Pete Presland

WE have been using a couple at work for the last few years, to manufacture smallish test parts for our machines. The surface finish always seems quite rough me, but still impressive how complex the parts are though. Not sure of the makes unfortunately.

I have no idea either, but it does sound a pretty cool thing to try. Good luck Rob, it will be interesting to see how it goes!

Congratulations on making some progress. I was out until 2am this morning the seeing was pretty decent for the UK, but the high cloud and fairly high bush forced me to go and get some sleep. 

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire :-) 

33 minutes ago, MarsG76 said:

Ending on the 31st May is a bit early since Mars will be at the best position to image (and view) last week in July AND 1st week in August.

 

Ends on 31st July, so it will cover opposition of Mars.

This is going to be a real challenge for UK based images, Venus is pretty high though at the moment. 

Easy to forecast the weather at the moment 

I don't really think about it that much, you cant un-spend it  I have had my eye on an expensive eye piece though for a few weeks, the weather certainly doesn't encourage me to keep spending much more that is for sure. 

It has been a very interesting discussion. I have not understood all of it, but it seems pretty clear that My Barlow is not going to be used much with the Asi290. If I get some decent conditions, I will try a few experiments with it and post what I get in comparison to the native focal length.

22 hours ago, drjolo said:

I have found link to some useful calculators in my bookmarks, and also for CCD sampling http://www.wilmslowastro.com/software/formulae.htm#CCD_Sampling . For green light and 2.9um pixel it gives f/14. 

The calculators also suggest some where between F11-F14 for the Asi290mm. But it also suggests a Focal length of between 2578mm (red) and 3528mm (blue).

A very interesting thread @vlaiv thanks for sharing.

Using Dawes limit to solve the resolving power of my C9.25" telescope it can resolve 0.49 arc-seconds.
According to sampling theorem i need to sample at twice the frequency of the signal being sampled. So the ideal resolution for my C9.25" would be to sample at about 0.25 arc-seconds/pixel, which would be no Barlow. Just seems a bit low at F15, let alone F11.2
 

2 minutes ago, drjolo said:

I also have this camera for planetary and lunar imaging. I am not an expert in this kind of imaging, but I was told and also read, that for this pixel size optimum sampling is at f/15. So maybe f/18 is a little bit too much, but also Jupiter now is far from perfect position in northern Europe, so it will be hard to get decent images this season I think  

If you have regular barlow (not powermate or other teleextender) you can decrease its magnification a little by shortening distance to sensor (if it can be done at all). 

I forgot you could do that, I have X1.8, X2 Barlow's and a X 2.5 Powermate.

Having recently purchased a Asi290mm, I have some fairly decent Lunar images and some average Jupiter images (still a work in process)

I have been mostly imaging at the native focal length, possibly a little more with the focuser/filter when in position. This gives me resolution of 0.25"/pixel, if I use a x1.8 Barlow this will be approximately 0.14"/pixel. This seems a bit oversampled, especially for the UK seeing conditions and the position of the planets.

The native set up seems to give an image that lacks a bit scale to ne honest. The image below is a work in progress from the 25th

I have done a few manually tracked images as well over the years, mostly when my battery has gone flat. You can let the area drift through the field of view and still get a decent image.

I was surprised there are 2 sites just up the A1 from me, until I read what they consider a dark site was. I would have thought most of the country was an Orion site, apart from maybe areas of the larger cities.  I also prefer the other map to be honest as guide as well. There is a fairly nice area that I do visit regular, that shows up very well on this map. https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/

Becoming a little disillusioned with the UK imaging conditions. I did think the other night while observing M42, it might be nice to try some sketching. I was so heavy handed at school though, for technical drawing!

I have pretty much all the TV plossl's that are available between 8mm-40mm. A rock solid eyepiece in all my scopes, the only temptation to change is to another TV eyepiece. They Barlow nicely as well, so a decent Barlow would effectively double your eyepiece collection.

If you look here you can see the images posted https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/235-imaging-challenge-9-rgb/

Fantastic construction Avani, nice to put a face to your very familiar name. The internet gets a lot of bad press at times, but I love the fact we can interact with fellow astronomers all around the world with such ease.

A few searches gave a couple of clues. A few searches gave a couple of clues, I would think if the Toucam Pro would work so would your SPC900

Unfortunately on the Philips website there is no reference to windows 10 drivers though

http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/dcbint/cpindex.pl?slg=en&scy=nl&mid=Link_Software&ctn=SPC900NC/00

I do neglect our nearest neighbour too much, this will encourage me to visit the Moon more often! 

 Have no regrets getting my Feathertouch focuser at this years Astrofest, it makes fine focusing especially with a Barlow much easier. I would imagine it would be possible to automate it, if Lunt don't offer anything.

and a ambitious double Barlowed view of AR2565,67

Favourite prom

I just remembered I promised to post a few favourites from 2016, to add the already superb collection here. The obvious place to start is with the Mercury transit!