Ags

On the plane back from dark skies, my partner was leafing through my copy of Astronomy Now. They nudged me and pointed to a Pulsar Observatories advert, saying "These aren't that expensive!" Strike while the iron's hot? We are planning a renovation of our home which would lead to a redo of our garden, maybe Pulsar dome could be squeezed into the design 😀

True that. I think more of a visual or narrowband scope. But I will do some more experiments when I get home. One thing to try is image with the prism diagonal, as that corrects some of the false color. I can also try my Baader UHC. Or even my Wratten #8. It would be nice to find a hack to get passable RGB as I can't pack two scopes for travel.

Yes - I used an Astronomik L3 - so it cuts the extreme blue and red too, not just the IR.

I got up early this morning to have another go at M81/M82, and shot about an hour of 8 second frames. I'm not so happy with the telescope for RGB photographic use, looking at the stars, but this is admittedly with the stars and galaxies sharing the same stretch. If I separated the stars into a separate stretch I think it would look much nicer. Also the image is wierdly colorless, so not entirely sure I didn't mess up at some point in the processing. I'm sleep deprived and liable to err! The result is very noisy - but I only had an hour of clear sky before dawn twilight, and no further nights at my dark sky location, so no possibility to add more data. Regarding the stars, focus is extremely critical with this f5.5 telescope, so I am ordering a Bahtinov mask to get that perfect. Aside from star bloating, the telescope behaved nicely on my AZ-GTI so I expect it will give nice results (to my eye) with a duo band filter, or even in RGB with more careful processing.

My only camera is a ZWO ASI485MC, so I am OK with vendor lock-in... 😀

I had a go at getting an astroberry setup working, but the few times I tried it, it was horribly unstable and I had very little success connecting the Pi to my AZ-GTI or getting a sequence of images captured without crashing. The new AsiAir Mini is in my price range. Assuming it is similar to other AsiAir versions, is it really plug and play and idiot proof? Shame it doesn't support USB 3.1 though...

My imaging session was a bust - I managed to shoot unstackable 8 bit SER sequences of M81 and M31. I rescued them with Siril but the resulting tiffs lost all color info??? After stacking in APP it turned out my focus was off. I am trying again at 4 am this morning, should be a clear spell then.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

I think I have found the happy compromise with a Long Perng 90 - 90mm f5.5 is a lot smaller than 100mm f7!

The GSO 0.5 reducer does not work with the LP90 - as expected, as the reducer is advertised for slower focal ratios. It does come to focus at least but almost the entire field is a fishbowl. Currently shooting some 6-second subs of M31 at 500 mm focal length. It will just be a detail of the core and M32 but still a nice experiment. If I am not too tired I will also shoot M81. Evaluating the scope for visual DSO performance will have to wait for another day however - my tearducts are blocked and I can't see straight!

Actually, I remember I did try that and darks were absolutely essential to subtract amp glow. It's been a while since I imaged DSOs, I had completely forgotten my prior experiment!

I use an uncooled ASI485MC in scopes with focal ratios ranging from 4 to 6. When imaging DSOs I shoot LOTS of short subs up to about 10 seconds long. I also shoot darks, but should I?

The front door of our holiday cottage is 125% Halloween. Count the bats!

A very good image! A lot of progress since the previous effort too.

Quite beautiful!

I guessed the second was with the ADC

It's been giving very nice views of Jupiter and Mars and double stars, but haven't had good conditions for DSOs yet.

Long Perng 90 - FPL51/Lanthanum Edition. Zenithstar 66 for scale.

I have a short 25 cm Uni extension column I use with the 112, but even with that I lose a bit of stability. I think the Uni 14 is the option I like most...

Enjoy the new scope!

The other one I have thought about is the Berlebach Uni 14 photo tripod - maybe with just a chain, no spreader.

Awful... but if the lens elements are undamaged, maybe it is possible to rescue them with a donor scope?

Looking at getting a taller tripod for my LP90 telescope (relatively short, 3.3 kgs) as my my current tall tripod (Artcise 60C) isn't up to the job. I am thinking of replacing my Berlebach Report 112 with a Report 312, but not sure it will be good enough? The alternative for not too much more money is the Uni 18, but firstly it's rather heavy and secondly how would I attach a 3/8" head to it? The alternative alternative is sell the Report 112, and get the Skywatcher AZ5 with steel tripod and extension tube...

Also in stock 10 days earlier... ...although my internet still shows the old price 🤨

I am starting to waver about pre-ordering... In my 90mm refractor this would give 0.9° field at the wide end and 167x at the zoomed end. On a typical night I wouldn't need any other eyepiece. Why wait for the reviews? We know some will say it's great, some will say it's awful, etc etc.