UKJay1971

Just joined the 10" Classical Cassegrain Stellalyra gang  Fantastic service (as always) from FLO

Anyone used it with a 178c camera and, if so, any guidance on the number of extensions used? I can't focus on anywhere distant in the daytime and so any help with approximated extensions needed will help when I get it set up (hopefully Monday night)

Finally managed to grab some solar this month in between the seemingly permanent cloud cover. AR 2822 has developed nicely and shows lots of detail. Had a play with my Daystar Quark setting and it was quite off-band. Also an opportunity to test my revamped T430 imaging laptop (these things are awesome for the money second hand now and the ability to upgrade them!). New SSD and 16GB of RAM and I was hitting close to 100FPS on my Altair 174m camera. Seeing was average but being able to reject 80% of frames across 2000+ frame 20 second video grabs was a bonus. Processed using Astra Image wavelets and Topaz DeNoise (my go-to denoising software now!). You can see the sunspot, its magnetic patterns as well as some Earth facing spicules (sharper white crests on otherwise motion blurred waves of plasma). Hoping this is the start of more surface activity for this summer.

sunspot01.tif

Just now, al-alami said:

Yes from Wadi Rum.   The scope handled being off-road quite well (or at least as far as I can tell).

 

A beautiful image from a beautiful country

On 6/28/2017 at 15:43, al-alami said:

Hi all,

So this is the first time I take the scope to a dark site with my QHY 163M and RGB filters.  Of course there were problems, which I guess is normal when you're doing something for the first time.  So here is my final image (cropped). This is:

20 X 1 min for R

32 X 1 min for G

20 X 1 min for B

Its not great, but I do think its a good start.  Now I wish I could get the spacing correct for the cc.

This is also the first time I ever process RGB images from a mono camera. (I guess that's what you might call as a disclaimer)

This from Wadi Rum? I love it!

Picked up my 130dps last weekend and gave it a test run in light polluted Wakefield. I wasn't expecting much and the data could be a lot sharper but I am seriously impressed by how this scope can perform.

QHY163m & 0.9 FR
Baader 7nm Ha filter
8x360sec subs

Targetted NGC 6888 - Crescent Nebula - and I literally chucked the data into DSS with no calibration files at all. A very quick curve transformation in photoshop and I got this. Loving it