Astro Noodles

1 minute ago, Dean Hale said:

It does look like a fancy bombay mix - but, i have no idea what it is. May have been pot-pourri at some point although it doesn't smell of anything. It just appeared sometime ago probably when the wife bought some more cushions.

I should get rid of that and replace it with Bombay mix. 

Astrophotograpy with beer and nibbles - a perfect evening. 😄

4 minutes ago, Dean Hale said:

Hope this counts - my indoor setup - sharpcap and a pint an ideal match. Already starting imaging M13 so cannot take a photo of the actual kit at the moment.

What's that behind the pint?

Pot-pourri or a fancy snack?

3 hours ago, whooshbang said:

 

Looking good now

 

It will be going into action tonight.

Naked eye supernova please.

Thanks to fellow member @whooshbang for selling me his bespoke dec bracket for iOptron Skyguider Pro. It has a Skywatcher derived worm gear for smooth adjustments. A major improvement over the standard iOptron one.

Apparently there are some doubts about the M87 image.

It seems that a couple of teams attempting to replicate the image processing have run into difficulties surrounding availability of information and the parameters used for the processing.

18 hours ago, Elp said:

Have you tried uploading to astrometry and enabling the annotated view once it's uploaded?

Astrometry is a useful tool- Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

I think I've found it.

ECX6-38 (snappy name🙂). 

Referenced in this article Near-infrared imaging of compact HII regions in Cygnus X (aanda.org)

It is in Cygnus, just above and to the right of the Pelican nebula.

It appears to be a star with some surrounding Ha, perhaps a planetary nebula?. It ca be found on Stellarium but no information is available about it.

This has changed into an over-ambitious mosaic project. 😄

I have used Microsoft ICE to stitch together the images.

6 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

A decent evening/morning here - the seeing was good, transparency quite good, the occasional wisp of cloud and of course not fully dark.

But I managed some new doubles, including  Σ1837 at 1.1",  Mu Librae at 2.0" and Theta Virginis, wider but with a mag diff of 5.

Finished with a scan of Markarian's Chain, not quite as distinct as the last time I saw it (early April last year), but M84 and M86 were quite obvious, and I convinced myself I could just make out NGC4388 with averted vision.

I often find that both the seeing and transparency are best on these nights between weather systems and cloud banks.

When there is a settled high pressure, It always seems very murky and wobbly.

10 hours ago, Zermelo said:

CO has been on usual form today too.

A few hours ago, it was showing 100% low cloud here for the whole of today and through to dawn tomorrow. Everywhere else I looked was saying clear.
MetCheck seems particularly bullish:

And just now CO has shown up late to the party, but did at least bring along a decent bottle:

No astro dark here now, but it should be worth a look.

 

For me, Metcheck was spot on, but CO was totally wrong tonight.

A beautiful night with good seeing and transparency, and low humidity.

I'm going to continue imaging until 2:30 unless my batteries run out.

10 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

CO has been on usual form today too.

A few hours ago, it was showing 100% low cloud here for the whole of today and through to dawn tomorrow. Everywhere else I looked was saying clear.
MetCheck seems particularly bullish:

And just now CO has shown up late to the party, but did at least bring along a decent bottle:

No astro dark here now, but it should be worth a look.

 

Fingers crossed. 

For me, Metcheck is saying yes, but CO is saying don't bother.

Guided by Clear outside, I waited up until midnight waiting for some clear weather so I could grab a few more images for my Cygnus project. It was, of course cloudy.

I couldn't sleep so I came down stairs at 3:15. Glanced out through the French doors and it was as clear as a bell. There was Cygnus flying majestically across the sky. Too light for imaging so I grabbed a pair of binoculars and spent a few minutes but came back inside because it was a bit chilly and I haven't got any socks on.

Good morning and welcome.

7 minutes ago, Laurieast said:

FWIW I used "New Panorama" on the Moon with four images. I'm guessing it found that an easy thing to do, and "Structured" as Vlaiv has shown is when it needs some help. 

What version of ICE did you get? I ask because yours looks different to mine in that yours has a dark background and mine is very light grey. Version 1.4.4.0

Hi Laurence. It is version 1.4.4-for-64bit-Windows.

I am planning to add additional images to my Cygnus mosaic, so I might be back to ask for more help. Thanks for the tip re 'New Panorama.

14 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

You need to help it a bit

Select structured panorama option, and approximately align images your self.

Yep- That's worked

Thanks very much for your help on this Vlaiv.

21 minutes ago, Laurieast said:

I just got a copy from here: https://download.cnet.com/Image-Composite-Editor-64-Bit/3000-2192_4-75207152.html

And stitched up the Moon https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/395271-moon-in-colour-stitched/#comment-4248205

 

What does this mean I'm doing wrong please? 

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

By the way Microsoft Ice does wonders:

That is the sort of result I would like. As far as I can tell, Microsoft ICE is no longer available (retired).

This is my best result with cropping and stacking in DSS

Thanks very much Vlaiv - I will play around with it a bit.

Distortion is better than stacking in DSS:

Do you think it would work better if I cropped the images a bit first?

Thanks

So I have these two images which I want to combine into a single, larger image. As you can see, there is some overlap. I have selected Jpeg images so that I can see what I am doing.

I have selected Pairwise stitching.

And then this box comes up - the files are correct. So I press ok.

Then this box. I press ok.

And this is the rather peculiar image which results.

Any chance you can let me know what I am doing wrong ?

Hi @vlaiv and @Elp

I have got the ImageJ Fiji version downloaded and everything seems to be working fine.

I am trying to use the stitching function to create a mosaic image out of two images. but it just overlays them one on top of the other.

Can you let me know what I am doing wrong?

18 minutes ago, saac said:

Nicely done Noodles.  Do you find that untied cables etc can have a noticeable impact on the final image?  I've never done any form of comparison to check. That  said, I've only recently made a serious effort to control by wayward cables. 

 

Jim

To be honest I'm not sure whether it makes any difference - but there was a bit of wind last night so I thought I would deploy the Velcro. I think it would make a difference if you were doing narrow field and long exposures but for what I do probably not.

Maybe just a good habit to get into. I only have 3 cables at the moment, but when I get guiding organised it will go up to 6.

Anyway, I thought you had an Obsy.

Here is a bit more of the region I captured 24/25th May with Sadr and the Crescent Nebula.

Same equipment/ parameters as above only this time 72x60 second subs and Velcro to keep the wires from swinging around in the wind. 😄