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Anyone seeing Io transitting Jupiter right now?


LeeWilky

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Yeh, I only go out of bed because everyone is so loud in my house you don't get to lay in bed in peace :D

Just boiling the camping kettle on the gas camping fire, it's got a little whistle and everything :D

It's definitely a lazy day, I should be doing uni work but I'll see what I must the energy for!!

If I go quiet it'll be because my phone has died and I have no way of charging it....

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Haha a kettle with a whistle not seen one of those for ages!

Last time we had a power cut i sat in my car and charged the ipad and phone lol.  Bought a dual USB charger for the lighter adapter and saved my life :)  Cant live without my phone and ipad lol.

Yeh this lot are the same up here.  Noisy family and a Jack Russel and Springer Spaniel pup so once they are up the whole house is awake!

What do we need to do to get some peace and quiet these days.

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Aha I have one of those in my car that's quite a good idea!! Shouldn't be long and we'll have power back anyway!

Ahh pup sounds cute, we've got a springer collie cross but he's an old man now! Not much spring left in him!

Everyone's just gone out so I do actually have peace and quiet... :o

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Cant beat a bit of peace and quiet :)

I never truly respected how nice a bit of peace and quiet is until after i served on the Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank.  After a few days straight sitting inside one of those engine running radios on and weapon systems firing when you get out and finally find some quiet time its like the world has ended lol! 

Its one of the reasons why i love this hobby.  I spend 15 mins packing my gear into the car and then drive down to one of our fields and the only company i have for about a mile in every direction is the horses and they keep quiet for the most part.

Could spend all night out there and fully intend too when we actually get a full night of clear skies!

Yay for the power being back on :)

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I can only imagine!! Can't say I've had the privilege of travelling in a tank!!

Everyone said how lucky I was to work In a deaf academy as it would be soo quiet... How wrong they were! They're the noisiest bunch of kids I've ever met :D

Yup the hobby is great, it's nice to switch off and not think of anything at all, just look at the stars! I always thought there was no way is work out the equipment or ever work out what I was doing... But the equipment is fairly straight forward!

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I thought that when i first pulled this thing out of the box!  I look at it and thought "and what the hell am i supposed to do with that exactly" lol

After reading the manual and watching one of Marks tutorial videos im pretty good at getting it set up, polar aligned and balanced in less than 20 mins now :)

Learning the sky is the next step but thanks to some great apps that we talked about yesterday thats easy too. 

All we need now is some clear skies!

Im still moving to the Moon :p

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See I was really jammy! I work with JKB who's on this site and he helped me buy the right scope for me, from FLO! I got it delivered to work and at lunch time we set it up together so I got a one to one tutorial!! :) yours is bigger than mine, mine is the SW ST80 which is perfect for me to get started! I keep the mount all set up and just pop the telescope on and what have you!

I've done something to my slow mo trackers though they keep falling off and not really working.. Need to read the manual and get them sorted!

I'm hopeful it'll be clear tonight!

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Yeh the fine adjusters are a little loose on mine too which is quite annoying.  I just put a bit of force onto really sticking them on and they seem ok now :)  They will be removed soon anyway as im shoving some motors in the scope after Xmas and New Year are behind us and then i can start taking some serious AP pictures.

The weather isnt looking great here now until Thursday and even then only for a few hours but Boxing Day is my familys traditional "lets get hammered" day so dont fancy getting the scope out after copious amounts of Jack Daniels have been consumed lol!

Its good that you have someone close whos into the same hobby.  Im the only one where i live and my closest mate whos into it lives over an hour away so thats no help lol!

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I'm very lucky! He has a masters in astronomy so he's an endless font of knowledge, he lent me some awesome books on astro physics aswel and I'm quite obsessed with it!

I'd like to get a motor and everything sorted at some point but I'm trying to not get too carried away and learn some more first, tick off some Messier objects and then start adding more to my equipment!

I very often take a big glass of wine out with the scope, keeps you warm inside and the cold weather keeps the wine cold!! :D but not drunk... That would be quite an optical challenge!!

Do you use 7Timer astro forecast? It's brilliant, so accurate and gives info on transparency, atmosphere and everything!!

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Ive tried various apps and websites but i find the best way is to get off my ass and look outside lol as more often than not they are wrong.  I had the Met Office plus 3 different apps includign Scope Nights which can be pretty accurate all tell me that it was going to be clear skies between 2100-0300hrs so i went down at 1900 and set everything up only to sit in my car for 3 and a half hours looking at clouds before i came home!  So i just use the Mark 1 eyeball in my head now to judge if its good enough :)

I was lucky as my scope came with the T-Adapter so all i needed to buy was the T-Ring and a remote shutter control and they cost me less than £15 for both items on Amazon.

