Craney

That's a great time lapse. Wow, what a difference when the Moon sets !!

Yes, indeed. That scores double points because it has an observatory, in fact several, in the FOV as well. Again, another place I would love to visit. I took a screengrab of that webcam ..... not worked out the star patterns yet, as they will include equatorial and more Southern constellations I'm guessing. Another activity to pass the time on cloudy evenings !!

In the next couple of decades, space itself will be the place to go to get dark skies.

Evening all. Always frustrating to have the plague of clouds descend upon us when we have free-time available or find ourselves in dark skies territory with a once in a life-time celestial event just about to happen. I was wondering if any of you have a favorite web-cam that you turn to, 'just to see what's going on in that neck of the woods' type of thing. The one I regularly look at is in the Shetland Islands, at a place called Burrafirth, right at the top of the Islands. In fact there is nothing much between there and the North Pole and as such makes a great 'heads-up' web-cam for any auroral activity. Here is a link. https://www.shetlandwebcams.com/burrafirth-unst/?fbclid=IwAR2sKcQA_3s7YUROtoPdiSY5t4REhJ2Nk-ALn04Z_3LhppxZDipmc9mdUOE The camera is quite sensitive and on a good night, of which (surprisingly) there is quite a few up there in the harsh latitudes, you can pick out satellites, meteors and of course the aurora in real time. Here is a still from a screen grab. I think that is Cygnus and the MilkyWay descending to it's low point on the Northern horizon. The bright lights are a local radio transmitter I think. I imagine it would be possible to do a star-trail photo if you could automate your screen grab, or if you had enough patience. One day I intend to visit the location and may even make a cameo appearance myself for a few frames. Keep watching .... Sean.

This was the preceding night to the Total Solar Eclipse in 2017. About 9000ft up on the Continental divide in Wyoming. Showing my partner what the MilkyWay actually looks like. Had to hold still for 15 secs...... good job Yogi didn't make an appearance !!

Thanks. After all is said and done, nobody was hurt. Good job I put the Takahashi and QSI back in the shed the night before.

Yeah... it threaded it's way between two buildings, cleared shed no 1, missed my astro-gear storage locker and also missed my fine collection of ornamental plant pots then fell short of shed no.2. Actually, it could have been a lot worse. Unlucky and lucky at the same time. Initial inspection of the kit suggests minimal damage, but I will have to check if all the component parts still function as they should. We all question if our kit is working properly, even when it has arrived in triple bubble wrap from My_Hermes... err... well...maybe not a good example. The worst case scenario would be little niggly faults that will come to light six months down the line. Reading some of the comments, it seems that the situation is open to 'interpretation' and it might be a case of accepting it is 'one of those things' and not dwelling on it. These things happen and more harm, ill feeling and possible financial loss will come as a result of pursuing it. Sean.

@Shimrod and @StevieDvd Yep !! .... I had a feeling that things might not be clear cut.

Yes, that's an interesting point. The car port has survived the worst the UK weather had thrown at it for 20 years prior to this date. I suppose it is difficult to assess how secure a structure is until the moment comes when it does break loose. The question becomes, what is a reasonable amount of security or even checking ?? !! If bits had regularly blown off his building and property and continually posed a damage threat, then I could accept that line of reasoning. Here in the UK we tend not to get too many extreme 'wind' events per decade and when we do, we expect there to be some damage resulting somewhere. not usually the same thing, in the same place.

Yes, this is the thing about insurance that becomes problematic. Whoever activates their policy, myself or my neighbour , we do not want to be paying more in the long run than to replace the item directly out of our own pockets. Seems a non-sense to have insurance that becomes impractical to use. I suppose it is a question of scale. To replace a £300,000 house requires bigger pockets than I have, compared to a £200 lens. But still, there is a principal at stake. At the moment the damage to the equipment 'looks' minimal. I am rather hoping it is rather than face the inevitable car-crash that is an insurance dispute. Hey-ho !!

