Aramcheck

"A star’s life and death as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope" - Free Institute of Physics talk at Wakefield College by Dr Olivia Jones (from Royal Observatory in Edinburgh) At Wakefield College - 16th Jan 2020. Details here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-stars-life-and-death-as-seen-by-the-james-webb-space-telescope-tickets-81037361931

Talks now announced include (amongst others): Ivaylo Stoynov, Astro Photography Tool “Modern Astrophotography and APT, with Q&A”. Damian Peach “High Resolution Astrophotography, with Q&A” https://practicalastroshow.com/speakers/

I got same LED problem on our Skywatcher PowerTank after it had been used 2 or 3 times. It still seems to be working ok but now I check the output voltage after re-charging for a while just to make sure. I only bought it because it was recommended by the FLO site when buying the mount... wish I'd looked into a bit more first. Cheers Ivor PS: Also noticed that I get a lower voltage reported in the Synscan Utilities menu, than I do with a multimeter.

We started out with a similar 130M EQ-2. I'd also suggest using the supplied eyepieces, & perhaps consider getting a 9x50 right angled viewfinder + telrad, if like me you find the red dot finder pretty much useless. Ours was a different manufacturer, so the Astromaster permanently mounted Star finder may be better than the red dot finder we had. Cheers Ivor PS: A cheap ND filter for the moon + light pollution filter also worth getting.

+1 on @Cornelius Varley's post. Don't expect too much with the EQ-1 mount though... even with a motor drive on the RA axis I expect that you'll see a lot of wobble in images (based on what I've done in the past with our old EQ-2). Should be okay-ish for the Moon though.

Thanks @Alan64 . On the 200 dps OTA rings I ordered a 2nd set & swapped out the problem ring. I then cut away the felt which had got scrunched up & adapted the ring so I could be used as a 3rd ring to help balancing when rotating the tube. The other spare ring was then fitted on the primary mirror end of the tube & helps as a fine balance weight. I also cleaned the gunk from the OTA with isopropyl-alcohol. With the new refractor, I just carefully cut away the additional felt & that seems to have worked ok. It's intended only as a 'grab & go' when time is limited but I agree it would be better if it was thinner. I guess I was just unlucky, but can't really complain with the service or value for money... Cheers Ivor

The SW-130M was our first scope from FLO. The EQ-2 isn't suitable for imaging, but it got me enthused enough to upgrade a year or so later. The RA-motor is a bit clunky (particularly the clutch), but does a fairly decent job of keeping the target from wandering out of the field of view. For observation the polar alignment doesn't have to be that great - there's no method of taking into account rotation of Polaris, but when aligning & tightening the Alt/Az although it used to shift a bit, viewing was still ok. I found the supplied red-dot-finder difficult for star-hopping & quickly upgraded to a 9x50 right-angled finderscope & a Telrad, which the mount just about coped with and made star-hopping easier. Initially everything was a very steep learning curve, but now I regret selling the scope even though it held it's price pretty well. The Meade option looks like it has a more robust (heavier) mount, which is a plus, but I still miss the 130M... Whichever scope you decide - Definitely buy from one of the established dedicated astro dealers... IMHO.

Don't think this has been mentioned before - apologies if it has... Free 1-day Practical Astronomy show in Kettering? (21st March 2020) https://practicalastroshow.com/ A couple of the online talks from 2019 were quite interesting: SharpCap's Dr. Robin Glover on optimising exposure times (https://youtu.be/3RH93UvP358) + Damian Peach on high res. planetary astrophotography:- (https://youtu.be/3RH93UvP358) We're going to combine it with a trip to the National Space Centre in Leicester - should be a good weekend!

Although the clouds have been absolutely lousy of late, I count my lucky stars I'm in the UK rather than Australia at the moment... That said, I've started getting 'cabin fever' not being able to get outside. On the plus side though, the cloudy nights have meant more time to practice processing images...

I don't know if we've just been unlucky, but on 2 of the 3 recent Skywatcher scopes we've bought, there have been problems with the felt used on the rube rings / dew cap. Back in Sept the SW 200dps we bought had poorly applied felt on of the OTA rings, where the felt was scrunched up, so that the sticky side was rubbing on the OTA preventing tube rotation... and a Startravel 102 that arrived yesterday, the same problem was apparent on the Dew tube / Sun shade.

