michael.h.f.wilkinson

I got alarms on both SpaceWeather and Aurora apps, and as the sky was clear, I went to my favourite spot with relatively dark skies and clear northern horizon (Aduarderzijl). Nothing was visible with the naked eye, but My camera seems to pick up a purplish-red glow low over only the northern horizon. It was absent elsewhere. I took a series of shots with my Canon EOS-M6 mk-II, with Canon 22 mm F/2 lens (similar to 35mm in full frame), and stitched them in MS-ICE. A tweak of curves in Gimp gives this result

Not brilliant, but because the purplish red colour only appears to the north, I do believe these are my first northern lights

My score is 99%

16 hours ago, Flame Nebula said:

Hi

Previously, I've seen several posts discussing these. In this country sirius B is hard, and the e/f stars particularly f, elusive. 

My own experiences have failed with both, using SW80mm ed and 127mak.

My future weaponry is going to be the 200pds (95%probable now) on an AZEQ6. Secondary weaponry, a used SW120ED (50%probable).

I would like your opinions/thoughts/musings, on the chances of either of these scopes bringing home these astronomical delicacies? 🤔

If I recall I seem to remember John producing a nice sketch of the Pup from the 120ed. 

Location: outskirts Nottingham, bortle 6 sky ( in theory) in case this info helps. 

Thanks 

Mark 

 

I have seen both the Pup and E and F in a Celestron C8, so an 8" Newtonian should be fine, but good sky conditions are a must

Just bodged together a cool pair of eclipse glasses for my little binoculars. One piece of Baader Solar Film and some cardboard from a six-pack of beer, plus some black tape, and the result works neatly for those with an interpupillary distance of around 73 mm.

Spotted one big sunspot plus a little one with them. I am currently in Stonewall, Texas awaiting the eclipse, but the forecast is not good, so I doubt I will be able to do any imaging. These SUNoculars will be ideal for potential quick glimpses through gaps in the clouds. Fingers crossed.

I will probably be visiting friends in Leon, Spain, which is also on the eclipse line. Not ideal as the sun will be low in the sky, but certainly a cheap option

80s seems about right, but 90s is also possible. Note that Vixen made quite a few items marketed by Celestron.

That is very nice indeed

I have readily seen the spiral structure in M51 from a very dark site (Bortle 1) with my 8" SCT, but it is very hard from my Bortle 4-5 garden. A 16" RC at work can readily pick up the spiral arms from the outskirts of the city of Groningen (Bortle 6-7 I would guess). I should add that the view from the dark site in Southern France with an 8"was more impressive than what the 16" could do from the city. Aperture is apparently less important than sky background. With M101 things are curiously different. Due to the low surface brightness I could not really see the arms  from a fairly dark site (Bortle 2-3) with my C8, but as my eye moved over the FOV, I got the impression of rotating motion, which is a common illusion when looking at spiral patterns. Using Olly Penrice's 20" Dob (Sir Isaac) from his beautifully dark site made the spiral arms stand out very clearly indeed.

1 hour ago, Scooot said:

Ah nearby then, we’re planning on watching from The LBJ State Park. I’m hoping the forecast improves, the one he sent me yesterday was for cloud around there. Although he says it’s often cloudy early on and clears up later. 🤞 

Fingers crossed!

I will be in Stonewall, near Fredericksburg, Texas.

That is pretty good. If you use automatic metering, spot-metering might be best, as long as the sun stays in the centre of the image. If there aren't any clouds, I would go for manual exposure (I will be using two planetary cameras with FireCapture, and will opt for manual exposure).

Very sad news indeed. Taken away far too soon. My condolences to his loved ones

1 hour ago, Ags said:

Interesting.... isn't that however the same as saying "we are developing a new stacking algorithm"?

Not really, this method simply detects structures (in stacked, linear images, so no  non-linear stretch applied) that are potential objects. Fairly uniquely, it handles nested objects (objects superimposed on others), unlike Sextractor, Profound or NoiseChisel + Segment.  We published a comparison paper in Astronomy & Astrophysics a few years back, and are working on several improvements. The paper is open access, so free to download.

This is a figure from an earlier work by Paul Teeninga, Ugo Moschini, Scott Trager, and myself, showing the difference between SExtratcor and our MTObjects method. The latter shows much more of the faint regions of the galaxy, and detects H-II regions in spiral arms, and superimposed stars as individual objects, rather than having them cause a fragmentation of the detected object as in SExtractor.

We will submit a paper on a multi-band version shortly.

15 hours ago, Paul M said:

Perhaps smart scopes will come of age when they produce images, from the app, that are at least superficially as good as those from whatever the current AP trend is at the time.

When  you consider that the great leaps now are from camera sensor technology and software/AI advances, that time might not be so far off.

