geoflewis

Thanks, I just saw your report. I also tried for the NGC3190 Leo quartet group, but not a sniff and I have my doubts that I'd be able to see them with the binos even when the sky is really dark, transparent and Moonless - 3193 may just about be possible, certainly it would be a good test....

I think the seeing and transparency here tonight were excellent. I didn't consider any imaging with the bright Moon up and wasn't even going to try the 22x85s, but decided I'd have a peep at the Moon around 10pm, which turned into a 2+ hour session. The Moon looked superb, showing excellent detail all over, but especially the Mare Imbrium region, bounded by Montes Apenninus in the East and the crater Plato and Montes Alpes in the North, with fine views of craters Archimedes, with Copernicus just coming into view at the terminator. The peaks of Montes Alpes, Montes Caucasus and Montes Apenninus really sparkled. Mare Serenitatis, Mare Tranquillitatis, Mare Fecunditatis and Mare Crisium all showed subtle shading and good detail. Lovely views were had of crater Clavius and the Southern Highlands. I am still surprised how much I enjoy viewing the Moon through binoculars, though it did leave me wanting to open up the obs and turn the C14 towards it either to view, or to image as I suspect the conditions were ideal for either experience. Next I decided to see if I could find some galaxies in Canes Venatici, that I didn't look for the other night. With a very bright sky my expectations were low, so I was pleasantly surprised to find M63, M94 and M106, the latter surprising bright and clearly showing it's oval spiral shape. M51 was easily found with the two lobes of it's whirlpool shape clearly seen. M101 was more difficult, but still found as a faint, but fairly large smudge. I was then blown away by the clarity of M81 & M82; I can't believe how clear these two were with such a bright Moon, the best I have seen them in binoculars, affirming my assessment of the excellent transparency tonight. I took a look at globular clusters M3, M13 and M92 rising in the East, again much clear than I expected, then the Coma Star Cluster (Melotte 111) which was a fine sight, filling the FOV and some. Seeing this tempted me over to M45, which was much better seen than my last session, now that the Moon had moved away somewhat and from there it was over to the Double Cluster in Perseus always spectacular, followed by several open clusters in Cassiopeia, including M103, NGC663 and the Owl Cluster NGC457. With Leo now well up in the South, I headed back there picking off the two Leo triplets, M65, M66, NCG3628 and M95, M96, M105. Lastly I headed back for another 10 mins or so with Moon, still delightful before calling it a wrap. All in all it was a superb session leaving me wanting more and I now can't wait for a clear, transparent, Moonless night so that I can really put these binoculars through their paces.

I'm glad that you found the RGB subs, the end result is sparkling

Many thanks, I’m glad you like it and actually the more I’ve looked at it today the less inclined I am to mess around with it. Cheers

Are you trying to use Registax to process the raw video, or just to apply wavelets to tiffs out of Autostakkert?

I understand that Salvatore removed all the ghost thumbnails, so maybe those that you have remaining is where there is still a real image. Have you tried actions flag malfunctioning thumbnails on those images?

Thanks Stephen, as always the newsletter is an excellent read, congrats on reaching 100 ㊗️. I bagged a fair few of the suggested targets with my new Apollo 22x85s on 1 March, but there are many more ideas that you've suggested for me to have another long session or two over the coming weeks. Here's my review from 1 March if you haven't seen it already..

That's a superb version Gav and worthy of the time that you put into it; it really sparkles with the Ha regions showing really well. I've only imaged it once, grabbing less than 3 hours data, mostly L with just 30 mins (3x10m) each RGB and it showed, with the result being almost devoid of colour. Seeing yours I really need to have another try at it.

It looks pretty good to me.....

Indeed a very pleasing result. I like the way it is cropped with the galaxy to the left and the chain of bright stars to the right. Well done

Wow, what a stunning and very different image. I saw the starless version on AB too and it looks like fine silk sheet to me - gorgeous.

Vin, First it is a very nice M35 image, well done. The artefacts that you are seeing are walking hot pixels that have not been eliminated by your darks/bias, which sometimes happens. By walking pixels I mean that these are the same pixels on the sensor for each group, which give the appearance of walking across the image as each of your frames drift slightly between captures, probably due to slight error in polar alignment. If you look closely you can see repeat patterns for red, blue and green pixels throughout the image. Other than cloning them out which can be done but is very tedious, the best way I know to avoid them is to dither during capture then use sigma stacking. Given that you have some natural dither due to drift in your individual images, you could try sigma stacking on the set to see if that removes them. The purpose of sigma stacking is to reject outliers, so if you set sigma at something like 2.5, these hot pixels will be outliers in the stack and very well may be rejected as stacking is on the stars, not the individual sensor pixels. I hope that makes sense, so perhaps give it a try anyway. Good luck.

