Wiu-Wiu

I recently looked into the TS Quadruplet telescopes, and those look really nice.  I would have been really tempted to get me one of those. 

A TS 81 mm flatfield apo costs less than the Esprit 80 and you have no need to buy an extra flattener. 

A detailed view of the sun through an Intes MK67, raw sketch made at the eyepiece and cleaned up afterwards for digitlisation. 

I hope sketches are allowed? 

Interesting question, I've had a few instruments over the years, and most of them are bought with a specific goal, so it kinda depends on where I'm observing and what I'm looking at. 

I also don't log everything, but I do so with all instruments. 

The 12" travel dob is still on the top of the list, but that was also my first 'big' scope and I had it for some time now. It is now residing on La Palma for my observations over there, That would count for about 100 - 200 observations per year.

The C11 edge is mainly used for lazy goto deepsky and double stars, the 10" Meade is no longer with me but served the same goal.

The 18" has only been here for just under a year but I do think it will surpass all the others quite quickly, in dark skies, it is just picking up fuzzies left and right, and I can use it at home as well as any dark site I can reach by car.

Terrible seeing conditions cut the astro trip to a dark site short, so only a handful. Of images made it and the second night was scrubbed alltogether. 
 

nonetheless, I stacked what I had, but needless to say, the dark nebula could benefit from at least 6 more hours of data. Will revisit when i get away to a dark site again, at least i know it can be done with my imaging rig. 

i started with just under an hour of images of the supernova currently seen next to M60, an easy target, even visually. 
lots of background galaxies, too. I might redo that region someday, too. 
 

One day is not a perfect 24 hour but I think you are on to something. 
Platesolving gives you celestial coordinates, and ra and dec “never” change for a (fixed!!) object.

what you could do instead is looking at where your tracker would be pointing when you will need to stop, see what star is near the center of that FOV, and using skysafari you could see when your object would pass there. That would be the end of your session, and you could plan the amount of exposures so the asiair is done taking subs by that time, depending on what time you wish to start (due to clouds, focus problems,…) 

for example: lets say, for ease, there is a tree right at the meridian from where you are looking. (The meridian is presented by a vertical line in the image)

you wish to image rho ophiuchi and are outside at midnight.

 You look at what object is there, and in this case, it is Kraz. 

now fast forward the time to the point where your object is at that limit:

That time is around 03:49 in this example.

so if you want to start to image at 01:00; you still have 2hours and 49 minutes of imaging time left and can plan , for example, 169 exposures of 1 minute.

Meridian flip is indeed not possible. Checking when the target will be at the set limit is a very good idea. 

I kinda use the same modus operandi with my setup when imaging. Due to several trees and houses I can only image targets between a certain window, I'm just not limited to one target, as you are. I use your trick to program the asiair during the day.

I use skysafari to simulate the sky at the start of an image run and select a target that is in range. Then fast forward until the target would run out of view, and program the amount of images (minus about 15 minutes to compensate for autofocus or meridian flips). That is the time when I can go look for a new target, and I do the same thing. I only park the scope before powering down the system. 

You could indeed start up the image capture at a certain time (but you would have to be there because I think the star adventurer starts tracking at power up); but once you are on target, your asiair would be programmed to take X pictures of X minutes, and will power down the entire system at the end of the session, including the star adventurer.

8 hours ago, tomato said:

You won’t have the right imaging set up for it, but if I’m ever fortunate to have the opportunity I would want to image NGC 1365 in Fornax, for me the most photogenic galaxy in the heavens, North and South.

Enjoy your stay under Southern skies.

It would be worth the try, even with this setup (I did choose this one over a smaller field of view, just for the ease, but it still is somewhere in between my home rigs, the Esprit 80 and 120) but unfortunately it is the wrong season for it. 

I think I have made a quite decent list, not too large either, so I can get enough integration time on the targets. I will add some comets "on the go" and maybe some objects that look stunning in the telescope. 

Here's the first draft: 

NGC 6723 a globular cluster with surrounding bright and dark nebula - should be interesting. (picture for reference)

NGC 2997 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAWK-I_NGC_2997.jpg

NGC 4945  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phot-18a-99-hires.jpg

NGC 5139 - Omega Centauri 

NGC 5128 - Centaurus A

IC 2944 - Lambda Centauri Cluster

IC 4604 - Rho Ophiuchi Nebula

NGC 253 - Sculptor Galaxy

NGC 3372 - Eta Carina

NGC 3576 - Statue of liberty nebula

NGC 6188 - Fighting Dragons of Ara

Thank you all for the inspiration!! 

Thanks for the input everyone! 

As for imaging: the setup will be ready for me and I will bring my asiair, so I can easily program it and won't have to look back. I chose a widefield apo (and not one of their bigger setups), exactly to be on the safe side and spend all of my time sketching and observing   That's what I always do, and it doesn't really cut into the observing time. I'm also bringing a skytracker for real wide field imaging of the milky way, that one does need some attention though. 

On top of my list is the Rho Ophiuchii region, which will get at least 2 nights worth of imaging time. The Magellanic clouds are not placed very well right now; Sagittarius will be straight up. 

I was thinking of some dark nebulae (Chameleon looks like it has a decent amount of them), Omega centauri ofcourse, and Centaurus A, but I can still use some ideas  

I have planned a trip to Namibia in a couple of weeks. I will be observing with a 12" and a 16" dobsonian, and will take pictures with a 102mm apo. 

