PeterC65

That's very interesting @ollypenrice. When I do EAA I almost always black clip to darken down the background. It sounds like it would be better not doing this if my intention is to get the best possible image with post processing.

An interesting read, both the targets you chose and what you managed to observe. I live about a mile from where you stayed, and the Forest of Dean Astronomy Group meets just the other side of that line of conifers in one of your pictures.

I have mostly ES eyepieces and love them. The ES 68 degree 24mm is my most used eyepiece and I have the ES 82 degree 14mm, 8.8mm, 6.7mm and 4.7mm which all get plenty of use. They all give clear widefield views and mechanically they are well made and feel very robust. I find them easy on the eye in that it is easy to get my eye in then right place as the eye lenses are big, the eye relief is not too much or too little, and they are not fussy about eye placement. I also have the ES 52 degree 3mm which I don't like nearly as much (the field of view is too tight and the eye positioning can be tricky) but I keep for its very high magnification. I can't say how the ES eyepieces compare with other makes, other that the Baader Zoom and Plossl's which I have also owned. Compared with these Baader eyepieces, I much prefer the ES eyepieces but that' probably a lot to do with their wider field of view.

I agree that the stars are tighter in your image. Do you think that's because of the filter choice or because you were taking more and longer exposures? I'm doing EAA so I'm much less particular, and I need to keep the exposures short which I'm not sure would be possible with a really narrow band filter. I have thought about getting an L-eXtreme but I think it would cut out too much light for EAA. The L-eNhance certainly reduced the star brightness. You should have seen it with no filter! What I liked about the image I posted was that it showed the whole of the nebula in context.

During a session I try to make sure I do some playing with kit and techniques but also some actual observing. I tried capturing flats recently and was very impressed with the results. I plan to capture flats (and darks) every time I do EAA from now on, although it does add to the setup time. I'm still undecided how I feel about mono. Altair have a new mono camera based on the IMX678 which is currently my preferred candidate (this one). It has smaller pixels (2.0um) than my existing IMX585 (2.9um), but I'm thinking that in 2x2 binning mode it would give me 4um pixels and the same resolution as the alternative mono cameras. I need to think about it some more before taking the plunge though.

I really need to observe some of these smaller galaxies with the 8" Newtonian / colour camera setup. I keep thinking that I might be able to see more detail with a mono camera but really need to try the OSC first.

NGC1499 is a great target, but I think it really needs a widefield setup so that you can see it in context. I had a go at it in mid-January using an Askar FMA135 which gives me almost 5 degrees. Here's what I managed with 58 x 15s frames and an L-eNhance filter, plus some (very basic) post processing.

I've had an item from FLO delivered by Royal Mail this morning that I ordered only on Sunday and wasn't expecting to receive until later this week. I find deliveries, and collections, by Royal Mail to be very efficient and I hope that FLO continue to use them. Whatever you do, please never use Evri. My heart sinks whenever I get an email telling me that they will be "delivering" my parcel.

Not so much comfort buying for me, but more of an obsession driven by wanting to see more. I think others are driven by this too. "If I just had this eyepiece / scope / diagonal / filter I might be able to see more detail in ... ". I'm very careful about researching the kit I buy and haven't made many bad purchases (or sold much gear), but I always have a list of "possible kit to buy" on the go, and most sessions involve a certain amount of kit testing as well as actual observation. Reading the observation reports from others, this also seems to be quite common. I keep expecting to get to the point where I have all the kit I need, and have tested it, so that I can concentrate on observation. I think I have got there for visual now, but not so for EAA.

Ah yes, I see. I was just looking at the wider star fields around Be 1 and 2.

I'm struggling to find 2164 in the Berkely Catalog. According to this website there are only 104 objects listed. Where did you get the BOCL 2164 reference? Some of the Berkely objects listed in the website look like they might be interesting for widefield EAA.

NGC4656 and NGC4631 added to by todo list too!

I read recently that you should always use darks when using flats, so I should probably make the effort to capture both each time I do EAA. The issue for me is that the setup process for EAA is getting longer and longer. I have to setup the kit from scratch each time, then I usually let the scopes cool before focusing so that I just need to focus once, then there is the capturing of darks and flats. My last session was visual and the setup for that was much faster, no cables to deal with and I could use the scopes right away as I was sat next to them to focus. OK, I didn't see as much but I'm thinking that visual is my grab and go.

I'm assuming that you're plugging the USB dongle into the hand controller and not into the hand controller port on the mount. In which case that's probably the same as using the built in USB port on the newer hand controllers. The only thing I can suggest, and something that has tripped me up repeatedly, is that if you're using ASCOM to connect to the hand controller then the hand controller must be in left in standby, not in PC Direct Mode, and if you're using the SynScan Pro software then the hand controller needs to be in PC Direct Mode. Get the wrong mode and the software won't connect or will say that the COM port can't be found.

I've been through this with my AZ-EQ5 which is probably similar. Do you have a USB type B (printer) port on the mount head and another one on the bottom of the hand controller? Either of these can be used to control the mount from a laptop with nothing more than a standard USB cable. EQMOD, the software and the cable, can only be used with the mount in EQ mode.

My first visual session in a while, with the Skymax 127 for the Moon and Jupiter and the Photoline 72 / 30mm UFF for widefield. Jupiter is still looking good. More stable than I’ve seen it for a while and with three of the Galilean moons quite close to the planet. I just missed the GRS unfortunately (still not seen it visually). Uranus was also clear, definitely a disc and with a blue tint. The Moon looked particularly magnificent tonight with the binoviewer. I can observe it for ages when I’m using both eyes. I was particularly taken by the mountain range along the edge of Mare Imbrium which the Sun seemed to be catching just right. Unfortunately the moonlight rather washed out the view with the Photoline 72 / UFF 30mm, but Hyades, M44 and M45 looked good. I think the UFF 30mm really benefits from a dark sky as the magnification is so low. I could see all three of the Orion Belt stars though, and the S-shape of stars between Alnilam and Mintaka, and the Skymax 127 gave me a good view of the Trapezium which is hard to see via EAA (it gets over exposed). I finished off with a quick check of Betelgeuse. It’s still there.

