increase Try Normal, Lighten and RGB-red modes. But remember it needs to be there in the first place;) There's only a certain amount you can do with data from a standard camera though. The €70 or so to modify it is really worthwhile if this is the sort of target you wish to shoot. Cheers and HTH.

Hi Nice shot. There is loadsa detail in it. I lost the artifact bottom right. Then a big hammer - AKA 'AutoDev'- in StarTools to find the hidden stars and fix the ones around the edge. Finally, DarkTable to find the colour and make it look nice. In fact any app without the awful nineteennineties-menus-along-the-top seems to get you there without needing to spend hours jumping through hoops! +1 for @Aramcheck's advice; you could get more detail by taking more frames. Cheers and HTH

Hi Yes. It makes it more difficult. It's easier to... Leave it set-up and plate solve one of your existing images. Most decent capture software will then synchronise the mount exactly to where the image was taken. Then it's just a case of taking more frames where you left off. Tell us what you'll be using and we'll no doubt be able to be less general. Cheers.