mackiedlm

I really like this target and think it gets less attention than it deserves. this is a nice rendition.

Good to see you back. And thats a great image to return with

It has indded been a bad year for AP. But some great images produced above. While complaining about lack of clear nights on another forum, I was contacted by a guy in Colorado offering to colab with me to help me finish a project. This was the result.

I have recently been piggy-backing my Samyang 135mm on my 20+ year old LX200. But last time out the mount died. There was heavy dew and after drying everything out it came back to life! But thinking it was gone for good I decided to get a Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTi to use primarily with this lens. Monday was my first night out with the GTi and while it was OK, giving a guiding RMS of around 1.2 to 1.4" most of the time (which is well good enough for this scale) it was a bit flaky at times. It may have been breeze, or cable management or maybe even just not as stable a tripod as I'd like. Or it may be to do with the backlash inherent in this small mount. But it will do. I intend to put it up on my second Todmorden Pier and when I do that I can try to resolve these other issues. For this time being this is; Samyang 135mm ASI2600mc Altair L-pro filter Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTI 80 x 180s

Thats a great FOV - I enjoy these widefields that put targets often imaged alone into context.

Thats a great image of something i dont think i've seen before.

Thats excellent - stunning detail.

Lots of dust - nicely done.

very nice image.

Lovely image. Great colours and excellent details. Shame its upside-down 🤣

Thats really well done. Lovely sharp details.

Thanks for that. Sorry i did not see your reply until just now. Thats excellent input and great images. David.

Your very welcome.!😡

I am VERY unimpressed that you should get all that.🥺 Particularly in what is said the be the wettest place in Scotland (Expat Scot here) Over here in the West of Ireland it has been unbelievably bad this whole year.

Thats an excellent image. love the colours. What I would not give for a whole night clear with no moon!

Thanks Nicola. Yes the dust is known as the Taurus Molecular cloud and it is truly vast! I have a mosaic plan for a 6 panel mosaic (3 up, 2 wide) with the above being the bottom right panel. And that will still not cover the cloud fully.

Thanks! Yes I agree, I love to see how our targets relate to each other in wider fields like this.

😆 Not far off! The mosaic plan is already in APT! 2 more panels above this up to Ngc 1499 first, then we will see if we go east or west. But at current clear sky frequency thats not likely to be this year.

This was an unexpected night out. Forcast was showing a possible 2 hr window so I thought I start off a new project. I ended up with 6 hrs (our weather forecasters are THAT good in Ireland!!) I lost about 30 mins because it was my first night with autofocus on my Samyang and I think it tried to do it during one spell of cloud!! I happened to wake up and take a look so re-ran autofocus. Anyway, This is 110 x 180s Samyang 135mm, ASI 2600mc, piggybacked on my LX200 GPS

That is spectacular. A worthy use of 3 weeks of clouds.

thats come out really well. Nice colours and detail.

I like that - its nice to see these galaxies wider field sometimes.

thanks, I guessed there had to be one of these but was unable to find it with a search🫣

The Star Adventurer GTI came out late last year to much excitement and fanfare. But I dont really hear that much about it now. I'm thinking of getting one to use with my Samyang 135mm and possibly my Sharpstar 61 EDPHii and my ASI 2600mc for widefield DSO. So I would be interested to hear your real world experience with this mount; Does it work?, What software do you run it with - PHD2, NINA, APT?? and does it "play nice". What sort of tracking RMS do you get? How does the claimed 5Kg payload stand up? Thanks for your input

That's a fantastic image. well done