Leaderboard

BTW here are the kits. Eric

Planets. Finally, a 'sort of' clear night. Started off shortly after sunset with a nice view of our Earth's shadow projected onto the atmosphere. Then was able to revisit Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. Not much detail on the side of Mars that was facing me at the time due to a very large dust storm currently in progress. Cheers, Tim.

Finally had some clear weather. I was so out of practice when I started these (and a few glasses of wine in) I completely forget to take notice of my histogram on my first run of Jupiter, so rather than embarrass myself, I will only post Saturn, Mars and Venus (and not in that order). Hopefully tomorrow night will be clear and I'll do some more. Each image is approximately 500 frames per RGB channel (I should take more notice of that). Regards Ray

I think it has something to do with the Moon being upside down at your place Greg

Only 4 x 30-min subs so tons of noise, and I can't use statistics to get rid of plane trails when 2 of the 4 subs has a plane on it However, what this does show me is that if I ever see a clear sky again I need to get a lot more hors with the 200mm lenses on this region. Greg

The New Forest Observatory at 5:30 p.m. after a day of snow - and it's still snowing!!!

When I was in the Norfolk County Constabulary, (1957 - 1968) standing outside the Norwich Gates at Sandringham House for 4 hours at a time and within the grounds, surrounded by 6ft drifts of snow it was not amusing, especially when the Superintendent in Charge of Sandringham Division (Lt Col R B Mitchell) drove up in his heated car, winding the window down and saying ..."But think of the honour chap!" I spent 9 Christmases and many other occasions at Sandringham House being one of the "honoured" chosen few. Dave

Clear from 7:30 until 9:00 p.m. last night, intrusive Moon, so went for Ceres. 18 x 15-minute subs from the Sky 90 array. Will go for this again tonight if it is clear even though the Moon will be even worse. Greg

Very quick and very dirty process of current target, NGC 1365. approx 9hrs integration RGB. Still need Luminance data but needed to see progress as I haven't done any processing for a while. Shane

From 15/02/2018 here are 36 x 10-minute subs on the Sky 90 array of beautiful blue star Gomeisa (Beta Canis Majoris). The averaged data shows a nice bright asteroid near centre (not visible in this SDMask stacked image which is used to get rid of the hot pixels). Greg

Since getting into this hobby, I've moved through several mounts beginning with a Meade LX90 on a wedge, ETX125, Vixen SX Star Book, Celestron CGEM and now a iOptron CEM60, its been a frustrating journey but learned a lot along the way. My last durable mount was the CGEM with which I took many satisfactory images with guiding that allowed up to 15 minute sub frames on a pier mounted in my light polluted area of metropolitan Los Angeles, California, Pasadena actually. After about 6 years the CGEM movements were getting a bit sketchy and from time to time fount it had a mind of its own when trying to align it to the night sky. So I started looking about for a replacement. I settled on a portable light weight iOptron CEM25 for my lighter optical tubes. This experiment proved very successful with smooth opteration and exceptional guiding performance one aligned to the north celestial pole which was fairly easy with the given polar scope. I was so impressed with its smooth operation and ease of use, that I decided on replacing my pier mounted Celestron with its big brother, the CEM60. I had to have a new adapter block made to secure it to the pier, but once set up it has turned out quite well following a few pilot error hiccups. Pay attention to the owner's manual when plugging in the cables! I plugged my Starlight Express guide camera into a power outlet by mistake and seem to have fried the connection from it to the scope. A GPUSB cable and box from Shoestring Astronomy has become a very good work around so it now works great. I'm impressed with the smooth operation and guiding I have gotten with this set up as being ligh years ahead of my prior struggles. I don't like to endorse products because your experience might be quite different, but so far this has exceeded my expectations. I use a Celestron 9.25" SCT, Stellarvue 102SV refractor and Celestron 6" SCT on this set up. Its a bit too robust to balance m 66mm Williams optics refractor, which resides happily on the smaller CEM25P.

15 hours worth of 40-minute subs using the Sky 90 array Greg

Here's a quick process of last night's M31 data taken with the Sky 90 array. This is 9-hours worth of 20-minute subs. Weather permitting I will go for a LOT more data on this one and may start off with 30-minute subs Greg

Got out for a couple of hours last night before the Moon rose. This is 11 x 10-minute subs using the Hyperstar III on the C11 with a Trius 814C OSC CCD. Noel Carboni processed this one as it was very difficult to sort out (flatten) with a large bright nucleus in the middle of the frame. Greg

Caph is in the lower left. This is another 200mm lens image, 18 subs, 15-minutes per sub. Processing for this one by Noel Carboni who screwed the pants off it trying to bring out CTB1 which you can barely make out bang in the centre of the image. Greg

A reprocess of the Kemble's Cascade data sans spikes Greg

Hi all! After a very long hiatus from anything astronomy I took a vacation and went to the Nebraska Star Party. My main goals there were to do some visual observing with my 20" Obsession Classic telescope from a pristine dark site. The goals were achieved in spades! I took one night there to set up the AT72ED and do some imaging. Well things went wrong all over the place and needless to say due to blue screens and a portable storage device failure I thought I was left with nothing. I did find 1 image that somehow was saved. It was a single raw frame of 180 seconds at ISO 800 with an unmodified Canon T3i. I shot this with the AT72ED on a guided Sky Watcher EQ-6. Image was processed with Digital Photo Professional, Photo Shop Elements 2018, and Astronomy Tools for Elements. After many iterations, I am satisfied that I have pulled as much information out of one frame of data as I am capable of with the tools I have. I tried very hard not to over cook or use to much noise reduction. I was lucky to be at such of a dark site that just one frame held so much information. Eric

