vineyard

Hello,

Hope everyone staying safe & well.  Finally had a chance to process some images from 27 March.  Have been ill most of the clear nights (so only managed to get 2 nights of capturing done) but mustn't grumble given the circumstances!

This is the best 47 of 60 lights of 60 secs.  Taken with an ASI178MC.  I'm actually quite enjoying AP, although the picture quality is very basic (need more data & better processing skills).  Still it gives something to do!  (And I'm starting to think about whether an ASI294MC might be something for Santa this year )

Stay safe all,

Vin

Amazingly crisp - bravo!

Hello,

Hope everyone is keeping safe & well in the current situation.  At least the stars are not in lockdown.

I had yet another newbie Q pls.  I took some wide-angle shots of the sky from the back garden (ie, with the backs of houses and trees in the foreground and the sky above).  Unmodded DSLR 30x30s on an iOptron Skyguider Pro.  Stacked them on DSS.  And when the image came back, I think the software had registered for the houses because that was sharp, but the stars were all a blur.  Is there a way of getting it to register for the stars not the houses?  (I know sometimes there are region of interest options, although the shape of the sky in the image would be a weird trapezium so I'm not sure how I could specify that!).

Thank you for any tips!

Stay safe all,

Vin

That's gorgeous.

I'm just a beginner into AP myself so cannot speak with anywhere near the expertise of others.  And while I've just gotten my hands on a used HEQ5 Pro at  an affordable price (and it does make a huge difference), I have to echo @vlaiv in his first post, and say maybe think about getting an old 2nd hand Vixen GP-style mount and then add the goto/motors yourself.  You should be able to do both of those comfortably within your budget?  That's how I got started tinkering with AP (an old GP2 that I modded with the EQStar EQ5 kit from this company in Ukraine - Alexander there is v helpful).  Good luck!

Vin

2 hours ago, jetstream said:

Glad you like nature, me too. For me astronomy is being part of nature at night- pitch black with the sound of animals at times. Mind you there has been times I ran for my "walking stick" lol!  We had bear issues last year with one hanging around for a month. You really get in tune with things- one out of place twig "snap" and all the attention goes there!

Mind you one of those snaps resulted in a face to face with the bear for a bit

One of the coolest thing I saw recently was a large owl fly across the road but with the wings pulled back? unless I didn't see the wings but I'm positive it kind of darted through the air to a tree about 30 ft away. Still puzzled with this one.

Wow!  If ever there was a legitimate reason to have night-vision monoculars  Stay safe & looking fwd to reading more sightings of all kinds.

16 hours ago, AdeKing said:

If you have a LS60 and can find an original Newtonian Baader Steeltrack (not the newer Diamond Steeltrack) the body of the focuser fits the LS60 perfectly once it's removed from the Newtonian base plate.

Don't think the same is true for the LS50 though.

Thanks for that tip AdeKing.  I just took the helical off my Lunt 50 and it needs a 35mm male thread into it.  So will see if there are any other focusers that might have that compatibility too.  Cheers & stay safe, Vin

That's lovely Nicos.  And that seems a huge prominence at 9 o'clock?  Cheers

I have to say I'm enjoying this thread as much for the observations on nature (wolves loping, owls, easterly wind bringing motorway noises) as the skies.  Thank you!

I have one and I've grown fond of it - one change I definitely intend making though is replacing the focuser.  The helical one is very annoying - there are Feathertouch or Moonlite focusers that can be replace it, and by all accounts (ie, reading other sungazers reports) the better focusers also improve the sweet spot.  So for me that's coming before any double stack!  Enjoy.

Great name - once you see the fish with its beady dark left eye...if the filament that goes off towards the left corner was joined to the rest of the fish, it could be an angler fish!

Hello,

I'm not sure if this would count as Widefield or should be in Deep Sky  but last sets of images from Sunday night's experimenting with the new setup.

Cheers,

Vin

1 hour ago, MarkAR said:

Much better with less purple, looks like colour balance varies between different computers.

Agreed - second image much more restful on the eyes.  Lovely.

Wow Kev the difference between the two images is palpable 👏🏽 That extra data makes such a huge difference. And that's with an unmodded DSLR - yikes!  The galaxy is so much more delicate in your image, whereas looking over-extracted to within an inch of its life in mine 😂

(Btw I was reading more about that galaxy - 1 trillion stars - and those photons started their journey in the early Meiocene period on Earth when apes were just evolving 😲)

Cheers

Hello,

I was wondering if someone might be able to point me in the right direction.  I have one of these from WO as the mounting rings for my EVoguide50 (its a perfect fit, ,no need for those mounting screws and so I think much better for flexure?).  The base of it is a normal finder base.  And so it doesn't fit into a normal vixen saddle (for example an ADM vixen side-by-side bar).  Is there a clamping device that could be tightened enough to hold both a finder shoe as well as the normal vixen style dovetail? I reckon there must be b/c I can't be the first person to have been looking for something like this, but all the different formats are just too confusing (VHS & Betamax I could handle, but this...).

Thank you!

