Nova2000

I was about to buy photoshop when I saw affinity photo website and realised that I will only be editing astro photos once in a while and it's not worth buying Photoshop for me 

Hello

This software looks really good for the price . Does anyone use this for astrophotography post-processing? If so how is it ?

Will buying a dummy battery which connects to a laptop to power the camera work?

 I was wrong when I read that 0-40degrees is the operation range of a dslr ,they were refering to the the battery temperature and not the senor 

Thank you

i would have wasted time if not for you'll I had made imaging plans with 30mins break for my camera after every 2 hrs .

cheers ,clear skies 

Yes ,but how long can I use my dslr till it's bad for my sensor ? Should I take a long break after clicking some subs or keep a small delay between frames ?

Hi all

I use a Canon 700d . Temperature at my site is usually between 26-32 degrees celcius. My camera is not modded .

Ive heard that using a dslr for long time can damage the senor because of heat . 

How long should I be taking exposure with my camera before I take a break to let the camera cool a bit ? Say I take 3 or 5min exposures .

Beautiful image! Your guiding was spot on I suppose.

interstellarum deep sky atlas. How's this book? Looks interesting

Hi everyone

I've been using a book called cluster, nebula and galaxies by PN shankar for locating objects .it's a guide to messier objects and contains a few bright ngc/Caldwell objects (around 10). 

I use mobile stellerium and other apps in the field but I really don't wanna use these apps and want to go back to using a guide chart cause there is detailed explanation and proper instructions given on how to locate the DSO and description of its appearance. Even surrounding field stars are shown . I find difficult to locate fainter ngc and Caldwell objects because of this reasons .

Can you'll recommend me a star chart/atlas ?

Thank you😊

Clear skies 

I had gone for a camp in the Himalayas. Altitude above  4000mtrs above sea level . The best sky I've seen . The sky so lit by star that I struggled finding constellations and big empty spaces in the sky .

Does anyone guide with the star adventurer? And if so how long can you expose and what scope/lense do you use ? I am thinking of a nice quick light weight and effective setup in the future which I can just easily take out and do some imaging .

https://www.tracerpower.com/12v-22ah-lithium-polymer-battery-pack.html

Are battery packs of this type usefull?

Does anyone have a link to a battery pack building guide  ?

thank you 

Beautiful!

Nice image . Is your 700d modded?

15 degrees north ,so I miss the magellanic clouds

always good to have someone out in the dark 

12 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Back on collimating of lasers for a second, there is an even easier way to make vee blocks though they won't look very professional!  Just get a flat piece of wood and four 6 inch nails. Bang in one pair of nails to make an X shape. That's your first vee. Now make a second vee an appropriate distance away. Sit the laser in these and turn it. This will give a perfectly accurate result.

Don't expect it to be easy to get this scope into perfect collimation and orthogonality. It is notoriously difficult because fast optics and budget mechanical construction are not natural bedfellows. However, getting the right distances will be a big help.

Olly

 

Thank you olly . I was searching for information on how to collimate the laser will try this .

18 hours ago, alacant said:

 

Attach your camera and insert the assembly into the focuser of your telescope.

That's it.

HTH

Thanks for the help and opening my eyes to what we were were doing wrong with the coma corrector . 

Now I really understand why many prefer Refractors

clear skies 

Hi all

Last new moon a friend of mine had come to my place with his Skywatcher 10inch dobsonian and so we decided to go for a observation night . I had my 8inch dobsonian.

This time we went to our usual dark site which is a bortle 3 (lp map).  Sky conditions were really good ,there were some gusts of wind . It had been a while since I observed some open clusters and so I decided to locate  them on the 8inch and my friend would go for the dso.

Elevation-780mts

Brief report of highlights 

Eskimo nebula appeared a small white roundish patch ,smaller than m1

Jewel box was beautiful

M51 I could make out the spiral arms

M101 arms didn't appear to be as prominent as m51s. North side has some glow as there is a village towards that side of the plateau .

Needle galxy - my favorite Galaxy

M104 dark line cutting through a ball of light 

Went through virgo galaxies m86,84,87,49,60,88,90,85,98

(I do not know the proper art of Galaxy hopping)

The bright globular clusters m4,m80,m5,m3,m13, Omega Centauri ,etc always a treat to the eye 

There were some clouds between 1am to 2:30 am , we make some coffee during this time .

We waited till 5:30am until packing up  so we got a glimpse of the milky way rising up . 

I had my dslr with me which I used to click a star trail and some milky way shots with a tokina 11-16 wide-angle lense .

(I am a impatient observer and want to keep viewing different objects instead of carefully observing one object properly 😀)

I feel my latitude gives me some good views of both the northern and southern jewels .

Cheers 

Clear skies 

Very sorry for the late reply , didn't go to the Astro club . Now I have the images of the tring and coma corrector. It's a 2inch barrel screwed onto the tring . I feel the porblem was with coma corrector but now I'm interested in the 75mm backfocus which I feel is also wrong in our setup.

One picture is with the tring and adapter inserted into the coma corrector. 

You need to step down your f ratio a bit . Like around 2.8 or 3.2 to get good round stars in the corners depending . I have not used ccd cameras but I know that you'll need some adapters to mount these lenses . And if I'm not wrong that 'L' you are referring to is the max point where you can spin your focuser .so basically that should be infinity. Hope this helps

Clear skies 

How to calculate how long can a battery power a mount ? I don't know much about this .

Hi everyone 😀

I was thinking of buying a gaming laptop as it has all those high end specs needed for astrophotography software .but usually the display on gaming laptops are bad and and low in brightness also. So I'm planning to also buy a separate monitor with good color and brightness for editing . Any recommendations? (Not very high end 😀)

Thank you

Clear skies 

9 hours ago, Swgogtrs said:

I had a car battery I used at one time, made the whole case for it, cig outlets, fuses etc. etc. but that puppy was heavy. Thought of using a marine battery, not cheap and you have to remember to charge em all of the time or it can die. 

Finally went to a Celestron power tank. *(you'll love this). After not charging it on a regular basis it died too. Replaced the battery in it and it is up and working now. You can buy replacement battery for it, please make sure you research the brand your getting if not an original. I went cheap ($40) at first and the first one showed up damaged, and the second one did too. Got my money back and purchased locally a Duracell battery at $75.00 (USD). 

Now I leave the radio on it on while working on different things, or leave the radio on for the fur kids while at work. I charge it on a more regular schedule now and no problems for 8 months now. 

Hi 

How long does it power your gear ?

10 hours ago, Ships and Stars said:

I'd love to take a magic transporter to the top of La Palma with the dob, or somewhere in the Nevada desert/Western Australia, but maybe I'm being unreasonable now 🤣

I do suffer from severe aperture fever, but think the 20" is as big as I'd really care to transport on a regular basis. Packs quite a punch for the moderate effort involved in setting it up. 

Atacama maybe ?😁

1 hour ago, AstroExploring said:

Took this of the Orion Nebula a couple of nights ago. Only 60x 1 minute subs as it was a bit windy! Taken with my newly modified 650D and Sky-Watcher 72ED 🔭 

Hi sorry this is off topic question. Which flattner do you use with the 72ed?didn't wanna start a new thread