My first live Jocular session

[AKB]

A window of opportunity last night, to try out Jocular for real.  In future, I'll try and focus on the observations, rather than the technology, but just to say the acquisition setup was:

• C9.25 Hyperstar with Ultrastar mono camera, no filters
• Nebulosity running on the observatory PC to do capture to local disc
• Jocular running on (indoor) iMac with the PC mounted as a shared drive
• No calibration frames yet, since I haven't yet got my head around that in Jocular (dust bunnies galore!)
• All the subs are actually either 30s or 60s, so I don't know where some of the slightly different numbers come from
• None of these images have been flipped left-right as should be done from a Hyperstar (forgot that Jocular can do this)

It's lighter in the evening, now, isn't it!  So had to wait a bit longer than usual to get started.

The plan was to wander through some known, then, for me, lesser known (and harder) galaxies, but just after focusing, I was near to M3 so gave that a go.  Then off to galaxies.

• M94, I've actually not observed/imaged this before.  I'm going to post-process the data here, as is my wont, to try and pull out something of the outer ring
• The Leo Trio, in two parts, due to the limited FOV.  Once again, a bit of processing to go for the NGC 3628 tidal tail may be called for.
• What next?  I have it labelled as M106, but, really?  It doesn't look like it to me – no idea what's going on here.  I've thrown it into astrometry.net, but that seems to take forever these days, so I'm sure that some real observers here can tell me what I was looking at.
• Finally, NGC 3684, and friends.  This region is really stuffed with good things.  Can anyone tell me what I should be using to help me identify all the interesting small stuff?  Stellarium doesn't seem to hack it for these.

It all went rather smoothly, 'M106' aside, and I love being able to remove subs from the stack retrospectively.  This is something that, much as I love it, StarlightLive doesn't do.  So I can definitely recommend Jocular to anyone out there willing to give it a go.  I anyone can tell me how to get this running on my observatory PC, that would be another plus, since I'd rather be sitting outside with the kit, rather than indoors (at least if it's not too cold.)

Thanks, 

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[London_David]

I was also looking at M3 last night just after setting up because it was near...

However, my main focus was on giving my new pier and mount (CEM60) a shakedown. I had some pointing issues (I didn’t read the instructions - probably should do that next time) with the new equipment and so all I got was a single 2 second exposure of M3 (asi290 on a sw150pds) . Not exactly a great view, but posted here for comparison to your much better view!

I also tried to observe some of the Arps from the other report but my sky model was off and it wasn’t going to them correctly, so no luck.

That said, the CEM60 seems very nice with almost no backlash (such a relief from my EQ3 Pro!), very stable tracking and I can control it wirelessly through Sky Safari on my iPad/iPhone.

[AKB]

25 minutes ago, London_David said:

I didn’t read the instructions - probably should do that next time

Er, yes...

25 minutes ago, London_David said:

That said, the CEM60 seems very nice with almost no backlash (such a relief from my EQ3 Pro!)

Quite a step up, then.  I’m sure you’ll be pleased.  The lack of backlash is one of the reasons I love my Avalon mount. 

 

[Martin Meredith]

Excellent results - some of the 'smoothest' captures I've seen so far. Your M106 seems to be NGC 4220 (with NGC 4218 just above). You're picking up a mag 19.5 galaxy near the lambda-shaped asterism too.

 

Exposure is estimated based on time of arrival of subs, so is being overestimated. Those numbers can be brought down a little...

I'm just writing a users' guide to Jocular so expect a general release this week where the secrets of calibration etc should be clarified!

Martin 

 

[AKB]

Hoping not to offend anyone who doesn't like post-processing...

...with the eye of faith, there IS a vestige of an outer ring on M94?  Not too bad for 11 minutes.

 

Also, I was pleased to see another faint fuzzy at the right-hand edge of the processed M3

 

[elpajare]

I like the images, especially the detail of M3

How kind of post-process do you use?

[AKB]

4 minutes ago, elpajare said:

I like the images, especially the detail of M3

Thanks!

4 minutes ago, elpajare said:

How kind of post-process do you use?

Pretty much as described in another post here:

 

[London_David]

Thats very interesting with the outer ring on M94. I'll have to check that out.

[AKB]

Revisiting these data with the official release of Jocular, and now armed with a full set of calibration frames, I have to say it does a great job with them.

Here's are side-to-side comparison of the original NGC3684, above (without calibration, but with dust bunnies and vignetting,) and the calibrated version (without those nasty things.)

 

 

Hats off, or is it chapeau, to Jocular (and @Martin Meredith!)

 

[Martin Meredith]

There is something magical about seeing the dust (and vignetting) disappear, isn't there? I only started using flats a few months back and they make a huge difference in one important respect: no need to disturb the camera so frequently to clean it!

Out of interest (since you're probably the only other person to do calibration in Jocular so far): were these produced from the flat subs by Jocular or did you reverse engineer the masters into the system?

Oh, and I understand now what you mean about the black background stripes in inverted mode. I will look into changing the background of the oculus to white when operating in inverted mode. 

Martin

PS Chapeau reminds me that it will soon be time for the Giro, which marks the start of summer, just as the Vuelta marks the end... 

[Mike JW]

Hi, Just enjoyed reading through the post and comments by folk. M94 and M3 now on my list to see what I can achieve. Mike

[AKB]

26 minutes ago, Martin Meredith said:

were these produced from the flat subs by Jocular or did you reverse engineer the masters into the system?

Yes, these were new subs, but I did think that the easiest way to get old ones in would be to drop multiple copies  into the watched folder...