Xilman

Here is my Nerd Test v2.0 Test result.

3 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

I want to know who the 1% is so I can eliminate them 

Same here. I also scored 99%.

0% scored higher (more nerdy),
1% scored the same, and
99% scored lower (less nerdy).

If one star is a white dwarf, it could be moving towards, away from, or be stationary relative to the Earth.

A strong gravitational field also creates a red shift which may be larger than the Doppler-induced one.

Curious. I very rarely find that an exposure of less than several seconds is usable with a light panel. The time required depends on the filter used, of course. Perhaps your panel is intrinsically brighter than mine.

FWIW, I would suggest you continue with your current practice. Do you have any evidence that the flats you take are unsatisfactory? That is, do you see any residual gradients, vignetting, etc after applying your flats to your lights?  If not, leave well alone - i.e. if it aint broke, don't fix it.

Some time ago I picked up a Celestron NexImage 5 which is basically a colour 5MP webcam. At the time there was no INDI driver and so after a bit of playing around with the Windows software the camera was stowed away until later.

Today I discovered that an INDI driver is available so fired it up under Kstars/EKOS and took some images, with mixed results. First, the image size is reduced to about 4MP. Second, only 8-bit images are recorded, despite the camera having a 12-bit ADC. Third, it appears that only the green channel is recorded when in RGB mode with FITS output, even though the FITS file contains three image HDUs.

Is this the best I can expect, or are there some configuration settings I have not yet discovered?

My thanks in advance to anyone who can help with this issue.

Paul

On 12/04/2024 at 13:54, TiffsAndAstro said:

Ty for this been trying to find it to download and struggled:)

I had problems too. If anyone else here would like assistance, please ask. Either by posting or by messaging me directly.

In particular, there is an excellent chance I still have the distribution kits stored on my systems.

One of these.  I already have somewhere to put it.

https://www.planewave.eu/en/products/telescope-systems/rc700-ritchey-chretien-f/12

I'd need to sell the house for it to become within budget.

The 1m version would be nicer but I doubt I could afford it.

Sundry 64-bit PC compatibles, both laptops and desktops.

SWarp, astrometry.net, APT, The GIMP, Siril, ds9, ImageMagick and even xpaint for annotation.

Oh [auto-Bowdlerized word which sounds similar to begger]! I forgot to mention sundry finders and guide scopes, all refractors with apertures in the range 0.05 - 0.12m.

At least twenty telescopes.

Thanks!

As dear old Oscar might have said: I have nothing to declare but my pedantry.

And my incompetence.

I have nothing to declare but my pedantry and my incompetence.

And a fanatical devotion to astronomy.

Amongst the thing sI have nothing to declare are pedantry, incompetence and a fanatical devotion to astronomy. And ...

I'll come in again.

I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

Hello, your local friendly pedant here.

Not counting two 5mm f/2 refractors (my eyeballs) I have well over fifteen.

1x0.4m Dilworth reflector

2 x 0.25m reflectors (Dobsonian Newtonian and equatorial Schmidt Newtonian).

2 x 0.15m refractors (Fujinon 25x150 binoculars)

2 x 0.08m refractors (un-remembered make of 15x80 bins)

4 x 0.05m refractors (two pairs of bins)

2 x ~ 0.03m refractors (two ex-gunsights)

Sundry other hand-held refractors in the range 0.01m to 0.04m aperture, including a pair of 6x40s and some Canon lenses.

Several (between 5 and 10) 0.002 - 0.003m refractors --- aka mobile phones.

The great majority (i.e, all but excluding only a few phones) have been used to observe stars.

3 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

With my 12" globulars are impressive. Galaxies are just grey smudges.

Tried looking at globulars in the Andromeda galaxy?

Mayall-II should not be difficult in your 12".

I'm in La Palma right now and could see Tenerife if I drove to the other (i.e east) side of the island. Although my experience of astrotourism is strictly Palmeran, there are some things which are universa in these partsl.

As noted above, cars make good power supplies. Most rental cars are fairly new and have fairly new batteries. Go for a drive before an observing session to ensure that the battery is fully charged. Take croc-clips with you to connect to the battery as you can't be sure what is available on the car.

Several outfits here in LP rent equipment. You may only need to take your camera, say, and rent the rest, or rent the mount. I am giving serious thought to providing that sort of thing myself but it won't happen just yet.

Also as noted above, check out local astronomers. Finding them will be a worthy exercise in the use of search engines and, perhaps, English <-> español translation sites.

Take plenty of storage with you, whether microSD, thumb drives, external USB drives or whatever. Make copies of your hard-won data and put one set in the hold and other in hand luggage. Data will not be covered by your insurance if it goes missing.

