1st image of the new Astro season

[Uranium235]

Well, its a few weeks past the solstice now - so time to fire up the gear and see what I can grab in just 2 hours (it was a Sunday night, so no uber-late session).

Unfortunately, it turned out to be the end of an era..... the Acer aspire one ive been using for capture and control for the last 7 years had finally bitten the dust. As soon as I booted it up I could see what was wrong - the screen had cracked (!) I dont remember being heavy handed with it.... perhaps "little hands" were involved, but its no big deal as I managed to get a replacement for 40 quid from the bay of fleas.... it will have 2gb too, so it should be faster on the bootup. It will be no fun trying to set it all up again though (ascom, PHD etc), and I will probably stick with the versions I was using (despite being ancient!) so I can just copy the settings across and get it working ASAP.

However, that was not mission over! I could still see part of the screen (just the taskbar), and I knew that netbook automatically loads tight VNC at bootup. So, I waited for it to boot up - then remoted in with another laptop so I could see the desktop and set everything up.... but focusing over a VNC... umm.. thats "interesting"

I suppose its a good thing I did this at home rather than drive out to the dark site to find it busted, but after the testing start I did get the 2 hours I wanted, plus the Samyang behaved really well (good corners)... so not a total loss!

 

NGC7000 - Sadr

6x600 (Ha) x2 panels

Samyang 135mm @f2, Atik 383L+, NEQ6

Thanks for looking!

 

[PhotoGav]

Welcome back to the night sky, Rob! A lovely return too, despite the Gremlins' best efforts to thwart you. Good luck with the new lappy and I look forward to seeing your always interesting images.

[Uranium235]

1 minute ago, PhotoGav said:

Welcome back to the night sky, Rob! A lovely return too, despite the Gremlins' best efforts to thwart you. Good luck with the new lappy and I look forward to seeing your always interesting images.

Cheers Gav

[ultranova]

Nice work around using the network,  and it didn't effected your

astro artistry,

Nicely done

Paul

[Ibbo!]

Nice one Rob

[Allinthehead]

Love it Rob. That's some fov.

[Uranium235]

1 minute ago, Allinthehead said:

Love it Rob. That's some fov.

Its going to get bigger

This is just the first two of nine, I have higher resolution data on nearly every area of interest within Cygnus - so once I have all nine from the 135mm I will blend in some of the high res stuff to tighten up the details a bit. But its an ongoing project, and probably wont be complete for a couple of months at least (as I'd like to add colour).

[swag72]

Looking great Rob..... Fantastic FOV and top notch processing

[Uranium235]

4 minutes ago, swag72 said:

Looking great Rob..... Fantastic FOV and top notch processing

Thanks Sara

[happy-kat]

The wider fov is very enjoyable. Who needs a telescope ;-) might have to long term think about a nice 135mm like your one as it just isn't comparable with my Helios from the bay of fleas.

[Uranium235]

23 hours ago, happy-kat said:

The wider fov is very enjoyable. Who needs a telescope ;-) might have to long term think about a nice 135mm like your one as it just isn't comparable with my Helios from the bay of fleas.

They really are worth the money mate its just a shame there isnt a mono camera out there with really small pixels (ie: ~2 or 3 microns) that could get more out of that bit of glass (or should I say 11 bits of glass...lol).

[toxic]

thats a blooming great image and a bigger blooming field of view great stuff Rob

[Shibby]

Very nice image, Rob. With the new season starting, I'm itching to get going myself - however, the "observatory" is still technically a "shed" and I plan to focus on finishing that first!

On 17/07/2017 at 21:41, happy-kat said:

The wider fov is very enjoyable. Who needs a telescope ;-) 

I was thinking the same... this lens almost makes those 22-panel mosaics feel pointless!  

[Uranium235]

1 hour ago, Shibby said:

Very nice image, Rob. With the new season starting, I'm itching to get going myself - however, the "observatory" is still technically a "shed" and I plan to focus on finishing that first!

