Roy Foreman

Well done for such a short integration  time. Agree about the weather. I've been waiting 3 months for a clear night !

8 hours ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

Your title was somewhat off putting! 😅

I'm still not convinced you don't have some kind of localised weather control, because I've not seen a star for weeks!!

I haven't had skies clear enough for imaging in 3 months !  Its getting beyond a joke.

2 hours ago, gorann said:

Thanks Roy!

LOL, do you see any mechanical structures then?

Sadly no, I  can't. The nebulosity is too, er, nebulous to see any mechanical straight lines hee hee hee.

Love the panorama but struggling to see the frog. Must be because I'm an engineer not a biologist !!!

Nice setup. I much prefer fork mounts to GEM's. No meridian flips well done on the image too.

Definately better. Looks sharper too

So did I . Nice image lots of depth and colour.

This is part of my ongoing quest to image the outer shells of M27 given my limited clear skies.  Still room for improvement I think but this is my best effort so far.  Those with better processing skills than I could probably make a better job of it.

I'm also doing the same for M57, but that's in the pipeline.

Taken over two nights - 15th July and 18th Sept - using my 16" Reflector and ASI 6200 MC Pro.

66 x 60 sec at gain 400 with an IDAS NB1 filter.

Processed in DSS and Photoshop.

Thanks for looking.

Yes I like the colours on this one as well. Very natural looking.

Staying up till 3.30am for just one night would do me in ! Looks like it was well worth the effort though. Hopefully you can now sit back and relax and recover whilst waiting for the next batch of clear nights !!!

Very nice. Love the colours.

I will check that out. Thanks for that Peter 

Excellent detail - well done ! And well done for getting up early - something I find very difficult to do !!

1 minute ago, peter shah said:

lovely set of images

Thank you Peter. Having just posted these I now need to figure out why the colour balance looks different to the originals !!

My cooled astro camera is playing up, so when a rare clear night occurred recently I reverted to imaging with my trusty Nikon D810a - an amazing camera that is so much more than just a stock DSLR with a modified filter.

Image details are as follows :-

North America Nebula

Stella Mira 90 EDT at f/4.8 - 20 x 30 sec at ISO 6400 plus IDAS NB1 Tri Band Filter

Dumbell Nebula

16" Reflector at F/4.5 - 20 x 45 sec at ISO 1600, no filters

Ring Nebula

16" Reflector at F/4.5 - 20 x 30 sec at ISO 1600, no filters

For what its worth, I've imaged all of these objects with my ASI 6200 MC with total exposure times four times longer than these, but results hardly any better. Can't explain why, but food for thought.

Hope these are of interest, especially to those who are imaging with a DSLR.

Lots of stars indeed. Next time I image M11 I'll use a shorter focal length scope and see what turns out.  Impressive image, well done.

Love the first version. Monochrome has a certain appeal which we don't see all that often. Great result.

I like it. Well done.

38 minutes ago, Zeta Reticulan said:

You're welcome. Apparently, due to libration and nutation, you can never see the Moon exactly the same twice. Unless you live over 186 years or something lol.

Ha ha didnt know that. If I did manage to live to be 186 I would probably have forgotten the views from the first time around!

That's great. Sheer coincidence that the illumination was favourable for my image. Even if I tried the same thing next month lunar libration would reveal different features at the terminator as you are probably aware. Thanks for pointing that out.

28 minutes ago, TheycallmeRiver said:

Absolutely love it.  Thank you for sharing.

Glad you like it. The thinnest crescent I have ever attempted. Bit of a long shot but it seems to have worked !

I searched for Mercury as well but like you I never found it. The moon was visible through the telescopes finder but the magnification was too low to make out many details. Thanks for your response.

It's not really the best time of year for chasing slim lunar crescents, but what the heck I gave it a go.

Taken at around 6.15pm, so in broad daylight, I could not see the moon with the naked eye, even when I knew where it was.  But with a Pro Planet 642 filter fitted it was visible for imaging, although contrast was very low.

This is a three frame mosaic taken with the 16" Reflector - 20% of 2000 frames at 19 fps and 2.5ms integration.

Processing was really tough and I didn't think I would be able to produce anything presentable, but here it is.

Thanks for looking.

8 hours ago, Skyline said:

The fov is very close to a 130pds, nice images BTW.

Thank you.  I'm hoping for a clearer night where I can take the time to really do it justice.  Forgot to mention in the details that I used an IDAS NB1 nebular filter which must cut out some of the light, but at F/3.4 there are still lots of photons coming through !

I was originally enticed by the Sharpstar 150 f/2.8, looks great but I was put off by reports of floppy mirrors and collimation issues.  Then I looked at Takahashi Epsilon 160.  Guaranteed quality but silly money.  So I opted for Skywatcher's new Quattro 150p.  I already have the 10" version which performs well, especially with the dedicated F/4 coma corrector.  Couldn't find any reviews of the Q 150p, so it was a bit of a leap of faith.

The Q150p is typical SW build quality and, like all my other SW scopes, is well put together and has no mechanical or optical issues. It arrived almost perfectly collimated - just a tweak to the secondary required.

These are first light results for the benefit of those who are also considering this imaging scope.  A bit rough and ready as I only had a one hour window between darkness and clouds rolling in.

First off - the Cygnus Wall, using the coma corrector that comes with the scope.  This is just 2 x 60 sec at F/3.4 with an ASI 294MC at gain 300.  No flats or darks, and no guiding so star images are not brilliant.

Second is the Sadr region, using SW's F/4 coma corrector and a full frame D810a DSLR.  5 x 15 sec at ISO 6400 unguided.

I'm sure the scope could do better given more subs and autoguiding, but I was pushed for time.

Hope these are useful for anyone interested in this scope.