Nigel G

Hey guys. Star tools is coming along good, with quite a few new tools. Has anyone tried the new 3D module in Star tools. It works very well with nebula, still trying to work out settings for galaxies atm. It's great for FB posts, also 3D glasses or viewing on web browser. Nige.

Hi. The 130PDS is on the absolute limit for this mount so would need to be balanced perfectly. With a good polar alignment and balance you could possibly get 2 minutes. But 60s-90s should be doable at a fair keep rate. A refractor would be a better choice but quite a bit more expensive. Consider re greasing the gears if your handy at taking things apart. I did this with my EQ3 with a good improvement to smoothness of tracking. Good luck and most of all Clear skies.

Thanks for your kind comments

Thanks & Well spotted Olly. I had not taken flats for NGC891. The circular artefact is the secondary mirror reflection from my 200PDS, which is partly why the black point is clipped Cheers Nige.

Thanks Ian Thanks

Sadly the weather has been pretty poor for astronomy and astrophotography, but I have made the most of what clear skies there has been. Working on my narrow band imaging and processing and my first LRGB image. I'm enjoying the new process, combining data, experimenting with data, personally finding processing easier than I had expected. First NGC 7000 SHO, 30x240s each filter. 80ED. Second the Heart nebula SHO, 3 panel mosaic, approx 1.5 hours each filter - each panel for around 14 hours. 80ED. Third the Monkey head nebula SHO, 30x240s each filter, 200PDS. Fourth NGC 891 LRGB, 15x240 each filter using artificial L from RGB. Several smaller galaxy's can be seen with NGC 891 ZWO ASI1600MC, sensor temp -10, 139 gain, ZWO 7nm filters & EFW. Thanks for looking.

A short video of Mercury and the Sun late afternoon on the 11/11/19 Thanks for looking. Cloudy Mercury.mp4

Clouds have stopped play for a while so I have been messing around with a little animation. M51 taken 1 image per century over a period of 250,000 years, bit of a long project . A bit of fun using pixaloop android app. Cheers Nige. 03_11_2019_22_29_14_3469999[1].mp4

I now have a ZWO ASI1600 cooled mono and 7 position filter wheel. The day it came in the post we had a few of hours clear sky, the first for weeks. Very odd, to get a chance on the day of delivery ( been cloudy since ) First I had problems with APT and random horizontal lines, think its a usb problem, so have ordered a mains powered usb hub. ASICAP seemed to be ok though. After wasting a while sorting the problem I managed to capture 9x240 Ha 10x240 O3 & 7x340 S2 on the Elephant trunk, I used the Ha & O3 to construct a HOO image. Bare in mind, this image has no darks or flats added, just light frames. Looking forward to using this fine camera again Thanks for looking. Nige.

Very nice M101 well done. I have been using APP for a while now, I stack and light pollution removal with APP then process with Star Tools. Sometimes polish with Photoshop express. Astro Pixel Processor was a big step forward from deep sky stacker for me and Star Tools works well with an APP stack. Star Tools 1.5 has some good new features, your computer probably struggled with Star tools with a full size image, bin 50% before starting processing and it will run twice as fast without loosing detail in the image. When you start star tools and open an image, on the left side with the tools is bin. If your happy with your chosen software, ignore the above Nige.

This is a very good book, covering all area's of deep sky imaging. Perfect for starters. Nige.

Excellent first attempt, great looking stars. Have you tried Star Tools ? great post stack processing software, unlimited free trial. https://www.startools.org/ Nige.

We are all newbie's at some point, you have to learn from somewhere I have never seen a global cluster on tv and only new they existed when I started astronomy 3 years ago.

Its M3 this ones M13

Oh my word. I never expected this. Thank you so much, to everyone involved. I have a very exciting sailing campaign going on now, so spirits are high. On top of that this really has made my day, no my month Cheers Nigel.