I think I'll feel like a kid in a candystore, with so many new objects and excellent skies to look at them... But I feel overwhelmed. Should I look at new objects only? Should I redo objects that I only saw on the horizon from other places? ... 

What objects should definately go on my list? (visual or photographic)

Any other experiences that might help overcome the delirium are more than welcome... 

They were, thank you! I think a 12” there can certainly compete with 16” back home. It’s all about transparency, really. 

I was finally able to make my way to La Palma to do some stargazing. No covid lockdowns, and also no volcano erupting this time, but the weather wasn't very nice and we were only able to squeeze in 4 nights of observing, all nights forced to drive up to the Roque to get above the clouds. 

There was quite some wind at some moments, but still we were able to do some decent observing. I wrote down over 100 observations and made about 20-30 sketches. 

Here are 2 messier galaxies that I was able to sketch on the same night. Same scope, same location and same magnification - so very good to compare them side by side. 

Enjoy! 

Messier 61 is bright and compact, but still shows nice detail in its core. Being a barred spiral it is not always easy to distinguish the arms from the bar. 

M83 is much larger in comparison to M61, but also fainter. A LOT of detail here, too. 

One arm is -very faintly- running off to the upper part of the drawing, following the line of stars there. 

3 hours ago, alan potts said:

Really like the Messier 100 Dave, really should try some of these smaller galaxies with the M/N 190.

Alan

Thanks all! 

I really wanted more data on these, but the window for most is pretty short from where I’m shooting. 

Very happy with the current setup though; it’s behaving quite well - apart from some hickups with the last asiair update in some of the meridian flips. 

Now looking into some longer focal length setup for the galaxy season. Just not sure on how to prep the c11E for that. (Camera, mount, reducer or not...)

It was an exceptional week, the telescope was out and working for 8 consecutive nights. 

I was able to shoot 18 targets, for a total of a whopping 69,6 hours! 

These are the final 4 of the processed files:

The neighbour of M53, the fainter and less dense NGC 5053:

Messier 100:

NGC 2903, a beautiful sight! 

Peculiar galaxies NGC 4618 and 4625:

Finally got some clear skies, so I was able to brush up on my comet imaging. 

3 were selected as a target, ranging from mag 13.5 to 10. 

Enjoy! 

Comet 67P is showing off its long and narrow tail: 

This one is the brightest comet, sprouting a wide tail. Also: look at the small open cluster on the right of the image. 

UMA doesn't quite have the appeal of LEO-like constellations, until I started observing visually... Lots of galaxies in there are quite bright, and have peculiar shapes. 

Here are two results of this week's session. Both with the esprit 120 on cem 60, from a Bortle 6 garden - so I used the IDAS D1 filter.

Sounds like you had a blast! Excellent sessions and thanks for the report!

Imaged over 4 nights in the last week, for a total of almost 7 hours. 

Esprit 120, Asi 071 on Cem 60, all data with duo narrowband HA-OIII. 

34 minutes ago, barbulo said:

You mean cloudy nights? Noooooo 😱

Ssshhh! No, my agenda is quite full these days, some processing time during the day would be nice  

Maybe tomorrow or next weekend... 

thanks!

You can't really call 3 months of rain and clouds a dry spell, can you? 

Last time I got the scope out was early december last year. And finally, we got some decent weather at New Moon. I was too occupied to be able to drive to my usual dark sites, so instead, I programmed the Asiair and put the Esprit 120 on the pier in the garden. At least I would get some decent data while sleeping. 

Because of trees and houses obstructing the views, I can only get about 2 to 3 hours worth of data per object per night. Some of the images are taken on multiple nights.

All images with Esprit 120, ASI 071 and IDAS D1 (unless otherwise specified) on Cem 60, controlled by asiair. 

Stacking in APP, final stretching and editing in Pixinsight.

First, some globular clusters:

Next up: some galaxies,

And an open star cluster:

Many more to come, but need more time to process the data.

Enjoy!

2 hours ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Steve

Team See Less.

That is about the closest to the truth as can bee. 

And for European clients: here’s one on sale for 200€  Ov optics

I didn't even know it did that. I know there should be some kind of comet alignment possibility too, but call me lazy, I still process those in pixinsight. (it's possibly still a beta version and I don't want to lose my normal version - I am THAT good with computers lol  

@alan potts @scotty38 it is taken with the STC Astro narrowband filter. I first bought it when I only had a filter drawer, not having a mono camera, nor filterwheel at that time. It was/is the perfect solution to do some narrowband imaging from my lightpolluted garden. 
 

the images come out looking like this, no extracting or recombining needed.

Alan, your filter is in my visual case. It gets rotated out in the field on challenging objects. 

nowadays I do have a filter wheel, but I only have this one and my idas lightpollution filter in it. The wheel is handy to keep dust out of the system.  I shoot narrowband on nebulae and when the moon is out. The idas D1 is used on comets and pretty much everything else. On dark locations, I shoot through one of the free slots. Maybe I’ll get a mono camera in the future, and put LRGB filters in there. (But I’m still not really convinced to make that step) 
 

Thank you,

That is a duo narrowband filter, so it pretty much comes out of the camera like this. Stacking and calibrating is done in APP, then the stack is further processed in pixinsight for stretching, levels, curves… 

Finally a little break in the clouds - it's been overcast for over a month! So I spent some time on NGC281, hoping to catch comet Leonard in the morning. Clouds rolled in at 3 am; so I had to cover the scope, and set my alarm, but it didn't clear up again, so this is it. No Leonard for me, sadly.