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Ags

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Everything posted by Ags

  1. Ags

    M81

    I think, based on your experience, that it should be quite doable, especially as I will be using f6.3 reducer for a focal length around 945 mm, roughly a third of yours. But I will need a very calm night.
  2. I worked on reducing the graduated shading representing star density to sharp contour lines. Hopefully looks less like a printer's error now! It was quite easy in the end, just little bit of integer division and remultiplication, plus a few cosmetic tweaks to reduce the number of dark countours and avoid very light contours.
  3. Ags

    M81

    I am trawling your back catalog of images after seeing your stunning M51 These results really motivate me to have a go with my C6/HEM15.
  4. Ags

    M51

    APOD! I was trying a similar shot with somewhat lighter equipment - a HEM15 and C6, but the night was too windy (still learning my way around this new mount). Next year I might move to Bortle 4 skies - looking forward to that after a decade of Bortle 8...
  5. The print proof arrived today. The cover is way too dark, but was just a quick placeholder so that Lulu would print it. The family verdict on the milky way traces I added to the charts was "Is it a printing error?" I am happy with the look of the individual asteroid pages. The book includes some pretty pictures. Whoever sent the book to the printers with the green debug boxes switched on is FIRED!!!
  6. I gave in and bought a new one. It arrived today. Now... Where did I put it?
  7. And a print proof of my new bookety-book.
  8. T2 spacers and an Astronomik L3 filter!
  9. I suspect you will find the structures are made of blue stuff 😀
  10. Hmmm, found this one in the Netherlands. No sign of clear pricing, which is usually a bad sign.... 3D Printen voor particulier - 3D On Demand (3d-demand.nl)
  11. Sounds like a very expensive job.
  12. Using a big dob on M31 is a little like using a magnifying glass to examine an elephant. It is a big object and doesn't need magnification so a bigger scope doesn't help. Also the brightness of an extended object depends only on the exit pupil and not on aperture, so M31 will be just as bright in 7x50 binoculars as it would be in a dob with an exotic low power eyepiece, with the exception that the galaxy will fit in the FOV of the binoculars. By far the best view I have ever had of M31 was with a pair of cheap and very rubbishy binoculars.
  13. Inspired by a comment by @vlaiv, I want to print some aperture masks for my Long Perng 90 refractor. I find the color correction fine for visual use, but I am thinking of trimming the aperture slightly for some photographic targets. My only problem is the lack of a 3D printer. I don't want to own one, but surely there must be a website somewhere that can print on demand? Does anyone know of one?
  14. Nah, that was a rubbish result! Tried again making sneaky use of Siril photometric color calibration this time. The galaxy is a bit orange now, but the stars are more colorful 😀 ...third time's the charm....
  15. An aperture mask will also have the benefit of making the field seem slightly flatter as it will increase depth of focus. Not that I see any field curvature issues in this image.
  16. The Atronomik L3 cuts a little far blue in addition to UV, so it can improve blue halos at the cost of a little richness of color.
  17. I find an Astronomik L3 filter helps. A very nice picture by the way!
  18. I thought this was an ok result, shot over two evenings using the Air's ability to goto a picture you took the previous evening. This is under Bortle 8 skies.
  19. It is annoying that a functional equatorial mount would have been beautiful and, most importantly, not wrong.
  20. We don't need to add to the reasons not to observe 😄 I'll stay away from the C6 on the more brisk evenings! Maybe I need a more aerodynamic option for the gusty nights, like a 50 mm refractor!
  21. Ags

    New member

    Welcome!
  22. Yes, I was also expecting the wind was a problem for plate solving, but I was hoping the setup could stand up to a bit of a breeze. One possibility to improve things is upgrading the current light Berlebach Report tripod to cheap but solid skywatcher steel tripod. I didn't know I could change the exposure length for polar aligning. Thanks for the tip!
  23. I tried the mount with my C6 tonight, a less than successful endeavour! I wanted to see if the mount would cope with a light breeze and the relatively large C6 and dew shield, and the short answer is no. Guiding was all over the place and exposures of any length had wind-induced trailing. Obviously a scope-mount combo for the most serene evenings only I was also hoping to see if plate solving would work with the ASI485MC and the C6. Even with the f6.3 reducer, the FOV is on the edge for AsiAir plate solving. I made several attempts but could not solve any view, nor could I polar align with the main scope. Also, I managed to spend an hour trying to find focus!
  24. All asteroids are minor planets, and all minor planets are (eventually) assigned a number indicating order of discovery, like 1 Ceres or 4 Vesta. The numbers were introduced to replace unique planetary symbols that were initially assigned to the first minor planets to be discovered. https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?utf8=✓&object_id=4 Only the first few asteroids to be discovered got planet symbols, and indeed they were recognized as planets. The symbol for the planet Ceres was: These little planets were demoted to minor planets when the number of discovered asteroids became too large - exactly the same reason for demoting Pluto from planetary status 150 years later. Of course, since 2006 we also have the category of dwarf planets (namely minor planets that are round due to hydrostatic equilibrium). Ceres is the only dwarf planet in the asteroids belt, but possibly Hygiea may yet be promoted to dwarf status (there is some dispute over why it is so round).
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