vineyard

I'm going to make a foray into my first cooled camera this year as well.  OSC to start with.  And currently my thinking is the ASI294MC Pro.  I did look at the 533 too but I prefer the FOV of the 294.

Good luck - looking fwd to seeing your images!

On 15/05/2020 at 09:09, Rusted said:

I wondered about the container behind the telescope in the image:

Doing an oil change?

Ha, that would be beyond me Rusted 😂.  If you mean the green & white thing, that's something my wife got for growing vegetables.  Light & water get in, but no snails or slugs which would otherwise feast.

The scope itself was wonderful to use btw.  Pin-sharp stars edge to edge, w no discernible colour fringes from what I could tell.  I tried it w 40mm plossl, 25mm Zeiss, 18.2mm Delite & 13mm Delite (ie, EPs good enough to have shown up any weaknesses in the optics) and no problems.

In fact the scope showed me a problem I had w my old UHC-S filter!  I had put that in first just to see, and the stars kept having a definite red shadow.  I thought oh this must be the achromat, but it still seemed too much.  I realised then it might be the UHC-S b/c the glass in that shakes a bit.  Took it out and the red tinge disappeared.

Spent the rest of about 2 hrs just star-hopping, and letting stars just emerge.  At the end, split one of the Leonis twins (I think it was Zeta but I can't be sure) at 13mm, and then put a 2.5x power mate in to take it to 5mm (200x) and perfect round twins moving fast across the FOV.

A really lovely scope - my go-to visual now.

A bit long so I think putting an extension will be necessary.  You can see the metal tripod takes about 2 secs to still, so perhaps a wooden tripod at some point in the future.  But the scope itself was wow.

I think I'm going to use the SP mount as my alt-az too.  Very very smooth!

Stay safe all,

Vin

(PS @Rusted - that was a great name for that prominence you came up with 'Tower of Destruction'?)

Aye v lucky to be able to play with that.

And the missus would indeed kill me on the plants.  Happily some of the wee plant-lings (or whatever they're called) are put indoors at night until its warmer so I have a bit more space (wait until the tomatoes grow up though, forget it then - but the nights are short then anyway, says he consoling himself).

Stay safe & cheers!

Hello,

Sorry if this is the wrong sub-channel, but I thought I'd share this photo.  An old Vixen Super-Polaris 102M on an original SP mount and original HAL-130 (?) tripod.  I got this from my elderly father (he's still going, but this gear is a bit bulky for him now - so I swapped him an old Vixen Porta on a Japanese surveyor's tripod (original versions both) and my little Primaluce 72ED as those are a bit easier to handle hopefully).

Looking fwd to taking it for a spin - strictly visual tonight

Stay safe all,

Vin

I knew not that there was such a thing, but upon googling...hmm.  Not sure I'd get permission to take it all the way up to 170cm but ideas are being germinated.  It could be painted, it could hold little pots in it, it could have vegetables & various green creepers growing up the side and camouflage it 😂 Thank you - will keep up sleeve for next round of negotiations!

Hello,

So I think my better half may be amenable to a pier being put in a corner in the garden.  Negotiations are continuing

One thing that would certainly help the case is if the pier could also be used for other purposes during the daytime.  Particularly if it could be used for potting.  Which I think means a pier at about the height of a kitchen work top (90cm, although another 10-20cm on top would probably be ok), with the ability to screw in a square work surface on top of it, which can then be unscrewed and removed.  This could then be used for potting plants on (or to put utensils etc while bbq'ing).

For telescope use, I'd have to then put an extension on top of that (to get sufficient elevation to be able to clear one side of the garden).  Currently I use a Berlebach fully extended (130cm) with a 40cm extension on top of that, with the mount then sitting on top of that.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to get maybe even 10-20cm higher (just to be able to get a bit more sky but it's not that important - also if I put a levelling adapter plate in, then that would give a bit of extra height anyway).  This is for AP.

So that means an extension of about 60-80cm on top of the 90-110 cm pier (levelling plate not included).

I don't mind screwing & unscrewing the extension bit on.  The mount itself will only be an HEQ5Pro (maybe max one level up from that in the future) - I use a 4" frac mostly, and maybe one day might go up to an 6" (frac or reflector) or max run two 4" scopes at the same time.  But nothing super big or heavy.

Is this a daft idea?  Is it even possible?

Also, would folks mind sharing photos showing piers being used for other purposes to help build the case ?

Thank you & stay safe,

Vin

22 minutes ago, jiberjaber said:

Not sure which DSLR you have but have you looked at the Indi stack running under linux? (Astroberry is a good starting point on a Raspberry Pi as an example, or even on a linux distro second booted on your laptop?)

