teoria_del_big_bang

I am more of an imager than observer but that report was a pleasure to read and I could feel your excitement whilst reading it 🙂 

Great work.

Steve

Stellarium was working but now it behaves very oddly.

Initially looks like it is just running slow but what is actually happening is that when I click on anything in Stellariun (could be a menu item or a star etc) nothing seems to happen no matter how long I wait, but as soon as I click on any other running application stellarium updates and appears to work until I click on something again and the same happens.

Anybody seen anything like this ???

Steve

18 minutes ago, Same old newbie alert said:

Any issues?

No not at all best  (and by far the most expensive) hub I have ever owned, although it does far more than just a usb hub.

I am trying to get the images of my Stellarium setup but when I open Stellarium it is really (really) slow and almost unusable.
Like I say not really used it so set it up and checked it worked but never bothered powering up after that so not sure how long this has been like this as it worked fine when I set it up.

Steve

4 minutes ago, Same old newbie alert said:

Nice, what hub do you use if I may ask?

USB hub you mean ?
I use a Pegasus Ultimate Power box.

Steve

29 minutes ago, Jonny_H said:

Thanks Steve,

That would be great if you wouldn't mind. I am sure I must have missed something so would be good to cross check.

Out of interest are you connecting your mount via a EQDIR cable or USB?

 

Thanks to everyone else for your comments so far.

Its to a IOptron CEM60 via usb.

I find it handy too if I want to point my scope at a target away from a near full moon, so I can search for targets I might not be familiar with in certain parts of sky.

Steve

4 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

I have CdC set up and it works fine but I rarely use it and as mentioned above I prefer to just use the Sky Atlas and Framing in NINA itself.

I am same with Stellarium, but sometimes nice to have to have a look about whats coming up into view later in the night whilst a sequence is going on in the background, which means I suppose you don't need the link to NINA as you just get the name of your target from Stellarium, or CDC, and then just type it into NINA and away you go.
I just though that it can be set up I might as well set it up but like you say don't need it and so far I haven't really used it.

Steve

You do not need stellarium but it should work.
I have set it up and I did test it so it does work.

I will check and send some screen shots of how I set it up, although sounds just as you have done so far.

Steve

Just now, Anne S said:

You can book a caravan which will be brought to the site ready for you and set up. They're a local firm and do quite a few for the starparties.

Oh really, that may well be a better idea and may even work out cheaper than hiring a camper.
Any idea which firm this is, I can search locally if not. Many thanks for the suggestion 🙂 

Steve

4 minutes ago, Shibby said:

For what it's worth, I replaced my Baader Oiii with an Astrodon, while keeping my Baader filters for everything else. I find this gives me star sizes that match quite nicely in narrowband, since they don't bloat as much in Oiii as they did with the Baader filter. Yes, I have to refocus but that's not a major problem for me since the NB runs are typically long.

Thanks, thats actually worth a lot, good information to have 🙂 
Now the issue is getting hold of a 36mm unmounted OIII Astrodon. I guess I just have to order and wait, I even tried the official outlet of Astrodon in US and they have everything but the OIII in 36mm.

Did you get the 5NM or 3NM ?

Steve

First time for me so glad to see other SGL members will be there.
This is actually my first star party so any advice is welcome, I am booked on Yellow Dragonfy pitch 152, not even sure whether to invest in a tent or hire a campervan yet.

Steve 

1 hour ago, david_taurus83 said:

Hi Steve,

The hole was 900mm deep but I only filled with concrete 500mm thick. The ductile iron pipe is 1.4m long and I didn't want it any higher than 1m above ground level as by the time you add an adapter (brake disc) and the mount, your scope will be near eye level anyway. It's been great so far, polar aligned when first fitted and I haven't checked it since. Best upgrade you can do short of a full obsy. 

Thanks for the info, I just need to dig a big hole now, you don't fancy doing another one do you, I will pay the train fare 😁

Steve

Your thread has inspired me again to get going on my small obsy and pier.
I have put it off all last 2 years as we are supposed to be moving and downsizing but covid sort of put that on hold. Now even that covid is hopefully 🤞 coming to an end we still have no firm plans to when or where we move so decided to just build something and take all but the pier concrete foundation with us if we ever do move.

 Also I thought your pier build was so god I basically just want to be lazy and copy it ( if that would be ok ? ).

