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So, having started one project last year which is yet to be completed I decided to start a new one, and what better target than IC1396 the Elephant's Trunk Nebula, but in widefield so can capture the whole thing. Utilising the excellent Samyang 135mm paired with Baader F2 filters I think this has turned out quite well, a little muted but it's my first attempt at manually processing the colours of SHO and taming the greens down to get the yellow/orange/cyan colour. Another plus I got to see some of the Perseid's at the same time.

M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy Second outing with the QHY294m all images were taken in 11MP mode, I've also attached cropped version RGB - 75x300s L - 35x300s Ha - 8x1200s 80mm William Optics Super APO QHY294M QHYCFWL QHYOAG-M LRGB Ha Baader 2" Filters Exposure 11 hours 30 minutes

After a busy week & the unsettling background of news I was itching to get out tonight for some peace under the stars despite the full moon. I opted for the ST80 & lazy GoTo choices as the moon was pretty much bleaching out anything less than Mag3 naked eye. Lovely night though and the full moon cast a hard shadow as I trudged out to my regular spot on the 22 of the river park rugby pitch. After aligning on Vega & Arcturus the AZGTi performed superbly, the widefield helps & this small scope is rock solid on the Berlebach 312 Report. Really pleased with this combination (maybe just need to upgrade the optics a bit…) Transparency was quite good & seeing perfectly fine for the low power session I had in mind. I defaulted to the Baader Hyperion 24mm 68 degree, switching in and out with the 32mm Hyperion Aspheric & Mk IV 8-24mm zoom based on the size of object. Started with the Double Cluster, NGC 869/884, stunning even under full moonlight and seen in its rich context with this widefield setup. Moved the short hop to Stock 23 (Pazmino’s Cluster) in Camelopardalis which I’d never looked at before. Nice bright open cluster with a prominent orange/yellow brightest member and a mini keystone to the W. Will definitely add this to my regulars list. NGC 457 - picked up the “eyes” of the Owl/Dragonfly in widefield and switched up to 50x with the zoom to reveal the jewelled “body & wings”. I came down on the side of Dragonfly tonight. One of my favourite objects, really beautiful. NGC 1502/Kemble’s Cascade. A super field, the fainter line of the cascade above a brighter 4 star arc flowing into a pretty open cluster. M44 - the Beehive stunning despite its closeness to the moon glow. The perfect object in this widefield set up. Went back & forth but the most satisfying view with the 24mm Hyperion fixed at c17x. Switching East of the moon I got some nice contextual views of globulars M5, M13 & M92 against their background fields. Love the sense of scale & distance viewing globs this way. On a whim I had a shot at M57, The Ring nebula as Lyra was rising out of the low murk. Delighted to spot a tiny smudge in the 24mm & faint but unmistakably the Ring Nebula confirmed at tonight’s max power of 50x with the Baader Zoom. Not bad for an ST80 with a full moon! Revisited Stock 23 and Kembles Cascade before finishing on a magic 6 degree view of the Alpha Persei cluster setting into gently swaying trees. Packed up & walked home basking in the moonlight to be greeted enthusiastically by my dog in an otherwise sleeping house. Have treated myself to a wee dram as I write - all in all a perfect antidote to this week.

Nice night here - a wee bit breezy but otherwise seeing decent and transparency slightly milky but better than average - could just about see the Beehive naked eye with AV. Very chilled out session from the garden with ST80 in 2 inch mode & 31mm Baader Hyperion Aspheric giving 13x magnification & a massive 5.9 degree field. Have a bog standard RDF on it as the field is so big it can actually be quite disorientating in rich fields. I have this permanently set up on a Manfrotto 55 and it’s an easy one hand carry out into the garden, so gets me out on nights when I otherwise might not make the effort. I always get a thrill from seeing galaxies from my back garden so started with a long look at M81 & 82. Hunted for M101 for a bit but really couldn’t see it, know I was in the right spot. I am sure that one special night it will just pop out, but not tonight! Went on to the Beehive M44 - almost the perfect object in this widefield rig, lovely sparkling lost in space scene. Moved to the Coma Berenices cluster another super star filled field. Pottered around Leo, couldn’t pick out the Triplet (M65 & M66) but could just about discern M95 M96 & M105 only as fuzzy stars but nevertheless upped my distance record for the nights from M82’s 11 Million LY to around 60. Looked at M3, M13 & M92 - love globulars in the widefield, you really get their context as lonely extra galactic wanderers and these brighter ones show up a bit better than the galaxies. Took a first trip this year into the bowl of Virgo, familiarising myself again with the “mini-asterisms” I used last spring to galaxy-hop my way through the Messiers here, the “jet plane” around Rho V., the “StarTrek badge and “the line”. A tantalising glimpse of smudges in Markarian’s chain Caught M35 as it slipped West toward the roofline then finished back on the Beehive. I do love this kind of low power observing and some day would love to upgrade to a really sharp ED set up, for now though the ST80 delivers a whole lot of outer space for the money.