 

Hi Jason, thanks for this.  I've got a v old Pentax (*istD) but can also borrow a newer Pentax K-something.  The manuals for both of those say that the camera cannot be operated while connected to a computer (which would be a problem for platesolving & image framing via EKOS) but maybe the Indi stacks get around that.  The wrinkle I found when I last looked at this was that the Indi code for Pentax doesn't seem to be in good shape based on some forum discussions (and I really don't want to take the risk of running non-stable code on my EKOS/SMate & destabilising everything else!).  Will keep an eye on it b/c it would be great (and much cheaper) to be able to use the Pentax APS-C chips!

Cheers & stay safe,

Vin

Gorgeous. Whole disk views (especially when there is this much activity) are just so pleasing! 👏🏾

I'm afraid I can't help you on your Q, but as my intention is a 294MC Pro for my next camera on my own learning path, if you are tempted to make the switch & need to shift the current one, I might know a careful new owner...😇

Cheers 😄

Hello,

To practice my GIMP workflow a bit more, I tried with some other footage from yesterday.  I think the colour here is too cold a bit (and I don't like the bright region in the lower middle right of the disk).  But I think the disk edge is better than the whole disk version earlier up above.  (Didn't take flats so maybe that's the reason?)

Anyway stay safe,

Vin

46 minutes ago, MarkAR said:

Not necessarily, the dark nebulosity does spread quite far.

Ah ok, thanks. The original image is so clean, I just had to chuckle seeing my hack at it!  Cheers & stay safe, Vin

As I suspected. This is nominally the same object 😂 but from Bortle 8/7, 72ED. To borrow a line from Jaws, I'm going to need a bigger scope for this one!

Stay safe,

Vin

Hello,

Had a chance to start tinkering with whole disk solar on the Lunt50 today.  @MalVeauXyour tutorials are a great starting place, thank you!

Processing still v clumsy & as I use GIMP not PS I still need to figure out my workflow & settings.

Stay safe,

Vin

That is a brilliant video - v funnily put together too.  And I'm really happy where it ends b/c I also recently picked up a belted HEQ5Pro from a fellow SGLer!  And am absolutely loving it for AP.  Have got it humming (by my newbie standards that is!) with a little 72ED - have figured out via tips from other SGLers I need a different camera for the 4" (sampling).  And if lockdown ever ends and the ATM classes begin again, am working on a little 6" reflector

If only I could get my old DSLR to work while connected to a laptop now...

Brilliant video @rorymultistorey& thanks @Stufor sharing that!

Hello,

Saw this on the Grauniad website - not sure if this is old news or not, but the image is certainly striking?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/08/astronomers-capture-new-images-of-jupiter-using-lucky-technique

Stay safe,

Vin

Hello all,

Here is M92 from a quick grab last night (only 1hr of 60s lights, unguided). So v much w-i-p but just liked seeing the cluster so I thought I'd grab some time with it.

Unannotated image is downsampled for size, annotated is not (I had no idea here are that many other objects in the FOV, not that I can see them necessarily but if the computer says yes, who am I to disagree!)

Stay safe,

Vin

(PS - one thing that has me scratching my head is that Wikipedia says this cluster is about 14bn yrs old - roughly the age of the universe - but its only 26k light yrs away, so our solar system formed a LOT later in the same neighbourhood? Wow)

Very nice. I actually grabbed about 3 hrs on Iris last night for the first time - but with a little 72ED from maybe Bortle 8/7 skies (but with an Astronomik CLS-CCD too ).  Have yet to process it, but somehow I don't think it'll come out like that 🤣

Beautiful. How long did all that take you if you don't mind me asking? I prefer the second image - the stars are more restful on the eye, and also seem more "individual" (each one a little solar system), whereas in the first one they seem just like stars (not sure if that makes any sense!).

V nice. The detail in M63 is lovely.

I was playing around with an M13 set I took (not as nice as yours!) and if you play with the colour curves, you can sort of make the cluster look a bit like a coronavirus with the spikes.

Hello all,

Here's a quick grab & process (downsampled).  Stay safe!

Vin

They're all fantastic, but Sinus Iridum just looks amazing. 👏🏾

Hello,

Here is my first ever go at M51 - images taken last week but only managed to get round to them today.  I realised I was making a masking mistake so hopefully this is less grainy than my other galaxy images!  Learning curve continues  

Non-annotated image is downsampled 3x for size reduction, annotated one is not - wow, that's a lot of objects in that FOV.

Stay safe,

Vin

Hello,

I spent a fair amount of time on M101 this week & managed to get 6.5 hrs of stackable data (total was more).  Limited processing skills, and only a little PL72ED scope (FPL51 glass) & ASI178MC.  But still pretty happy with it - its about as far as I can take it I reckon.  Nice to see 9 star clouds also caught in the annotated image!

Stay safe,

Vin

Tbh I'd be doing high fives if I ever came out with an image like that.  It's gorgeous.

Is there an emoji for green with envy?  Enjoy!

PS - looking fwd to seeing the sketches that come from that!