Paul

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

The first guideline is simply 'Don't.' Even quite a significant amount of dust has no discernible effect whatever.

By and large I agree with your advice, especially for Dobsonians used visually.

However, there are particular fields, in both visual and imaging use, where cleanliness is critical to reduce the amount of scattered light to a minimum and so raise contrast to the maximum. Examples include trying to detect the faintest possible objects, whether star-like or extended sources, and observing not so faint objects against a bright background, which includes things like Sirius B in the glare of Sirius, or objects in bright moonlight and twilight. Sometimes, at occultations for instance, you have no choice but to observe when the event happens regardless of the sky brightness.

What prompted me to post the above is that I need to clean the window on my Dilworth again. It was possible to perform asteroidal photometry near full moon recently but the oblique moonshine scattering off the dust on the window did hit the SNR badly.

Excellent!

I am especially looking forward to exciting new images and the latest developments in the understanding of M40.

It depends. My stargzing is entirely indoors (I'm an imager) so it can be anything I like.

In the observatory, either Cola or, more usual, hot chocolate. it's nice having a kettle near the telescope!

Beer or wine is not uncommon if I'm in the house driving the equipment over the LAN.

1 hour ago, bomberbaz said:

finally found it amongst the other stars, thanks for the link, that really helped.

I plotted a line of the asteroids course over 3 nights and then used this to compare to the maps in the link you provided.

Well done!

I've not had chance to have another go since the images I sent you.  Poor weather and social occasions.

Paul

Horizontal drizzle last night.

More of the same this lunchtime.

23 hours ago, Peter Drew said:

The one and only time that I've seen it was with my 30" Newtonian back in 1986.  It was in twilight so Sirius was dimmed but not too light to lose the Pup.  The Pup must be getting either a wider separation or getting brighter as telescopes down to a 4" seem to make it available under good conditions.  How long before someone spots it naked eye?     🙂 

I remember seeing it in a 27.5cm Mak-Cas (which I believe you made) in the very early 80's.  The orbital period (50.1 years) is such that it was about as wide then as it is now.

No-one else seems to have mentioned AP (by which I understand imaging) so here's my experience.

Full details at https://britastro.org/observations/observation.php?id=20181130_040400_1fdd8dc86f81c7d8

You may have seen https://carnegiescience.edu/new-moons-uranus-and-neptune-announced by now which reports two new satellites of Neptune and one of Uranus.

As Uranian satellites are named after characters in plays by Shakespeare, I propose that the newcomer be called "Bottom".

Does anyone here have any influence with the IAU naming committee?
 

I'm a sad old geek who grew out of stamp collecting.

These days I enjoy making measurements which stand a reasonable chance of being useful to other astronomers, so I observe variable stars and asteroids.

I also enjoy tracking down elusive objects, especially if they form a collection of some sorts. Hence my images of small satellites in the outer solar system, TNOs, and globular clusters, especially those orbiting galaxies other than the Milky Way.

1 hour ago, dciobota said:

Hmmm, maybe I haven't found a place here after all.  I see two members here obliquely referring to me and this kind of behind the back criticism does not sit well with me.  If someone has an issue with what I say or how I say it please say so directly to me.  Being civilized does not mean talking behind someone's back.  Just saying.

I am passionate sometimes and may say things that get misinterpreted as offensive.  I already apologized to Olly once for giving him the wrong impression about something I said.  Maybe I should be more there is a heightened sensitivity here to anything that would be interpreted as offensive?  I don't know.

I think for now I'll just sit out and maybe just watch.

I did enjoy sharing what knowledge I have and trying to help here and there.  This is the main reason I was on CN and the main reason I'm here.  But I'll definitely go away if I'm not welcome, I have no skin in this game.

Peace.

 

I sincerely hope I am not one of them.  If so, I apologize unreservedly and assure that it was not intentional.

3 hours ago, Paul M said:

Like pubs of old, when folk used to pop out for a pint quite frequently, there would always be a familiar face to chat to and even let off the steam of the day.

Exactly.  Well phrased, Sir!

9 minutes ago, rl said:

I too am an electronics/computer engineer...and fully sympathise with the OP.

One of the beauties of visual astronomy is the complete lack of technology..just you, the scope and the stars. No broken wires, no unexpected windows updates, no flat batteries, no USB lockups...

You are quite correct about the beauty.

However, I do most of my "screwin' around" with hardware during daylight when I tend not to be looking through telescopes anyway. For example, one day (not night) I clobbered the Windows registry in such a way that it is unable to perform Windows updates without my explicitly asking for them (in daylight, of course).