Donal, you have every right to be pleased that image, it is lovely and a huge improvement over the earlier trial versions that you shared - you clearly are a quick learner 😉. There are a few very minor misalignments towards the south (bottom) of the image which reveal themselves at full resolution, so maybe you could fix those, but otherwise it is a very pleasing, crisp, but not overly sharpened image. Well done.

Steve, I think that you may have just been seeing the legacy 'ghost' thumbnails, but that there was no underlying real image. I had a similar experience in that at first all (well most) seemed well, but if I tried to open any image none were there. That said the ghost thumbnails were useful in that it helped me identify correct versions for some of my images, where I had uploaded several versions. FWIW Astrobin now seems stable to me.

Thanks, I had to crop it a bit due to vignetting, particularly in the bottom right corner, so I cropped all the edges about 40 pixels to preserve the overall look.

After completing M82 in January I decided to get the other one of this lovely pair of galaxies at the start of February. Due to a combination of poor weather and a minor operation in mid Feb I wasn't able to get back to it until last week, then gabbing the last of the data with a fairly bright Moon around last night. The image was captured with my QSI583wsg-5 / C14 plus x0.67 Optec telecompressor lens and Astronomic HaLRGB filters. Capture details are L=18x10m, Ha=16x15m, RGB (each) 18x5m for a total of 11.5 hours. I'm not completely satisfied with the processing, so may have another try, but in the meantime thanks for looking. Any and all comments and feedback is welcome.

I totally agree and already gave several insurance companies ear ache this year for precisely that reason. I even bounced back and forth between a couple of them to get them to beat their previous 'best' price. It's become ridiculous....

Thanks for that, yes, it does look different. Is this under their 'Essentials' policy? The policy I was on with them 2 years ago was called 'Premium', but they told me that it is no longer available. Everything I got from them last week was verbal, so makes me wonder if what I was told was correct. The person I spoke to had to go off line to talk to a supervisor a couple of times, so now I'm not very sure the accuracy of what I was told..... Still that uncertainty is enough for me to recheck the T&Cs for Halifax, N'wide and anyone else I might end up with..... 🙄

Thanks Mick Geof

Interesting as this is different to what I understood and not what my policy documents stated, BUT these docs are from a couple of years ago as I no longer insure with Saga. Here are the relevant extract as was - I've underlined the words that I was relying on.... 1. Loss or damage Any loss or damage to your contents or business equipment: in your home and within the boundaries of the land belonging to your home including loss or damage caused by scratching or denting, or domestic pets; The most we will pay for any single item, collection or set is: £2,500 for valuables and personal belongings I understand from talking to Saga last week that this limit is now £3,000. I raised the specific question with them and was assured that single unspecified items up to £3,000 and total value of items up to £75,000 subject to the single item limit would be covered within the boundary of my property, be that in the home, or in outbuildings. I may have misunderstood, but I was very precise in my requirements. I've just checked and their renewal price, fixed for 3 years, was £734, so that was the end of it - I won't be insuring with them this year. Cheers,

Thanks 😀

I was with Saga until last year and considered them a very good insurer, not least because they dealt seamlessly and quickly with a £10k+ claim when our house was flooded due to a burst pipe. Unfortunately their renewal premium last year saw a significant hike, in part I think due to the claims history, so we moved to Halifax who at the were my main current account bank provider. This year I have renewal quotes from Halifax, Nationwide, to whom I moved my current account and Saga. Halifax and N'wide both quoted in the £350-£400 range, Saga were a much more expensive £600-£700, so I won't be going back. I am also waiting on a quote from a broker who wants to bundle the house and contents with my car insurance both of which are up for renewal this month. So regarding my astro gear, in a ROR obs - Yes, Saga set an individual item limit of £3000 for anything in an outbuilding, but I added my AP mount as a specified item at significantly above that value. Everything else is valued at less than £3k single item, but all are covered within the £75k house contents total. It is very similar with Halifax and N'wide, so I didn't find shopping around particularly difficult. My broker left a message to say he has a very competitive quote for me, but I'm still waiting to hear the details..... Not sure if this helps, but rebuilding costs insured at £1m, contents at £75k in house and/or outbuildings with off site cover for some items and astro gear with one item specified at above £3k all for <£400 to me seems very reasonable.

Thanks Ciaran, go for it. I got mine because my scopes are always tied up imaging when it's clear, especially when I'm using the C14 as I don't want to swap the camera for eyepieces mid project. I thought about getting a small dob, but that requires more storage room and the wide field view with the bins somehow connects me to the sky better than any scope I've use.