Be aware tho AP is time consuming and very addictve lol!  You might need more than one glass of wine to keep you warm :p

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Ah man that sucks, I'm quite fortunate because I live in a rural area I don't have to drive anywhere! Sometimes I've just whacked it up for 45 mins in a cloud break!

7timer has yet to fail me, but like you say.. Can't beat the good old eyeball!

Yes when the camera comes I shall take out the whole darn bottle :D

I can see me spending far to much time on AP, it's quite nice though as when it's cloudy you've still got things to do with the hobby. Playing around with photos, posting them getting feed back and trying again! Stops the constant hankering for clear skies... Kind of!

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Exactly why im into AP :)

You can still do it even when the skies are cloudy but the best part is you will see things by doing AP that you will never see just looking through your scope at something.  You get so much more detail by imaging than your eyes will ever register. 

M42 through my scope is just a faint smudge in the sky but taking just a few 5 second exposures gave me this.

Far from a great pic but far better than my eyes could see through the scope!

Plus you get an awesome feeling when you capture a great image :)  I was so excited when this appeared on my screen and technically its an awful picture lol!

post-33248-0-06714400-1387885917_thumb.j

And one of Jupiter and 3 of its moons

post-33248-0-76158500-1387885961_thumb.j

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I really like your pic of M42 without the RGB it's lovely and natural! I hope to get some nice pics of Jupiter and also when Saturn comes around that would be great!

I think I will have to get to grips with lowering my expectations at first to give myself a fighting chance :D

I didn't get a modded camera because I'd quite like to do some ordinary photography too! Is your camera modded?

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Thanks :)

Nope my camera is completely stock for the same reason as you.  I wanted it to take normal pics too.

One day i will be getting a modded camera but for now ive seen some pictures on here that people are taking with brand new unmodded cameras that are almost as good as modded ones so im in no rush to get one.

You can get some quite nice widefield shots too with just the standard 18-55mm lense my camera came with altho i cant upload them now as they have limited attachment size to 20mb for some reason.  It was 50mb last week.

Theres one on my Flickr page link is on my signature.

To get the really good pics you need motors and long exposures.  That Orion pic is just 17 stacked 5 second exposures manually tracking the scope for each capture as anything longer than half a second gives star trails.

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So when you do each pic you centre the M42 and do a 5sec pic then centre it again and do another as so on?

Yeh I'm not in a hurry to get a modded one.. I might be terrible at AP or not enjoy it and then I have a useless camera! It's more likely ill be rubbish than not enjoy it but you never know!

I think all the ins and outs I will just have to learn as I go! Plus I'll have JKB who I'm sure i'll pester no end :D

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Nice pic from the phone its quite tough taking them!  Next time you have a go go into your camera settings and reduce the ISO to around 400 and have another go.  It will be on Auto at the mo.  You will need to adjust the ISO depending on how full and bright the moon is. 

I also bought a Moon filter which helps no end specially for the full moon.

Im sure you wont be terrible at AP it just takes a little patience a little luck and lots of trial and error :)

These are from my phone after playing with the cameras ISO settings.

post-33248-0-15072300-1387887599_thumb.j  post-33248-0-75437400-1387887602_thumb.j  post-33248-0-06000300-1387887605_thumb.j

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I didnt even know what ISO was until i got into all this lol!  Learnt so much in such a short space of time thanks to this comunity and various YouTube vids etc.  I had never even used PS or any image editing software until this hobby started :)

So much to learn but i love a good challenge!

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No I still don't really know ISO is but I'm getting there :D

I support the astronomy club where I work that JKB runs and he gave us images to work in PS with and we've been learning in ICT how to use PS so that's quite lucky!! It's the stacking software I will have to get used too!

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ISO is basically how sensitive your camera is to light.  The lower the ISO the less sensitive and the duller the image will be.  As the moon reflects lots of sunlight its very bright so to take good pictures of it you need a lower ISO setting so it isnt overexposed.

When you start doing AP you will learn to adjust your ISO a lot lol.  Too high and you will make the image too bright and too low it will be too dark. 

You also need to balance your ISO with shutter speed and find the sweet spot.

If your ISO is too low and your shutter speed too fast as your camera is less light sensitve a fast shutter speed wont give it enough time to register any detail so the lower the ISO the faster the shutter speed is required and vice versa.

I find that the sweet spot on my camera for the moon is between 200-800 ISO depending on Moon size and between 1/500-1/250 shutter speed.  You cant have a higher shutter speed as the moon travels fast so anything longer and you just get a blur with an untracked mount and overexpose it anyway.

You basically just have to have a play with different settings and snap of lots of pics an find what works best for you, your camera and the conditions then play with the results in PS :)

Ill be happy to help you with anything you are struggling with just PM me any time.

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