Ags

OK, it's me again! This time I took the DSS stack into Siril, where I did color balancing, gradient extraction, star desaturation, and noise reduction. Then I put the image into Gimp for stretching, sharpening and color enhancing. I think this is the final version? Happy to have color in the stars in M13 and the blue star at 7 o'clock is looking bluish not whitish. I may have pushed the sharpening too far though. I got the color by using adding the unstretched image as a layer, running Color Enhance, and setting the mode to HSL Color. Siril noise reduction has features specifically for the light starved images I take, and it helped reduce the noise shadow from the field rotation quite well.

Yes I have been thinking of two batteries too!

I was just reading about Siril star synthesis which can desaturate stars using science and make star shapes more perfect using art. This could take my M13 to the “next level” 🤣 I’m quite liking Siril - unlike AstroPixelProcessor I understand what it is doing and feel I can use it logically…

Which underlines how bad the below scenario would be.

I was just thinking today (some might say I should do that more frequently)… if you placed Earth at the center of the Sun, the Moon would only be slightly more than halfway to the surface of our star. Yellow “dwarf” indeed!

@david_taurus83 this is only my temporary shed so I don't want to lay a cable that won't be needed after a few months. Also I am happy to have a reason to upgrade my battery options, which obviously have nonshed applications too. I may very well run a cable to the official astroshed when it goes up next year, rather than getting a solar solution that could have been relocated to the astroshed.

I did a reprocess doing color balance and background extraction in Siril before doing further processing in Gimp. I've got more of the cluster, but less of the star color in the bright field stars. It's stretched so much the imperfections of my field rotation are starting to show through - to get rid of that I either need to find my polar scope and go EQ or do the stack in Siril and do background extraction on each subframe.

This is 33 minutes of 4-second subs, shot with my AZGTI in alt-az mode. I did not use a reducer/flattener (to get a bit more scale), so the stars are not perfectly round throughout. I tried shooting at 300 gain as an experiment. Another experiment was keeping the data linear for almost all the stretching. Processed in Gimp. I tried enhancing the color with Colors > Auto > Color Enhance (a new tool to me) although it was rather too strong so I toned it down with layers. As a final experiment I used Siril to remove a gradient.

I photographed this after Eurovision. The UK song is stuck in my head now.

So true. For the longest time, a C6 was my holy grail. Well, I got one. So the new holy grail was a Long Perng 90, and I got one of those. Almost immediately started looking at the "next holy grail".

I have several holy grails. A Borg 107 mm fluorite would do nicely, especially if it was accompanied by a C11.

To be fair the Greeks do have a formidable reputation for efficiency. 😀

I have been thinking on and off about getting one of these. https://www.amazon.nl/-/en/Bresser-Station-telescopes-electronic-connection/dp/B07VCFQLYG/ref=d_pd_sbs_sccl_4_3/259-9965323-5265014?pd_rd_w=yoOtg&content-id=amzn1.sym.c41a8b3f-0a24-4a0a-bc5f-4f6f6c01ae9c&pf_rd_p=c41a8b3f-0a24-4a0a-bc5f-4f6f6c01ae9c&pf_rd_r=AJTF8X9KPVBDTC3NMKPZ&pd_rd_wg=U8ObR&pd_rd_r=c957c54d-f690-4c1c-b909-a0eea7a1c377&pd_rd_i=B07VCFQLYG&th=1

@Carbon Brush you have persuaded me!

@Mandy D not so worried about the photoelectric deterioration of the cells, I'm more concerned about mechanical wear from wind and rain (snow seems rather unlikely given the last few winters). Does anyone know why they say to connect the battery before the cells? What if I just want to use the USB ports?

It would be very awkward to run a cable to our shed, hence looking at solar. The rate at which I use batteries strongly suggests the solar cells would be sufficient. The concerns I have are around how durable this would be.

I am looking to power my garden shed, which has become the home for my equipment due to dusty building activities in my habitation. I am looking at this little device, it will only have to keep a couple of batteries charged by usb, which will in turn power telescopes and a light in the shed. Am I on the right track or are there better options? https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B08KZF2FX4?ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_dp_GGXAE56TAZJDSP9VGYQB

First light image - Vega. It is mono because I messed up stuff, or course. Just 5 minutes of 4 second subs shot through a gap in the clouds. The spacing between the sensor and flattener was out by a centimeter, and you can see that on the edges. No flats. I am happy with the stars in the center, especially as I lost my IR blocker - the house is upside down with renovation work. I found it this morning, so hopefully on Sunday we can do a proper first light in color with reasonable integration time, correct spacing and IR blocked.

The mini scope is outside cooling. Not the best conditions tonight but hoping to do some test shots of stars. oh, and I put the scope on the AZ-GTI backwards. In my defense I’m an idiot! 🤣

You guys are starting to scare me!

If you acrewed a 1.25" extension tube in the front, you could mount it as an eyepiece. I wonder if it might actually have a use, for example for night vision (where exit pupil is not a constraint).

That was quick... seems nicely built but confusing. I tried to put an eyepiece in the wrong end 🤣

Thanks, the stars look very promising in that picture.

I saw a hazy Moon that was looking somewhat too full to observe, or maybe I was lazy tonight. I packed the scope away for the first time in the garden shed, which received a secure lock today and has been thoroughly cleaned out over the past couple of weeks. I feel a bit of anxiety about it being outside, but it’s safer there really - the apartment is full of builder’s dust.

Hi, this looks like an interesting project!