Captain Scarlet

I have sequestered one of my wife's old hair-dryers after similarly frustrating sessions. It's a total game-changer, and if it contaminates viewing slightly because it's heating up the secondary and/or the spider-vanes, although I haven't noticed it,  it's something I can live with for the sake of making the difference between that and seeing nothing at all.

Cheers, Magnus

My immediate thought was anoxxle of some description. Nearly 50 years takes us to 1969, so lunar module or lander nozzle perhaps?

Magnus

My first DSO image, taken Sep 2017 on an EOS7D/2 + 300mm f/2.8 , 9 x 50 secs tracked on an AZ-EQ6 GT (using alt-az) from a really quite dark place near Baltimore in SW Ireland. Stacking in Pixinsight and curves in Photoshop. TBH I was a bit shocked (in a good way). I'm looking forward to improving it...

Edit: each "sub" was 50-odd seconds, f/2.8, ISO 1600 . I recorded 12 in all, but I rejected 3.

I'll keep in touch with your website - do not neglect it!

By way of quid pro quo if you're interested you might be interested in my website, a good starting-point bearing in mind what we're talking about here, is www.slidingseat.net/stars/stars.html#startingout .

Cheers, Magnus

Hi Victor, getting to this thread quite late. I had a quick look at your blog, it seems you've moved on a bit since those pictures! One thing I noticed, do you realize your 2nd pic in the series posted above features Triangulum (M33) as a noticeable object as well as Andromeda (M31) ?

Your first pics are very like my first ones, which is what drew my interest.

Good luck with your journey, seems like you have an interesting future ahead of you!

Cheers, Magnus

On 4/2/2015 at 09:32, acey said:

A true dark site is not "pitch black"..

This matches my experience of my first properly dark site a couple of years ago in furthest SW Ireland, a couple of miles from Baltimore. Walking back from the pub one evening, I couldn’t actually make out most of the constellations, they were just drowned out in a sea of stars such as I'd never seen before, it was incredible. It was at that exact moment I decided to re-indulge my interest in Astronomy. Having said that, I do recall the only one that WAS obvious was Orion, perhaps that's what was meant by "an Orion sky"  ?

Magnus