Budding Star Gazer

This is going to usher in a new age of exploration & understanding, shame the hubble can't be serviced one last time with some new gizmos and a fuel payload to send it off to the same position.. Seems such a waste to just let it fall from the heavens. 

On 23/11/2021 at 16:37, LDW1 said:

How many own a Planisphere ?  How many know how to use one ?  How many still use one ?  Here is mine but it gathers dust, I am making it a point to use it again but not every time.

The original observers app, have one myself and every year still buy the phillips annual observers guide book even though i have a host of smart apps on my phone. 

On 28/11/2021 at 14:38, Antoinfletcher said:

I'm looking to buy a scope and I find the idea of a dobsonion attractive (nice aperture to price ratio). I have narrowed it down to the Sky Watcher Heritage 150 flextube with virtuoso GTI or the Skyliner 200P.

I am attracted by the 150's goto system, because I'm not experienced navigating the night sky.  However, the 200 offers a lot more light for the cost. The scopes cost about the same.

 

Any advice would be welcomed. 

When it comes to observing apature is king, as a noob myself if you can afford a larger reflector mirror then buy it, as for the go to side of things if you're not that confident in finding your way around the night sky there are plenty of point and find apps available for free on your phone that will easily replace the goto mount and get you looking in the right direction. 

You can even attach your phone to your scope so as you manually slew your scope the app on your phone will give you a live view of what's s in front of you. 

Some of the better apps even have a seach function that will guide you to your target. 

Save your money, buy the bigger mirror and use the apps to start with, i purchased they sky quest 10" from Orion based on this advice and am glad i didn't waste the money on the goto functions to start with. 

goto is not a bad thing if that is your preference, my reasons are not your reasons and always buy what you will be happy with & will get the most enjoyment from. 

34 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

I like your keen nature to deal with challenges 🙂 There is a lot to learn so I didnt take that route when I started a year ago. I went for the bright DSOs (see my journey in the link attached to my signature). With small exposures you can get a lot of detail from these brighter objects and then comes the challenge of learning to process them. I have just recently purchased a guide scope and hoping to get longer exposures when clouds clear....a long wait in this country it looks like.

Yes the cloud cover i think will be my biggest obstacle to overcome, it's been like middle earth orc country for the last week here and I've been itching to get out. 

17 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi

If you want difficult, 1333 is ideal, although I think you're gonna need longer than 30s frames. But hey, try it. Overnight, you could get over 900 frames.

Don't forget about disk space and processing power. Each debayered frame is well over 100Mb and you'll need a decent gaming machine to stack them.

Great project idea though. Do keep us posted.

Cheers and good luck.

 

 

I get the 2 minute plus frames for the deep sky stuff which will happen, my general idea is short through to long exposure so i hope to capture as much detail through the entire field of view or as much detail as possible. 

My hope is by putting in the time i will not have to sacrifice close to mid range detail for the deep sky detail in the back ground which although the primary focus of the idea will hopefully mean a sharper overall image. 

I would love to have a photo at the end that not many people have. 

I have been watching quite a lot of tutorials over a few years now and i figure if it can work for mr peach and the level of detail he gets on planetary objects it should work for deep field shots too. 

Of couse my budget is a fraction that used by mr peach for his marvellous shots so i have no images of grandure, i just figure if i am going to put a lot of time in i might as well go for broke. 

I have a ASUS tuf i7 10gb rtx card with 16gb ram for the processing, running W11. 

Fingers crossed! 

10 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

For me at least astrophotography can be very taxing at the best of times so personally I would pick an easy target as I can almost guarantee you'll still find plenty to trip you up 🙂

Yes i will be doing some practical learning sessions before diving in but i have always found the best way to learn is just to get stuck in.. I expect failure to begin with so will not be deterred in any way. 

On 10/03/2014 at 11:57, Russe said:

Hi guys,

having fallen in love with my 130pds, and seeing that I'm not the only one recently, I was thinking it would be nice if we posted our images made with a 130pds here.

It gives a nice reference point as well, as to what could be achievable (with better guiding, better camera, better weather...).

Well, here goes:

Excellent shots with a cheapish camera & OTA, i was looking at the 130 myself but have decided to try the

TAL-1, currently have one winging its way to me from ebay for £21 and am bidding on 2 more just to hedge my bets on the state of the mirrors. 

I have yet to decide on a larger tracking mount but my starter set will be the TAL-1 & a EOS 6D which so far is under £400, i have just recieved my sky watcher adventurer but dont think it will take the weight of the OTA.

I did quite a lot of reading myself before purchasing a camera, i ended up going for a canon EOS 6D, it seems to be a relatively good starting point that didn't break the bank (second hand £350) from WEX.

