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Wiu-Wiu

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Everything posted by Wiu-Wiu

  1. I totally forgot i had this data lying around… made on an astro trip to Namibia in 2022; probably never processed it because i only had 15x300s of data. looks like that was quite enough, wouldn’t you say?
  2. Quite the view at the moment, with enough integration time, even a tail is becoming visible. I was able to shoot it from South France last week. Now we are back under a thick cloud cover, so it might be a while before we gat another chance. Crop from the image made with an Esprit 120 and asi 533. No filters were used.
  3. I took a last minute trip to Southern France last week, taking my imaging setup with me. Weather wasn't very cooperative, we were plagued by bad transparency. I had to throw out 50 subs due to loss of guiding by clouds, but was able to keep 94. The dark clouds are starting to pop out, but I think this needs more. Will revisit later.
  4. I was able to bring a slightly bigger photography setup on my recent trip to La Palma, during our stay I spent several nights on 5 targets. These are the results: LDN11235: LBN 576 (Abell 85 or CTB 1) NGC 7023 - Iris Nebula: LBN 331 - Cygnus Waves: and my favorite: LBN 468 - The Loop of Darkness Details in the images, all images captured with the Esprit 80ED and asi 071mc pro on a CEM26P. We were plagued by some high clouds on most nights, visible in the bloating of the brightest stars. I tried reducing the glow as much as possible. Hope you enjoy!
  5. An unexpected cleas night - but ofcourse at full moon.. I decided to put the scope out and at work on some Messier objects. As I had reconfigured the Esprit to host the Asi 533 for a narrower FOV, to get ready for galaxy season. The transparency wasn't that great throughout the entire night, the subs gave away that high clouds were present, lit by the full moon. I didn't make any flats, as seen by the same spots in every image. All images were cropped slightly to get rid of the edges. The collage does show the differences between the clusters, might be a fun project to do all of them one day. (spoiler alert: they won't all fit this FOV) Esprit 120 with ASI 533 and L-PRO on CEM60 at the home pier. All work done by the asiair pro. Stacking and gradient/LP removal in APP, stretching in PixInsight.
  6. I've gotten some really good views of the planets with the 18" dob lately, so I figured I'd give it a shot to image them. Seeing wasn't good, but results weren't really what I had in mind either. Asi 224mc through the 18" Dob on its platform, I threw all images into a GIF. First one shows Io on its way to cross the disk Second one has the red spot on its way out. No use of making a gif of Saturn, so here's the best what I could do. I might need more practice, hope to get some better shots at good seeing. The processing was more labour intensive than I anticipated.
  7. Wiu-Wiu

    NGC 5286

    I have found not one single mention of this globular cluster on the forums, time to change that! This cluster is accompanied by a bright orange star, and shows some details like variations in brightness and small star chains. Sketch: charcoal on white paper, inverted, and added speckles digitally for effect. The brightest stars were drawn in manually. Hope you like it! enjoy!
  8. Thank you, everyone! We had a good choice in renting scopes, not only for photography (see my website); but also for visual use. I switched between this 12” and a 16” Dieter Martini dobsonian. I might be tempted to rent a bigger scope, but on my first trip to the southern hemisphere, a 12” was more than big enough. The 16” was nice for those small planetaries, or getting more detail out of other objects.
  9. This one took a while, first I had to muster the courage to start sketching this enormous mass of stars. By no means possible to pinpoint every single star, but i did manage to get some of the details (like the darker lanes and the two dark "eyes" in the center). The brightest stars have been drawn truthfully, for as far as this is possible in these kind of objects... Hope you enjoy! Wiu²
  10. My back yard is SQM 19.3-19.6. Narrowband is the way to go, but the L pro does a decent job when shooting other targets. I’m keeping my setup intact when storing it in the shed or even moving it to a dark location. Saves me a lot of worries with dust or spacing. the 533 and esprit 120 combination has a quite narrow FOV, thus reducing the amount of stars in the field, and less chance of having brighter ones in there. I didn’t have that problem with the 071 on this telescope. the NB targets are usually quite large, with this setup I am aiming more towards galaxies and comets anyway, so i’m not going to use the l extreme that often.
  11. L-pro and L-extreme in the filter wheel here, with the asi 533 mc pro. because i wasn’t sure about vignetting, i went with 2” filters. the only issue I am getting with the L-extreme is that on faint targets (well, rather faint stars in the frame), the autofocus doesn’t work properly, even with up to 20s exposures. while being an excellent filter, i am thinking of putting my STC duo narrowband back in the wheel, and use that instead. Both are ha-oIII filters, but the extreme is a bit more narrow. On targets with fainter stars, i’ll use that one. (Osc has limited filter use so i still have 3 slots open ) Apart from that, the choice for a filter wheel was to eliminate the need of opening my light path and risk getting dust in. Darks are just made with the front cap on in a dark room.
  12. One of my fellow travelers on our latest trip had a chair just like this. It is indeed small and transportable, but you need to take extreme caution when repositioning. He didn’t, and when ‘hopping’ from one position to the next, the entire chair came crashing down in itself, breaking the internal structure and sending him tumbling to the ground. luckily with no physical damage or damage to his setup, but ending the use of the chair right there.
  13. Wiu-Wiu

