Hallingskies

Jose: you seem to be asking all the right questions and I think you can’t go wrong with either mount. The portability would favour the Avalon (and the alt-az adjustments are really easy - something else to consider if you have to polar align each time) but from the one Mesu I have seen I am really impressed with its quality. It is really solid and stiff. There is absolutely no free movement in it whatsoever. It’s good that you have such a difficult decision to make!

I have Skipper Billy’s old Avalon and have been very pleased with it so far. Although I have it permanently set up, it is so light and compact that I would imagine it would be superb for a mobile set-up, certainly much more so then my old EQ6. My version also runs under EQMOD as an added bonus - not sure if Avalon’s latest mounts do. Don’t know if it is anything to do with the mount, but (touch wood!) pointing accuracy is also superb. Objects land on my ATIK 460 chip first time, every time, even after a meridian flip. Who needs plate-solving? Balancing is absolutely critical to get the best out of it though. It also seems to react sharply to poor seeing, although longer guide exposures help to damp that down. It has to be a bad night to get poor stars, though. The Mesus are superb bits of engineering but are big old lumps of metal (don’t know what the new Mk2s are like). It seems some folk here have the upper body strength and strong backs to lug them around as mobiles, but they really have to be considered as observatory-based kit I think. Just one other (probably daft) point. The Avalon mounts, with matching Primaluce tube rings and dove tails, are things of beauty. I had mine set up indoors for a while just to get everything running, and I simply enjoyed looking at it. It’s certainly a display piece that you won’t mind having around when you aren’t using it!

I posted my effort a bit earlier. I think yours is superior, much more subtle and nicely framed. I’m surprised your long exposures in Ha didn’t flood everything else out as I found the signal quite strong, even at only 300s. I got nothing to show in OIII at 300s but I had made up my mind to stick with RGB for colour given I had read the blue stuff was down to reflection, so kudos to you for teasing out some OIII.

Yes, I messed the framing up. Normally I take a single full length sub and then adjust the framing accordingly. In this case, I started with blue frames, of which there isn’t too strong a signal. I could see the main nebulosity was off to one side but for some reason I didn’t adjust it - I think I was too busy tweaking the guiding. By the time I got the first sequence run finished I was too far in to change the framing as clear nights are a rare thing these days. Lesson learned.

From earlier in the month, an HaRGB compilation acquired using my Esprit 100/Atik 460/Avalon fast reverse combo... 20 x 300s RG, 20 x 450s blue, 40 x 300s Ha, preprocessed and registered in Astroart, colour composited and final processing in PaintShop Pro. More details here if you are interested.

I want a ride!!!!

Very nice. For some reason I find my OIII filter gives me sharper and more contrasty results on the Moon than my Ha does. Don’t think I could beat yours, though.

A boring mystery picture, but... I bought my Atik 460 from Ian King a couple of years back and it has been in my obbo ever since. After a string of ropey subs I wondered if the dessicant plug might be getting a bit tired (though last night's subs were fine - obviously conditions rather than kit after all). Nevertheless, I dropped FLO a line last week, asking how much some replacement plugs might be. Received these in the post yesterday, completely free of charge. You really can't complain about THAT for customer service...

I love the place. There is a little book on sale there entitled “Astronomers at Herstmonceux” which gives a bit of the history of the place using the recollections of those who worked there, and which really captures the magic of it.

I think the guiding problems were down to my old Vista laptop not liking my new WiFi range extender. It seemed to hang for a few seconds every now and then and this appeared to throw the guiding. When I disconnected it for a later session, that seemed to stop the hanging and the wild swings, although guiding still wasn’t brilliant. Think I will have to run some Cat6 down if I want to use Remote Desktop.

Your guiding must be pretty good at that focal length. The outer areas of the galaxy look a bit fuzzy, wonder if you have over-cooked the noise reduction? The centre is lovely and sharp with good colour.

Lots of dusty stuff! Well done, I can never get that to show.

Thanks. I think old age and IT woes are getting to me. Why doesn’t stuff just work?!

Each to their own. I just think naming a deep sky wonder after a naff eighties computer game is a bit déclassé. It deserves something more dramatic.

