Simon Pepper

Not yet but will check this out. For some reason my app isn’t showing the map so no idea when it’s going to pass were you looking at the 6pm ish pass? Thanks 

Here is my initial result from this weekends Astro camp with a few SGL members. We met up in Stonegate in SE UK in a bortle 4. We chose new moon for obvious reasons and by complete amazement two nearly completely cloud free nights (had to bin maybe 20 mins). Milky Way was clearly visible overhead and M31 was obtainable to the naked eye with inverted vision. Overall it was two really great nights. I capture LRGB over both night on this one using WO Redcat 51. Its also drizzled 2x and processed in PI. Thanks 

2nd night out with @carastro and others on an Astro Camp South East UK 

I had a look at 5am today Venus was blatant and clear but I couldn’t make out the comet I think I may have left it too long. I will try again tomorrow at 4:30 🙏

Finally some clear skies in the South East, UK. Here is four nights and my longest integration on VDB152. 

Acquisition details over on Astrobin below. I am getting reflections on the brighter stars that I am getting a little annoyed with. Anyone got any tips on how to get rid of these or is it a case of pay more for better filters? These were Baader LRGB and ZWO Ha. Thanks 

VDB 152 Widefield - HaLRGB ( Simon Pepper ) - AstroBin

Thanks for the heads up I wouldn’t have known and I am literally 10 minutes from there so I will be sure to pop over tomorrow. Thanks 

This is a great idea apart from the WAG part lol! I’ll go and inform the Mrs I am off to La Palma! 

49 minutes ago, Dan_Paris said:

It is the Newton fault, but rather the filter fault, or a a shared responsibility between the filter and the corrector.  According to the size of the reflection, it occurred approximately 50mm away from the focal plane. No mirror there.

 

Here's a deep exposure with my newt including mag. 2.4 Phecda in the field, there's only a faint reflection in the upper-left corner :

 

This is the kind of stars I am after. When imaged like this the composition just works. I wouldn't look the same if was just a refractor and a bloated stat here lol! What scope did you use for this? Thanks 

Some interesting opinions here. The reflection @Clarkey has there is one of the worst I have seen. It must be painful starting a new OTA only to have those issues. I have been there and that's why AP is a rabbit hole! I guess to simply things a little a colour camera maybe a better option that way its a just a UV IR cut, but I guess one could get a halo from there also! I think my take away from this is yes a newt can produce awesome images and a cheaper option, however to get really decent results the scope will have to be upgraded and cared for which will cost more money in the long run and perhaps some frustration. Maybe I will give it a little longer then till I can afford the scope and all the upgrades required to get great results! 

1 hour ago, tomato said:

I have an LED streetlight opposite my back garden which looks like it would give me a real problem when imaging due South:

 

The council should switch it off after midnight according to their policy but it stays on all night. I considered all kinds of screens including making a light weight box shroud which would be dropped over it by drone and then removed at the end of the session. Using GPS this could have been incorporated into the automated run so I wouldn’t even need to get out of bed!
However, even with the scopes in the orientation shown in the photo, the subs were not affected by stray light so I just carry on regardless.

I had the same issue with one of my street lights out of all the ones in my road which is easily 50 the one right outside my house was the only one that stayed on all night the others went off. I called the council and it turns out they are managed by East Sussex highways they came and fixed it had an issue with the sensor I think it now goes off at 12pm in the winter and 1am in the summer. It’s worth another call and hopefully can sort it 

1 hour ago, Mandy D said:

@Simon Pepper Not to attempt to put you off moving over to the dark side, but you can get nice diffraction spikes with a refractor by string a pair of crossed wires across the objective.

I'm not exactly experienced in collimating Newts, but today I needed to check mine and found the Astrobaby guide helpful She says it's a simple guide, but to be honest I think it is probably one of the most comprehensive and I found it quite difficult to follow. I persevered with it only because I suspected my secondary was in need of alignment and found it was a long way out, despite having had some pretty good photographic results from the scope. It took me about an hour to wade through it and complete the task, but if it is onl the primary, which is usually the case, then it is a few minutes to do with a Cheshire eyepiece.

I don't think you are mad in wanting to try things with a Newt, but they do come with their own set of quirks. I've never worried about these issues. I don't know about the light leaks, but I'm sure someone will come along and help you with that. Here is the link to Astrobaby:

https://www.astro-baby.com/astrobaby/help/collimation-guide-newtonian-reflector/

Thanks Mandy and you do make a good point but I was under the impression the fishing line trick over the refractor would t give the diffraction results I would expect with a proper Newt. If someone can prove me wrong though I am all ears 😄

Hi all 

I have been doing AP for over three years now and I have always used refractors which lets be honest are quite forgiving especially the widefield type plug them in and go!  However recently (and this could be the case of equipment envy) I feel I want to make that jump to something different something that comes with other challenges and perhaps some diffraction spikes! I keep seeing images on Astrobin of users with Newts where the stars just look incredible. I cant get stars that good with my refractors there is sometimes something that's not right whether internal reflections from filters, star bloat or some aberration that I just have no idea where its coming from. I have done a bit of research showing newts come with their own challenges. Collimation, light leaks, focuser sag the requirement for flocking etc. Anyone with experience in this field please give it to me straight how difficult is all of this bearing in mind I have never collimated a scope in my life am I mad to be wanting to do this with just three years experience or is the time right? I have also not ruled out hyperstar or rasa, but for the price of say a SW quattro at F3.45 will be fast enough I believe. Any advice and recommendations on scopes will be very much appreciated.

Thanks Simon 

On 06/08/2023 at 21:30, Dark Raven said:

Welcome to the RC51 club. It is fine and durable instrument. I'm sure you you will have amazing time with it. AM3 would probably be more suited as AM5 is a bit of an overkill but they work well together.

