johnfosteruk

Ooh nice, about time too. Let's hope this one's a keeper then.

I've got work tomorrow, so have to get some sleep somewhere, early night for me. I'm rather upset that my spare battery died a death last night so I think I'll need the hairdryer to keep it warm!

The eclipse is easy, getting up will be the problem

Truly oustanding!

I was going to go out again to do some widefield but alas more clouds.

You've ruined it now

I've had barely any time to observe or image for a few months now, and when I've had time the weather has been awful. Tonight I broke my duck I spent an hour splitting doubles with the frac, watched ISS pass a few times and did some lunar observing, focussing on the fine details on the Western edges of Oceanus Procellarum, the seeing was good and 250x yielded some nice sharp detail I'm pleased to say. Then it was time for some images, including some test shots at 600mm for the upcoming eclipse. All in all a good evening. Wide mono Closer mono Closer RGB Closer still mono

So I can say I've at least bagged a look/image of something in the night sky in Jan '19 I just grabbed this. Saying that, I'm optimistic for later, looks like it'll clear as the Moon approaches the Meridian, it's also looking 50/50 for the eclipse which is better than it's been.

Nicely done sir

Very nice

Nicely done Steve, I was hoping to get out tonight, it's the first night in a while I've had free time and it's cloudy of course

I think the av mode will overexpose the moon it's nearly filling the frame. I'd get out before hand and test it tbh.

Outstanding.

I don’t know how, it’s straight out of the phone. PP required next time!

During these long cloudy nights which seem to be the norm lately I'm using my evenings constructively, as one does. Among the tinkerings is iOS shortcuts. This started out as an app called Workflow but was recently purchased by Apple and integrated into the OS. What the app does is automation (Similar to the Android app Tasker, but nowhere near as advanced yet), the integration with iOS is pretty good so far though, plenty more for Apple to do in future releases I feel but very useful. It can set variables, run IF statements, While loops etc but before it can play nice with your apps, the developer has to plug into it and Sky Safari hasn't as yet. So last night I started thinking about how else I could make use of it for astronomy and here's part of what we've got so far. It fetches Moon info or weather info from www.timeanddate.com, parses the page to pull the info we need into a list then formats and displays the list items in a panel, all in the home screen 'widget'. I'm liking this a lot, and as it can also do Javascript, and Python (via a 3rd party app), plug in to your device's location, present menus, ask for input and more I'm planning lots more features. Asteroid/comet data from MPC, rise/set/transit time for a user input target (via Heavens Above for example) are a few examples. I might need to dust off my copy of Jean Meeus' Astronomical Algorithms and get it calculating stuff too (which means I can then get data from services like Simbad which have a structured query language and calculate my own location based data, rather than 'scraping' sites like timeanddate which could change layout without notice) It's a bit of fun, just to see how far I can push it, but any ideas/thoughts/suggestions will be well received, so chip in and have your say. Quick vid of it in action (only 7mb, maximise for best viewing experience) ScreenRecording_01-03-2019 23-35-21.MP4

Another inspirational series John, I must get out to see the nose again myself in 2019. The problem with the moor is there's so much to visit, so little time to visit it in.

That's lovely Reggie, our Christmas, much like most of December, was cloudy!

What a lovely Xmas pressie Olly, thank you! Loads of colour & structure to play with, in my case at the expense of other variables. There's loads wrong with this but it was only a quick attempt (with PS CS5). Ha combined with red (30%) RGB combined and linear stretched Star mask applied curves adjustments Saturation adjustments (lab mode) Same routine for the Lum (The Lum is feisty though isn't it!) Sharpened the Lum Lum and RGB combined NR Job done Have another go when I've got more time

Mine too. Nice shot Charl.

A (UK) seller at abebooks.co.uk has it for £132 which is a little less expensive, although still one too many zeros for my liking!

I found this in the wikipedia discussion for that page: Which would give approx 1.2 billion km, which is nearer to your initial suggestion of Jupiter's orbit!

That wikipedia page bothers me, because it quotes over 1000 solar radii, which is a lot more than 134 million km, then it quotes the 134 million km figure.

UY Scuti's radius is assumed to be approx 1.2 billion km with a margin for error of a couple hundred solar radii, so it's more like somewhere between Saturn and Neptune!

Your problem, not mine

Nicely done Gav, next job, go wider for more faint stuff! As for colour balance, for me you've got it pretty much where it needs to be.