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It’s clear tonight!

Ags

By Ags
in The Astro Lounge

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Ags

Ags

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Posted

It’s clear tonight, or so my computer says. Going to have another try imaging M42, with my new step-down rings stopping my lens down to F3.8, and restricting the spectrum to red only. 

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Ags

Ags

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22 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Hope your experimenting is fruitful. If you are using a bayered camera will you also be trying just the green channel?

I am fortunate to be using a mono camera. It is still clear but Orion is still lurking behind a big tree.

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Ouroboros

Ouroboros

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I managed half an hour or so outside with bins before the sky misted over. Again it wasn’t worth setting up a telescope. Nevertheless less it was quite clear whilst it lasted found Uranus quite easily which surprised me because it’s not really near many distinct star patterns at present. Think I found Neptune too but it really was misting over from the SW by then.  Star and nebulosity fields in Cygnus looked good. Nice to identify M29 again. 

There’s nothing quite as freeing and enjoyable as using bins to rove around the sky quickly and easily. It’s just a pain having to hold them. And looking above about 60° is also a pain in the neck - literally. A tripod might seem like the answer but that immediately looses the spontaneity of using hand held bins - not least because it’s good to be able to walk around for different vantage points, avoiding trees and so on. 

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Mr Thingy

Mr Thingy

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Fortunate to have had clear skies all day here near the East Coast. 

Managed some solar observation over lunchtime (perk of working in my home office), and now just finished a casual early evening session. 

Started with the ring nebula - always blows my mind seeing a smoke ring in space. Then I bounced around a number of open clusters; Perseus, Taurus, Cepheus. Andromeda was showing really nicely so took a look at that too. Concluded by trying to spot the moons of Uranus but seeing wasn't good enough.

Zodiacal light was also on show and my friendly local barn owl was screeching along in the background. 

A very satisfying session overall.

Edited by Mr Thingy
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Moonshed

Moonshed

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Today, for a change, I was very fortunate, clear blue sky all day and then at 6pm guess what, it was still clear! I could see stars! And Mars and the Pleiades, and, and, and....gotta get my scope out it’s going to get misty soon for sure.

I managed to get about 90 minutes in before the seeing, which wasn’t actually brilliant anyway, took a turn for the worse. I spent most of the time taking AVIs of Mars of varying lengths and the rest looking though the eyepiece, best way to round off the night.

Tonight I tried a different approach. I fitted the dew shield on my SCT as usual, but, following a suggestion given here to give it a go, I did not switch on my dew heater, and set the scope horizontally and left it to cool down, it doesn’t take long as it lives in a shed set up ready to go. The idea is to avoid the air currents that can possibly arise inside the tube due to the heat created by the dew heater. Seemed worth a try anyway. The image of Mars on the FireCapture screen looked pretty good and appeared steadier than it has previously, but that could well be down to the seeing.


Anyway, tomorrow will be interesting when I take all that very precious and so carefully collected raw data and process it until it becomes an overstretched, over sharpened, over waveleted and over Photoshopped cringeworthy mess. If on the other hand it turns out not too bad I may post it here so you can all gasp in amazement. Sigh.

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Ags

Ags

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Well it was clear at dinner time, but puffs of cloud were already drifting over when I set up soon after. I figured there was no point waiting for M42 with the deteriorating conditions. With the light cloud I needed to be shooting straight up. So I had a go at NGC 1499 (California Nebula) and gathered 74 minutes before the sky was totally gray, but one third of the subs were of water vapor. But still - I did get a result and quite good by my standards! Not bad for limited data, thin clouds, Bortle 8 city lights, and only an R filter not proper narrowband. For me anyway 😀. Will try grab more data, I think I could make this quite prety...

189  x 16 second subs at Gain 160 (ASI 178 MM, 100mm focal length, F3.8)

calineb_04.png.c3ac5ad3b24819599d2c9b0f12582480.png

Edited by Ags
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david_taurus83

david_taurus83

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I was all set last night for some opportune imaging. Setup at 6pm waiting for the promised clear spell from 8 to 12. Got rained on instead. 11pm came and it looked like I could grab an hour between the clouds. Nope, got rained on again.

Nights like those are the worst. They tempt you to setup in anticipation and literally spit on you. I have 2 weeks off for Christmas. It would make a nice present to have 3 or 4 decent nights 🙄

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Luke

Luke

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I've had a lovely eve. I missed the early part of astro darkness as I was playing a card game with my son that finished later than expected (it was ace though, similar type of game to Magic the Gathering, if you know that).

Thankfully it stayed clear mostly until about 11 and I managed to hunt down a few targets I had not seen yet this season, like the Crab nebula and one of my favourites, NGC457. I couldn't find Caroline's Rose and just missed out on M31 by the time I figured out what Andromeda looks like (I'm out of practice after hibernating during solar minimum!) and the clouds rolled in.

The clouds have been frustrating these past few months, but it feels worth it now. Fingers crossed everyone gets some clear soon.

Edited by Luke
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Luke

Luke

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Woohoo, another lovely short session last night, and I managed to catch a few more first views of the season: the moon (okay, I had already done MkI eyeball, haha!), M31, M34 and Caroline's Rose. I also tried a variable polarising filter on Mars briefly, which tamed the brightness nicely for me in my 10 inch dob. My wife Sarah tried a UHC filter on the Orion Nebula which I had tried previously and gave that a thumbs up.

Edited by Luke
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