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WADAS (Wakefield and District Astronomical Society)

stonemonkeylives

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nicks90

nicks90

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the pds is basically the same as your existing ota - just that it has a beefier focusser to hold the additional weight of cameras etc and the primary is further up the tube to allow more types of imaging chip to achieve focus.

its a very short focal length (same as yours) and hence you will struggle the same to get good clear high powers for planetary viewing.

If the planets and lunar are more your thing, what about a decent refractor? Aperture isnt everything when it comes to solar system stuff.

you could look at maybe a SW evostar 120 on a goto mount - FLO have them for £450 at the moment. that would leave some serious pennies for eyepieces.

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nicks90

nicks90

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James,

17th April we have been lucky enough to secure the services of Julian Onions to come and gives us a talk on "Galaxies - one gigayear at a time". This will be at horbury academy at the usual time.

We have also extended the invite to Bradford Astro Society, so we are expecting a good turnout for this event.

plus after the talk - plan is to go down to the Cinnamon Lounge in Horbury Bridge for a bite to eat afterwards

May 15th - Normal society meeting with a telescope workshop to deal with any repairs or upgrades, help with collimation, goto, set up etc. Plus we'll have the necessary kit there to clean eyepieces, binoculars, finder scopes etc.

June 18th - depending on the weather, we might try for a slightly earlier society meeting and bring along scopes with appropriate filters and do some solar observing and maybe try and pursuade Keiran and the other imaging chaps to do a bit of a practical workshop on basic imaging with a webcam and dslr (widefield and through the telescope). Hopefully my barndoor tracker will be functional by then and we'll have a go with that too.

Edited to add, we are hoping to book the brilliant Paul Money come and do a talk on simple astrophotography at some point in the near future too. We saw him deliver his talk at the Bradford Astro event last month and he was great and has agreed to come and deliver the talk to us

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stonemonkeylives

stonemonkeylives

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James, we will try our up most to keep people informed on here, but if you haven't already I would also recommend either signing up to our mail list, following us on Twitter or liking our Facebook page as these are usually the first to be updated with events and such forth.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

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nicks90

nicks90

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Hate astronomy!

Got all set up to do a bit of imaging of Jupiter, aligned right and even powered the tracking from the mains as the battery was flat... forgot I can't achieve focus with the webcam in my dob!

Not to worry, I'll use the Barlow to get focus.

At 3000mm focal length and a webcam chip that small, trying to get the image on the chip was impossible! Twice in 2 hours I got it to flash across the screen on the laptop, but by the time I had seen it and tried to back track to get it back on screen - GONE!!!

Ended up kicking the dob base in frustration, causing the cap of my 32mm ep to roll off in to the hedge - which I can't subsequently find - and pack up in disgust.

Giving up the whole idea of getting any imaging done with the dob, so going to concentrate on making my barn door tracker for my camera instead.

Stupid hobby this, standing about in the dark dodging clouds, getting cold and testing the patience of a saint.

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MattGoo

MattGoo

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The answer you're looking for Nick contains these parts: "Mount", "Equatorial", "at least a HEQ5".

I do admire those that get good results with a Dob/Webcam setup, but does take a lot of effort. Even on my EQ6 it can take a while to get the subject actually on the sensor of the webcam at long focal lengths, i.e. when using a barlow.

I'm sure you'll find the eyepiece cap in the morning.

I've a had a great Birthday today, but sadly no Astronomy for a while due to this haze/clouds.

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Sammyb

Sammyb

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I've got the hang of getting the planet on the sensor now even at focal lengths of over 5000mm. Just start off at the lowest mag, centre it in the eye piece and then swap to the camera. The planet should be on the sensor or close by. Centre it on the sensor and then put the Barlow in. If it is just off the sensor I find that upping the gain so everything is really bright and/or defocussing helps you work out where it is to nudge it onto the chip. I think the cameras I use have the same chip size as yours.

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nicks90

nicks90

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Update on our society plans for the next few months!

 

17th April Guest Speaker - Julian Onions  "Galaxies - one Gigayear at a time". This will be at Horbury academy at 7.30pm.

plus after the talk - plan is to go down to the Cinnamon Lounge in Horbury Bridge at 9.30pm for a curry.

May 15th - Normal society meeting with a telescope workshop to deal with any repairs or upgrades, help with collimation, goto, set up and we'll have the necessary kit there to clean eyepieces, binoculars, finder scopes etc. Plus we will have a couple of members giving advice on astrophotography - both planetary and DSO.

June 18th - "Solar Observing" - An earlier society meeting than normal, looking to start at 6.30pm. We'll bring along scopes with appropriate filters and do some solar observing and do some other solar / solstice related stuff if the weather is rubbish.

 

June 29th - Horbury Show - we are looking at having a stand at the Horbury Show on Sunday 29th June. We'll have some solar scopes and have a bit of a display set up. So volunteers to man the stand, talk about what we do and display their scopes would be appreciated.

 

July 17th - Guest speaker at Horbury academy - to be confirmed.

 

August - No specific meeting due to summer holidays - but we are looking at going to the 22nd - 24th August Star Party at the Dark Sky Discovery Site of Dalby Forest.

 

Sept - Dec - We have some good plans for these 4 months, including a bit of a party for the societies first birthday, observatory visits and some excellent guest speakers :-) Further details will be forthcoming, but we are looking at having 2 society events per month from autumn onwards.

As ever - this society is run by members, for members. If there is anything you would like to see on our calendar or you want to do a specific activity - please do let us know on here, private message, facebook, twitter or to our society Gmail address.

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hazegood

hazegood

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Took some video of Jupiter last night, modded web cam and my astro master  but anything I do in registax doesn't look right, would appreciate it if one of you imaging guys would have a play see if you can get anything, or tell me whats wrong with the video,

Dropbox linky: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1x1ygxijavbxjb0/jupiter.avi

Thanks

Leigh

 

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MattGoo

MattGoo

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Hi Leigh,

I've had a quick go at stacking it with AutoStakkert!2 and then some slight wavelets/RBG align in RegiStax 6:

Hazegood Jupiter

There's a tiny bit of the banding detail coming through :)

It's looking like it's still a focus issue, or some chromatic aberration which is causing that flare off to the side.

Regards

Matt 

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mapstar

mapstar

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You out then Damian?

I got out for about an hour just on the patio. Went out for Mars as I've been wanting to look at it for the last week but haven't had the time. I picked out quite a bit of the dark detail on the planets surface but the moon made the contrast quite poor.  I wasn't able to pick out the polar caps which I'm not sure I would be anyway? was at 4mm (8mm barlowed)  the atmosphere wasn't helping and the street lighting over barnsley but I enjoyed it all the same.

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