Time under the stars

[ian_j_kirk]

Hi everyone. Been a visual astronomer for a few years now, and have found myself being more and more interested in ap.

As always sgl is amazing for advice and tips, and bought making every photon count as per that advice. My real interest is in dso's and know this means long exposures. So my question is, living in the uk, do you imagers find yourselves getting fustrated at the lack of clear nights allowing you to collect all the data you need? Or does the image processing stage tide you over until the next session?

Clrar skies

Ian

[Alien 13]

You can start off imaging DSO`s with subs of 1-2mins so a whole session can be done in an hour so there are usually plenty of gaps in the clouds to keep you busy.

The image processing does fill up the cloudy nights and more.

Alan

[ronin]

Doing AP usually requires a reasonable amount of time, in visual you can more easily take scope out, set up and view. Polar aiignment need not be so accurate and cool down would be nice but the scope still gives an image - just a better one if cool.

So you need to be well prepared and a reasonable amount of time for AP.

Frustration, read the posts, seems to be a fair bit around.

Equally I recall when first here that there was a period in Oct/Nov of about 10 clear, warm(ish) stable nights.

By the fifth and sixth night the complaints were about too many clear nights and lack of sleep, you can guess what was saidn about the ninth and tenth night.

For AP you have to accept the lack of sufficently long periods of clear dark nights, you also need to be well organised otherwise you can lose a potential hour of time.

[PorkyB]

It takes me a couple of hours to load up the car, drive a a dark site and setup, then at least an hour to get home again, so I only go out imaging if the weather forecast looks like it will be clear for a good part of the night.  Even so, I manage to get out at least a couple of times each month.

Most of my DSO images are 25x60 seconds.  It is surprising what you can do with less than 30 minutes data (and there is a long thread on here showing many people's results).  This means that to find an object (no goto here), and image it usually takes me an hour, so I usually get to image around four objects each night, but to be homest if I get one good one then I think the night has been a success.

[Astrosurf]

Yep, it's frustraing! I do long exposures so need good long nights. If it's patchy cloud, I do planetary and lunar. Mind you, when I have a very successful night, the long wait is worth it.

Alexxx