I had another go at processing... having got a copy of the excellent "Inside Pixinsight" book... (Probably about the 6th iteration, but I guess that's what cloudy nights are for...) I'm finding that balancing the OTA is very fine-tuned, so opted to balance with the DLSR in req. position rather than align first with my reticle eyepiece. I should have just paid more attention to the focusing after rotating the camera. A lot to learn still, just wish we had more clear nights to try...

Which mount is it on? (The 130p is available with manual EQ / AZ, Dobsonian and GoTo mounts). We started out on the similar Skywatcher 130 EQ-2 just over a year ago. Personally, I'd largely forget the dials. The RA/Dec were not accurate enough to use and the Altitude one was out by approx 4 degrees (The RA/Dec were however useful in getting the scope roughly aligned in the start position). As @PeterCPC and @banjaxed say, try to see if you can see something in the distance in daytime (obviously not pointing anywhere near the sun), using the lowest magnification eyepiece and having removed the cap from the front of the scope. Once you've managed to focus on something in the distance (which will appear upside down), you'll then need to align the red dot finder - probably done when it gets dark or at dusk. Once you have the red dot finder aligned to the tube, it will be easier to find objects in the night sky, but in my experience with an Explorer 130, I found that replacing it with a Telrad and a 9x50 right angled viewfinder made it easier to use. (When I upgraded a few months back I got a 130pds and a 200pds OTA & found that on the 130pds I needed to use a 9x30 viewfinder & Rigel Quickfinder, due to space & balance problems) Hope you have success... The first outings with our 1st scope were quite fraught... try looking at the moon once you have the focus issue sorted! Cheers Ivor

You could also make yourself an astrolabe... https://in-the-sky.org/astrolabe/index.php

France is the leading light... https://www.darksky.org/france-light-pollution-law-2018/

After reading about StarNet in January's Sky At Night mag, I downloaded it & have used it to create separate images of the background stars & image target, but I can't see what difference the "Stride" setting makes (other than the length of time it ties up the computer). What effect should the Stride setting have? Many thanks Ivor

Thanks for this! Recently there seems to be have been more in the press on light pollution (unless I'm just more aware of the coverage) & there is a big push for Smart Cities where street lighting can be varied according to requirements using the Internet of Things & central management systems. Hopefully this will lead to dimming of lights where appropriate & better use of lighting in general. We need legislation similar to that passed at the beginning of the year in France... I get the feeling though, that outside of the Astronomical community, the problem is largely unnoticed. Maybe we need to engage more with environmentalists to raise awareness of the problem. Studies in Tucson & modelling by the US DOE do however suggest that skyglow has modest reductions from the introduction of lower CCT LED lights, largely because the lights are more directional & also shine less light above the horizontal. In Leeds the street lights are due to be replaced with LEDs (4000k CCT on main roads & 3000k in the majority of residential areas), but the extent to which the CMS system will/may be implemented is not clear... Cheers Ivor

I could be wrong (being very new to Pixinsight myself) but check whether you should be specifying "RGGB". If you open one of your Lights & go to the Process Console on the left hand side of the screen you should see what the CFA pattern is. CR2 files from my Canon are "GBRG" & if I debayer with a diferent setting, like "RGGB" I get a very different colour background. Worth checking your Master Bias & Darks too I think, as the top image looks like it has more noise than the single frame. (Open the master bias/dark and compare with a single bias/dark frame - the master should have less noise & a smoother appearance). Cheers Ivor

Genius! That's it... I'd managed to lock the RA in the completely open position. To make matters worse I'd only been looking earlier at the manual & thought "we'll they've got that picture labelled the wrong way round"... It reminds me of when we had our EQ-2 scope & I learnt the hard way that the slo-mo DEC control only has a finite movement - took me a night or two to figure that out. Thanks again @geeklee - much appreciated! Cheers Ivor

I now keep our gear under the house in a storage area, as it helps avoid condensation issues when bringing kit back into the warm. A good tip though if having to bring the mount inside!

