geoflewis

3 minutes ago, Greymouser said:

You mean you have clear skies and you have no intention to have anything to help you celebrate? Other than those clear skies...

There's a bottle of bubbly in the fridge for me and SWMBO to see in the NY - she's currently watching pre New Year TV (Dame Edna), which is rubbish and I'm going back and forth between the warm indoors and the obs, as for some reason tonight RDC isn't working properly, so I've given up on that.....

Cheers

7 minutes ago, Greymouser said:

Yes good one, happy new year everyone! ( I wonder how much astronomy is happening tonight? ) 🤔

Happy New Year to everyone from me too - I'm currently imaging IC342, waiting for M82 to get above my neighbour's treeline which is just a few meters on the north side of my obs, so I have no view below about 60 degrees in that direction....

Cheers

Thanks Stu,

I did wonder whether you'd still have them 😏. I've been wanting a parallelogram mount for years as I like to lay back in my sun lounger with the 15x70s, but I can never hold them steady enough, so I got the P mount in the run up to Christmas - I told my wife not to splash out on Christmas presents for me this year, as I would be buying what I wanted 😄.

The difference using the 15x70s with the P mount is remarkable, but once they are used rock steady rather than hand held they really start to show their deficiencies. I understand what you mean about preferring a scope and I may find the same, but I won't know until I've giving them a try. I'm now also considering the Helios Lightquest 25x100s as they were given a 9/10 review by Stephen Tonkin at Binocular Sky back in 2017. Decisions, decisions.....

Cheers, Geof

On 01/03/2016 at 17:20, Stu said:

Anyhow, the Helios Apollos seem to get excellent reviews, so I nabbed these 22x85s

Hi Stu,

I know this is a very old thread, but I'm wondering whether you still use those 22x85 binos and what your longer term impressions are of them? I just purchased the Monster Parallelogram Mount from Orion and have been playing with my 7 year old cheap (£50) 15x70 Revelation binos with surprisingly good results, but of course optically they have lots of issues, especially off centre. I've been researching larger size options and think I'll prefer using straight through (rather than 45 deg / 90 deg), as I like to point binos where I am looking to locate targets, so these came up and I then found this thread. I also like the option of using UHC/OIII filters as I have both of those kicking around in 1.25" sizes, now rarely used as I've moved over to 2" with my C14.

Any info that you (or indeed anyone else) can share will be great and I see that FLO have them listed 'in stock' (https://www.firstlightoptics.com/all-binoculars/helios-apollo-high-resolution-85mm-binoculars.html), so subject to the feedback I get, I'm pretty much ready to pull the trigger.

Cheers,

I saw the start of this thread last week, but since then have been mostly too busy for SGL, or indeed much astro at all. Really glad that I found this again as it is a brilliant thread, stuffed with superb images. What a great read....👍

Cheers and Happy New Year

On 09/12/2019 at 19:41, Gina said:

Watched it too.  I always watch that programme.

Me too

A superb image and description John

Nice capture, but curious why it’s posted under solar? Geof

OMG Pieter, this without doubt is the most stunning image of M31 that I've seen, the detail is remarkable. Then I had a look at your website and it is full of equally stunning images. The detail seen in your B&W and inverse B&W images could keep me absorbed for years to come.....

Thanks for sharing your work, Geof

Something else to look out for with Jupiter are the mutual occultations of it's 4 main moons, which happens approximately every 6 years, when the orbital plane of the four Galilean moons is edge-on with that of the Sun and Earth. This last happened in 2014/15 and will happen again in 2021. Here is a gif animation that the I made from a series of images when inbound Europa was partially occulted by the outbound Io on 26 Feb 2015, together with a still image of almost maximum occultation which occured at 22:21 UT. The gif has an elapsed time of about 75 minutes and starts with Io and it's shadow in transit across Jupiter, then Euorpa appears inbound from the right.

They're not my best ever images, but they are fun events to observe and these fairly rare mutual moon occultations only take a few minutes to complete, so you need to be ready for them. Unfortunately the bad news for 2021 is that Jupiter will be very low down and close to the Sun in the dawn skies, however, the good (well better) news is that these mutual events occur over several months, so with a bit of forward planning, perseverance and clear skies, there is a possibility of seeing one or two of them from the UK in the March/April 2021 time frame.

Regards, Geof

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the link to David's blog. I see his was LRGB, so I think that you're right, adding Ha might boost the signal somewhat. I'm not sure when I'll get around to it, but I'd like to give it a try.

Yes, my skies here in South Norfolk are pretty dark, being on the Bortle 3/4 boundary, with readings well into the 21s SQM when no Moon and of course no clouds are about. That is a rare combination at the best of times, but the past 2 months have been terrible. I live on the edge of a rural village with no immediate street lighting within half a mile and only a couple of small light domes from nearby small (~10k population) towns 4 miles away and a slightly larger one from Norwich, but that is 15 miles away and in a direction to the NE where I can't image anyway due to the neighbour's trees - they probably actually help by shielding the LP from that direction 😀.

Cheers, Geof

To me that's a cracking M45 Stuart, definitely a bonus if it was just test data 👍. I also like the way you presented the sub image inspections, so what tool(s) did you use for that? Geof

Superb image, why would you even think of packing it in when you produce goodies like this? I know, just frustration speaking. Great blog post BTW and enjoyed a quick trip through a few of the many other superb images on your website. Cheers, Geof

That's a sweet PN image Chris and not a target I've seen previously. I wonder how well it will show in LRGB or HaRGB, so maybe one for me to consider in future with the C14.

I also prefer V1.