I've used the basic x0.5 1.25" reducer from FLO (this one) with my 72mm refractor and found it caused significant star distortion across much of the field of view. I've since replaced it with the StellaMira x0.6 2" reducer (this one) which is much better but still far from perfect. I've only used reducers with my refractor. I think if you want a flat field then you need to buy a good reducer, preferably one designed for your scope which might not be possible with the 4SE.

I'll give it another try with the settings you suggest. Is it more useful for widefield / narrowfield / both?

I've also used this background subtraction but I tend to use it only when I can see an obvious gradient, such as when the Moon is bright. I have some dew shields on order for the two Newtonian's which will hopefully reduce glare from the Moon and other stray light sources, and also reduce dew build up on the secondary which I think is a problem during longer sessions (I have dew heaters for the primary which solves the dew problem there). One thing I have noticed is that if you leave the low frequency wave background subtraction turned on and then observe something bright like the Moon or Jupiter the background can turn a bright colour. This threw me for a while and I was thinking that there was something wrong with my setup. It will be interesting to see if flats are useful without darks. The last EAA session I did, it took so long to setup, cool, and calibrate, that by the time I was ready to observe the clouds had rolled in. I need to be able to get started quicker. That's interesting that you use dithering. A couple of months back, I put a lot of effort in to being able to control the mount in such a way that I could use the SharpCap non-guiding dithering function, but when I tried it, it didn't make much difference. How do you use it? I often have two scopes and cameras on the same mount and I think that probably makes dithering impossible, but I could use it on just one scope.

Well they certainly remove any optical pathway anomalies and that makes quite a difference in itself. The last time I was using high magnification (8" Newtonian with x1.7 Barlow) I was very distracted by the dust bunnies. In daylight the mirrors looked clean though, and I could only spot tiny dust specks with a torch. I think I will always use flats now when working at high magnification. Maybe not for lower magnification widefield observation. As for the improved detail, it felt like the flats were stretching the available light across the display range. The histogram seemed to be showing that as the peak was much wider than usual and I didn't need to use the zoom check box to see it. It may be that I was getting a kind of pre-stretch, or it could just be the removal of the optical anamolies.

I've used dark frames before and found they made little difference. Maybe slightly darker background, but they also seem to mess up the black offset (move the peak to the left, too close to zero). So mostly I've been using the SharpCap Hot Pixel Removal feature which seems to work well at removing hot pixels, which I do get with the IMX585 camera. I've been using 15s exposures for EAA recently and that doesn't slow things down too much. For the same total exposure time I get noticeably more detail with 15s exposures than with the 4s exposures I was using previously. Taking 20 dark frames at 15s does take a while though. I had a spare slot in my EAA filter wheel which is now occupied by a dark filter and that makes life a bit easier. While I do need to place the light pad over the objective when taking flat frames, the capture process is very quick, and they are actually much less trouble to take than dark frames. I might try just taking flat frames and not bothering with the more time consuming dark frames. As long as the light source does not have a gradient I think you should be fine. This is my second light pad as the first one did have an obvious gradient. I think the light source is so close to the scope that it will be way out of focus and that diffuses the light. I've read that some LED backlights use pulse width modulation for brightness control and that can be seen if flats are taken with short exposures, but I've not had that problem with my light pad which is operating at its minimum brightness setting.

I have the StellaLyra UFF 30mm and it is superb. Easily the best eyepiece that I have optically. Dead flat and with a really wide field of view. I have the Explore Scientific 24mm 68º 1.25" eyepiece which is also very good. It gives a wider field of view than your stock 25mm eyepiece, so even closer to that of the UFF, and because of that I hesitated about buying the UFF for a year. First I bought the Baader Hyperion Aspheric 36mm 72º 2" thinking that would be significantly wider than the Explore Scientific, which it is. It works fine (not exceptionally) with slow scopes like the F11.8 Mak, but is terrible with the faster F6 refractor and F5 Newtonian's. So I finally bought the UFF and it really knocks the socks off everything else. I've compared the UFF with the Explore Scientific directly, both using the 2" diagonal, the 24mm via an adapter. The UFF is dead flat right across the field of view whereas with the 24mm the edge stars are elongated from about 70% of the way out. I hadn't noticed this with the 24mm previously and had been completely happy with it (I still am for most observing). I tend to setup with either a 1.25" diagonal or 2" diagonal and don't generally swap during a session. So I use the Explore Scientific 24mm as my widest field eyepiece with the smaller diagonal and the UFF with the larger one (with a 2" zoom for narrower field). That makes it sensible to keep both (well that's my excuse). I also still have the 36mm Aspheric as it gives me the widest possible field of view with the Mak.

Nice! It's making me wonder about setting up a sky camera outside.

And some more practice, this time at quickly bringing the kit indoors when it starts raining!

Out tonight again but I think I'm pushing my luck. The clouds are coming in thick and don't show much sign of letting up. Still, it's given me a chance to practice my setup routine including taking darks and flats which was much quicker tonight. And I did get to observe M42, always a pleasure, and NGC2371, a little planetary nebula which was visible even with just the two stacked frames I managed to collect before the clouds intervened, having worked out where I was pointing.