@Skipper Billy & @geeklee - Thanks for the replies. Normally that's what I do & I haven't had any problems before, but this time I slackened it of too much when balancing. Subsequently the clutch locks tight, but it isn't the same kind of smooth resistance when rotating the knob, and when locked tight, the RA axis can still rotate easily, so the locking mechanism isn't now working properly.

There's a meeting in Helmsley of the North York Moors National Park tomorrow (16th Dec 2019), where a Dark Skies Friendly Lighting Scheme is going to be discussed. The proposal is for a grant scheme to enable Dark Sky Friendly lighting to be installed with "grants of up to £2,500 (50% of total costs) per individual premises as part of a community, business, network or other group scheme. In exceptional circumstances more than 50% may be awarded up to a maximum not exceeding £5000". For more info see: https://www.northyorkmoors.org.uk/about-us/meetings-and-agendas/authority-agenda/december-2019/Item-11.pdf https://www.northyorkmoors.org.uk/about-us/meetings-and-agendas/authority-agenda/december-2019 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/15/light-pollution-north-york-moors-national-park-dark-skies I presume the meeting will be open to the public? Hope the scheme gets adopted! Cheers Ivor

Had a daytime practice session today with the DLSR + scope to try to get a better feel for how the Synscan controls relate to the camera image... When balancing the RA I think I must have undone the RA Clutch too much as now when I lock it, the RA axis is still prone to movement, for example when adjusting the DEC. Have I completely messed up the mount? Any ideas on how I can rectify this, or anywhere that does repairs? The mount is a Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 GT Pro where the RA Clutch consists of a threaded bolt that goes into a ring just above the polar scope eyepiece & rotates to lock/unlock the axis. I'm feel such a numpty & am kicking myself! Any help much appreciated! Many Thanks Ivor

I bought a pair of Opticron Oregon 20x80 last Christmas for my wife. We haven't found them very useful as:- Due to weight they need a tripod It's difficult to manually locate objects in the night sky (principally due to small FOV) Because our eyesight differs, we keep need to refocus for left + right eye sight. The subsequent 10x50 Opticron Adventurer bought for the following birthday worked out a lot better... especially as we no longer need to share our old 8x42's. I find a pair of bin's great for learning the night sky, but the 'scopes have proved better for sharing the experience. Sorry it's not's direct answer to your question! Cheers Ivor

Thanks Rick. It's an AZ-EQ6 GT Pro mount, which I'm still getting used to. I did a 1-star align on Mirach but probably should have paid more attention to that. (There's an advanced polar alignment procedure in the Synscan manual that I've yet to attempt). Focus was with a Bahtinov mask, but as Mirach was too faint for the camera live view, I had to take 10 sec shots at ISO 6400 & then make blind adjustments + repeat until it looked ok. The lesson here is that I would have been better off focusing on a brighter star so I could use the live camera view + also using using the camera zoom to get a larger image of the diffraction pattern. (Another mistake was deleting these image files, so I could have re-checked them later!) I suspect that I probably disturbed the focus, when rotating the camera to re-orientate M31 in the frame, so should have rechecked focus afterwards. Looking at the 1st & last picture I took (about 1hr 25min apart) the total drift was about 1% of the captured image size, which suggests to me that the tracking wasn't too bad? However looking at Pixinsight's Sub frame selector measurements on my subs on the other two images I've taken over the last couple of months, I've clearly got a way to go on getting better star shapes. Thanks for your help! Ivor

1st light with our 130dps & my 4th attempt at getting an image with DLSR. Learnt a few lessons on this outing including the need to re-check focus if rotating camera to frame the target & to pay more attention to centering the object in the first place... Also, haven't yet sorted out taking Flats but wanted to take advantage of last Sunday's clear skies and the position of M31 whilst it's still visible from our back garden. Took 52 x 90 sec lights (ISO 800) + 50 darks + 50 bias, but stacking in DSS & Pixinsight proved fruitless. Using Pixinsight's manual Dynamic Alignment I could see that 1 x image was ruined by aircraft landing lights & another 20 by high mist (or dewing up of secondary?). Stars were also a little out of focus & I clipped M31 a bit... Took some time to process in Pixinsight, but fairly happy with result!