powerlord

I've been gathering data for this for what seems like months.. in the end, 10 hours Ha, 25 hours of Oiii and finally got to the point I could do something ok with the Squid. So, here's the results. SY135mm and sometimes asi1600, sometimes asi2600.

Out camping, clear skies in Bortle 4. Was hoping I'd see a vast seeing improvement in my results compared to what I've had from the back garden bortle 6 in Ipswich. But my saturn is worse than a July one I took. I don't think my Jupiter is much better either. It's the first time I've ever shot mars - so not sure if that is any good. C9.25xSW2x barlow, and asi224. ZWO AM5 first light!! - perhaps not an ideal mount for this since it really needs guiding - I think it was wobbling more than my eq6r-pro but exposures so short doubt it mattered.

Hi Neil, great as always. I shot mars, saturn and jupiter at weekend, but feel I'm not getting the best out the data. Can you just summarize your process ? mine has been: I've shoot each planet with IR pass, and OR block. And each I shoot 'high gain' and 'low gain' PIPP to stabilise and sort quality autostakkert, auto AP, and then stack based on what results looks like trying to aim for best 25%, but if all much of a much sometimes best 80%. stack at 1.5x and 3x. I then put em through Registax, dydadic, guassian, pushing each as high as makes an improvement. then look at all the results and choose the best. but feels like I'm over egging it, and tbh, not really sure what I'm doing. My saturn came out well a month ago, but the saturn I shot this time seems nothing like as good.

I'll tell you what - I was on a roll - so I requested my order history from amazon and got the csv file... I've been an amazon customer since 2000. The total was.. well I'm not telling. Let's just say, it was more than my first house cost. 😶

I buy FLO's stock. Isn't that the same thing ? 😁

My new precious...

Also, many home insurance policies limit contents to around 35k. that might sound a lot. maybe was 20 years ago when we didn't own 1000 quid phones, etc but it's nowt now. So it's another thing worth checking. I'll be checking mine for the astro stuff - usually it's computer gear I'm concerned it covers, but seeing that figure from FLO is nearly HALF the limit above... I think I'd better revist the policy. stu

At least resell values are good. generally. And inflation works in your favour. sort of.. no hear me out...cough I mean say you buy summit for 1000 quid new from FLO. resell value or astro stuff is good - prob get 800 back when you sell it after 2 years right ? so it's really only cost you 200 quid ? well hold on, there is inflation at 10.1% .. so your 1000 quid in a zero interest account would be worth 10% less in a year in real terms..900 quid.. and then another 90 the second year.. 810 quid. so, really your 1000 quid purchase has only cost 10 quid. If inflation goes up a bit more, it'll be free! stu p.s. my cheek has a tongue in it.

If you've just ordered your latest FLO gadget and thought to yourself - huh - bet I could just cut and paste that order history into excel and add it up - see what I've spend in the last 18 months* don't. just. don't. that way, only pain lies. ignorance is bliss. 😬 stu * lets just say it's got the same number of digits as my yearly salary.

great, ta - yeh that's when im there - over last weekend.

hi chaps, does anyone know if it's ok to sell yer old gear there ? seems like it would be a good place to stick a table of stuff in from of my motorhome - save postage, and make easier to sell/buy big stuff like old mounts, etc ? stu

you've got the wrong thread type. the screw in the AM5 is probably a 3/8, 16p UNC bolt.

the different options reflect in the sliders below. very nice first attempt. Would you recommend the am5 ? are you using with an asiair ?

Thanks all. Pity none of the sources seem to mention a distance. Stu

I took this one at 3.30am on saturday at around 5000mm (C9.25+2.2 barlow). neptune is the middle one I assume. triton the light nearby dot ? but can someone tell me what is the red one ? none of my planetariums have anything showing there ? In fact according to say Skyt Safari there are no other stars in the POV with a magnitude more than 19, which is clearly mince as there are loads here, and this is just a stack of 40 .5 second exposures.

Not very good seeinng I don't think. I shot saturn too, and the results were far inferior to a month ago. Pity as I was up till 3.30am 😞 anyway, this is the best I could make of it.

the local buses go up the top - you just need to hop on one. have a rake on the internet and you'll find the timetables, etc.

ah well, you see, that's not the one I look for, I look for this one - sorry, from one of my own pics as I didn't want to draw another elephant 🙂

prob best to post this in the begginers forum to get more views/responses.

nice detail. I always look to see an actual elephant at the tip of the trunk - and you've got him/her there. stu

I agree re:mono, I have 5 or 6 desktop wallpapers I've shot in widefield Ha with the 135mm - look the biz.

In funny ones like this I usually try an integration with no reference data at all - just lights. If that works, eyeball the reference data. If nothing obvious, add just flats and bias. If that works, then add darks. It's worked for me before in identifying the ref data that had issues.

top work fella! I'm of the same mindset - some folk like to get bogged down in the theory - fair enough, each to their own. I prefer to say 'stuff it', and just have a go - sometimes you end up coming away thinking 'yup they've got a point there', but more times than not I end up with something I am happy with, even if it's not good enough for the star peepers out there. 😛 I'd be well happy with that result. 👏

you are right, still not right. here's v4

Well, got the second panel last night, but as you can see I'm still getting black bits in the center of the frames. I was thinking it could be dew even though I've got the dew heater on, but I'd expect that to be the opposite.. maybe I had dew when I took the flats ? but it's not obvious in them hmm.. well that's the best I can do - ok if you can ignore the two circles.