fraudulent imaging

[alacant]

Hi everyone. Here is the view -from the sofa- of my last imaging session. A new definition for 'armchair astronomer' perhaps?

VNC has a lot to answer for; I feel such a fraud!

[Spikey]

Exactly the same as me. Long gone are the days where I'll be squinting, hunched over a freezing laptop wondering why everything but one aspect of the rig isn't working. 

[xtreemchaos]

I even do it while in bed in summer when sol gets up early I don't . charl.

[triton1]

My idea of heaven.This hobby must have chosen me because I hate the cold!

[Horwig]

30 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi everyone. Here is the view -from the sofa- of my last imaging session. A new definition for 'armchair astronomer' perhaps?

VNC has a lot to answer for; I feel such a fraud!

Totally agreed, I use a combination of Win7 remote desktop and Teamviewer, but there's nothing like sipping a nice glass of red in the warm whilst the kit slaves away, life is so hard

[MarsG76]

In that case I've been a fraud for years.. In actual fact I'm doing exactly the same thing as I'm posting this... iPhone in VNC'd into my astro laptop and that's how I'm keeping an eye on things while posting and watching videos.

 

[alan potts]

I must be very new to it because I don't care about the cold and I was even laying on cold concrete to see if the sub was in focus, had my glasses out with me too, it won't late.

alan

[Jonk]

Same here, I can VNC any computer from any computer in the house or outside, including the phone

[wxsatuser]

I'm out there whatever the temperature, minus 6 if I remember correctly, was the coldest so far.

[alan potts]

I could probably do the same myself with the computer system I have here in the house and the observatory but if I actually did the link up you would probably find aircraft overhead changing course.

Alan

[swag72]

Fair weather imaging here for me too  Always seen sat on the sofa monitoring, but ............ when there's problems as there often is, I am out there for hours trying to sort it all. To that end, because I sort out my own issues and don't get someone  (or pay someone) to fix it for me, I don't actually consider the sofa watching time as fraudulent in any way.... more like well deserved  

[The Admiral]

14 minutes ago, swag72 said:

Fair weather imaging here for me too

But isn't it always fair weather where you are Sara?

Ian

[swag72]

12 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

But isn't it always fair weather where you are Sara?

Ian

 I wish it was so Ian!!! 

[ollypenrice]

Hmmm... something would go out of the activity for me if I did it from the house. I can't claim to be roughing it because the main observatory has a warm room, a heater a bench-come-bed - but it's the observatory.  Of course I'm often doing other things as well, running a second rig, helping guests doing visual observing with the 20 inch and the SCT etc. etc. but I just like to be in a sacred place for doing the sacred activity! 

Olly

[carastro]

I stay with the rig until imaging is started, I align focus and start up the imaging by the mount.  Once I know it is all working fine I retreat into the house to watch the rest of the images download from the warm of the indoor desktop via Teamviewer.  

The only thing I can operate from indoors is the capture and guiding software.

If you're clever enough to set it all up remotely and lets face it you erected the rig in the first place, then how can that be cheating.  I am afraid remote imaging from another country where you haven't even set up the kit in the first place it the only thing I regard as cheating (sorry to those who image that way).  But if you have a remote rig you installed yourself then that would in my mind be acceptable.

Carole 

[Demonperformer]

I would love to be able to do that, but my imaging site is the front garden and I dare not leave the gear too long ... had a laptop stolen a few years back ... and there are too many kids around who would be more than happy to stick their fingers where they don't belong (on the objective/corrector plate, etc).

[Pete Presland]

Not a fraud at all, as long as you are enjoying what you do, that's all that matters   For me coming in frozen to the bone, is the only way a session should. I guess my wife is right, I am a bit mad 

[ollypenrice]

Surely cheating and fraud belong to sports and to business, and imaging is neither sport nor business. We are all free to do it in just the way that we wish to do it and enjoy doing so.

Personally I find capture a fairly boring and mechanical process. I can do it, you can do it, anyone with a bit of practice can do it. (The more you spend, the easier it gets! ) I like processing, which is where you get to place your own stamp on what comes out. It's also the hard part. It is far, far harder than capture.

If I had the means to buy into a southern hemisphere imaging rig which was up and running I'd do so in a trice. I really feel I 'meet' an object when I process a data set devoted to it. If I were down there next to it I'd doze under the stars looking up but, if not, I'd still love to work on the data.

Olly

[Stu]

As an observer I think that I would always want to keep the connection with the stars, so if I were indoors I would feel I was missing out on good observing time! I think some keep a dob as well as the imaging rig for just that reason.

[Alan White]

4 minutes ago, Stu said:

As an observer I think that I would always want to keep the connection with the stars, so if I were indoors I would feel I was missing out on good observing time! 

My feelings as well Stu, but I am no imager,
perhaps it's only us hardy visual types that cope with the in cold 

[wxsatuser]

44 minutes ago, Stu said:

As an observer I think that I would always want to keep the connection with the stars, so if I were indoors I would feel I was missing out on good observing time! I think some keep a dob as well as the imaging rig for just that reason.

Although not an observer as such I do like to watch the sky as the gear is doing it's stuff.
Eyeballing satellites, meteors and anything else of interest, sometimes I even get the 10x50s out
and have a scan around.
Sometimes have even fallen asleep under the stars.

[Ags]

I love being out in the dark and cold, just me and my dog and the telescope. If it doesn't get you off the sofa, it's not a hobby!

[ollypenrice]

Even something as simple as aligning on a star is part of it, for me. My Mk 1 Mesus don't have a park postition so I squint along the scope to aim it at one star, synch it roughly and then fine-align with the camera. But that squint along the tube at Capella or Denebola or Betelgeuse, and moving the scope onto it simply by hand, is a nice moment.

Olly

[AKB]

14 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I squint along the scope to aim it at one star

I do have a park position, but often move the mount manually for flats, etc.  I’ve tried aligning by looking along the scope, but it’s often pot luck as to whether I find it on the camera, so, much to my chagrin, I’ve added an RDF to the setup recently.  Perhaps my FOV is somewhat lower than yours.

Certainly agree, though, that setting up that one-star alignment is just nice.

[geoflewis]

Yep, the days of staying out all night with my rig in freezing, dew saturated conditions are gladly behind me. I was always concerned about the electrical gear (power supply, laptop, etc.) getting soaking wet, even though I had a laptop tent to protect it from the worst of that. I now have an observatory with a warm room, so will retreat to that if I want to monitor what my rig is doing close up, as I did last night when I was checking out how it performed when flipping, as I'd had camera rotation issues last time out. However, I do now also retreat to the warm glows of the log burner and TV back indoors using RDC on my wife's very old Vista laptop to monitor my astro laptop running Win 7. What's not to like....