Rustang

Awesome! 👍

6 hours ago, AstroNebulee said:

Stunning images just brilliant. It was an amazing show wasn't it and just simply all over the sky. I doubt will get something like that for a long time. 

What set up did you use? 

Clear skies 

Lee 

Thank you, yeah it was just beautiful, very lucky to have witnessed it. I was using my Fuji XT-2 and the Fuji 16-55mm f2.8 lens.

6 hours ago, FenlandPaul said:

Beautiful set of images.  I was considering heading to Norfolk late that afternoon but was a little concerned it would get foggier there earlier so I stayed reasonably local.  But the weather ended up being better than expected for everyone, which was awesome!! These images are keepers, that's for sure! 🤩

Thanks Paul. Sadly parts of Norfolk did fog up, mostly over on the North East, my parents mist it because of the fog, they drove around for an hour trying to find a clear patch. I was considering two locations, Happisburgh light house over on the East coast and Cley wind mill, I'm thankful for chosing Cley!

Stunning!

I'm still speechless after last nights Aurora display. I had been reading the hype all day so decided to risk heading up to north Norfolk to hopefully capture it. I was running late due to some annoying road works and was about 45 minutes away from my destination when I noticed the display out the car window. I pulled over next to a field and as soon as I pointed the camera in the direction of the pillars that I noticed, the camera just lit up. I spent a couple of hours in the field before then heading to Cley windmill, my original destination. The display was still on going when I got to the windmill so spent about an hour there enjoying the show, I could see the pillars and the red, pink and green colours by eye, absolutely amazing!

28 minutes ago, Pete Presland said:

superb set of images, was it visible to the naked eye?

Not really, due to where I was its just to light polluted but further north such as Norfolk it was apparently.

Pitstone Windmill tonight. I have missed so many chances and some great displays this year so it was great to finally capture it tonight. I nearly didn't head out and was about to pack up after not seeing much when I got there but then it kicked off a little.

20 minutes ago, FenlandPaul said:

A beautiful image from one of my favourite locations! 👏🤩

Hope you had a great time down there; we’re Cornwall-free this year, which is a bit disappointing!

Cheers mate. Yeah a lovely holiday thanks, I cant get enough of Cornwall, such a stunning place. Shame you cant get down there this year, we might be having a year out ourselves next year, or it might pull us back again!

Back down to Cornwall again this year for another week away with my family. Although I made the decision to sell most of my DSO astrophotography gear, I still have every intention of capturing the Milkyway as and when I can. I decided on Kenidjack Valley as my main location this year and the foreground was shot on Friday just gone at approx 10:30pm and is a single 30sec, 800 iso, f4 capture. Now the Milkyway, although the weather was great for the week, the clouds did not play ball, I nearly had a chance on the Friday but the clouds just would not shift. So with that said, I have used last years Cornwall Milkyway data in this image which would be exactly how it would be anyway even if I had got more data this year. I hope to try again next year.

Thanks guys, ive tried two power supplies that used to work but now dont, i dont have any others to try at the moment. I will keep looking into it.

1 hour ago, Roy Challen said:

I don't have a quark, but I do have a Solarscout. No issues with power in the two and a half years I've had it.

If there were no issues before you sold it, then I would suggest that it must be a fault with either the cable of the new owner; or, something happened during shipping.

I would check that the socket on the quark is free of debris, that the cable is rated for at least 1.4 amps, and that the battery/supply is fully charged.

Also, is the owner aware that it takes a few minutes before anything meaningful can be seen through a quark?

 

It was supplied with the power supply i was using, theres no power what so ever, nothing on the led. Its coming back to me so i will see if i can power it up. Its incredibly frustrating and concering feeling that now I may now have potentially just lost alot of money which i cant afford to lose if I cant get it to work.

Has anyone had an issue with a Daystar Quark powering up? I had no issues before selling mine on, but the new owner is saying it's not powering up with the same power supply, no orange light. Any idea's what could be the issue? 

If you decide on the 224mc, I have one currently for sale in great condition if you wont to save a few quid. I used it for planetary, mostly on Mars and with an 8" 1000fl scope and a x2 barlow. I too just wanted to dabble and was really pleased with the results for a planetary beginner! I'm just up the road from you aswell.

Well its not the data I was hoping to collect, I was aiming for 10hrs or more each for Ha and OIII but with those lovely clouds getting in the way I'm not sure I will get the chance to gather more data. With this in mind I decided to process what I had anyway and I'm pretty pleased with the result. The usual hammer tool had to come out to play to smack the OIII data into submission!.

