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I've felt 50 degrees in Crete and Arizona - it feels life threatening walking down the street. Greg
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A new Prime Number
Radar replied to wingeing Pom's topic in Off Topic - Funny Videos - Interesting Concepts
Holy moly! Most people only know what a prime number is from watching Contact. Ray -
Struck Down Again
Radar replied to scorpius's topic in Off Topic - Funny Videos - Interesting Concepts
How is this Perth weather Dave? Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. I have never seen summers so clouded out. Ray -
Still pulling good data from the light pollution. It must be frustrating being so washed out in Pasadena. Ray
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Nice job Tony. Amazing what sits behind that light pollution. Ray
- Earlier
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A couple of days before Christmas I found a new Prime Number with just over 454,000 digits https://primes.utm.edu/primes/page.php?id=125878 Greg
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That can be a real puzzle! I had awful Guiding problems with my earlier mounts that included a Meade LX90 on a wedge, a Vixen mount, finally success with my Celestron CGEM for several years but on occasion it just went nuts. Now I'm using an iOptron CEM60 that is the best ever. My guiding graph is nearly two flat interwoven lines and makes guiding a pleasure, but for how long before something changes? Who knows? hang in there.
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I have taken some short exposures of the trapezium stars from another time that I can superimpose on the washed out area. will probably do that to complete the view.
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That is nice. well done. I would like to have a shot at that on film with my Canon EOS 1n. I must dig out my 'round tuit' !
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Struck Down Again
scorpius replied to scorpius's topic in Off Topic - Funny Videos - Interesting Concepts
Hi all and each. Well 2019 is here all fresh and new. So hopefully this will be a much better year than the one ended - Next week I have to have a full CT Scan again and then following that a week later I have an appointment with the Oncologist - Pretty sure he is going to be satisfied with the results. - So will post info from the visit later. Meanwhile have been dusting down the Scope gear, driving the EQ6Pro around the kitchen from the Dell laptop. That seems to be functioning well. I also have bought some eyepieces, barlows and filters. Was quite surprised at the price of the latest EQ6Pro well over $2k (AU) Of course the latest ones are now belt driven. But glad I do not have to buy that again. plus the prices of the 8 and 10" scopes seem to have gone up considerably - All we need now is a few clear nights without all that cloud moving in from the Indian Ocean. Basically I am in good nick, medically, so that's a bonus and something to enjoy. May all your skies be cloudless and your health strong in 2019 Dave -
That would be awesome with some short exposure so core isn't blown out. Nah, it's still awesome. Shane
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Nice mate. I'm having massive guide problems at the moment so no imaging for me. Shane
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Same set up as for Rosette, Triad Filter on 4" refractor. imaging from "light pollution central" can be fun.
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I took this from Pasadena with a TRIAD filter from OPT corp that eliminates light pollution for emission nebulas letting through only H-Alph, H-beta and Oxygen wave lengths. I used my 4" Stellarvue refractor with field flattener, iOptron CEM 60 mount, QHYL8 camera. two hours and thirty minutes exposure yielded this image. clear cold nights have been good imaging weather here.
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The first video in the 12 part beginner series shows a way to have your work flow, named how you want it, every time you start. This info alone has helped me immensely. There is another piece of software out now called Astro Pixel Processor, I've had a quick play but prefer PI. Shane p.s. I'll give you a pm tomorrow regarding something I'd like to discuss with you mate.
