Ships and Stars

On a budget, the Celestron 15x70s would be good. I have the 12x70s (no longer made) and love them. A cheap but decent tripod or monopod would be great to mount them on for steady viewing.

Definitely weather proof! All galvanised or stainless materials except the M8x1.0 bolts holding the binoculars. Definitely need an angle grinder with cutoff disc to cut this pipe though. I'm working with a supplier to perhaps do some kits. A really good home setup with a few mods in the works.

Great idea! This set-up is very modular so can be altered with an 8mm hex. I just received the clamps today so planning on adding lots of little touches over the summer.

Indeed, with some refinements this is really a decent home set-up. Not very portable, though the galvanised coating means you could easily leave the tripod/fork outside or preferably in a shed without any fuss.

Thanks! I scavenged the pipe from a skip and bought the clamps online. the Mk II refinements will include a proper azimuth bearing and a few other small tweaks but it's pretty much there. It's rock-solid!

Constructed of only the finest hand-selected 2" scaffolding tube and clamps, the Kraken Mk I observation binocular fork mount boasts an integrated tripod and tips the scale at a svelte 30kg 🤣 Designed to provide vibration and shake-free viewing for the heaviest observation binoculars under any weather condition. Properly torqued, the clamps are rated to withstand an applied slipload of 900kg. Not recommended for trekking or small children. Total cost <£30 for: 3 x swivel arms 2 x 90deg elbows 1 x tee-clamp 2 x flange arms 2 x plastic end caps 🤟 Pipe was free 🤟

Great report! It has inspired me to try for the Hercules cluster tomorrow night if the weather holds. Wanting to use the 10mm Baader classic ortho some more on the faint fuzzies. Having too many galaxies to identify is a good problem!

Wow, still pretty cold. We've been having soem very clear weather lately, I was getting a bit fed up after February and March, if it was clear it was very windy. Past week has been like living in a different location. I will try the Eskimo out tonight with the BCO, that' a very cool target. Hope your skies stay clear, if it's anything like the other night, the 24" should put on quite a show for you 👍

Those are excellent conditions! The mighty H130 is punching well above its weight under those conditions. A good incentive for those living under LP to take portable scopes out to darker skies when lockdown lifts and astro darkness is around. I've been stuck under 20.2 SQM LP, so have started taking loads of short subs using the Stargate and a Nikon DSLR, good results and can go quite deep on galaxies. PS tried the 9mm APM vs the 10mm BCO on M57 the other morning, the BCO was excellent, much sharper and much more light transmission, even got a hint of colour. I'll lose astro darkness next week, but will see what I can squeeze out this summer. Another nice one there Gerry! The air has been very clean since everything happened.

They way I would describe it to a non-astronomer is to imagine EVERY tourist spot or panoramic viewpoint on Earth, from the Grand Canyon to Ayers Rock and the Great Wall of China with thousands of drones suddenly popping up every time you wanted to soak in the view or raise a camera. That's how bad it will be. Musk really needs to ground these things and the UN or some organisation with some clout needs to put a halt to this. As if Earth wasn't bad enough in most places, now we have to deal with this rubbish totally cluttering up the night skies. It's going to be completely awful!

Here's another B&W image I've started - 73 x 6" subs of M81 at ISO 400 for a very brief 9min 44sec integration, no darks/flats/bias yet. I'd like to increase contrast without losing detail, and will work on colour when I crack the RGB channel stretchy thingy! Lots of programmes Filroden mentioned, thank you 👍 I'll make sure the histogram isn't buried to the left on these short exposures, quite pleasantly surprised ISO400 even works on this. Looking clear again tonight, might be my last chance for awhile to get more data with the mighty photon hoover 🤣

Thank you! Might invest in Photoshop if GIMP isn't up to the task.

Thanks Filroden, I wanted to ask what the 'natural' colour of M101 was. I have GIMP I could use for working with RGB channels I suppose. I haven't done any editing in DSS, just stacking, so need to learn how to boost the red etc, I'll have plenty of time for that this summer because we lose astro darkness from early May to late August How would you avoid overexposing the stars? Drop to a lower ISO presumably? I also shot M82 at ISO 400 and was astonished to find it actually worked, very little noise, so may drop down to ISO 200 based on recommendations from others. It's great fun when it all works right. Thanks for the tips, I need to do some reading and tutorials this summer 👍

I was thinking a custom 2000 watt laser pointer might knock them down. I'd bolt it to an AZ4 mount!

