From 26th February 2024

[M40]

Not a dark night by any means, a case of avoiding the clouds and beating the rapidly rising moon, all taken with a Stellamira 125, asiair, heq5 and zwo asi290mm, all simple screen grabs.

NGC3729 approx 65 million light years away, 22 x 10 seconds

 

NGC3656, approx 135 million light years away,  33 x 10 seconds

 

Minor planet Lutetia, located in the asteroid belt about 2.5au away, 100 - 120 km diameter

And finally Uranus and a couple of its moons which lies 19.89au away. Single shot with zwo asi385mc

 

[RobertI]

Love the mono captures. 👍

[Geoff Lister]

And from North Somerset, Uranus direct from my Seestar, without post processing,

3 moons just visible, Titania (top centre), Oberon (top right), & Umbriel (bottom right)

And comet 144P / Kushida (below right of HIP 25278 (111 Tau) [the big, bright one]

 

Geoff

[PeterC65]

I really need to observe some of these smaller galaxies with the 8" Newtonian / colour camera setup. I keep thinking that I might be able to see more detail with a mono camera but really need to try the OSC first.

 

[M40]

11 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

I really need to observe some of these smaller galaxies with the 8" Newtonian / colour camera setup. I keep thinking that I might be able to see more detail with a mono camera but really need to try the OSC first.

 

Go for it, you know you want to 👌 that's my plan for the 125. My next step is to use the asiair with darks and flats, trouble is there has been so few opportunities of late the question is do you go for a target or do you play. So my answer was go for the smaller targets to see what the result is like without spending time on things I've not tried before.

Must admit I would use the mono rather than a colour, it would be more sensitive, plus the target galaxies will be mono anyway.

[PeterC65]

44 minutes ago, M40 said:

Go for it, you know you want to 👌 that's my plan for the 125. My next step is to use the asiair with darks and flats, trouble is there has been so few opportunities of late the question is do you go for a target or do you play. So my answer was go for the smaller targets to see what the result is like without spending time on things I've not tried before.

Must admit I would use the mono rather than a colour, it would be more sensitive, plus the target galaxies will be mono anyway.

During a session I try to make sure I do some playing with kit and techniques but also some actual observing.

I tried capturing flats recently and was very impressed with the results. I plan to capture flats (and darks) every time I do EAA from now on, although it does add to the setup time.

I'm still undecided how I feel about mono. Altair have a new mono camera based on the IMX678 which is currently my preferred candidate (this one). It has smaller pixels (2.0um) than my existing IMX585 (2.9um), but I'm thinking that in 2x2 binning mode it would give me 4um pixels and the same resolution as the alternative mono cameras. I need to think about it some more before taking the plunge though.

 

Edited February 27 by PeterC65