Xsubmariner

Thank you to everyone for a great Swag, it was a pleasure meeting you all. Kudos to Mark for showing me some excellent DSOs using my non-aligned EQ mounted telescope without a finders scope. Hope you get well soon Tony.

Martin

13 hours ago, Paz said:

and unlike those just buying and selling for personal use and not for profit, Kit Testers pay a fee for each ad.

While I agree with the concept, I have noticed some have more than one membership and don’t declare Kit Tester on them. What I don’t like is when their language during the sale expresses user knowledge and performance of an item, which you find out is untrue after purchasing.  As they say “buyer beware”, but it does taint someone’s experience of our forums within this wonderful hobby. 

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Welcome back, if your into AP you will find there is a substantial increase in the choice of hardware and software.

Managed to get some data between the clouds on Tuesday morning, this is just 6x1min LRGB Image so not a large amount of data, home to capture 2 or 3 min frames early tomorrow.

Cheers Freff, pitch 3 booked for the weekend. 

Hi Flip, welcome to SGL from a fellow South Wales member. You will find plenty of threads about imaging that should assist in your AP journey along with many experienced and willing members.

Cheers,

Martin

Hi Rob and welcome to the forum, it is a good knowledge base to start learning.

Martin

I should be available for the weekend 17-19th March.

 Having taken up Astronomy late in life, I am finding the journey; educational, fascinating,  immensely enjoyable and rewarding.  While attending a couple of star parties early on, I concluded the true delights of visual observation were not for me due to an inability to remain at the eyepiece for the requisite duration, consequence of many years of physical contact sports. 

 While my focus is AP, I have greatly enjoyed reading this thread, it has been been educational and somewhat enlightening. Kudos to mikeDnight, Sir, your sketches are pieces of art in addition to scientific documents. It was also great to read so many different responder experiences, that clearly reflected many years of dedication to this wonderful hobby. Thank you all for sharing.

Given the awful skies this year, It’s no surprise most of the images are narrowband. Not my best but most enjoyable image experimenting with different colours to highlight Nebulosity layers.

Yes, they meet at Pencelli Castle C&C site.

The link suggests your outbuildings contents is limited to £2500, and it’s the outbuildings structure that is covered up to the total policy. Having investigated this matter a couple of years ago I discovered most Home Policies covered outbuilding contents up to £2500-£5000. If your kit is worth more you will need to seek specialist cover.

Hi Dave, I would always advise anyone new to AP to go OSC initially and recommend they buy used, to minimise financial loss were they to migrate to mono at a later date. While I noticed you have an ASIAir, were you content to run your system from a laptop with say Nina, the For Sale/Swap forum currently has an as new QHY268MC for a bargain price of £1200. This would give you an excellent wide field capability and the camera would be an ideal partner for any future refractor.

Happy Christmas to you, your family and the SWAG crowd. Hope to catch up in the spring.

You might want to check out the QHY268MC, currently £1599 at MA. No good though if you operate with an ASI Air which locks you to ZWO camera’s only.

I was interested in BlurXTerminator because my f8 SCT/RC telescopes have large secondary mirrors, with a downside of slightly softening any image. Purchased yesterday for £86 via PP,  I tried the software on some M1 data captured Thursday using my f8 SCT which resulted in a Wow moment others have mentioned.  I have included the before/after Ha image of M1 after running BXT with default settings.

While my initial M1 data is far from perfect, BXT has dramatically improved the possibility of creating a decent image from a night of bad seeing. The level of benefit from running BXT will vary between datasets and will be subtle in certain instances, but it will deliver an improvement. Any imager in Northern Europe needs all the help they can get, so I welcome this positive gain and believe the cost a worthwhile investment considering my overall expenditure in this hobby.  

2 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Skywatcher uses terrible grease in their mounts that doesnt like sub zero temperatures.

This is the reason I changed out my NEQ6 grease for some extreme temperature lubricant and haven’t had a problem since. Not cheap stuff though.

Managed 2 nights of imaging without the threat of passing rain, what a joy. The sessions would have been much shorter had my equipment setup necessitated me being outside. Thankfully I now control the equipment from a warm observatory control room. 

This was a far cry from a few years ago when I spent a lot of time under the stars with my NEQ6 and laptop. All was well up to -6, then if the temperature dropped further guiding became erratic and the mount sluggish. Found out later the original grease in the NEQ6 was not able to operate at those low temperatures.

As the U.K. weather becomes more adverse, my reasons for building a back garden observatory are more than justified. This season more than any, has been spent conducting opportunistic grabs between rain and sheltering from adverse weather conditions.  Imaging in the U.K. under the stars in winter is definitely for the young and hardy. 

Welcome to the forum. Such enthusiasm is great to see, have a great time exploring this wonderful hobby.

I hope you are fortunate and can recover all the equipment. You can buy a small cupboard dehumidifier for £25-30, or get pack dehumidifier. Place it in a warm small space (airing cupboard is ideal) with your kit and it will greatly assist in drying out the space along with your kit. 

Now to go find a suitable cover.

Very nice Alex, may I ask what process flow you used?

 I would be concerned about any debris that might be scattered over the observatory from the chimney.  I have fitted exhaust pipe tape in the past, which could be wrapped around the chimney without risk of fire.

10 hours ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Come over to the light from the dark,

Clearly “The Force” is strong in you Nigella.

Hi Wim, you have my sympathy.  There I was about to complain the ambient temperature was too high causing all the cloud, then the cold spell arrived and following one night of imaging I am subjected to heavy fog and AP is all but useless, yet again. I question the sanity of U.K. AP imagers, either were half full guys and girls or just fools. Considering the systems cost aggregated to nights of actual use this hobby is more expensive than @#§¥@#%&, enough said.