Craney

Nicely done. Always difficult with a long focal length.

Reports of blue Polar clouds on Spaceweather.com this morning. https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=168015

2: In Dusk, if you hover the mouse over the top RHS of the display it gives you a menu with a few options over the location of the image box. If you double click (I think) on the image box you have, it zooms in. If you zoom in too much, go back to menu described above.

Folks, I think we have just found the new SGL Challenge Competition..... AstRophoTography £10,000...... hmmm ? The winner should be able to buy a decent Starlight Feathertouch focuser with that.

That we all produce a duff image once in a while.... and really he ought to get that focus sorted on the next clear night....

...eek !! It would undoubtedly make a very stable unit, but pouring concrete into one of these piers does seem a bit excessive... unless you want to moor the QEII to it. My first question would be... are you sure that 'unseen' concrete block is suitably big enough ??..... this pier ( with or without concrete) with a mount and scope on the top is going to provide a large turning force on the concrete-soil interface. You cannot risk any slight shifting of the rig from its 'fixed' position during slews etc.... it would make the project a bit futile. I've always seen the advantage of these piers is that they are sturdy and robust with a fair amount of mass, but movable if circumstances change, leaving a residual 'foot-print' of only 4 bolt threads exposed. (... and by movable, that could be in the vertical direction as well, either a lifting or a sinking of the base plate ). Your idea of filling with concrete is permanent in the extreme with no chance of selling the pier on at a later date if you wish to...... and it would be a right royal faff to remove if you had to. Personally, ( if you are sure that block is big enough) , I would chisel and angle grind the metal pole to below the block surface. Then use ground anchor bolts to secure the pier into the concrete block. This gives you flexibility for change and some form of graceful recovery should you make a mistake slight miscalculation 🤔 Sean.

Weather balloon.....??

I'm only an enthusiastic onlooker, but from the forums and things, the 174 mono chip is the one people tend to prefer for detailed imaging at the moment. There is a lot of info out there on preferred and recommended pixel size for the set up you are going to use, taking into account use of barlows etc... USB 3.0 and global shutter are also preferred options (if perhaps your older model needs upgrading). Also, having a fast drive (SSD) on your PC also helps with the data transfer. Companies like Basler and Point Grey ( now FLI ) use the same chip in their cams, sometimes with slightly enhanced performance.

I was quite taken aback when I first imaged Mars with decent 'seeing'. I had actually got surface detail !!! Previously I had recorded diddlerly-squat from the red planet. After seeing a sequenced collection of images somebody had taken on FB showing the rotation, I thought I would give it a go. Celestron Edge 8HD. 5 frames over 1 hour ( Best 7% of 10,000 each). ZWO 224 and Powermate 2x. Since Mars makes a gloriously long sweep across the sky at at a respectable altitude, in theory you could get a good 6 hour sequence. Sean.

Ouch !!..... Well, yes I know the pain. I did something similar with a Meade 8 inch SCT, but here is the interesting part, I manage to damage the primary and secondary mirror, but not the corrector plate !!! I'll let you you guess what happened. I keep the 'remains' in a box and dare not look at them...... it is still too sensitive a topic. Anyway, it would be interesting to know if a Meade Corrector plate would fit and work on a Celestron C8..... because if it does then we can talk some more , and who knows, your C8 may image again. Maybe somebody on here who knows about SCT's can chip in... (??). Regards, Sean.

I would say you have got the Plough dead centre.

Well, it got the better of me tonight. A branch of my pear tree which has obviously prospered in the heat and rain of the last month decided to place itself right in the way of Jupiter. Sky was clear but the planet was just oscillating in brightness as the branch lolled playfully in my line of sight. To make it worse, Jupiter's maximum altitude was due to occur in about 20 mins..... I reckon there was still and hour of hassle left with the foliage.... Decision made, loppers out...... branch off !!! I need to explain what happened to the garden manager tomorrow....... must have been a gust...

Hi there, First off, no such thing as a dumb question in this hobby. I am pretty sure the DUSK download suite contains all the relevant sub-programmes and drivers needed to work. I only have the one Atik camera ( 414 mono) and so I cannot say for certain if you can just plug'n'play with the rest of the camera range, but I suspect you can as the installation routine does not ask for you to identify specific cameras. Also when I use APT with the 414ex, upon registering the camera, the ATP dialog box finds and lists the ATIK drivers without me having to search the folders, so I guess DUSK must keep them in an accessible place. I cannot enlighten you with regard to Macs. I have enough trouble getting my head around Windows. Maybe join the Atik forum and post a question, they are very helpful. Btw, which camera are you going for ?? Sean.

Hi Junare, Welcome to the forum. Lots of wisdom and experience on here to help you. Sean.

I'm very envious of anybody building an observatory. It's looks good. A small point, might not be anything, but the high side of the roof slope is facing West, which will catch more wind in the UK than if facing East. If you switched it around then the slope will be more aerodynamically placed in terms of the prevailing wind ( Nor & Sou'Westerlies) and might stop any strong gusts getting under the higher end. Obviously there may be other local factors that are more important to have it the way you have. Sean.

Some cloud detail in there. It surprised me at first to see Venus facing to the left as I had become so used to it being an evening object and facing right. The weather of late seems to be conducive to early mornings. The showers build up in the heat of the day. Roll over and rain until about 1am ( by which time Jupiter and Saturn are past their best for me). Then the skies clear at about 3am. Mars is still high, Venus is quite spectacular and you have the Winter constellations peppering the dawn light...... but setting up the kit at that time takes some dedication.... and silky stealth skills to avoid making a racket !!

They are great pics for a native F5 scope. I'm not getting anywhere near that detail here in the UK. with an F10 SCT.

What are you using to stack the frames ?? Oops.. just read your last post. What percentage of the frames are you using in the final stack ??.... I think I can see the Polar ice cap in your initial images, so your focus might be OK, but you should not have the blurriness ( looks like the image jumping around) after stacking.

.... and you could argue the same about images taken with entry level equipment and those with the hyper-scopes....

Thanks, yes that's the ticket.

Hello everybody, Anybody know of a good on-line resource for identifying features on Mars ?? Ideally one in which I can de-rotate back to when I took the image on the previous evening. Stellarium shows good detail but does not label the features. Up until last night my images might just as well been of a de-focused near-by sodium street light ..... but I think my planetary imaging may have turned a corner.... C8Edge. 2x powermate. Zwo224. best 5% of 4000 frames. With Mars on the ascendancy in terms of brightness, size and viewing opportunity, links to a good resource would be useful for both imagers and visual observers. Cheers, Sean.

Yeah, give it a go. This is one from about 4 years ago. Canon 60D ( un-modded ) with an 80mm F5 ( FL=400mm) Achromat refractor. (unguided). It was before I started to take notes of exposure times, but the file data says ISO=6400. exposure 180 secs, which is quite believable. This is from Bortle 6 skies. I think it is definitely out there to be got. Sean.

That is a very tidy piece of work. Like you, I've gone for the exposed permanent pier and nearby 'mission control' shed. It can be a bit exposed to to gusty winds, but it does give you a lot of space to move around and allows you to buy that 6" F15 Apo !!!!

A good Yorkshire saying is " They could fall asleep on a washing line" ....... sounds like it might apply here

600 cubic millimetres ?? err... thats a cube of side... 8mm...... This is what I built for my pier base.( about 50cm square) It is a bit deeper than 50cm, but I filled the base with rubble and half bricks, so the concrete making wasn't on the industrial scale...