Thanks Alan, yes, great fun. So far these large bins + P-mount are proving to be everything I'd hoped for 😎

Ticks off some more faint fuzzies for me that is..... 😀 I set my camera running in the obs collecting more data on M81, then brought my Apollo 22x85s out on the P mount to take a look at the Moon. I was very pleased to get my first visual on the lunar X and tried a quick capture with my iPhone at one of the eyepieces. It barely shows in the photo, but I was pleased to see it visually. I wasn't expecting to see much else with the binoculars with a bright Moon in the sky, but how wrong can you be...? M42 the Orion Nebula was pretty washed out, but the trapezium was an easy split. I scanned the general area, then popped over to the Double Cluster, which was a fine sight despite the bright sky, then further over to Cassiopeia to see the Owl Cluster (NGC457). Gaining confidence I decided to try for some galaxies, so started with the M81/M82 pair which were very easy and pleasing, clearly revealing their different shapes. From there I dropped down to Mizar, another easy split and over to M101, followed by M51, both found without too much difficulty, with M51 just giving up it's 2 bright lobes. By this time I'm thinking that maybe the Moon isn't damaging the sky as much as I feared, so perhaps I can shoot some luminance on M81 after I've completed the Ha currently being gathered. I'm also thinking that later on I'll target some fainter galaxies in Leo and Virgo once they rise above my house roof after 11pm. Until then I stayed with some brighter open clusters in Auriga (Ms 36, 37, 38 and NGCs 1907, 1893, 1857, 1778) and the 'ladder asterism to the west of NGC1893. Staying with open clusters I headed east to M35 in Gemini, then dropped down through the chain of fainter clusters NGC2158, IC2157 & NGC2129. It's just so much fun panning through star fields with these binoculars mounted on the parallelogram mount, whilst I'm comfortably seated in my relining chair. Continuing east of Gemini I found the magnificent Beehive Cluster M44, then dropped down to M67 another lovely open cluster. By now the sickle of Leo was just showing above my roof, so I tried for the 9th magnitude NGC2903 to the west of Algenubi (epsilon Leo), the end star of the sickle; the galaxy appearing as a faint ellipse, hinting at it's true barred spiral shape. It would be an hour or more before I would be able to see the Leo triplet and other galaxies below the lion's abdomen from where I had set up the binoculars, so I popped the lens caps back on and headed into the observatory to check progress there. Returning to Leo maybe 45 minutes later and dragging my P-mount and binos further away from the house I could start to search for some more galaxies, albeit standing not sitting. Starting with the Leo triplet, M66 was an easy get, but I could not see M67 or the 'Hamburger' NGC3618 which was disappointing, but I think this was primarily due to me having to stand and strain my neck as this region was still too close to my rooftop to be able to sit down, so I had to wait a while longer. Whilst waiting I revisited M51, M101, M81/M82 then remembered M45 the Pleiades which being very close to the Moon, turned out to be a waste of time as it was really washed out. By about 11:30 Leo was well clear of my rooftop, Regulus had already transited and the Virgo bowl was tantalisingly coming into view, so I settled down to see how many galaxies I could find. This time all 3 of the Leo triplet were found, followed by what I call the other Leo Triplet M95, M96 & M105. The galaxies in the Virgo bowl could not be seen whilst seated, so I headed east to M64 the Black Eye galaxy, then whilst there dropped down to see globular cluster M53, which view enticed me to go hunting for other globular clusters M3, M13 and M92 all of which were easily found. Finally I returned to the Virgo bowl, initially standing, but eventually being able to sit back and relax, which I've learned makes a huge difference to what I can observe. Starting east of the star Denebola I found a 'T' or reverse 'J' asterism of stars where I know to find Ms 98, 99 & 100. M99 was an easy get, but with perseverance I was able to tick off M100 and eventually M98, which at mag 10.14 in a still fairly bright moonlit sky was very pleasing. Next I tried some, for me, yet to be seen galaxies. I found another asterism of stars which to me looked a bit like a Corgi or Jack Russel dog. By reference to those stars I started to look for firstly M87, then panning east M89 and M90, all of which were found. Back to the Corgi face and up to another similarly bright star I unsuccessfully searched for the Eyes (NGCs 4435/4438), but did find M86. The Eyes are each in the Mag 10+ range, so maybe I can get those later in the year when there is no Moon about and Virgo has gained a higher altitude and moved further west of my house. Checking Stellarium this morning I realise that I missed a trick or 2 in not seeking out some other bright galaxies in Canes Venatici, e.g. M63, M94, M106 and several NGCs, so those will be for another night. Not recently being much of a visual observer, I feel like these binoculars have me starting over with this hobby again. I'm having enormous pleasure once again learning to navigate the sky by star hopping and learning star asterisms that point the way to fainter targets. For a night when I though the Moon would not allow much, I think I ticked off nearly 40 different targets (several being binocular firsts for me), plus wonderful general views of rich Winter/Spring star fields. By the time I'd finished with the binoculars, clouds were rolling in from the SW and my camera had collected 2 hours Ha and 1.5 hours L on M81, so with what I'd already captured last week I may now have enough data to process an image of that glorious spiral galaxy to go with the M82 that I completed in January. Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading about my session last night and thanks for looking.