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I think I was a member many years ago !

Woodwind

By Woodwind
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Woodwind

Woodwind

Posted
Posted

Morning All,

I cannot be sure but I think I joined a few years ago when I was in the States working on a vehicle project.

I had always wanted to "do" astronomy" and my wife was talked into buying me a 4" Stellarvue by a good friend out there. This was quickly followed by a Tak mount - and of course lager scopes. The US is an extraordinary source of astronomy kit - both second hand and new. It is also possibly considered to be less of an "eccentric" past-time over there; and of course they have some seriously good viewing in many parts of the US.

Most of my kit is high-end second-hand stuff. I ended up with TAK refractors (FS 102 and 152) and AP mounts, to which I have added a variety of astro-imaging accessories. I use an Astro Tech 66mm for guiding and modified Canon DSLRs for imaging.

Effectively I have to start learning all over again as I have not imaged seriously for about five years (weather, jobs and moving etc). It has been good fun to get all the bits out of the boxes after so long and try to work it all out. I am conscious that I might have to sort out things like software as I think a lot of it will have moved on (and become a lot simpler hopefully). I am working on setting up a Robofocus sysem that has been in its box since 2008. Its an example of something that might or might not work with Windows 8; anyone got any ideas ?

Anyway - I hope to be able to get out there in the dark (but humid) skies of the South West of England this summer and to eventually put up an observatory to avoid having to lug that AP mount in and out of the house.

Bye.

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barkis

barkis

Posted
Posted

Inevitable mission creep/aperture envy !!!!!

Ah!  you're a sneaky one Woodwind, show us a baby, then the biggie  :grin:.

But, very nice, and don't worry, aperture fever is a prolific epidemic these days, and no antidote, other than go larger.

Welcome back to the fold, and we look forward to your forthcoming Images, as soon as the skies and weather allow.

Best of luck with your  proposed Obsy.

Ron.

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Woodwind

Woodwind

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Thanks for the all the welome messages - its good to be part of an "astro-community" again.

To be fair to Astro Physics, most of those cables are to do with the guidance and dew-straps. I have also added the Robofocus to the system - though I am trying it out with the FS-102 to start with.

Cable management seems to be a perennial problem with any imaging system I am going to try a method of looping all cable runs back to a central hangar above the mount to reduce "snagging and dragging" that could affect the smoothness of the tracking.

I am also looking at getting some new image processing software as my PS CS3 sems a bit out of date. Anyone got any good ideas on that score ? PixInsight looks a bit complex for rank amateurs like me.

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reddoss

reddoss

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Posted

Welcome back to SGL Woodwind.  

Some people use a number of software for preprocess and processing such PS, Astro art and PixInsight. I know folk who will perform an action on an image in one program and do another on the same image in a different one, a sort of mix and match approach.  Personally I use Nebulosity 3 for all my preprocessing (including hot pixel removal and stacking) but use PS for most of the processing. There are  many  fairly cheap actions (Noels actions, Annie's actions) and plugins (Gradient exterminator , Star Shrink, Noise Ninja, HLV Green noise removal) which help. 

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