I was thinking the same... this lens almost makes those 22-panel mosaics feel pointless!  

Hope you get set up soon mate the roof of the obsy will be the most challenging bit - and making it 100% weatherproof. Dont be too long about it though it officially gets "dark" again on the 27/28th I think (depending on where you live!).

I'll be bringing the 135mm (or two of them if im lucky) to SGL XIII if you want to take a look at it. Although its a good portrait lens, its manual focus only so your subject has to be sitting still, and really nailing the focus requires the use of live view.... so while its great for Astro, its rather challenging for daytime work if youre just taking casual pics by hand.

[Alien 13]

35 minutes ago, Uranium235 said:

Hope you get set up soon mate the roof of the obsy will be the most challenging bit - and making it 100% weatherproof. Dont be too long about it though it officially gets "dark" again on the 27/28th I think (depending on where you live!).

I'll be bringing the 135mm (or two of them if im lucky) to SGL XIII if you want to take a look at it. Although its a good portrait lens, its manual focus only so your subject has to be sitting still, and really nailing the focus requires the use of live view.... so while its great for Astro, its rather challenging for daytime work if youre just taking casual pics by hand.

I did quite a bit of experimenting with programmable focus confirm chips with old M42 lenses these could be glued to an existing adapter or in this case the Samyang lens, this would allow quite a few metering options as well as focus confirm through the viewfinder of a DSLR if you wanted to use it for daytime snapping.

Alan

[wimvb]

4 hours ago, Uranium235 said:

it officially gets "dark" again on the 27/28th I think (depending on where you live!).

 

27/28th of NEXT month where I live.

Great image, btw.

[Shibby]

17 hours ago, Uranium235 said:

Hope you get set up soon mate the roof of the obsy will be the most challenging bit - and making it 100% weatherproof. Dont be too long about it though it officially gets "dark" again on the 27/28th I think (depending on where you live!).

I'll be bringing the 135mm (or two of them if im lucky) to SGL XIII if you want to take a look at it. Although its a good portrait lens, its manual focus only so your subject has to be sitting still, and really nailing the focus requires the use of live view.... so while its great for Astro, its rather challenging for daytime work if youre just taking casual pics by hand.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to make it to SGL this year - got lots of other travelling planned and not enough leave available! Planning to attack the sky with a double-barrel are we?

I won't get the obs finished before it gets "dark", I only seem to find a couple of days a month so it's sloooow progress.

[Uranium235]

1 hour ago, Shibby said:

 Planning to attack the sky with a double-barrel are we?

 

In a way, yes

Im floating the idea of easy NB bicolour by using the DSLR with a 12nm OIII clip filter - which should (in theory) work quite well since at least half the pixels (green) will detect the signal. Shame you cant make it this year mate, hope to catch you next time round - if your obsy is finished by then.... perhaps you should get DIY SOS in...lol.

[peter shah]

love it

[tony210]

Love this- great detail-lovely monochrome image-Tony.

[Uranium235]

Thanks guys

It turned out a bit clear last night, so I added another three panels.. just an hour on each, plus I got buzzed by a few clouds - but its enough for a quick n' dirty process:

[wimvb]

Are you going for a udss (Uranium Deep Sky Survey)?

Great image!

[Uranium235]

3 hours ago, wimvb said:

Are you going for a udss (Uranium Deep Sky Survey)?

Great image!

lol... if its a survey of Cygnus, then probably! I've spent a fair few years imaging that part of the sky, so I should have all the data for a fairly decent image of it (in Ha anyway!) once I have then 9 panels I need. I'll have a go a blending some hi-res a bit in later on to see if it works as planned.

[Alien 13]

Its amazing what you can do at f/2 

Alan

[ollypenrice]

Oooooh, majestic field and processing! Tip top. 

My own (pink, don't ask...) Acer Aspire Win XP croaked two nights ago after ten years.  To be honest I was ready to see it go because I needed a microsope to read the text with aging eyes!

Olly