Been wondering whether it's worth getting an Askar fma180 for my dslr to use as a secondary setup for widefield, not too sure about the lens quality. It'll be on an Omegon LX tracker which I've found to be quite good for unguided tracking. Open to suggestions for other lenses other than the usual Samyang/Rokinon, even older prime lenses. Camera is an IR modded Canon 600d.

Ok, straight to the topic, I have a budget of 150$, which could buy me a Zhumell Z114 table top dobsonian, but I don't know if it has international shipping charges, I asked it on a discord server, and they said that it most likely has shipping charges, so now I am looking at the Zhumell Z100 table top dobsonian, which costs around 99$, and hopefully the shipping chrges are/below of 50$, but here are my main concerns: 1. If it somehow gets out of collimation, there is no way of adjusting it (Because it has a fixed primary) 2. I don't know if it is a upgrade to my 70mm f/10 refractor (But it will give wider field of view, which is good, because I am buying it for DSO's) 3. Some people say that it is a barlowed Newtonian which is not good And here are the obvious reasons to buy it: 1. It has eyepieces which give wide-field views. 2. It has a parabolic mirror, which is good So, what should I do? I am also open to other suggestions which are under 150$. Also allow me to kindly decline the offer to buy a bigger scope/save more money and buy a bigger scope.

I wasn’t able to get out to the park last night but once the smaller of the children was abed & the teenagers uploaded to their games I popped on a hoodie (cunning anti-security light plan) and decamped to the garden, wine in hand, for an impromptu after dinner tour with the ST80. After wrestling with the old wooden tripod on my “new” Prinz 330 60mm earlier in the week, the Manfrotto 55 and full height viewing position made this feel quite the luxury experience! Wide-field views weren’t bad either... 15.4, 9.30 PM ST80 & Baader Zoom. Seeing good, transparency patchy at Zenith, murky below 30 degrees. Castor - almost split @50x low over rooftop M44 Beehive - great view, put the red dot right on it. Was above the houses & enjoyed the soundtrack to a neighbour’s party whilst lost in space. Melotte 111 - lovely view. Super round pin points & some good colour contrast with white & a smattering of orange stars. ST80 loves these slightly fainter clusters. No hint of CA. This cluster now firmly on my highlight list. Chertan & 73 Leonis - but no triplet (well it was worth a try) Algieba - Split (just) at 50x, nice yellow headlights. Had a look for anything apparent in the Virgo galaxy field but lots of white LP to SE so no chance. Cor Caroli - beautiful view in the ST80. White primary with smaller fainter white secondary - nice round stars. Mizar - again a super field, Mizar A&B look a close pair at 50x with size contrast - easy to imagine as an orbital system. Alcor a way off and a couple of other faint stars making a nice little asterism. M81 & M82 - yes! From the garden, a first outside of M31! Hoodie over the EP. Dropped the red dot carefully in line from the diagonal across the bowl of the plough/dipper. Galaxies popped with a slight nudge from original guess. See an oval and a stripe & that fantastic orientation - obviously no detail but a rewarding view from among the security & streetlights! Enjoyed for ages with a glass of wine! Civilised galactic travel...

Hi all, For a long time I wanted to shoot this frame, probably from the early days of my astrophotography adventure. Finally after all these years I managed to get a decent result of the 'stuff' between these two beautiful nebulae. Fairly happy with the image but always looking for improvement. I hope one day to redo this all with a mono camera and filters. Apart from NGC1499 , M45 and the Baby Eagle Nebula no idea what else is in the picture. If you happen to have an idea feel free to educate me. Some info on image and capturing: Widefield Pleiades to California. Taken over 2 nights with a total of 11hrs 25min integration. With a stock Nikon d610 and Nikkor 85mm 1.8 objective. Tracking was done with the Skywatcher Star Adventurer. Lights and all calibrations frames were stacked in DSS. Processing was done in Adobe Photoshop CC using Adobe Raw, GradientXterminator plugin, HLVG plugin, Nik software plugins and Photokemi action set. Ken

Hi all, I've made a video about my experience looking through binoculars at deep space objects. I am NOT an observer. So I expect I got a few things wrong. Particularly the fact that it was impossible to film in complete darkness. I'd be really interested to hear whether I was way off the mark or not. And what other deep space objects are good to look at through a small pair of binos. Many thx in advance.