First Lodestar Live session

[RobertI]

Just had my first session with Lodestar Live and pretty pleased with the results. Both pics as seen on the night - 30 seconds exposures using a 66mm refractor on non-goto CG5. This was a test, on my front drive, with 6 very bright sodium lights within 100 yards, so I was really chuffed to get what I did straight out of the box.

M51 - I think I have also managed to get IC4263 (edge on spiral) but unable to find out much about it:

IC3077 - I was searching for M81 & M82 and found this instead - never seen it before so a definite result!

A couple of questions:

- Are the 'black blobs' down to dirt on the sensor?

- Is there a good place to go to get very detailed star charts to help identify what I've got? Standard planetarium programs don't seem to be enough.

I can see this becoming addictive. Looking forward to the next session!

Rob

[Paul81]

Hi Rob!

Really pleased to see you had a great first session and enjoyed using the app! They are some nice captures given the nearby source of LP.

The black blobs are almost certainly dust on the sensor, or dust somewhere in the image train (although my first place would be the sensor or filter if you had one fitted). I used Baader Wonder Fluid to clean mine - but no matter what the damn dust fairies seem to always creep there way back...

As for detailed star charts, you can submit (for free) your exported pics from Lodestar Live (either the FITS images or an exported PNG with no information text added) to http://nova.astrometry.net. The website is an online plate solver, so will churn away for a short while and report back with detailed information and an annotated version of your image. You can also download the plate solver and run it locally for a faster result.

I look forward to seeing your future adventures! 

Paul

[RobertI]

Thanks Paul. The plate solver sounds amazing, will give this a go.

[RobertI]

I have confirmed that the anonymous blob is indeed NGC3077 using Astrometry.net. What a brilliant website - thanks for the steer Paul.

[nytecam]

Excellent results Robert :-) I use Wiki sky (=Sloan DSS) to check star fields and mags down to mag ~19 eg fainter than my exposures go!

[RobertI]

Thanks nytecam, I will give wiki Sky a go too. Being a non-goto user I expect I shall be making a lot of use of these tools to find out where I actually ended up!