Mike JW

Hi Rob,

Super results. I am sort of envious of the set up - wide fov is so good for setting the context and frequently show the beauty of the heavens, unlike my set up. 

I use SLL/Jocular with my ultrastar. To set the time for subs: First decide what the sub time will be in SLL, then go over to Jocular and hit the sub time button (just below the camera on the right - see below - I placed the cursor on the 7s, ) and up will come the pre-programmed sub times. Then activate the desired time, or if it is not there then  create a user defined time and activate it. Hope that makes sense. Just out of interest, I never use median. I also regularly delete subs as they come in, if they have satellite trails or they have significant star wobble if the conditions are unsteady.

Enjoy the journey.

Mike

Hi Rob,

I shall look forward to your adventures with Jocular. As you know J. does it all for me.

Mike

Hi Johnathan,

Mike Wood here (Martin mentioned me), and as you will see in the EEVA thread I have used a variety of scopes for visual and then EEVA.

I used for awhile a 5" apo for EEVA and with my interest in going really deep I soon abandoned it in favour of my C9.25 that I had at the time. The C9.25 became C11 which reduced the time needed to collect the subs but my all time favourite is in fact my 15" Dob - quick at f4.5 (or at f3.5 when I use a reducer). The larger the scope then in theory the greater the resolution (but all the normal caveats apply), however the fov gets smaller so I loose out on wider fov that smaller scopes give. I have often thought that the ideal EEVA scope is somewhere in the 9" to 12" range and operating around the f4 mark. Thus I would concur with your thought of a 10" Dob.

Having said that a 10" is a good idea, look through what Martin M and Biil S achieve with their 8" Newtonians - really quite stunning. Their results sometimes out do my 15"!  Generally I can achieve better resolution and of course quicker but I have been fortunate to be able to own a large Dob.

GOTO is in my view the only way to go - manual is so slow and frustrating, especially when we have such limited clear spells. My early visual Dobs were manual and yes I enjoyed the star hopping but once I converted my current Dob I saw so much more visually and also using the EEVA approach. If time/money permitted I would run my 5" Apo on a separate mount and get the wide angle context for my Dob views.  (C9.25 with a hyperstar set up in an observatory works incredibly well but that is serious money and not where you are at).

Enjoy the journey.

Mike

PS. Chelmsford is my home town but I now live elsewhere.

Hi Ian, 

12 hours ago, Big Ian 65 said:

is the need to refocus due to temp, just down to the expansion/contraction of the scope components, or something else?

As you say just down to expansion/contraction. Sometimes scopes will need to be re-focused if you point them at a very different part of the sky (things move slightly in some scopes). I only very rarely needed to re focus my C11/C9.25 during a session but makes sense to be aware that focus might change during a long session.

Cheers,

Mike

As happy-kat says, focusing on a star is sufficient, but remember that you may need to re focus during a session as the scope cools down.

I made a homemade mask out of thin plastic. Card may give you ragged edges but should work - try to make the cuts as smooth/sharp/accurate as you can but probably no need to over do it.  The pattern is key.

Mike

Hi Ian,

You are now hooked!!!!

Bahtinov masks work well. Others will use software programmes but I very limited knowledge of technical stuff - I do the point and shoot approach. (I have tried to use Sharpcap on several occasions but fail to even get an image.

I use Photoshop 13 sometimes just to adjust contrast or brightness but as it is EAA I keep post processing minimal (other than tweaking in Jocular when I wish to post a result) and maximise the observational comments.  (Imagers tend to focus on the image and often do not make any observational comment.)

The reducer - I would suggest you use it all the time - increases fov and gets results quicker.

Martin will advise you no doubt on using Jocular. I collect FITS files and send them direct to Jocular to process live and this results in all the data being saved within Jocular for later use, reference...... I am totally sold on Jocular (for me it is so easy to use compared to Sharpcap etc).

Enjoy the journey.

Mike

Excellent. Fired me up to take a look.

Mike

Well done Geoff. I cannot get my Dob down that  low.

Mike

Well done. My first attempts went straight into the bin. It makes for a lovely project to visit all the Arps in a year. I have done two rounds. First time with a smaller scope and not using Jocular. Second time using my 15" Dob and stacking the images in Jocular. What you have picked up with your set up is more than I could see visual in my former 20" Dob.

Have fun, enjoy the journey.

Mike

Hi Ian,

I too went down the rabbit hole of which camera - not a straight forward answer.

The C9.25 is perfect for EAA (I use to do EAA with a C9.25, then it became a C11). With the 0.63 reducer it will be 'fast' enough to keep the time down to get 'live!' images quite quickly and also have a reasonable field of view. As Martin indicates, alt/az is fine. Currently I use a Dob, which is of course alt/az.