Thanks for the replies everybody. Been one of those days !!... Just returning home after trying to sort out another issue ( not weather related )..... and thinking maybe the wind has turned a few plant pots over !! Neighbour has been helpful in assisting me tidy up my back garden and get rid of the debris. He has said (verbally) he will also help if it is an insurance matter but until I can assess if there is any real damage to the equipment then I do not want to initiate 'proceedings'. I took a lot of pictures and invited him around to see the situation before extracting the equipment , so that he could see that there was a bit more at stake than a dent in the lawn. I have never claimed anything on insurance before. I was not sure ( until reading some of these replies) if it was my insurance or his that needed activating. It was his car-port but the damage was to my property on my side of the fence. I suppose I should ask him if he is going to claim for wind damage to his property on his own policy. Do I claim for any of my incurred loss within his claim or do I do it separately ?? Oh dear, I have never been a fan of this type of thing. ... I need a bit of time to digest things. Again, thanks for any advice or guidance with this type of thing. Sean.

On returning to my house today after a trip away I discovered quite an upsetting scene. The neighbour's car port lifted off in the wind last night and landed right onto of my rig which was in my back garden. I know the TeleGizmo cover is good, but it struggled to defend my Samyang 135 against a quarter of a ton of flying wood and plastic. Here are some pictures of the scene. Lens, camera ( Atik 414ex) and EFW2 were knocked out of the saddle. On first inspection the only visual damage I can see is the lens hood is broken and the plastic on the outside of the lens (filter holder?) has cracked. The Astro Kraken dovetail has split as well. I will need to test the components individually to see if they are fully operational. Hopefully they may have come out of this relatively unscathed. Anybody got any advice on the situation? Anybody had a similar occurrence ?? Haven't really had time to think about it just yet. Literally picking up the pieces. Oh well !! Sean.

Wow! ... that must be Astro Photo of the Year .... would not be surprised if somebody spots Nessie and Elvis in there as well ! EPIC.

Indeed.. Hairs on the back of the neck job. I've just edited the post. Celestron C90 and Canon 600D. I have a pic of the set up. Took the filter off for Totality. . Took a bit of planning and every digit crossed for the weather.... and it all worked out.

2017 Total Solar from Continental Divide, USA...... my first ..... and I got a half decent shot as well .....nuff said Taken with Celestron C90 and Canon 600D.

BBC have a report..... some good pictures. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64621721

I would suggest that 'Heads Up' is probably not the best advice.

Another thing of note with very short focal lengths ( fish-eye types) is that they can tend to wrap the horizon, or tree-lines or cloud banks into unnatural curves. OK if you are just trying to capture something on the large scale but difficult to crop out and correct if you want to use it as a straight forward, 'normal-looking' print. This type of thing. Image kindly donated by I.N. Ternet. The zoom lenses mentioned above can remedy this to some extent with narrower FOV as a consequence.

Hi Andy, I think some people have had a degree of success using a Herschel wedge and a solar continuum filter. ( safety in mind at all times of course ). The FLO page for the filter gives a good indication of the improvement it can make by itself , especially when used with a high frame rate mono camera with suitable stacking. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/solar-filters/baader-75nm-solar-continuum-filter-540nm.html

1) Galileo's scope 2) Newton's Scope 3) er..umm.... my favorite scope.

How rude of the comet to gain peak brightness when I am collecting mono narrow-band data on the Spaghetti nebula. Could it not have had a 50,000+1/2 year orbit !!??...... and it rises above the house at 3am. Oh well. So, without changing my rig set up I thought I would give it a blast. My mono camera is an Atik 414ex and so it cuts down the field of view a bit, but still wide enough to get that wiggly tail. Three attempts presented here. 60 second Luminence exposures ( 12x60 ), one on the Coma, one on the tail and then 'mosaic-ed'. Stacked in APP LRGB..... rapid blast 60-secs each. Combined in APP. Lum GIF to show movement across the sky. Hope the GIF works..... Sean.

I think it's more of the case that the massive star that was, exploded and left the nebula ( outer stellar atmosphere ) with the pulsar embedded ( remains of a super crushed core ).

Was there over Christmas. This brings it all back. Great shot with the lighthouse.

Thanks @vlaiv Seems reasonable. Never thought about it beyond my own understanding. I can see where your brightness argument is coming from now. Cheers, Sean.