I don’t care for the “Pacman” moniker so I gave it my own! I then found that “Eye of Sauron” is actually a colloquialism attached to a rather dim galaxy NGC 4151 in Canes Venatici. My blog (see signature) explains all. I was aware of it being used for the Helix - but the Helix is an appropriate and long-standing nickname and not many folk know of its other labels.

Details here if anyone is interested. It won't stand up to pixel peeking, which will show up the dodgy stars that got battered down from the bloated blobs in the stacks. Guiding was awful, don't know if that was the kit or the conditions.

It’s an old hobby horse of mine but I believe that air pollution causes far more of a problem than mist or high cloud as it scatters light even when your target is directly overhead. I always check my local UKAIR sites before an imaging session. If the PM10s and 2.5s are high, I know my subs will be poor. https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/interactive-map (click on a site near you and that will pull up the online hourly data) I think our air pollution problem is truly scary. PM 2.5s in North Kent and East Essex often breach the WHO 24h recommendation of 25ug.m3 - but DEFRA doesn’t have its own formal daily limit, so nothing is said or done! (This August bank holiday, people were experiencing breathing difficulties on Frinton beach. A fuel spill was mentioned as a cause. PM 2.5s in the area at the time were way over 100 ug.m3. This never got mentioned... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-49468334) So if you use Clear Skies as a guide to imaging prospects, I would suggest you also bookmark your nearest UKAIR site as well - especially if you live on the eastern side of England. Bear in mind not all sites have a full range of instruments, given that it is the particulates that most seem to affect imaging.

I managed to grab some OIII data (12 x 600s, Atik 460, Esprit 100) last night, to add to my earlier Ha data before my auto-guiding packed up and starting taking occasional but random 12" excursions. Really don't know what is going on there and I am starting to despair at it all - I'm no techie and with the weather we've been having, I feel like packing it all in! Still, I was pleased with the final result. Might be the last one for a while... I went a bit wild with the colour saturation. Not quite sure where the yellow came from in the end, but it looks pretty. I was using various Ha and OIII combinations for a green channel and it just dropped in to say hello - unfortunately I didn't record what I did and can't replicate it! ...

40,000 satellites put up by that nice Mr. Musk...

High altitude particulate air pollution is becoming a global problem. My observations are that it gives a smooth and unbroken haze to the sky, unlike high cloud (usually patchy) or mist (clearer overhead than at the horizon) as you describe. There have been extensive forest fires in Siberia and easterly winds have been blowing that bounty over much of Northern Europe this summer. Local geography can hinder its dispersal. You can get a general idea of your local situation from satellite-based reporting e.g. https://waqi.info/#/c/50.497/2.437/7.8z

I have an old Nexstar 4 and no, the handset only remembers the time it was last turned off at, which is aggravating. You have to enter the date and time afresh each time unless you have the GPS add-on. It does sound like a date-time entry issue, although it might be worth checking your location details are accurate as well. You will need to start with the scope pointing north and reasonably accurate date/time info whatever alignment scheme you choose. Also, make sure you are getting a good solid 12v minimum to it. My old Nexstar did not like dodgy power supplies or battery packs that were not fully charged.

Yes. In the Medway valley we suffer from horrendous air pollution when the wind blows from the east - PM10 and PM 2.5s scatter light. Don’t know if you have an equivalent to the UKAIR monitoring site data in France.

Looks like a nice project to keep you busy! I have a 1 in 8 slope on my garden. When I put up my 2.1m dome I bit the bullet and dug the bank out. It made life easier when it come to laying a concrete foundation and also kept the height of the dome down relative to my neighbour’s garden (she was really good about it all but even so, I didn’t want a stark white dome towering over her fence!) My better half also gained a flat area for her greenhouse, but we did lose the strawberry patch! I was in the process of putting some terraced raised beds in so the spoil/soil went in there. If you do go down the dig-out route then that’s the biggest problem. It’s amazing how the volume of spoil seems to quadruple compared to the size of the hole it came out of!

It seems that a lot of experienced observers are quite OK with letting the full power of the sun shine down their exquisite optics. So if it’s good enough for you guys, then it’s good enough for me! Maybe it’s like Stu said, a lot of the older Herschel wedges were maybe a trifle dubious in design, something I certainly recall seeing in action. Maybe I will invest in a modern one sometime, as the “team thinks” that they do seem to offer improved views - if the Sun ever pulls out of its current prolonged state of quiescence....

Good point!