Ha 18 x 1200 sec subs   (6hrs)

OIII 12 x 1200 sec subs  (4hrs)

WO Z73, QHY-9 mono, Baader NB filters, HEQ5 Pro.

APT, PHD2, DSS, PS.

6 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Wonderful images! the first is my fav, its so clean and contrasty, beautiful job. It's been so cloudy here I couldn't see it at all, I'll catch it the next time around. 🤣

Thanks, i wasnt sure if i was going to have a chance to or not, im pleased i did.

10 hours ago, happy-kat said:

The comet with stars, I like how the tail is showing too

It took some processing to keep that while blending it into the stars but I'm pleased it's showing it a little.

This was a hard one to process, this is my 3rd attempt and I think I'm happy with it considering the data wasn't the best. I have never captured a comet like this before so at least Ive had ago.  Captured on the 31st January.

QHY 9 mono - shot as RGB x15 120 sec subs each channel

awesome

5 hours ago, Yawning Angel said:

Link to Google drive, Comet C/2022 E3 

1.1GB zip:

15 x 60 sec L
15 x 60 sec R
15 x 60 sec G
15 x 60 sec B

Master Flats LRG & B
Master Dark, 60 sec

Tracked on the stars

My version is here: C-2022 E3 (ZTF), LRGB

I'll leave it up for a few days , and I'd love to see what you do with it 🙂

Thanks, im not sure il match your processing but will give it ago plus it will be good practice for if i can capture some data of my own 

1 minute ago, Yawning Angel said:

If you want to try out processing some data, let me know and I'll try to upload it somewhere 15 x 60 per channel

Yeah that would be great, thanks. Maybe a shared dropbox folder would be easier!?

10 minutes ago, jfrijhoff said:

I hope to get a clear night to try and image the comet (first time ever for me). I was also planning on 30sec subs, and I just have the Samyang 135mm, so hopefully star trails in the comet-aligned image won't be too bad. I'll be using Siril to stack, and there seem to be directions on their website to do it (https://siril.org/tutorials/comet/), maybe it also helps in your setting.

The next few days are not looking great weather wise, hopefully I haven't missed my chance!

2 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

The coordinates that Stellarium reports the comet to be in are fairly accurate, within half a degree for sure at least on the 3 comets i have tried so far. You can manually slew to those coordinates and you will at least see it in the frame and can adjust manually from there.

Good point, I'm pretty sure I can enter the coordinates into APP somehow or the mounts ASCOM/EQMOD controller.

1 minute ago, Yawning Angel said:

I used the Orbitals plug-in for NINA, but if you can use Stellarium / ACSOM to point, it can easily be added to it's database

Oh cool, I didnt realise I could add it to a database, I have the ASCOM platform for my imaging gear but I use Astrophotography Tool so could I add it to that? I will go and research that in the meantime, it would make my life much easier if I do give it ago. 

6 minutes ago, Yawning Angel said:

I tracked the stars for my attempts, then created a master star image. My thinking is the mount want to track stars, where as the comet movement if going to need it to work harder...plus comets are fuzzy anyway 🙂

After that, you can do a comet stack, aligned on the comet and a strong rejection algorithm can reject the stars (experiment with rejection settings)

Good luck!

Ok cool so track as normal then as if it was a nebula. I think my main concern is locating it and pointing everything at it, I currently dont have a finder on my imaging rig and I dont really wont to take it all apart or add anything so trying to get the camera on target with no eyepiece or finder isant going to fun! 

I have done some light online research in regards to technique used for capturing comets but I wanted to confirm how to go about it. Firstly I have a mono camera so it will have to be captured as LRGB, does the centre burn out quickly?, just trying to gauge exposure length. I'm guessing I have to locate it manually then start tracking? I normally use APP to get on target but I'm guessing I wont be able to do that because it wont be in APP's database? I believe I will have to track on the comet itself to get the correct speed/movement without star trails or is it possible to sort the stars out later? I think I've seen people do this is stacking, the stars separately then the comet etc, is that true or if my stars are trailed then they stay that way instead of fixed!? So if I use the comet to track on, I guess I select the comet as the star in PHD2? I normally track side rail at 0.5x, if I was to do that would it keep up with it?

Just trying to make things easier for when and if I give it ago as I've never captured a Comet before.