michael.h.f.wilkinson

Great report of a lovely session. I have never used a red-dot finder, I prefer using a RACI (either an 8x50 or a big 14x70 DIY job).

Very jealous of those skies. Clouds and rain here

I should add I was using short exposures mainly because I hadn't got guiding to work properly. I just used exposures that worked just with tracking. It did work

Very nice results. I have often found thin hazy cloud often coincides with very stable conditions, suitable for planetary imaging.

I think I was using a luminance filter. I would have to look up the gain settings

I used a lot of short exposures on my ASI183MC-Pro to get this on M13, in just 1h 38.5 minutes exposure, I think a mix of 60 s and 30 s exposures, but I was using a bigger scope (6" F/5 Schmidt Newton)

Difficult to say. My best guess would be contrails of planes that were on roughly parallel courses.

UHC filters only work well for emission nebulae, not galaxies or reflection nebulae, so they certainly have the ir limitations. For most emission nebulae, they work very well

What magnification were you using. I can pick it out quite readily with 16x80 from a dark site, so it isn't a very hard object. I do notice using a UHC filter in my C8 at 65.5x (with the Nagler 31T5) helps a lot

In my Celestron C8 I find that I generally work at focal lengths of 7 to 10 mm for planets, equivalent to an exit pupil of 0.7 to 1.0 for an F/10 scope. A 6 mm can work under good conditions, and if conditions are outstanding, I might go for a 5 mm, but that only on moon and Mars. You might want to consider the Pentax XF 8.5 mm (I used to have one, but replaced it with a Tele-Vue Delos 8 mm). The Pentax XF 8.5 is very good value for money, I feel. There are plenty of other choices. In my light-weight travel kit I have Vixen SLVs of 5, 9, and 15 mm which are all excellent, Pentax XW quality for a much lower price, at the cost of a smaller FOV (50 deg vs 70 deg). If you don't mind the short eye relief, a Plossl or Ortho of around 7 mm would work

Superb shots, as ever

Sounds very interesting. Have imported it into Stellarium

Indeed, the image is way out of focus. Stars will then appear as (faint) images of the shape of the aperture, complete with secondary mirror and spider vanes

Thanks, but these are not the mosaics. The H-alpha ones in a separate post are

Got up early this morning (4:15), and went to a dark spot north of the city of Groningen. Venus was above the horizon, but rather worryingly red, due to some thin cloud near the eastern horizon. I got out the Helios LightQuest 16x80s and tried my luck on comets 2P (Encke), and 103P (Hartley), but no luck in the bright moonlight. I will try them with a telescope later. As it was rising, Venus turned a healthier colour, so I focused my attention on Leo's head. I spotted a compact, fuzzy blob, with the faintest hint of thin gas tail, and the slightest green tinge close to epsilon Leonis. I first wondered whether it might be a star made blurry by the haze on the horizon, but all the other objects in the FOV were pinpoint. In averted vision, I kept catching tantalizing hint of a thin straight tail, and the coma stayed obstinately fuzzy, so I reckon that is comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) bagged, especially because it was in exactly the right spot according to the map from comet chasing. Comet number 36 bagged. I had another go at Encke and Hartley, but no luck. The 6" F/5 Schmidt-Newton might fare better, all the more so in less moonlight.

Very nice indeed.

Very nice indeed. The ASI178MM is great for this kind of work. I use mine for most of my WL and Ca-K disks

Very interesting. Looks genuine indeed

I also find just scooting along the Milky Way with a wide-field instrument (be it binoculars or telescopes) very relaxing, even if I have seen many of the objects hundreds of times. It makes me feel at home in the universe.

Two contenders here: The APM 80mm F/6 which gives 5.3 degrees FOV with the Nagler 31T5, and 5.75 degrees with the Vixen LVW 42. Here it is shown with the ES 12 mm 92 deg EP, which at 40x still yields an impressive 2.3 deg true FOV The other is the inimitable Meade SN6 6" F/5 Schmidt-Newton which with the Nagler 31T5 gives me 3.33 degrees on the sky, which makes this a great comet hunter.

I am more-or-less forced to use a wider field as I am using the little 6" Schmidt-Newton. It really needs a darker sky than I have to get the faint stuff

That is absolutely stunning! M27 is one of my favourite targets, whether imaging or observing with telescope or even just binoculars. Haven't had a chance to get more data on this target this summer, alas, the weather has been that bad. Your image really shows there is a lot more detail to be got outside the "apple core" part than I have manage to capture so far.

Wonderful result

Very nice indeed. Given the low read noise of CMOS chips, little if anything is lost in shorter exposures. Stacking does take longer, of course.

That is a lovely mosaic. Love the crisp, but natural look. It is so easy to overcook these images.