At what point do you just... give up?

[BrendanC]

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing this. I can see that your frequency of viewings goes up each year, presumably that's as you get more used to your equipment and observatory?

I keep my scope outside under a (fairly serious) tent which keeps it dry, but even though I can be up and running in half an hour, it's still been very frustrating recently.

For what it's worth, here's the Jupiter image I managed to capture with my T7C (ASI120MC clone):

I also got a moon in there which I didn't realise until post-processing.

Last night was without doubt the clearest and calmest it's been for months - but my DSLR was being repaired so I couldn't take advantage of it!

[inFINNity Deck]

1 hour ago, BrendanC said:

I can see that your frequency of viewings goes up each year, presumably that's as you get more used to your equipment and observatory?

Hi Brendan,

yes, indeed I get more used to the observatory and the equipment, I now can start up in 5 minutes and start imaging well within half an hour. The biggest challenge is to have several objects ready in the planning, both RGB and NB, so I can choose what to image based on the presence of the Moon. What also helped this year was C2020-F3-NEOWISE, which I imaged 12 times, most times through tiny holes in the clouds. In a similar way I took some 13 images of Saturn last year. Those images only required luminance as it was for two high school students who wanted to determine the orbital periods of Titan and Rhea. Those images could be taken within 10 minutes.

Why am I sharing this? Simply to show how much fun one can have even under 80-90% cloud-cover, which makes imaging a fun challenge at times as well. 🙂

Nicolàs

 

[BrendanC]

Great - love the positivity!

[BrendanC]

Just thought I'd pop up again and say I didn't give up.

 

[groberts]

That looks really good on the wall Brendan, would be interesting to know the imaging details 

[Paul M]

18 minutes ago, BrendanC said:

Just thought I'd pop up again and say I didn't give up.

That's a great result! Well worth waiting for.

I'm still alone in the foothills of success with a sprained ankle and carrying a lame mule on my back 🤣

[BrendanC]

On 22/02/2021 at 16:55, groberts said:

That looks really good on the wall Brendan, would be interesting to know the imaging details 

Sure, here you go:
• 16.25 hours of integration time, made up of 29x120s, 152x180s and 115x240s - simply because I've just started guiding and am increasing exposure times each session to see what my kit can do, and what works given my skies
• Bortle 4 sky, moon average 49% phase
• Calibration: 25 flats, 25 dark flats, 50 darks
• Hardware: Sky-Watcher 130PDS scope (F5), Sky-Watcher NEQ6 mount, Canon EOS1000D astro-modded camera with Sky-Watcher 0.9x coma corrector, T7C guidescope (ASI120MC clone), Angel Eyes 50mm guidescope
• Software: polar alignment with SharpCap Pro, guiding with PHD2, capture with Astrophotography Tool (APT), stacking with Deep Sky Stacker (DSS), post-processing with StarTools, Photoshop CS2, Affinity Photo and Topaz Denoise AI