Jkulin

Beautiful looking scope. Indeed I saw the results of somone on Astrobin and did a hell of a lot of research, varying reviews, especially about loose screws, so please check as most seem to complain about that. What filters are you going to be using Dave as some fast Astrographs don't like working with lower spec ones. Watching with interest, enjoy.😎

I use the "Dark Sky Meter" for my iPhone and it appears pretty accurate, although I very much doubt that it is as good as the proper jobs. When I compare against Clear Outside and the app, they really are very similar, more info: - https://www.darkskymeter.com/

Having had a CEM60EC, I think you’ll find it’s handling capacity is as stated by iOptron of around 60lb. iOptron work on quoted imaging loads, so my 120EC is 120lb and my 40EC is 40lb

I think its a combination of both covers, the garden is quite open so any wind helps keeps a movement of air around it, I just don't seem to get a problem with condensation, the only time I did was when using the plastic moulded primary cover that came with the 10" RC, since not using that I just don't have an issue.

Nope, I very loosely secure a bungee cord to stop it lifting off in the wind I have done the same with the 40EC except that is on a tri-pier until I can work out a permanent location.

I have left my mounts outside for 2-3 years now, I use a telegizmo 365 and then cover it with one of ENS breathable covers, from experience I can't trust 100% the telegizmo as I had one fail and it filled my mount up with water. I leave my Scope, camera, FW, etc outside as well on a permanent pier, I was going down the route of a Obsy, but I am a bit of a perfectionist and if I can't afford to do it properly then it will wait until I can. I have just bought a CEM40EC to go with my 120EC and both shall remain outside ready to roll.

Love the colours Rodd

This had an interesting tale, I was browsing through my files trying to work out what I was next going to capture and I came across the data that I had captured in September 2018 from the Pelican nebula which I had never processed...why...God Knows, but I thought I would have a good look. First thing is that I had not taken any flats, thankfully I had kept my master Bias and Darks, so I thought I would have a play. I had a small gradient in the top right that I cropped out and a bit of a gradient in the bottom right, but the biggest thing was that I had some horrible halos from the Optolong filters I was using at the time and my guiding was far from perfect. So I thought time to learn to remove the stars, create a Lum in grey scale of the stars, process in morphological transformation and then use Pixelmaths to add it back in, it worked, first time of trying that. This is far from perfect, but it was a great learning tool, showing that you can work on poor images and get something okish out of them. 14 x 1200s Ha, 8 x 1200s OIII, 8 x SII all with my old 2" Optolong NB Filters, CEM60EC Mount, Moravian G2-8300 MKII CCD, Lodestar X2, Celestron OAG, SGP, PHD2, PI, PS 2019 Further details: - https://www.astrobin.com/py9rnp/ As I say it is very much far from perfect, but I learnt a lot processing it and trying new techniques Here's the bumf: - The Pelican Nebula (also known as IC 5070 and IC 5067 is an H II region associated with the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The gaseous contortions of this emission nebula bear a resemblance to a pelican, giving rise to its name. The Pelican Nebula is located nearby first magnitude star Deneb, and is divided from its more prominent neighbour, the North America Nebula, by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust. The Pelican is much studied because it has a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas to hot and causing an ionization front gradually to advance outward. Particularly dense filaments of cold gas are seen to still remain, and among these are found two jets emitted from the Herbig–Haro object 555. Millions of years from now this nebula might no longer be known as the Pelican, as the balance and placement of stars and gas will leave something that appears completely different .

Yep because of the centre weighting Carole, but they are 9.5Kg each and the counter weight bar probably weighs the same. OTA, FW, OAG, CCD, Pegasus Motor probably weighs 25kg in total. 😎

My latest at -4.6ish

Thanks Stuart for you kind comments. I'm finding with my first full year of using the Chroma 3nm Filters and the 10" RC that less is more, it has had a very tiny amount of de-noise to combat the full moon with the OIII, but that's it. I'm an old school photographer where you shot with E6 or B&W and were beaten into submission if you as much as played with your images either by cropping or playing around in early PS, so I very much try to present the image as it appears just after stretching. My mate Peter Shah was on the phone to me after I had finished and I explained to Peter how I didn't like the double stars in the middle, he roasted me saying why try to remove something that is already there and exists...enough said😎 ATB

I rest my case, but I am biased 🙂

Thanks to everyone for the kind comments, much appreciated.😎

I appreciate the beauty of the Starless version but for me, if there are stars there, then leave them, even with the trials and tribulations of Alnitak. The capture of the nebulosity is superb, congrats.