Good grief, they will be everywhere...

Thanks, was just reading on DSS help about the bias exposures, etc, really need to add those! The 20" dob is indeed a photon hoover, even with short exposures it goes pretty deep, and that's under town LP. Hoping to try this at my dark site in the autumn.

There are already so many satellites as it is, but these new satellite trains are going to be a nightmare for astronomers. Something needs to be done before they are streaming across the sky everywhere. Presumably once they go offline, they'll be left in a decay orbit to gradually fall out of the sky and burn up. Who knows, but it's a right mess.

Thanks, I'll have a look. I set RGB all equal using eyedropper tool, don't see any green on my monitor, but didn't want to make background sky totally black, like a bit of grey for a more natural look. I don't know much about sRGB vs Adobe RGB etc so that could explain things. I do notice the uploaded images here seem to discard some edits, hence the extra vignetting which I tried to crop without cutting the ends of the spiral arms. Both M101 and M51 are naturally blue without filters, guess I'd need to shoot three or four sets of subs using filters to achieve a different colour, as in the'Hubble palette'. I actually reduced saturation a bit on this. I'll have to practice some more. Will take dark frames and learn to stretch and edit in DSS 👍

Thanks Brendan, still a lot of work to do on it. Really needs dark frames adding but pretty happy with it.

My first photo of Messier 101 taken with a 20" SW Stargate 500p dobsonian and Nikon D810 with ES coma corrector under fairly bright town 20.2 SQM skies. Excuse the terrible vignetting on the edges! Working on that. 👀 220 x 8 second subs at ISO 2500 for a tick over 29 minutes total integration. No darks/flats or bias shots. The images were stacked in DSS using recommended settings, then edited in Lightroom 5. Will learn how to stretch photos and add darks at some point 👍

Thanks all! 👍 Paul - I have an absolute ton of vignetting with my camera as well, full-frame dslr, so I just switch to aps-c mode generally. It's all just practice I believe, and I have lots to learn here. Olly - now you mention it I have heard of the Dobsonian hole and fully understand it after last night! I was waiting for M101 to drop back down last night but cloud moved in about 2:30am. I was dog tired anyway. I've set up again tonight and have taken extra care to collimate and level the scope. I also checked all the bearings for smoothness and everything seems ok. Shall try for M101 again tonight, got a very rough photo last night but too embarrassed to share, haha. If it goes in the dobsonian hole, I'll drop down to M82. Good luck everyone, hope the weather is clear for you all.

Thanks everyone, I didn't put a lot of thought into this, just downloaded DS Stacker and went for it and then added some dark frames taken at the end of the session. I'll look into the ISO 200 setting, that's very interesting! It makes sense though. I would love to shoot at ISO 200! Thanks for the 55mm setting - I was wondering about that but haven't had a chance to read up. I'll go that route tonight, weather permitting. 25 minutes isn't bad I guess, wish I could take longer subs, but alt-az limitations w/o an EQ platform, so pretty happy with that. And finally, thanks Olly! I tried it again last night but the mount wasn't playing along well near zenith (M101), I'll try it again tonight on a lower object after I inspect the altitude runners etc. Still tracking fine for visual. I'll see what else I can squeeze out of this set-up 👍

My brain has engaged momentarily and I looked in the ES coma corrector box. Lo and behold there is a t-mount adaptor which in turn threads onto my Nikon t-mount adaptor, so I now have a Nikon DSLR/coma corrector set up at last. Amazing 🤣 Moving on, I have set up interval shooting in the D810 menu using mirror-up mode for 10" sec exposures at ISO 2500 x 200 shots, but will do some test shots first before I let it do its thing. Incredibly, it is supposed to be clear here tonight so I will have another bash at Markarian's Chain, or maybe something up in UMa. And collimate, collimate, collimate (and fine focus as best as I can) 👍

Thanks, it's a 36mp sensor on the D810, so plenty of room to crop the horrible vignetting I was going to try it though my 2x powermate to get more detail, but would probably have to double ISO to 6400 or take an absolute ton of subs. Still might try it one of these days! First port of call is to get the coma corrector working and I think I can get away with an even lower ISO of c.2000 or 2500 if I take plenty of subs. Not sure how much flat frames will help, I have a lot of learning to do!

I have a long way to go! Haha. Will try and line up on Markarian's Chain tomorrow night with a coma corrector. There is also horrible vignetting with the full frame sensor, but this is just sort of for fun - nice to have some record shots of various objects.