The C9.25 will cope with a sensor diagonal of 11mm and probably a touch more. It will also be OK down to about f5. I did try using a f3.3 reducer - not worth it unless you have a very small sensor.

Mono cameras are far more sensitive than colour, thus you get results quicker. I am not a fan of colour except for Planetary Nebulae and star clusters. Mono is much more as you see it through a big Dob ( of which I use to own one).

I use the starlight express ultrastar camera, capture the image using the Starlight Live software and then send it straight to Jocular software to stack etc (Jocular has been written with EAA in mind - I highly recommend it.) I started out using the starlight express Lodestar x2 which gave good results). I think I saw one of these for sale recently on UK Buy/Sell.

As Martin says - ask for help as you need.

Cheers,

Mike

Looks like you are now well set up for a fantastic EEVA journey. Always good to check collimation now and again, although in my experience the celestron scopes hold collimation very well - I use to tweak it maybe once a year.

Mike

Hi David, a fascinating area to view and thank you for all the information.

Mike

It is a while since I visited this beautiful group. Below is my shot from 2 years ago (pre jocular).

Mike
 

Well done Vin, good to know the Minitower delivers. Next target is to move to dark skies?!!

Mike

Really need Tony's set up for the wide field views in an observatory, then stroll across to the 20" Dob (in the roll off shed) with a suitable camera inserted to take a closer more detailed look and of course all of this gear under mag 7 skies!!!!!!

Abell 2151 - such beauty, awe inspiring.

Mike

Arp 71 is in the Arp classification as a spiral with a high surface brightness companion. Quite possibly it is a line of sight pairing but is obviously part of the wider galaxy group. In this shot it is the pairing in the centre. However this area is rich in interest. The whole area is Abell 2151. Arp 71 is also  VV1791.

Arp 272 is nearby but Jocular has placed the label in correctly. It is where the VV220 label is placed. Arp 272 is a group of three galaxies

Off to the left is the galaxy labelled as Arp 272 in the shot above. It is in fact PGC 057073 and hoorah it is a ring galaxy (outer ring) - (R)SABs, also around the 500 million lyr mark.

and finally on the landscape image is VV 212, which is Arp 122. This pairing are interacting, or have been ( they are about 10 million lyrs apart). Arp grouped them as elliptical or elliptical like galaxy perturbing a spiral (the uppermost galaxy is the spiral that is being perturbed).

Abell 2151 is the whole of my landscape shot and beyond. Many galaxies are about the 500 million lyr mark. A total of 87 galaxies in the group.

and finally, there was me off to bed at 7pm to sleep/rest until just before 11pm. Then out I went into the light late spring/early summer skies of GB on a night of steady  skies and transparent (M13 just naked eye at the zenith). Packed it in at 1am and sorry to abandon the Milky Way going most the way down to Sag. Was it worth it? - absolutely but at my age I am wrecked and need a day to recover.

Mike

This comet is about 575 million miles away and will be much closer in a year's time.  Currently sitting in a lovely star field in Hercules. It is about mag 14/15. (just below centre - the only fuzz ball in the shot).

Mike

I took a peak at this SN in Virgo (one month after Bill's post).

Mike

Hi Vin,

In the 7", M13 would not be anywhere near as bright. Your view feels closer to a 12" scope?

Mike

Hi Martin,

You might find this link of interest - double star astronomy: double star datasets (handprint.com)

Mike

Martin

Very interested to see how this line of EEVA observing works out. Certainly worth a go in colour and a smaller pixel camera - not for me with the Ultrastar. Short subs definitely give better results when ever I have tried it. Also as is obvious very steady skies work best. The frustration with so called doubles stars is are they true binaries /multiples or just optical?

The Cambridge double star atlas, second edition lists only true binary systems. I do have the Cambridge doubles in excel format and various other lists of true doubles.

You mention L and T doubles - what does the L and T mean?

I use to have an OMC 200 which on a good nights I could track down faint doubles (mag 11, using AV could sometimes get me fainter). 

Have fun with this project,

Mike

One classification describes NGC 4762 as SB(r)0^0^ sp LINER - Ok it has a bar, is likely to be a spiral but how do they get to work out that it has an inner ring and what does the  0^0^ mean??

For a moment  Martin, I thought you had lost the plot (although as you know I do like doubles)!!!! and then all was revealed - a delightful capture - excellent to have hunted this one out.

Mike

Arp 263 - is called by some people the Loony Galaxy; I assume because of its chaotic state as a result of the merger. Interestingly so 91 H11 regions have been identified indicating the on going star formation. It is actually quite small at only 40,000lyrs across and is classified as IB(s)m pec. (s) = transition to a ring, Im = irregular magellanic  type, B = not sure what this refers to? a bar?

Mike