So I have a question and there may be more to follow.

Your hole was 600 X 600 mm and 900 mm deep - I think.
But you did not pour the concrete to the ground level so how deep was the actual foundation block ?
Has that so far proved to be deep enough ?

Steve

31 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

Interesting...I was on the New Member Help team, till I had to close my tank down (divorce!).

It will be a while ago now since I was last on, at least 10 years I think.

Just logged on again and my last post was Feb 2013.

Steve

15 minutes ago, cajen2 said:

@teoria_del_big_bang Was the forum UR, by any chance?

It was indeed, I ended up being part of the technical team giving advice, I really liked it all.
Although I loved Astro stuff back then I did not have a scope then and the time I spent on my reef I don't think I would have been able to do much astronomy, I ended up till all hours of the night then with lights out waiting to see what came up out of the rocks at night, it was amazing to watch.

Steve

1 minute ago, cajen2 said:

And don't even get me started on marine reefkeeping, where even a modest 90cm tank plus equipment runs into several thousand....each fish or coral that you buy is £50-£100+ ..... and the electricity / maintenance costs a fortune too.

Tell me about it.
I had one and loved the hobby. Also joined a really good forum which had a good community spirit very much like SGL and loved the hobby.

But, as I started to earn less I just had to either scale it down and maybe at least go to fish only or get rid and due to the running costs alone (changing the salt water, electricity for all the pumps, and all other supplements required) sold all livestock to a local shop and dismantled it.
I miss it but couldn't justify the ongoing costs to keep the livestock healthy.

Regarding the OP's question I think to a degree Astronomy is very affordable, as mentioned above binos and a dark sky all you need.
Then even a reasonably light polluted backyard a 2nd hand Dobsonian doesn't break the bank and gives some great views.

But like anything, if the bug really takes hold and you want to go further, then it does get difficult on a budget, and if you want to venture more into AP than using your mobile to take some snaps then wow, even 2nd hand now can get pricey if you are struggling with rising costs. Even 2nd hand gear now seems to command top dollar,  guess in part due to the scarcity of some kit, which is just how the 2nd hand market tends to work in anything be it cars or astro gear, its worth what people will pay.

But also it's not only the fact the astro gear is expensive, as cost start to rise generally, like the recent fuel hike, then even for the average family with a couple of kids it becomes hard to justify spending a lot on any hobby, let alone those on a tighter budget.

Steve

I was promised a perfectly clear night last night until after 4 am (according to the ever reliable CO 🙂 ) and it looked that way when I went to bed at around midnight, but just after falling asleep I heard my laptop making a noise as PHD had lost its star and went down to thick cloud everywhere, so freeing cold in my jim-jams had to bring everything into garage.
If anything encourages you to get on with an obsy build that does it 🙂 

So if that was from last night you have done well.

Steve

One other thing I am keen to know @ollypenrice , if you can, is what would I gain using a 3nM compared to the slightly cheaper 5Nm ?
I guess the 3Nm come int their own in heavily light polluted areas, or maybe near full moon, but is that basically it ?

Steve

48 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Swapping filters between subs strikes me as a little pointless in narrowband, but I may be missing something?  I can see why you'd do it in R,G and B because you need about the same number of each and being short on one is useless. More would always be nice but slightly too few, provided you have the same number of each, can give you an image.
It's different in NB. You are always going to need a lot and you don't need the same number of each, so shooting one set then another makes sense. It makes even more sense if you use somewhat moonlit nights for the Ha.

I think it's me that's missing something Olly, and that's experience. I was treating NB just like BB but what you say does make a lot of sense to me now.
I think in the past I just wanted to get some data to work with , and where I am in UK it can be weeks before another clear night occurs, and often the target has gone before I get chance to get the next filter done, but maybe, unless I move somewhere with less cloud, I just have to be patient and gather the data when I can and if that ends up being next year, so be it 🙂 

48 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Do you need the same make of Ha and OIII? Depends on what you're going to do with the subs. If you're going to add the data to (L)RGB then you don't. The main difference will be in star size and you won't be including the stars in the LRGB data.  If your project is NB-only then I guess you really do need the same filters to get a good match on the stars.

Good point I had not thought about.