Cheers, Geof

21 minutes ago, MartinB said:

Yes, this is the grumpy old man orientation!  Rotate 90deg counter clockwise for Phantom of the Opera and anticlockwise for yorkshire terrier😆

What a cracking image Martin, I see the grumpy old man (thought I was looking in a mirror) and the phantom, but not the Yorkie, but then you've confused me with the difference between counter clockwise and anti-clockwise... 🤔

Cheers, Geof

Only just seen this cracking image. Lovely processing, very well done Martin.

Geof

That's a cracking image Carole. I've not heard of, nor seen the pumpkin nebula previously, but I definitely see a somewhat ethereal, alien looking face in there.... 😱.

Nice one, Geof

Having imaged this target a couple of months ago in Ha, I decided to return to it and try for an HaLRGB version. My previous Ha comprised 1.5 hours of 5 min subs, which I've since learnt isn't long enough subs for NB, so I shot another 3 hours at 15 min subs. In addition I captured 9x10 subs for each of RGB and 18x10m L. After grading and stacking the Ha, I used 9 of the 12 and then added them to the previous Ha. After post processing this is what I got...

Next I processed the Ha as R together with the RGB and then layered the Ha using a soft light combine to enhance the detail to get the following L(Ha)HaRGB result...

As can be seen there is virtually no colour in the stars, maybe just a tad of yellow showing, but the blue stars are all saturated, so other than the red nebulosity, I don't see much advantage over the mono Ha only image. In my view, the Ha on it's own shows much more structure in the nebulosity. I probably need to shoot much shorter subs for RGB star colours, so I might try for that another night.

I processed the 3 hours of L that I captured, but couldn't see how it would add anything to the final image, so haven't used it.

I really struggle with HaRGB processing, so any feedback and comments are very welcome. Thanks for looking.

Geof

It looks pretty good to me Dave, though not the colour palette I’m used to seeing with NB on this target, but then I’m not a NB imager, so what do I know.... 🙄

I still need to process the HaLRGB data that I’ve collected on Mel 15, though I’m also interested to see how the new 12x15m Ha stack compares with my previous 19x5m stack, so I’ll probably start with that.

Cheers, Geof

10 minutes ago, spillage said:

If you are able to remove the old hard drive

Thanks Mark,

I really appreciate your advice, but really I wouldn't know where to start; I know absolutely zip about this technology other than having to use it and even then I'm something of a philistine...

Cheers, Geof

1 minute ago, spillage said:

Or download win 10 onto a pen drive purchase another hard drive and install win 10 on the new hard drive using your win 7 key. At least then you can go back to win 7 in minutes if needed.

Thanks Mark, but I don't think you understood my original post - I can see that what you wrote was all English, but it might as well have been Martian.... I haven't a clue what that meant, sorry 🙄

Geof

1 hour ago, sloz1664 said:

Hi Geoff,

The disc image was the backup in case Windows 10 didn't work for my needs. I'd then restore the image backup and have my old Win 7 machine as it was previously. I downloaded the FREE version of Amomi Backupper Standard and loaded the disc image onto an external HDD. My disc image was 178 GB.

Steve

1 hour ago, spillage said:

I think sgp will continue to work and install but any issues from future updates will not be supported and updates will be aimed towards win 10.

Thanks Steve and @spillage, I think I’m going to leave it alone and see what happens. If SGP stops working then I’ll reconsider my options. I’m still on SGP 2 BTW, as it does everything that I need. I’m very much from the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t tix it...’ school. If I need to upgrade to Win 10, I’ll either get someone to do that for me, or buy another refurbished Win 10 laptop, from Morgan Computers, or somewhere like that, which is where the current Obs laptop came from last year.

Cheers, Geof

21 minutes ago, sloz1664 said:

Talking of computer issues and associated problems. I was merrily plodding along, minding my own business, and happy in the thought I had a trouble free system.... When SGPro announced it was NOT supporting Win 7 in the New Year. This meant that I would have to upgrade to Window 10. I'm not afraid of the operating system, far from it, I have it installed on three machines already. It's the fact is it "astronomy ready" I have built a fair few Arduino projects that automate a fair bit of my equipment and an old filterwheel that has never let me down. All of which I need to work but don't know they are Win 10 compliant. So in a moment of "He who dares" I compiled a disc image of my Win 7 machine and Loaded Win 10........ An hour or so later I had a fully functional Win 10 machine, fully compliant with my astro gear. The only casualty was my old Philips SNC900NC webcam I used to monitor the Observatory. Well pleased.

Steve

 

 

OMG I hadn't picked up on this SGP/Win 7 announcement, so I just checked it out.

I find computers (other than just using them) a complete nightmare, not made any better in that the brand new £1300 Win 10 pro, gaming spec laptop that I just bought for home use and astro processing was faulty and I've only just received the replacement last week after many hours of tech support over a few weeks, which confirmed that the original was a dud...!! As I'd purchased 3 years premium tech support (turned out to be such a good decision) with the laptop, I even got them to remotely set up the replacement laptop to be sure that it wasn't me that f**ked up the original...!! The prospect of me having to upgrade my old observatory laptop's Win7 to Win10 terrifies me - I'm sure it's a piece of cake for you techy folks, but for me this is is a disaster waiting to happen.....😱.

Steve, I note that you compiled a disc image of your Win 7 machine before loading Win 10, so is that an absolute requirement, or were you just taking extra precautions - I have no idea how to do that, not even sure I understand what it is.... 🙄.

What happens if I do nothing and just continue with Win 7?

A very anxious Geof 😰

Nice early transit capture Adrian. I also had to resort to views with binos and images taken with a handheld DSLR and 200mm zoom.

Well done, Geof

What a lovely series of images showing the progress of Mercury across the Sun. West Norfolk was obviously much clearer than South Norfolk for the start and early stages of the transit. Really good to see that first contact .

Well done, Geof