1 hour ago, alacant said:

Hi everyone

This is one of those dark regions at the Perseo-Taurus border where you wonder how you ever got anything without goto and databases. It's a mush of dark stuff with just a few stars able to punctuate the gloom.

Not nearly enough time, but do post your dslr efforts if you've had a go. I think the only way with this one is to start snapping when it gets to a reasonable altitude north east and come back in the morning.

700d on nt150s @ ISO800

A good result for such little available light, i will be venturing in to my first imaging session soon (after some practice sessions) and was thinking about the regions that are bare. 

I know a dslr is a long way off from the Hubble but i do like the thought of capturing something that is hard to see. 

My thought process is a series of many nights mixing many short 2 sec and long 30 sec exposures and sifting through frame by frame removing the most usless images before stacking them in the hope of getting a good shot, i am new so i figure the best way to learn is to start with a difficult project and learn by my mistakes. 

10 minutes ago, callisto said:

Could something like this be what your looking for?

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-mount-upgrade-kits/ast_psh_t_gsoclc.html

Yes thank you, i will have to give flo a ring and discuss.. Stange i didn't see this a few days ago, i spent ages on their site looking at all the goodies available when i ordered my star tracker. 

Hello all, 

I have a 10"sky quest that I'd like to turn in to a goto, quite a few yeears back i see Orion were selling a set up but do not make it anymore. 

Anyone know of an off the shelf 10" dob goto mount i can purchase & retrofit the sky quest? 

I assume i am not the first to ask so a quick link to a thread if anyone knows one.. Cheers all. 

Today the posty man mostly be bringing me a star adventurer 2i pro pack & a lot of excitement!

This is the start of my astrophotography adventure, 

1x used canon dslr camera.. Check. All the necessary trimmings.. Check. 1x star tracker.. Check. Some free donload software to stack & clean images.. Check. 

Waiting on the mount and i should be good to go for under £1k.

Also waiting on a Tal-1 which cost me £21 plus postage to try & build a cheap deep sky set up...fingers crossed. 

It's the UK,

probably get clearer sky's while standing on jupiter looking at earth. 

On 28/06/2021 at 19:23, Astro Noodles said:

I have been thinking about dark matter lately (it's been very cloudy here and my job is boring). 

When I first heard that it was a thing, and was necessary for current theories to work, I thought 'Why does there need to be dark matter, can it not just be ordinary matter that we can't see, and black holes and stuff?'. Then I learned that It didn't interact with anything, and there had to be more of it than actual matter so I thought 'OK'. I have been watching some things on Youtube and now I see that black holes are being mooted again.

Can anyone explain the current thinking on this?

 

I have my own theory on dark matter, every ying has a yang, a positive & a negative. I think the reason dark matter is so elusive is because we have yet to discover the medium in which to view it, the known light spectrum i think has a mirror beyond what we can already see in either viable or invisible light. 

I think once we discover these new spectrums everything that is hidden will be illuminated. 

It must stand to reason if dark matter exists then so does dark energy, who is to say that when or if we reach a point when it becomes visable that this dark matter has not coalesced in to dark suns, words, solar system or even galaxies. May be the gaseous arms of our own milky way as we see it is not the full picture & when it is finally revealed in all its glory a few hundred billion sun's will become so much more. 

Crazy notion i know but i can dream. 

Wow it's been a long time since I've been on here, got busy living and have recently found astronomy again. 

I have a dob which i fixed locking castors to, rubber shoed castor wheels with a locking arm set of 4 from any good supplier will cost you about £20, fix them direct to the base of the stand. 

we all looked up and smiled in awe

some just listened, with fallen jaw

For fifty years he conveyed his way

that is until this final day.

we've all strode out minds truly fired

knowing well we've been inspired

So lets all look up

and smile in awe

and join this toast.

"Sir Patrick Moore"

Rip Sir Patrick you will be missed.

fine words, a very nice poem.

no way.... very sad news.

most insurance firms will insure the contents of an out building but you need to list what you keep in it and the value, i will say it's not cheap

i have seperate insurance for my fishing gear including kayaks, snowboarding gear and surfing gear which is all kep in an out building.

that looks like an amazing bit of kit, out of interest how much would it go for ?

After Reading the article i thought it's not a bad place to start so i've been looking around the web and found these' Barska 25-125x80mm Zoom Large Astronomy Binoculars | Overstock.com

A little Advice would be great as per cost is this reasonable or too much for my first investment i did find a pair of Bushnell PermaFocus 7x50 (Auto Focus) for £125,the above model seeming a better choice.

With this i will need a pocket Guide, Star Chart to get me started, i'm guessing these are region focused and it would be good if someone could recommend a good guide for the South East UK, i,m from Essex.

Many Thanks

Lee.