Vin

Thanks both - for the kind words & the suggestions.  Yes to all of the tips!  I do have a guidescope - lets see how good the alignment gets.  I just got the HEQ5Pro second hand from a fellow SGLer and after a weird first night, last night was the second go and I was just hopping looking at different targets and (fingers crossed) it seemed to be doing what it was meant to (and quite well - I even tried some 2 min exposures and without guiding they were - by my eyes - pretty steady).  Crikey re the 12 hours but looking at my image & others I can see where the extra data comes in!  I wish I had a permanent setup but I've found a good spot at the bottom of the garden (and - last night at least - the wifi reached there to be able to sit inside and control things ).  At least Uma typically tends to be quite high & always around, so yes there's no reason for me to not try adding more data.

Sadly staying indoors tonight as running some aches, but good luck if you're out - stay warm & safe.

Cheers,

Vin

Hello,

My first ever galaxy photo!  When I look at some of the other M101s out there, it makes me want to hide but hey you've got to start somewhere.

What would be the first line of attack to improve this image: change the processing, or take longer lights, or have a cooled camera or a camera with a different pixel pitch?

Thank you for any suggestions & stay safe,

Vin

(PS I really should have cropped the top right hand corner out but hey ho)

Hello,

My first time ever on this.  Pls excuse clumsy processing.

Stay safe all,

Vin

That is just beautiful. Shows that yes while the universe can be fierce & unforgiving, it is also full of life & in fact life-affirming.  Wonderful, thank you.

Thanks Mark, hope you manage to fix it.  Probably a stupid Q from me, but how do you reset a camera (in case that's the problem with my ASI178MC)?  I just figured that would happen when you dismount it & switch it off?  I did test the camera again this morning with daylight viewing, and its capturing images fine.  Maybe it was one of those nights!

My silver lining is that if the guidescope platesolving continues to work, I can put BV's into the main scope and have go-to tracked BV'ing to my heart's content  

Cheers

Hello,

Having watched the forecast the prior few days, I knew it was going to be a clear night so I set up w much excitement last night.  I'd recently got my hands on a belt-modded HEQ5 Pro so I was looking fwd to putting my 4" frac on it w a guide scope & going on a journey.  Have to say it was a mixed night.

The good bits:

• I got polar alignment to work from the bottom of the garden, and w EKOS' PA module.
• I got the guidescope (Evo50) to focus.
• The mount is solid and easily held all the gear (my other one is an old GP2 which is brilliant but unfortunately not quite sturdy enough for imaging with the TV102 w all the rest of the paraphernalia).
• I even got guiding to work, and it was pretty accurate on the EKOS internal guider.
• The plate solving worked with the guidescope (once I realised that somehow astropy was in a different location on my laptop now, and so I needed to change the python path in EKOS astrometry configuration)

The not so good bits:

• the ASI178MC on the main scope was showing weird things (lots of moving white pixels) even after taking darks which meant the platesolving just wouldn't work
• once polar-aligned, the scope would suddenly think it was pointing somewhere completely different rather than polaris (and so it moved off to the wrong place, and with platesolving not working on the main camera...)
• at one stage, EKOS was taking the scope in diametrically the opposite direction!  (I set it to go to X Draco and instead of moving eastward, it went westward...)
• then when platesolving with the guidescope camera, tried to take it one of the UMi stars, and after a first attempt, it suddenly went off towards the horizon!
• after that, I thought maybe the mount thinks its in the S hemisphere (hence also not pointing at polaris when parked?) and changed the DEC - and when I parked all of a sudden the OTA starts moving downwards...😂😱)

By this time it was late and I decided to pack it in.  Glad to have got some things to work, but more than a bit disappointed at not having been able to see anything in particular.

Back on the horse this morning (inside the house), and after googling, saw an old SGL post that made me think that perhaps the mount was using an old park position from the previous owner.  So I parked, then took off the brakes and manually moved it back (ie counterweights down, and OTA pointing at Polaris), cleared all parking data & reset this as park.  And now it seems to work properly, it slews in the right direction by the right amount with multiple destinations tried (including meridian flips) and returns to the proper (Polaris) park every time.

Of course the moment of truth will be when its outside again (next week maybe?)...I really hope it works then otherwise I'm going to be gutted again since w all this self-isolation, the stars are even more important!

Cheers,

Vin

(PS - I meant to say, if anyone recognises any of the "not so good bits" from prior experience and has some advice, it will be gratefully received).

(PPS - I think I've also found that everything - cameras, mount etc - needs to be switched on and connected before I fire up EKOS on the laptop?)

Was literally just typing when you posted the update.  KStars & EKOS is great (I'm a complete newbie and I find it v user-friendly) - enjoy!

I'm guessing you're on Windows?  Fwiw, I've found EKOS really good & user-friendly - I'm on Mac but I think EKOS can also be used on Windows (its INDI not ASCOM but there is a Windows bridge).  Good luck!

Hello,

So I think it was the fact that I foolishly forgot to switch to RAW mode.  I think those rings may have been some weird compression artefact b/c I tried again (same camera, same lens) earlier this week - this time in RAW.  And no rings!  (The flats could be better in this image, and the old Pentax either has a lot of chip noise or there was a massive gradient because of light pollution (I didn't use a LP filter) so I've cropped it a bit.

Progress of some kind I guess (at least the stars are not quarantined!).

Thanks both.  The sudo raspi-config via the interfaces came back with an error Andy, but once I go in through the Stellarmate app on my iPhone, it does work (and its via novnc as you say stash_old).  Frustratingly the app doesn't seem to work on my old android tablet (Samsung Galaxy), but at least its progress on the iPhone side!  And agreed re the astrometry stash, that's what I've done (downloaded the lot on my laptop).  Cheers both, Vin