Craney

Breaking news on the BBC. Former Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins has died, aged 90. If you are looking at the Moon tonight... then spare a moment. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56921562

The 533 has different pixel size and well depth, so has different characteristics that may better suit the AP rig you are running. "amp glow reduction too" means that there will still be some visible in your subs and you still will have to get rid of it. The 533 is supposedly amp-glow-free. Some people do not get on with the 533's square sensor. As per normal with astro-decisions, there is no perfect choice. You have to balance out the pro's and cons..

Icarus had a bit more than his fingers burned .... I imagine the filtering technology is simply 'smoke and mirrors'...

They are hexagonally shaped so they don't roll away when put down.... I like that little detail. Alas, I doubt they bounce favourably when dropped. EDIT:.... I just seen that they have a built in tilt adjuster. Again, nice thinking.

I would not worry about those streaky bits..... It looks like you have captured the "face of God" in the microwave background..... or maybe a returning signal....???

Unusual to see spots near the Solar 'Pole'..... caught me off guard for a moment. You have picked up some lovely granulation on the surface. Sean.

Careful things don't spiral out of control. Great pic btw.

My favourite because I was ready for it, it was at a good altitude and the sky was clear for virtually all of the eclipse...... done on an Alt-Az mount as well, so none of this automated none-sense.

8" SCT is a planet killer ( @F10. F20, F30 etc with barlows) 8" SCT is a good all round visual and AP scope ( lightweight,small, fairly easy to collimate) (@F6 -F7 with reducer) 8"SCT becomes fast, widefield scope for DSO's (@F4 with Night Owl @F2 with Hyperstar) Might not be the very best in each class, but the versatility is very attractive.

"Fitted the skywatcher autofocuser to the 100mm breeder" Here's hoping for Triplets.......

Yep, I don't make life easy for myself. Big old focal length (1400mm) combined with small narrow band objects that take a bit of coaxing to get any detail to emerge. Eskimo - ngc2392 I can see his nose in there. It was a bit Baltic on Saturday night when I took it, my nose probably looked the same. Ha (60mins in 45sec subs) , O3 (75mins in 45sec subs). It is quite a bright object. "Bow-Tie" ngc2371.. although looks more like a Quality Street Toffee. Ha (120mins), O3 (60mins) in 2min subs. Cats Eye ngc6543 Left this one to run til Dawn as it rises later in the night. Very bright core and ever so faint tendrils of gas surrounding it. Ha and O3 90mins in 5 min subs. Looks like it might be clear tonight. Have fun out there. Sean

One of the 'joys' of letting it run whilst you get the zeds in, is to work out what went wrong in the morning !!! Most instances you'll find are obvious and could have been avoided. That's astrophotography for ya !!!

Evening all. Had the Celestron 8HD in galaxy imaging mode the other night, but could not resist having a look at the Moon. I had a go at the three little craters named after the Apollo astronauts and found them a bit more of a tougher prospect than I had at first presumed..... anyway...another story. The camera is an Atik 414ex mono. CCD, probably not the accepted first choice at Lunar imaging. Setting it on 0.001secs exposure I just let the scope track back and forth across all the illuminated areas. My thinking was to later pick out maybe 5 or 6 key images and stitch them together to get the whole Moon. When it came to processing, my goto stitching software is ICE (Image Composition Editor, which is free). I thought, what the heck, lets just put all the lot in and see if the computer starts venting steam or it will take a googolplex of minutes to process. Well, 153 images, and it took about 40 minutes on a medium spec. PC. Here are a few screen captures of the process.. and the final result (after a bit of auto-tone and sharpening in PS). Not too bad.... You get some blotchy background space areas if you stretch the image too much in terms of levels and contrast, but with the Moon being so bright it tends to be "less is more" in terms of processing. I imagine it is not as detailed as the 'best 10%' of 4000 shots video mosaic method (PIPP >> AS3!>>Stitch) , but it is a lot quicker to capture in the first place and not too time consuming to process, I left it overnight and went to bed. Regards, sean.

Phew.....Thought it was a version of the Cerne Abbas Giant at first !!

Your mind might suffer an 'inflationary' expansion when I suggest that if you have a moderately sized scope and a half decent astro-camera you might have already imaged a Quasar or two. It surprised me when I discovered a Quasar in a picture of M97 (Owl nebula) that was over 8 BILLION light years away !!!!

I'm trying to image the Apollo Craters (Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins). Yes, Moon looks sharp and crisp.

I think that one qualifies for " Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World..." must be a stacking option or something like that. ??

The menagerie expands....

Thanks. oops! I forgot to mention I had the 0.7x reducer on it.... still 1400mm, not bad. The 414ex is quite a small sensor as well and very sensitive. it picks up some pretty faint features. Yeah, that one strikes me as Eeyore the donkey, or a Gnu.

Does this feature have a name ?? Had the Edge 8HD set up for galaxies, but narrow-band filters in the filter wheel..... oh well, lets zoom in on the Rosette nebula. Our Feline Feature is just to the side of NGC2239 (the lovely cluster of stars in the centre of the Rosette). Celestron 8HD - Atik 414 - Hubble Palette - Ha (110mins) O3 (50mins) S2 ( 25mins) There is a whole line of interesting shapes to be found here. Sean.

Yep, definitely a sunspot. This resource gives you a daily image of visible solar. https://www.spaceweather.com/

Brilliant photo. Unguided !! Blimey, when I go unguided, all my stars look like whirlpools !!

Having a 10" Quattro "Sail" on my mount might actually come in handy.....

Now, that is nice. What a beautiful contrast between the two objects. Different in distance, nature, chemistry and classification. I think this conjunction ( if it can be called one) is more eye catching than the 'Great' one earlier in the ...err ... year, season...lock-down ?? sean.

Hope it comes with a nice tartan blanket and a thermos.