Mangifigeek

And so it begins. As with all things astronomy related, the weather stopped further activity. Hope to get the "ground works" done next weekend.

🙂 I already appear to have achieved that level of cloudiness. I plough on nevertheless! I am not sure the UK is the best climate for this hobby.

Hi, How is this working for you? I am considering building one too. Have you covered the blocks with cement after building the tower? Thanks

MureDenoise looks useful, thanks

PI and GIMP. Noise reduction is something else to get around too...

Hi Rich, It was my first time guiding in a few months and I was simply using a cheap t7C in my finderscope, so likely to be my guiding issue (and the USB lead got caught on the counterweight too!) - generally I had a few guiding issues as I am getting upto speed with it again after the summer. I have not yet bought a coma corrector which will hopefully address the corner issues when I get around to it. I have recently bought an OAG but have not yet used it in anger. I achieved everything I wanted to that evening so I was happy (including having downloaded more detail for my plate solving app, which now works using my main imaging camera). You are a more patient person than I waiting for the scope to be delivered! Good luck.

Just in case anyone else looks into this thread... Also working well with its first test using an ASI 294 MC PRO. I am enjoying the longer nights 🙂

It would be great to see some of your results 🙂

I guess DSS has never been so heavily used before for such a great comet!

Sunday was my first attempt at using DSS for comets! I had some success if trailing stars or the comet is moving ("standard mode") - but standard mode looks quite silly. I did manage one stack in the combined mode - but it always hung after that at the final stage and I had to kill the process. It was interesting stacking the first and final image over a 90 minute period and seeing how much the comet had moved relative to the background stars. The attached photo was based on just a handful of the lights I had taken (they were very short ones). Anything more caused DSS to hang. I am following the thread with interest, and I may consider doing the stacking in PixInsight when I have time.

Some sma Some cracking photos there - I aspire to doing some like that! Thanks for the tip about refocussing with temperature changes, that had never crossed my mind.

I will take a look! Thanks

Looks like it was all down to me not collimating correctly - the stars are looking much sharper (I used my DSLR - which I left attached for a few hours before using it). I set the telescope up last night as the night promised to be clear, however, the clouds proved rather stubborn. I managed to get less than 10 minutes imaging of M31 in (and have only done a very quick process of it) to test the telescope, but seems like it is all OK. I then nipped off to look at the wonderful Comet Neowise (which was hidden by a tree from the VX10). I will do a more thorough process of the images another time. Thanks everyone for your help Paul

I am relatively new to astronomy, but that is the approach I take! Other apps I use on Android include "Good to Stargaze" and "Weather and Radar". I find the "Weather and Radar" quite good - useful showing the radar images. I only found out about "Clear Outside" this week, so early days for me.

*** removed pending further tests! *** 🙂