If you polar align well enough, guiding will be spot on and you'll have sharp stars across the entire field.

I went with uncooled ASI585MC at 2.9 um in order to reduce the undersampling and avoid the need for large, heavy battery while backpacking.

 

In hindsight, perhaps it was over cautious on my part. I'll go wider with my next cam and I'm sure 533 will give you great results.

Do show what you get with it.  

What are those funky green parts? Actually gives the Cat some sexiness? 

 While @woldsman image is down for now  here is my first image I would like to share.

Annoyingly I had just imaged the Veil and the Cygnus Wall prior to the allowed dates, so instead redoing them again with new data I tried to opt for one of the lesser imaged targets in the Cygnus region NGC6914. I also imaged this in broadband, only filter in play here is a UV IR cut. The camera was a ZWO 533 MC Pro and I captured this over the only two clear nights in most of July and August here in the South East UK which was August 7th and 8th. Total integration was just shy of seven hours and the scope I used was ES127ed with 0.7x reducer. I feel (I hope) clearer nights are coming and I even managed to see a very faint Milky Way from my garden under bortle 4.5 the other day. Thanks Simon

I currently have both but the EQ6r has not even been out of the box. I was thinking like you have two imaging rigs running at the same time but actually knowing the second rig is that much heavier it’s not practical so I literally can’t be bothered with the hassle and the Rowan mod on the heq5 is so good I am not even sure the EQ6r will match it. I have seen it at 0.25 total RMS. 

On 15/06/2023 at 21:10, Littleguy80 said:

I created myself a little spreadsheet to keep track of the things I wanted to. While observing I use SkySafari to quickly log what I’ve seen. In the spreadsheet I can just add anything to the individual lists and this then automatically updates the summary. I’ve learnt not to make record keeping too onerous, otherwise my fun hobby starts to feel like a chore. For example, I was recording the sun spots I’ve seen when I first started solar observing but have stopped that now as it didn’t seem a particularly interesting number to record in the end. 

This is amazing. So is the spreadsheet located in the sky safari app or is this something you put together? Thanks 

Welcome to SGL 👏

On 14/06/2023 at 01:34, Littleguy80 said:

Just updated my records and that’s comet number 25 for me. A quarter century no less!

This is a great idea do you literally just have a saved word doc somewhere? I think I am going to do this for comets and supernovas as I can still remember the four comets and I think two SN! 

So many M101s here now. We should all share our data and create a 100hour super integration! Here is my take on the SN. It’s 12.5 hours of data from four nights last week. I also took a night of Ha data but my poor processing skills can’t seem to add it correctly. Image was taken with ES127 with 0.7 reducer and ZWO533MC. 

7 hours ago, Uranium235 said:

Just keeping the gear ticking over with an hour on M101

More of a corner test than a serious image...

However... im my time away Ive noticed just how bad the night sky has become, there is an unnecessary amount of space junk orbiting this planet now. Not one sub was left unblemished.

Mr Musk... you have a lot to answer for.

 

Corners look good. Also there is a SN in M101 currently pretty sure I can see it in this image. Can’t see any Musk trails thank goodness for software 

3 hours ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Not my deepest image in terms of data gathered (around 2.5 h), but I was alerted to the presence of quasars in my image of NGC 3718, NGC 3729, and Hickson 56. There is a useful map of the area here

I was quite amazed to see I got 6 out of 8 listed. There are some very faint hints of the other two, but having captured an object 11.2 billion Ly away from my back garden is quite amazing, I feel. Makes me want to grab more data on this lovely target.

Interesting stuff! How were you alerted to the quasars? Thanks 

Here is my take on M51. I actually imaged this on my first ever astro camp with @carastro (thanks Carole) amongst others. Its the first image I have taken outside the comfort of the back garden. Image was taken on the 21st of April during 21:30 and 00:30  the clouds rolled in. It was also the first light for my 533MC Pro which I have to say is a great little camera! Due to the minimal integration time I was hoping to add some more data, however lack of clear skies and the moon have put a stop to that for now. Its a pretty aggressive crop because I took my flats the following day with dew on the lens which was a school boy error and because of this had awful artefacts. After throwing out 10 or so subs I was left with a measly 2:45 considering the low amount here at F7.5 I think it came out better than expected.  Scope was ES127ed with a hotech FF.  Looking forward to the next camp already. Thanks 

Yep! Just the other day the wife asked that question about how much money I have spent on AP gear and to her horror it was more than the kitchen which included a wall down here and there! Needless to say she was not best pleased with this and has caused some tension! I am now in a position where any new first lights can no longer be shared on the gram as she has full visibility of that. She has also demanded that we finally roll our incomes into one which is probably long overdue I have just been putting that off 😂

5 hours ago, david_taurus83 said:

Just wondering if anyone uses their AM5 on the carbon tripod with heavy refractors? My Esprit 100 is currently sat in the wardrobe while the 200P is on the pier so I was thinking about trying the Esprit on the AM5? The Esprit isn't a particularly long refractor but it's weighty. I'm not doubting the AM5's capability but more concerned about toppling the tripod. I don't have the pier extension either. Would a counterweight be advised? 

This is why I got the EQ6r I just couldn’t trust that AM5 mainly the tripod. I can’t recall where I saw it but someone had an Edge that was on an AM5 and it fell off glass shattered complete write off can’t recall how but I suspect it toppled over. 

It Could be hard to tell the difference between guiding, poor PA, balance, seeing, wind… is this image a stack or a single sub? I am also trying to contend with the wind tonight and if you look at these sub comparisons the elongated stars are caused by wind the next image guiding was under 1 total error and is fine.