Astro Noodles

Hi Laurence. This is how the mounting bracket should look. With the central tongue to the top (My Skyguider is upside down in this image). Does yours look like this? Personally, I find it easier to polar align with out mounting the counterweight etc.

Clear Outside Annual Darkness.

I'm in the market for a h-alpha so might try a Baader.

It was just something I scooped up early on. I hadn't used it before. Just wanted to try it out. I didn't think it would be that bad. 😄 It seems that it was doing exactly the opposite of what a UHC filter should do. Most of my other filters are Astronomik or Skytech.

I probably won't be using it again.😄

So I bought this cheap, no label UHC filter from the internet. I spent an hour and a half imaging the Western Veil with it yesterday and it did a brilliant job of eradicating any trace of the nebula! 😂 I think it only lets through green and yellow light.

I'm going to buy a light pad to do my flats. I've noticed there are plenty on the internet for sale in the £30-40 range. Does anyone have any recommendation/advice?

I've watched it. I am still not clear on a number of things though.

So, we can see the CMB, and from it we can determine a number of things, including that the big bang happened and when it happened. For those of us who don't understand the maths or science, a visual representation has been produced. When I look at the representation, the first thing that strikes me is it's lack of uniformity. To my mind, if the big bang happened from a singularity, and was obeying a single law or set of laws, surely the CMB would be uniform across the whole sky. What does this mean? What am I missing?

I did have a look on the internet to see if Sardinia had any notable crime problems. I couldn't find anything except that the island has been historically plagued with bandits - even until recent times! Maybe @Gonariu can enlighten us on this.

This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase 'ego trip'. 🤣

Really?

What kind of people would play a joke on a harmless amateur astronomer and laugh abut it for centuries afterwards? The youth of today 🙄 They should bring back birching, or national service.😄 I think that one thing that we all share is the fear that some nutter may do us harm, wherever we live. Personally, I feel safer out on my own in the countryside than I do in my suburban back yard.

Not bad for a guy who started off by selling second hand records out of a cardboard box.

Yes

Thanks Xilman. I have had that thought myself. I take the darks before the session whilst I am setting up my kit as it's going to be the warmest. I don't know whether that is the correct thing to do.

Camera is a stock Canon 1100d.

I am hoping to get 8 hours or so of integration time on a specific target. Obviously this will take me several sessions to achieve at this time of year. My method is to collect a single night's data with darks taken before the session and stack these with a master bias. Then, I will stack the separate night's files together in DSS to form a composite of each individual night's imaging. Is this the correct way to do it, or should I forget about the darks and just save all the subs and stack them together in one go?

Thanks guys for your positive comments and suggestions. I am greatly encouraged and now resolved to get a few hours of integration time on this target before trying anything else. 🙂

I'm currently using Gimp. Nico Carver and Astrofarsography have created youtube Gimp tutorials for star masks, gradient removal etc. I'm waiting until I have something worth the effort before following them closely though. 🙂 I'm actually quite interested in Startools, I have been playing around with the demo.

Thanks Clarkey Astro-modified camera is on by Birthday list for October. 🙂 I will try to get more integration time on it. Cygnus is in a really good part of the sky for me and I should be able to get good time on it over the next few months.

Ok so I think I have made some progress. Here is last night's attempt at the western veil. 47 x 60sec taken at iso1600. I am very happy with the tracking now (trust me to get a lemon). I have had to stretch it like mad to get the nebulosity. What can I do next to bring out the nebulosity? Longer exposure, higher iso, filters, more integration time? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 🙂

Welcome to SGL. 🙂

Welcome to SGL.🙂

D for Dew Heater. 🙂