    NGC 55 (SCL)

    The Sculptor Whale Galaxy, or AKA "The String Of Pearls Galaxy", is a stunning view in the telescope. Dark lanes and mottled appearance, almost completely filling the field of view with the Delos 17 @ 100x. Foreground stars are speckled across the field, giving a real feeling of depth to the image. A real treat!
  14. Ah! How silly of me. Ofcourse! i usually go to my trusty IDSA (interstellarum deepsky atlas), it has brighter objects printed bolder, so the easy ones pop out on the page. being a list guy myself, browsing Deepskylog also helps, there are tons of observing lists in there and most targets have sketches and observations logged, so it’s good to know what you’re up against. the Caldwell list might be a good one for you! I wished i had known that one before we left, it’s full of nice targets. let us know how your list is coming together, it might help for future reference
  15. Eta Carina is much brighter and bigger than M42. You’ll see why the Northern hemisphere got dealt a bad hand there 😅 15-20 degrees might still be plenty high enough, we saw the LMC and SMC at about that high, and views were stunning already. what does SH stand for? I am not a native english speaker, and can’t imagine what you’re looking for. quite a bit of sketches are in my deepskylog gallery, and pictures on my website.
  16. I've read tons of stories about this supplier. All have the same narrative. I bet his dog ate a lot of his homework when he was in school. I hope he succeeds in making a good mount, but I still have to read a review from someone who actually got what was promised. I have a pier, made in one of their earlier years, no complaining there, but a pier is no mount... Maybe when they actually start production and have them in stock. But no way i'd be part of another one of these adventures. buyer beware!
  17. This is a lovely planetary nebula in Cetus, O-III is needed to bring out the object more. Seen in the early hours of may 31, it was the 9th and last sketch of that session.
  18. It has been a while since i posted something here. In may, i took a stargazing trip to Namibia with 2 friends, and i am still processing images, sketches and observations from it. I'll be spamming the forum again as the sketches get finalised. I'll kick off with one of the most eleaborate sketches i ever made up to date. It is a view of the center of the Eta Carina Nebula, with a nice view of the keyhole nebula. Details are in the image. If you ever have a chance to see it, this must be one of the most beautiful nebulae visible from Earth. you can keep looking at it for hours and never get tired of it.
  19. Why change eyepieces if you can use another scope?
  20. A lot will depend on how large the group is. I always went in quite small groups and we had rental cars, one or two per accomodation. the area of the observatories is open for anyone during the daytime, it is the only way to visit the vista there. Also, some observatories offer guided tours (like the GTC), but most of them are closed to the public. you might be lucky and get a private tour in one, but you’ll have to register a long time in advance and would have to get in touch with the one responsible for that telescope, and get the go from the operator on duty that day. Be sure to take the driving into account! driving up the roque from las tricias will take you about 30-45 minutes. Depending where your accomodation is, getting to las tricias will take at least equally long. There are no straight roads on LP, and all of them are mostly 1x1. daytime activities are quite easy: hiking! La Palma is the most green island of the Canaries. But again: you are on a volcano, most routes will break a sweat. Driving from vista to vista is another possibility. A visit to the caldera itself is worth doing, but the park is only open when you have a ticket, so be sure to plan in advance. A visit to the south tip, and the -before last year- “newest” volcanoes, is also worth doing, but the new eruption has cut off that part of the island, and i’m unsure when the new road will be opened. if you are considering hotels: most are at the east side of the island, and there is another route up the roque, but I always stay at rental casa’s on the west coast so i can’t help there. good luck! Definately worth the trip!
  21. I took this image over 2 nights, used 11 panes to create this mosaic of the Rho Ophiuchi nebula complex. Manually positioned each pane to overlap. Each pane has at least 12x300s of data in it. Imaged from Deepskysafaris - Rooisand Desert Ranch, Namibia with a TS100Q and Asi 071MC pro camera. Stacked in APP, stretched in Pixinsight. On true scale, this cropped view of M4 and NGC 6144 was too nice to pass:
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