The leap, in my view, will be with the first self-polar-aligning, equatorial smart telecopes. I Think that is only a few short years away. 

And it can't come soon enough! 🤣

Camera sensors are hitting fundamental limits. The quantum efficiency on my best camera peaks at around 85%, with low amp-glow, low read noise (just a few electrons tops), and cooling. There is simply not much room for improvement.  AI cannot make up more photons, or magically increase resolutions beyond what the PSF of the optics allows. It could generate plausible images that look great, but it known that these AI methods can hallucinate objects that aren't there.  This is why software for faint object detection we are developing at the University of Groningen relies on statistics to ensure there is enough evidence for the presence of something that cannot be explained as a random fluctuation caused by noise.

This is not to knock systems like the SeeStar 50. If people enjoy using them: great! If others prefer more complex set-ups: also fine.

1 hour ago, fintwin2 said:

That a cool setup! I haven't heard of the Vixen before. You think the EQ5 then should be more then capable so I wouldn't need to go to the EQ6 Pro for example? Have you heard anything about the CGE mount? There is a local store in my area selling an old version of the CGE mount I posted the link to for $999. I don't know the shape of the gears nor do I know what software its running, if it needs to be updated in some way or if that is possible. Plus, I think it would need an inverter to be used with a battery pack and it is quite a heavy guy. 
https://www.celestron.com/products/cge-pro-mount

 

No doubt the CGE-Pro (or are you talking about the CGEM?)  is a good mount, and the price seems very low, but it is a very heavy beast (154 lbs or 70 kg, payload 90 lbs 41 kg, i.e. complete overkill for a C8 OTA at 5.3 kg). Even the CGEM (which I also have) is rather heavy to set up every time. The Great Polaris is set up very easy by comparison, as is the HEM15.

That is lovely. This pair never gets old, and the number of little fuzzies in the background is amazing

My C8 came on a Vixen Great Polaris mount, which is very sturdy, and more than capable of carrying the C8, and mine has been doing this for 28 years or more. The EQ5 is a copy of the mount, and it should be adequate (although some say the engineering of the Vixen is better). I now also have an iOptron HEM15, and that should also be capable of carrying the C8 OTA (although I haven't tried that yet). The C8 OTA is both light and compact, meaning it does not tax the capabilities of a mount very much

I got a fairly cheap 1.25" 90 deg Amici prism from Teleskop Service for my DIY 14x70 finder, and it works well enough at low magnification. I have an Orion Optics (looks like a WO rebrand) 2" which works beautifully in wide-field views in my APM 80mm F./6 and Celestron C8), but degrades a  bit when pushing magnification (odd diffraction spikes). Haven't tried it on the moon, I should add.

Nice images. Love the Leo Triplet. I really need to go back to it with my 6" F/5 Schmidt-Newton and gather more data (but then of course, the weather has to play ball first).

Cheers

Michael

The TV Plössl 20mm is no doubt one of the best Plössls you can find, but eye relief alone would make me go for the SLV. I have three of these (5, 9, and 15mm in my travel and outreach set) and their performance is superb. They basically give the same optical quality across their 50° aFOV as the legendary Pentax XWs give across their 70° aFOV. I have several XWs so have been able to verify this. It's almost like having orthos with good eye relief.

Lovely image of one of my favourite galaxies

Indeed a 25mm or even 32 mm would work much better than the 10 mm you have on deep sky objects in general. The wider field makes finding things easier too

Currently I have the following OTAs

1. Celestron C8
2. Baader/Celestron 8" Tri-Band SCT
3. Meade SN-6 6" F/5 Schmidt-Newton
4. APM 80 mm F/6 APO triplet
5. Coronado SolarMax II 60
6. Skywatcher ST80 (guide scope)
7. generic 70mm F/5 achromat (giant finder)
8. 60 mm guide scope

If we count binoculars as telescopes that would add

1. Helios LightQuest 16x80 mm
2. Zeiss Victory 10x42 mm
3. Lunt 8x32mm SUNoculars
4. Zeiss Victory Pocket 8x25 mm

These scopes may be mounted on the following gear:

1. Vixen Great Polaris
2. Vixen GP-DX
3. iOptron HEM-15
4. ZWO AM-5
5. SkyWatcher EQ3-2
6. Tele-Optic Mini-Giro
7. Home-made P-mount

4 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Very stylish! They instantly reminded me of the beautiful Snow Hill Lane Bridge over the motorway, near Lancaster, UK.

I have 10x25 by Leica and find them super-useful - but I'd rather have 8x, for sure. Light binoculars can be quite jittery, lacking much anvil effect.

Olly

I find holding these 8x25 bins very easy, but then I also find the Helios LightQuest 16x80 mm fairly easy to hold still (although a monopod definitely helps)

And the eyepiece caps have now also arrived, so I can now safely use them as pocket binoculars