Mr Thingy

That was my first thought, so I checked Stellarium and saw it was the opposite side of the planet.

Yes indeed. Enough of my images get marked by satellites to know how many are up there now. I always see them when I'm doing visual too, but this was much brighter and faster. Not doubting it's man made but just wondering if it was a satellite and why it was so fast.

Yay! A silliness amnesty. I'm sure I've got some to add 😁. I power my gear from my shed and have to pass a cable over a fence to get there. Last night I thought I'd throw it, with just enough slack so it doesn't hit the ground, but it bounced off the fence and landed square on my head (prongs first, of course). That hurt 😖 On Wednesday I set up, polar aligned, ready to. Slewed to target. Points at fence. Totally forgot to consider where my target was. Moved a few feet. Set up again. Estimation was wrong. Still not clearing fence. Third time it was OK. So that's this week....

Yes, the chances of that have, unfortunately, risen a lot recently.

Whilst setting up my AP session last night, and waiting for the skies to darken enough, I saw a bright light travelling very fast, roughly travelling West to N East, at a constant speed. It was slightly brighter than Polaris appeared at that time. Fortunately I had my binos to hand so I could follow it and rule out an aeroplane. There was no tail either, so it wasn't a meteorite. It was traveling very fast and covered about 90° of the sky in about 20 seconds and as I say, it was very bright. Any idea what this was likely to be? I assumed a satellite but the speed and brightness made me doubt that.

Fantastic image! There's something so appealing about reflection and dark nebula. Great processing too - the reddening effect on the stars visible through the dust is very clear.

Sorry to hear that, but perservere - when you figure it out I'm sure you will be delighted when the first images roll in (then time to scratch your head and work out how to process images😱). I will let someone more knowledgeable than me advise, but I wonder of the use of Synscan is interfering. How do you connect the Asiair? I connect via laptop so I'm not at all familiar with Asiair, but I completely skip Synscan and connect the mount to laptop via an EQDIR cable. I then control everything with the laptop. I just wonder if Synscan is overriding the input of Asiair somehow.

A fine April we're having here. I think tonight might be the 7th or 8th clear night so far and tomorrow looks promising too. 😁 Happy viewing!

That sounds wonderful. I think you might have made a few of us jealous. Great pics, btw.

Looks like a dalek. (Fine looking scope too)

Hopefully first light for my new OSC camera tonight. Just need the pesky high clouds to disperse.

I started recently in much the same way, going right in with the whole shebang - guiding, EFW, EAF, platesolving, etc. Honestly, if I can do it anyone can (no pressure now!). I tested as much as I could in the day and for the evening I prepared a 1-page workflow with all the steps and settings. I never use that anymore but it really helped for the first few sessions. My first session I couldn't get platesolving and guiding working, so just shot unguided, getting quite pleasing results still. In both cases I just hadn't configured properly, and once rectified now runs perfectly. I thoroughly recommend platesolving btw. Very easy to use (once you download the database 🙈) and so effective. Good luck and please share your results.

I love this target but it's sadly out of reach for me. I don't think it goes above 18° at my location and it's in a direction obscured by my house. Very nice picture.

If my wife ever sees the 'Order Information' page on FLO........... nice knowing you all 😱

AA* Meeting Minutes 20th April: My name is Mr Thingy and I'm an addict - I can't stop buying astronomy equipment. Despite already owning a new and decent mono camera (ZWO ASI183MM GT), I decided to purchase a ZWO ASI533MC-PRO, which I told myself I must have for extra utility. However, despite this setback, today I have managed to go a whole 5 hours without looking at the FLO website. Tomorrow I promise only to look at dovetails and cable options and I definitely will not be looking at APO refractors. *Astroholics Anonymous (AA) Thank you for your support 🤭

Incredible. About 3.5 Earths.

Mesmerising. I wonder what the scale is.

Fantastic images. Nice to see such distant objects. I see from your images that you are N Essex, which is same neck of the woods as me - I'm in S Suffolk on the border.

Lovely pictures. I really must learn how to get that golden colour from the Ha. It looks fantastic against the blue of the OIII.

Incredible. Hopefully it will be Titan next, with their planned Dragonfly mission.

I chanced upon this whilst browsing for targets and it looked very interesting, so I had to give it a go. I hadn't previously encountered the headphone nebula in the Lynx constellation, but that might be down to the fact that It's very faint at mag 14 and has a low surface brightness. However, it's also fairly large at 6.3 arcmin. This image is just 1h45 min of lights, taken in HORGB (6 x 450s Ha, 6 x 600s OIII, 1 x 30s each RGB). Nice clear images I've seen have 50+ hours of data so, MUCH more integration time is needed, but I'm pleased to already start seeing some detail coming through. Hoping for some more clear skies this week to add more data. -Thingy-

Lovely images. The chain is a fascinating target.

3rd clear night this week 😱 (I hope you were sitting for that). Managed to get enough Ha and OIII data on IC410 to get a colour image together (my processing skills need refinement but I'm enjoying learning the ropes). I had some dew appear late in the session, so the RGB I shot for the star colour were spoiled, hence some weird star tones. More data also needed, but that will be for next season now, since IC410 is getting too low. For that reason I changed targets last night to PK 164 (headphone nebula). I wasn't sure how successful it would be, as it's very faint, but the preview showed the nebula clearly with 7.5 min subs in Ha and 10min in OIII. Looking forward to processing that over the weekend but for now I'm shooting a few hours worth of darks so I can negate the vibrant amp glow!

I have the foundation series in my loft, all bearing his artwork. Absolutely fantastic.

I had a break in the hobby in recent years and, between then and resuming again recently, they have now fitted LED lights. It may be my imagination but it really seems that there is much less scattered light and sky glow and I seem to be able to see much more clearly the faint fuzzies. Thankfully for me the LED lights are at the front of my house, so they do not shine into my garden.