michael.h.f.wilkinson

Lovely crisp images

Very nice indeed! lots of detail in that image

Haven't done much H-alpha imaging, as the sun is indeed to low to pick up from my back garden. Besides, the weather has been horrible. I do occasionally observe in H-alpha from work, where I sore my Coronado scope. Regarding lunar mosaics: I like to stroll around the hi-res version, or zooming out to see the whole moon. I might have one of these printed on a HUGE poster and hang on the wall

Managed to capture enough data for a 10-pane 104 Mpixel mosaic using my Celestron C8 and ASI183MC camera. Seeing was a bit up and down, but I syill got a decent result. Each pane was a stack of 200 out 1000 frames, stacked with AS!3, stitched with MS-ICE, luminance channel sharpened in ImPPG, and recombined with colour in GIMP Clicking on image to view full resolution highly recommended

Bright moon out with lots of hazy clouds, and a big halo Couldn't resist setting up the Celestron C8 and do my first lunar imaging of the year Seeing is a bit up and down, but we will see what comes out

In the past I have used some hairs from my head (dwindling natural resource in my case too), as these were much thinner than any wires I could find. It wasn't easy to stick them on, however.

In a Plössl eyepiece (and many others) you can attach the reticle to the field stop (as was easy in the Antares Erfle), then it should be in focus

I turned an Antares 25 mm 70 deg EP into an illuminated reticle EP. I got a reticle from the Surplus Shed, but I am not sure they have a suitable one available.

Much to my surprise I was able to see the sun today, around lunchtime. I rushed out the Coronado SolarMax-II 60, and was pleased to see quite some activity on the southern hemisphere. Earlier in the morning I had already spotted a sunspot with my Lunt 8x32 SUNoculars, and the spot was also clearly visible in H-alpha, just east of the meridian, south of the centre, some complicated plage and filaments could be seen around it. Further eastwards, possibly belonging to the same AR complex, a bright patch of plage stood out, with some thin dark filaments surrounding it. On the western half of the southern hemisphere, two big dark filaments could be spotted, one really looking like an arch seen from the top. If they stay put for a few days they might turn into big prominences. I tried spotting proms, but couldn't see any before clouds rushed in. Still, nice little birthday gift of a clear patch at least

That is completely different. Adding vanes to the scope is mathematically the same as convolving the image with the corresponding PSF

Same for cat people with their SCTs, Mak-Newts or Schmidt-Newts

Why not just convolve the image with the required diffraction pattern?

M42 indeed. At longer exposure, and somewhat longer focal length, it looks like this, where you can see just two star s of Orion's belt at the top, and M42 is shown somewhat overexposed at the lower right

Didn't the Michelson-Morley experiment show the speed of light in both directions was the same? This suggests (but doesn't prove) isotropy of c.

Here in the Netherlands the weather isn't exactly helpful either. I haven't been doing DSO imaging that long or that intensively, so there are still lots of fairly bright and big targets to chase. What I intend to do is keep going at some targets over and over again to see how much I can tease out of the object, simply by combining shots from many sessions. Case in point has been last summer's attempt at M27 with the Meade 6" F/5 Schmidt Newtonian. After gathering over 13 hours of data, I start to see the fainter outer shells This is a lot better than the first image, which only had 2 hours of data These are indeed lots and lots of short exposures, to minimize the effect of the odd passing cloud, but also to because I haven't got guiding sorted out properly yet.

It is now listed as mag 12.6. Still no clear skies in sight

Not entirely sure, but it looks like a gradient due to LP, so try "light pollution removal" under "tools" in APP, to see if you can get rid of them. You simply select at least 5 boxes that don't contain diffuse nebulae (stars are OK, they get ignored), and press calculate. This can help a lot.

I personally almost always use my flattener/reducer (0.8x) with my APM 80 mm F/6. Imaging at F/4.8 really helps, and the field is nice and flat. On the rare occasions I don't use the reducer, I do insert the 1x flattener I got with the scope.

I am thinking of visiting Texas in April 2024. No prizes for guessing why 😁😁

I am actually thinking of buying a house in southern France after I retire. Better weather than the Netherlands, and better food too. I speak the language well enough as well

I much prefer using a monopod over a tripod for ease of use. My Benro MAD49A monopod is a good 75" in length (before attaching the trigger-grip and ball head, or the binocular adapter. They sell for between 50 and 70 euros over here, so quite affordable too. It is very sturdy indeed

I do not know what the current rules are in the UK, but here in the Netherlands, if a defect emerges after 6 months, the burden of proof rests on the buyer to show that the defect must have been there when he first got the product. If the defect shows up within 6 months, the burden of proof lies with the seller to prove the product wasn't defective, and some form of accident or wrong usage caused the problem.

It is. It builds very grumpy characters

OK, so you move everything inside, and then it clears again, but more rain is forecast, so I have left it at just 30 minutes of data. Quick stack with just background calbration and light gradients removed with star colour calibration produces a more orange look: Very noisy, of course, but a reasonable start

Clouds have just rushed in. I might see what happens after midnight, but I doubt it will be good