48 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Astrodon NB filters are stunning, as they should be. I've processed their RGB data as well and, quite honestly, I don't think it's that different from Baader data. So... fancy NB filters, yes. Fancy LRGB, not so important.

Stunning if you can get hold of them 🙂 
Not having to get LRGB will save some cash, cheers Olly
 

Many thanks Olly, just the sort of help I was needing 🙂 

Steve

1 minute ago, Shimrod said:

and you're not going to do much stargazing with the Backbarrow apartments - they are surrounded by tall trees!

Are they, not an issue I would also keep my chainsaw 🤣
I had about 13 60 Ft + Leylandii at bottom of my garden that were starting to block the sky hence I bought the chainsaw, just 4 to go

Steve

Nice to see both in same frame, many setups barely get the heart in the FOV without a mosaic.
Certainly plenty of detail in there 🙂 

Steve

Apart from the apartments if I buy one of those I wouldn't be able to afford to do AP, I would just have to keep my binos and keep working a few more years 🙂 

Where did I put those lottery tickets ?

Steve 

Just a bit of an update on the flat panel.

In general still very pleased and its functioning well.

One caveat, one of my aims was to be able to put the flat frames at the end of a sequence to take all flats for all filters used in that session, so its all ready to power down in the morning.
And I have done this several times using both EKOS and NINA and has seemed okay.

But, last night was going to be clear according to CO so started to image IC443 and set up a sequence to loop Ha, OIII and SII images till around 4:00 am and then to shut the flat panel turn on the heater in the panel, wait a while and then do the flats.
But once again CO let me down and despite suggesting the evening would be cloudless until 5:00 am around midnight I heard the beeping from laptop to say PHD had lost its star and got up to see almost full cloud cover.

I had managed a few images so decided to stop imaging but to jump to the flats in the sequencer (NINA) but when it attempted to take flats they were awful and did not look like my normal flats at all.
Now it was a very cold night and very humid and when I went out to see what was happening I think I can see the issue.

• Due to angle of scope the flat panel when open was pointing pretty much up to the heavens.
• Dew was condensing and made the flat panel face very wet indeed.
•   When the flat panel shut it then just dumped all this water on the scope front lens which then pooled to the lower part of the front lens.
• This caused the light form the panel to be very unevenly distributed.
• When I looked there was still a fair but of water on the flat panel so there must have been loads on it before it shut.

How to stop this I am not fully sure yet, I guess there are things I can do to help the situation.

• Before closing the panel move scope to some position to let most of the water run off.
• Then after a delay to let the water run off maybe move scope again to a position where scope is near the meridian so that when flap closes any remaining water will run down and not get dumped directly on the lens.
• Turn light on, that may heat the panel up a little at least and turn the flap heater on for some time but may need 20 to 30 mins or so as I do not think it is that effective.
• Then start the flats sequence.

Steve

Thanks.

So how would I determine that offset ?
Would I say focus a three or four times with one filter and then a same with the new filter and see the average difference in focusser position ?

I will have a search about the Antila filters see what people are saying 🙂 

Steve

I really am struggling for help here folks.
I need to fix my OIII halo issue but ideally do not want to spend £3K doing so, but if thats the only sure option to have the best NB imaging then maybe I have to.

• If I do replace my filters, or some of them, then it will be Chroma or Astrodon (If I can get hold of any at the moment ?)
• If I just replace the OIII it will be thicker than the Baaders and so will need focussing everytime I change from OIII to to OIII.
• I really do not want to focus everytime I change filters as with the clouds up North I usually loop my sequences, so do not say do 10 x Ha, then 10X OII and then 10 X SII I usually do one frame of each then loop round the 3 filters so I would be focussing nearly every image.
• So next option is to just buy 3 new NB filters and leave my LRGB. Not ideal but at least reduces the refocussing as often sessions will be LRGB or NB only, sometimes I do Ha with RGB but would have to cope with that.
• I can always upgrade the LRGB later but not even sure if imaging wise I gain anything apart form removing the need to refocus sometimes.
• I am assuming that the difference required in BF would not really matter as it is only 0.3 mm difference.

To reduce the cost a little I could get 5Nm instead of the 3Nm but with Bortle 4 (ish) am I loosing anything using 5 Nm over 3 Nm. I know the bandwidth of the 3 are just narrower but what difference would I see in my data, is the improvement just at near full moon.

Steve