A couple of years ago I looked at doing this, I started a sequence and after the first sub it clouded over and that where my plans stayed until the last couple of weeks. Unusually the weather forecast on all of these nights wasn't great and for the OIII and the SII they were captured on nearly a full moon, last night I was plagued with gusts of wind up to 17mph, but that's all they were ad-hoc gusts and I lost 3 subs. These were all captured with 1200s subs of Ha, OIII and SII a total of just under 11 hours of data. This was one of those images that the more you worked on it the more it developed, I had in my mind a "Pillars of Creation" Colour scheme and deliberately didn't not recall or research it again as I knew when it would be right, and to my mind this is. The reality is that I probably haven't spent more that 3/4's of an hour in total working on it as I had some important work to finish. I was worried about the double stars at the centre overlapping and I did have a go at star reduction, but it seemed to ruin what was actually there and so I have left it. Because of the wind, the guiding was from 0.24rms up to 0.80rms, but the iOptron 120EC Mount is really performing and handled it easily at a focal length of 2008mm with my GSO RC F7.9 Truss Scope. I hope you like it as much as I do? 11 x 1200s Ha, 11 x 1200s OIII, 10 x 1200s SII, iOptron 120EC, Moravian G2-8300 MKII, GSO/Altair 10" RC F7.9 Truss, Chroma 2" Unmounted 3nm Filters, Bortle 5 Skies, 19.51 SQM Here's the link to the acquisition details: - https://www.astrobin.com/fs2s15/?nc=user Here's the Bumf: - The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth. The piece of the nebula shown here is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A; it is commonly called the Elephant's Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star (HD 206267) that is just to the east of IC 1396A. (In the Spitzer Space Telescope view shown, the massive star is just to the left of the edge of the image.) The entire IC 1396 region is ionized by the massive star, except for dense globules that can protect themselves from the star's harsh ultraviolet rays. The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. Two older (but still young, a couple of million years, by the standards of stars, which live for billions of years) stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity. The combined action of the light from the massive star ionizing and compressing the rim of the cloud, and the wind from the young stars shifting gas from the center outward lead to very high compression in the Elephant's Trunk Nebula. This pressure has triggered the current generation of protostars.

Superb Martin, I really like that.

Hi, I think you'll find this is The Packman Nebula - NGC281, the Eye of Sauron is the Helix Nebula as per this link: - https://www.astrobin.com/378608/E/?nc=user

Thanks Martin, much appreciate your comments. I was lucky, the data was really good, didn't use any masks, just a real simple process in PI, Bortle 5 skies, 19.54 SQM Just a lucky capture from my garden where the neighbours security lights never came on!

I have always looked at the tadpoles and thought was a lovely quirky object to capture, so with very little moon and reasonable clear nights, I captured this on the 29/11/19 and the 01/12/19. I'm really quite pleased with it, all I have done is about 20 minutes of processing and that's it, working on the basis of less is more I thought I'd leave it at that and if one day my skills at processing improve, then I can always have another go. This has simply been, SHO combination, ABE, SCNR (Green), Histogram and Curves stretch and that is it, it really had all the data there. Here's the bumf: - IC410 is a dusty emission nebula located in the constellation of Auriga at about 12.000 ly from Earth. It is part of a larger star forming region that also contains the Flaming Star Nebula. The gas structures in this picture are lit by the radiation from the open star cluster NGC1893 that lies in the center of the nebula. This star cluster is about 4 million years old, but in astronomical terms it is still very young, with hot, massive stars. At the top-left of the star cluster two more dense structures are visible. These are similar to the famous Pillar of Creation and they are composed of dust and gas leftover from the formation of the star cluster and are very likely to give birth to more stars in the future. As can be seen in the picture, these structures point away from the center of the nebula. This is because of the stellar winds and radiation pressure from the stars in NGC 1893. Due to these structure's shape, the nebula is also called the Tadpoles Nebula. Images of the star cluster by the Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest that it contains approximately 4600 young stellar objects. 11 x 1200s Ha 11 x 1200s OIII 11 x 1200s SII Altair/GSO 10" F7.9 Truss RC iOptron 120 EC Mount Moravian G2-8300 MkII Lodestar X2 Guiding Captured with SGP & PHD2 Processed in Pixinsight Link to more info: - https://www.astrobin.com/1815a5/0/

They must be bloody massive Corgis Steve😂 It all depends as that is what Trump has been banging on about the the US allowed Chinese goods in at very low tax rates, yet the Chinese applied massive rates on US imported goods.

@Dinglem Speaking as I own an import company you need to take into consideration not just the taxes and the duty but the freight costs and customs clearance charges, it all adds up quite significantly. We always state on every quotation: - Duty is calculated at the cost of the item+ the Ocean Freight + Any Collection Charge + Fees + Insurance, then multiplied by the rate. VAT is calculated by adding the above total figure plus the amount duty, then multiplying by the relevant rate of VAT. So HMRC certainly get their blood money.

Thanks Göran, as beautiful as your images are, it isn't for me.

Hi Göran, I may be to use your words a "Puritan", but you made you declaration from the outset, so all can understand, beautiful image and processing, even if that isn't for me. Indeed it is now at least 6 weeks since we had a clear night, I do wonder when it will end or will it be another "Last year Event"!

My concern was: - Just my opinion Dave, for me unless I have set up my own equipment, captured the images my self and processed then I would never publish, intimate or omit that it was anything else. I know this is an ongoing debate, that reflects so many peoples different opinions, that there is never going to be agreement.

I think you misunderstand me. I am not disputing your skills at processing, just the merit of the capture. What I said was that by not mentioning how you captured the images and now knowing how it was captured, doesn't carry the same merit as if it was your own equipment set up by yourself, owned by yourself.