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Cheers Shano. I am hoping tonight will be clear for some imaging. I've had back luck with the weather on nights where I was free to image. I bought Warren Keller's 400 page manual a few years back when I first bought PI, I read it with great interest, practised the techniques and discovered PI. But the way the PI platform is designed means that if you are not using it all the time (like me), you will forget all your hard efforts of studying it. I find PI is not intuitive, there are too many back doors or hidden techniques. For example, their functions for noise reduction are mostly not named noise reduction but other fancy mathematical names. I constantly found myself having to try and remember stuff that should have been straight forward. The software is incredibly powerful, but from a commercial resale perspective, they have made some massive mistakes by not making it as simple as possible to use. I get very limited time at the moment, I need straight in and out software solutions, but (for example) I found very simple processes like stacking three master files of different sizes would become headache material; I then bought a software program called registar and without even looking at an instruction manual stacked my images within 60 seconds of opening the program for the first time (this is how software should be designed IMHO). I do love PI though and it certainly has its place in my processing regime. I've highlighted all pertinent information in Warren Keller's book so I can get it quickly when using PI, I found that has helped me streamline the process of using PI. Hopefully I can break in the new year with some astroimaging. Ray
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Marble Bar was 49 degrees. Its crazy. If it is clear over the next few nights, I've actually got time for the observatory. Fingers crossed. Ray
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Found some great youtube tutorials for PI. Although they are for total beginners there is lots of great info. I even learned some useful tips with keeping icons available on the desktop for ease of use. and one from Warren on the astro imaging channel page https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pixinsight Shane
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Welcome to my world (sky). That's an old cluster my friend. Not an easy nut to crack under a bright moon. Ray
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Seems the only clear nights have the bloody moon imposing and I was itching to do some imaging so said stuff it and got this one. Object:NGC 1466 Object Info:from wikipedia NGC 1466 is the New General Catalogue designation for a globular cluster in the deep southern constellation of Hydrus. It is located in the outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The object was discovered November 26, 1834 by English astronomer John Herschel. John Dreyer described it as "pF, pS, iR, glbM, *7 f", meaning "pretty faint, pretty small, irregular round, gradually a little brighter middle, with a 7th magnitude star nearby". When using a small telescope, this is a "faint, small, unresolved and difficult" target with an angular size of 1.9 arc minutes. It has an integrated visual magnitude of 11.4. This cluster has a reddening corrected distance modulus of 18.43±0.15, corresponding to a distance of 48.5 kpc. The cluster has a mass of about 140,000 times the mass of the Sun. It is an old cluster, having an estimated age of 13.1 billion years. In photographs, the cluster spans an apparent size of 3.50 arc minutes. The core radius has an angular size of 10.7±0.4 arc seconds, while the half-light radius is 24.3 arc seconds. There are a total of 49 known and one candidate RR Lyrae variable stars in the cluster, as of 2011. Eight are RRd, or double-mode RR Lyrae variables. The average periods are 0.591 days for RR Lyrae type ab and 0.335 days for RR Lyrae type c. These are consistent with a classification of Oosterhoff-intermediate for the cluster. Twelve other variables have been identified, including two long-period variables and a Cepheid variable. Number of Subs: L 20 , R 20 , G 19 , B 20 Sub Length: 60sec Total Integration Time: 79 minutes Date Captured: 24/12/2018 Imaging Camera: Moravian G2 2000 Imaging Telescope: GSO RC8 CF Reducer: no Focal Length: 1625 Image Scale: 0.94 arcsec/pixel Field of View: 19 x 25 arcmin Mount: SW NEQ6 Pro, Rowan belt modded Guide Scope: Orion ST80 Guide Camera: Prostar LP colour (toupcam) Capture Software: APT Astrophotography Tool Guide Software: PHD Guiding 2 Processing Software: PixInsight Shane
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Good grief!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Greg
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Australia under a massive combination trough. My Wx station recorded 41.5C today WA had very high fire warning for entire State. Some of those Hail stones measured up to 80mm in diameter in Sydney. !! Dave
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I see Gold Coast and Sydney got hail the size of golf balls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Struck Down Again
poppasmurf replied to scorpius's topic in Off Topic - Funny Videos - Interesting Concepts
Merry Xmas Dave. Shane -
Struck Down Again
Radar replied to scorpius's topic in Off Topic - Funny Videos - Interesting Concepts
Good news on diagnosis my friend. Have a great Xmas. Ray
