A couple of small achievements I thought I'd share

[MikeODay]

I know it is not much in the grand scheme of things but I was really quite chuffed to get two images printed in the reader's image section of the Australian Sky & Telescope magazine in the past 12months.

better quality:

[Peakedge]

Well done, Mike. I'd be as proud as punch to have an image published but looking at yours, I've a long way to go. Excellent images, by the way.

David

[StargeezerTim]

Congratulations! 

[laudropb]

Congratulations. Lovely images.

[Vox45]

Quite an achievement ! Great looking images you got there

[ollypenrice]

Good. In fast optics a DSLR can thrive.

Olly

[gorann]

Yes, congratulations! Well deserved.

It is just a pity that the images from the magazine do not do justice to these great images. Astrophoto really do better on the web than on paper.

[Physopto]

I'll add my congrats as well. Very nice images.

Derek

[Stu1976j]

Congrats great couple of images 

[Pompey Monkey]

Well done Mike, I particularly like your Lagoon.

And a bonus point for inspiring my roll-off shed obsy. Just one thing though: I had no idea how imposing a 7 foot high shed on top of a 15 inch high platform would be until we assembled it! Luckily I have a long garden and the neighbours don't mind

[ollypenrice]

Yes, congratulations! Well deserved.

It is just a pity that the images from the magazine do not do justice to these great images. Astrophoto really do better on the web than on paper.

This is true. However, if submitting images to magazines or making prints for yourself, I'd suggest a gentle tweak or two to your PC screen versions. The print will fail to hold fine resolution, the upside of which is that it will entirely fail to reproduce classic astrophotgraphic noise. You can push your low brightnesses beyond the screen noise threshold while remaining below the print noise threshold. So a little low level stretching beyond what you'd do for the screen will mean that your faint stuff will be both visible and clean in print. On the other hand you also need to be careful to keep safely below the saturation point at the bright end because print usually white clips as well.

Olly

[MikeODay]

Thank you all very much for your very kind words; they are much appreciated.

I have only been at this astrophotography lark for a little over 18months and I still have a great deal to learn and improve upon. Every bit of positive encouragement goes along way.

Cheers

Mike

[MikeODay]

Well done Mike, I particularly like your Lagoon.

And a bonus point for inspiring my roll-off shed obsy. Just one thing though: I had no idea how imposing a 7 foot high shed on top of a 15 inch high platform would be until we assembled it! Luckily I have a long garden and the neighbours don't mind

Pictures please

[Pompey Monkey]

Pictures please

For sure!

"Build" thread here: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/245847-it-started-with-a-hole-never-thought-it-would-come-to-this/?hl=%2Bstarted+%2Bwith+%2B

More pics here: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/258231-show-us-your-obsy/page-2#entry2831636

So many mistakes made, so many lessons learned for next time, but it works! I think I need to tidy the garden now...

[MikeODay]

I like your setup paul - especialy the way you have set in the rails and mounted your equipment at the base of the pier.  I have placed a small desk at the back of the shed and run extension cables from th pier to the laptop I take outside and place on the desk.  I then close the door and sit inside to operate the scope and camera from my laptop and ipad. My biggest difficulty is trying to keep all the cables tidy and out of the way when I'm coming and going between the desk and the scope. Your setup looks like it might be less troublesome.

[Pompey Monkey]

20 minutes ago, mike005 said:

I like your setup paul - especialy the way you have set in the rails and mounted your equipment at the base of the pier.  I have placed a small desk at the back of the shed and run extension cables from th pier to the laptop I take outside and place on the desk.  I then close the door and sit inside to operate the scope and camera from my laptop and ipad. My biggest difficulty is trying to keep all the cables tidy and out of the way when I'm coming and going between the desk and the scope. Your setup looks like it might be less troublesome.

Thanks Mike,

Regarding some of the "lessons learned":

The wheels snag on on the edge of the channels. Next time* I will go for an inverted "U" section track with inverted "V" wheels;

Yes, the integrated pier, PC and power supply works great. Except at the planning stage I did not consider the impact that the deck would have on the vertical real estate** on the pier and ended up with a very limited space to fit the gear in. Next time , the pier will be taller. I have lots of vertical space in the shed.

 

Having said that, The only cable run required to the pier is the power supply, which comes up from below***. Connectivity is now by powerline (ethernet over power) to the pier (100 mbs at the end of a 50 m mains extension) and wi-fi via a directional patch antenna to the controlling laptop while focusing. Works great.

I eventually want a desk and chair in the shed for doing stuff, but at the moment, I'm quite happy going out to roll off the shed and get focus from time to time, while doing all the plate solving/guiding/imaging control from the nice warm indoors

 

* There will be a next time

** I made it up as I went along.

*** Ask me about foxes and power cables. I dare you...

 

[MikeODay]

You're a more dedicated man than me Paul - I doubt I will ever want to mix and pour that much concrete by hand again!.  If I ever move I will scrape together the money and pay someone with a stronger back to do it for me.

How does the ethernet over power sytem connect up to the scope and PC?. Do you have a link I could check out?  The desk works ok but on very cold nights I would'nt mind being able to run things from inside the house.

No fox problem for me.  I ran a standard extension cable from a point under the house, out through a ventillation hole in the bricks and then trough conduit buried underground between the house and the pier.  I then connected the extension cable to an outdoor rated powerpoint mounted on the deck beside the pier.

 

[MarsG76]

Well done... If I had one of my images printed I'd be stoked, so you should be very proud... they're great images.

 

[MikeODay]

On 26 January 2016 at 16:27, MarsG76 said:

Well done... If I had one of my images printed I'd be stoked, so you should be very proud... they're great images.

 

Thanks for that, much appreciated.  

I am pretty pleased with myself (   ) and a little bit of encouragement goes along way when I'm cold and tired and all my subs have halos around all the stars due to the humidiity - that is of course if the @#$% clouds would go away so I can capture images of bright halos, grrrr....

 

[Pompey Monkey]

On 26/01/2016 at 00:02, mike005 said:

You're a more dedicated man than me Paul - I doubt I will ever want to mix and pour that much concrete by hand again!.  If I ever move I will scrape together the money and pay someone with a stronger back to do it for me.

How does the ethernet over power sytem connect up to the scope and PC?. Do you have a link I could check out?  The desk works ok but on very cold nights I would'nt mind being able to run things from inside the house.

No fox problem for me.  I ran a standard extension cable from a point under the house, out through a ventillation hole in the bricks and then trough conduit buried underground between the house and the pier.  I then connected the extension cable to an outdoor rated powerpoint mounted on the deck beside the pier.

 

Hi Mike,

I bought these: http://uk.tp-link.com/products/details/cat-18_TL-PA4020PKIT.html as a kit. The mains pass-through is useful as I don't lose any sockets. I expect you'd need a different model in Australia!

I don't get the advertised speed, but that's not surprising as the signal path is adapter-->mains four way-->wall socket-->house ring main-->spur-->external socket-->50 metre extension cable-->mains four way-->adapter. To be honest, now that I write it down, it's amazing that It works at all!

It reports a 100 mb connection, but in reality is gives a stable 50 mb. This is more than adequate for a remote desktop session.

I originally connected by WiFi via a directional antenna, but this sometimes slowed to a crawl so I upgraded to the powerline adapters. I keep both networks running for redundancy: If I lose connection I have to bring the Obsy PC indoors or take a monitor and keyboard down to the bottom of the garden to see what's going on.

All I need now is a USB focuser and I can do it all in the comfort of my man-cave

The fox has been no problem at all with the white extension power lead for over two months now and I know it's still about because I've seen it! I think there was something attractive about the black lead