2019 - a busy year

[don4l]

I've just tidied up my hard disk and was astonished to discover that I have done much more imaging than I thought!  The last 6 month has seen dreadful weather for astronomy, and at times it was almost depressing.

I've been wondering where this huge increase in productivity has come from, and the answer is CCDCiel, ASTAP, and Indi.  They just seem to work.  I used to spend an hour, or more just finding, focusing and rotating the camera.  Now, all these tasks are completed in about 10 minutes - long before the camera has reached temperature.

This is a collection of the images, all of which were taken during 2019.

This year, I will have to concentrate on getting more exposure time on individual targets, and maybe  go for fewer images.  Time will tell - I'm not sure that I have the patience.

 

 

[DaveS]

Wow, whata lota images! I thought I did well to get eight, but your haul is something else.

[don4l]

15 hours ago, DaveS said:

Wow, whata lota images! I thought I did well to get eight, but your haul is something else.

I was very surprised too!    I hadn't realised how efficient that my setup had become.

This year I hope to go for some longer exposures, and fewer images.

[han59]

Automation makes it possible to use any brief clear sky moment. Imaging an object is not restricted to a single night. You could have 90 minutes of clear sky, take a series of images and continue imaging the same object next clear night.

My only setbacks are occasional bad USB connection and computer freeze. The computer freeze is mainly caused by the memory module connector of my old 2009 desktop. The old desktop is permanently placed in my astro shed.  It was never designed for the cold and occasional high humidity environment with continuous ventilation. But it has survived already 5 year in the shed.  Making the connection a few times normally fixes the problem.  One of the two old harddisk doesn't like temperatures below zero so it is used as secondary disk.

Han

 

 

[Whistlin Bob]

Wow- that's a terrific collection- some stunning images in there. I wouldn't, in your position, be too worried about spending more time on individual images if you're getting results like that.

I especially like the variety of focal lengths you're using to give interesting presentations of familiar objects.

I totally concur on the use of tools to speed things up- plate solving on APT has made an enormous difference for me.