Well here is my rusty effort done in PixInsight. I hope you approve Eric. Shane

As I finished this imaging session it fogged right over - I was extremely lucky to only lose the last pair of subs!! One of my favourite areas, the Caph region of Cassiopeia with NGC7789 in the bottom right hand corner. 200mm lenses with Trius M26C OSC CCDs. 14 subs at 15-minutes per sub. Greg

Here is the light pollution chart for the NSP. Eric

Wow, one sub! The question begs, why do we need an hours worth if you are getting results like that with one sub? I was in the U.S recently. I was in San Fran, San Diego and then Tuscon. Tuscon has the dark sky laws for Kitt Peak Observatory, the skies were amazing. Regards Ray

The above Caph data combined with some earlier (2-frame) data. Greg

110 hours and 38 minutes later out came a Sierpinski pyramid in Rigid.Ink black PLA, 162mm along a base edge and 0.2mm resolution. Greg

This is nowhere near finished yet. It was just the first taste of deep sky for about 5 months. RGB, 1 hour, 1 hour, 2 hours, respectively. No luminance or Ha yet, stacked in Maxim DL, Processed in PixInsight. Still needs noise removal and a few other things. Just feels good to get some photons and the equipment going. C&C's welcome Ray

Stunning mate. How come the constellations are upside down though? Nice vibrant colour in those stars. Ray

I think anyone would be horrified if they knew what went on in their garden down at the macro-scale Greg Should I be putting "Warning - Graphic Images" next to these??

Awesome idea mate. Love to see a photo of that. Otherwise maybe a scope trolley (or similar) could be useful. And yes, Facebook killed a lot of specialty forums. I'm resilient, we'll weather Zuckerberg's storm. Ray

Geesuz people! finally got some observatory time in. Day time shots. Weather is looking good for some night time work as well. Yeehar! About 500 frames per shot. Pretty quick process. Just low res jpegs. Feedback welcome. Ray

Two macros Greg

Somewhere in a large bag of old B&W antique photos I am sure I have a photo of the "Sputnick I" will have to see if I can find it. That would be around 1957 if my memory serves me right I had just been posted to North Walsham in Norfolk after joining the Norfolk County Police, having completed my training at Eynsham Police College. . The camera was an Agfa Isolette, I bought when I was in the Navy.

Just seen I got today's EPOD - please vote - http://epod.usra.edu/blog/ Greg

I have an old Canon 5D MkII - the latest one in this range is the one to get Greg

Awesome mate. My obs needs a clean I think. I'm going to remove the wooden outside walls and put some type of white cladding / sheeting around it instead (its starting to get weathered). Ray

Yep that's the printer - it will do 8 x 8 x 8 inch prints. Greg I use black Latex spray-on paint. Yes - I know it doesn't bear thinking about Greg

What climate change?? Greg

I've been acquiring data on this object for about a year. Admittedly I throw most of that data away. IC2944 sits near the SCP and with the weather over the last few months (either cloud or poor seeing) I haven't been able to get enough data. I still want to get a few more hours. You are looking at 20x 5 minute subs per channel (Ha, OIII and SII). No luminance yet. It really needs some more data to do it justice. Basically the image shows numerous Bok Globules collapsing into EGGs (evaporative gaseous globules) which will form new stars. In fact every star you see in the sky was once a globule like these. Capturing star formation like this is one of my favourite things to shoot. Photos are few and far between these days with the crazy weather. Maybe I should do more solar. This is only a low resolution version and hasn't been deconvoluted yet. It needs much more data. The ionized hydrogen in the background though accentuates the globules. Comments and feedback welcome. Ray

Had a call from NBNCo saying they will be calling round to my place on Monday 29th Mar to install NBN. That will be great to see the speed meter move a bit further round the dial from 3.6KB/s !! Our 50 year old copper is so slow it runs backwards. It sucks. All I need now is Telstra to replace the wire from the pit to the house which only has 2 wires left which are cross-patched and the cable has surfaced above the ground, the pipe coming apart. Been like this for 2 years, even a complaint to the ITO didn't cause them to do anything other than wrap a bit of insulating tape round the pipe breakage. TPG have sent a an el cheapo TP-Link modem, but will be using my AC68U Asus Router which is NBN compatible and a Cisco VOIP phone router box. Far more reliable setup. Dave.

Especially when you do it twice !! My eldest is 56 and my youngest is 35 5 sons: 6 grandchildren 3 girls 3 boys (at last count) Val and I do not have any plans ) I was 26 when my first was born. Dave

Had another play tonight. I haven't done processing for a few months so its good to get my feet wet again. I think this needs luminance for sharpening. I still need to bring out the colours more. Regards Ray

Totally near the pole Greg and a painful object to shoot. I was determined to get it though. I will still add a few hours data to it. It needs more colour and sharpening. But after such a drought I'm happy to be processing and making pictures again. Ray

Yeah.. All very tongue in cheek But some interesting archival stuff there. Did you know that the "Sun Picture House" in Broome WA is the oldest "Cinema" still operating in the world. Its a semi open air venue with deck chair type seating. All the ladies wear long skirts. Not to be formal, but to ward off flying cockroaches ! Spent a few hours there ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Picture_Garden

Sorry to hijack your thread mate but this is exactly the problem I am having. Remember the old days on this forum, we were outside most nights a month. I'm struggling to get cloudless nights, and if they are clear, the seeing is shocking. On average one photo (enough good data) is taking two months, crazy stuff. Ray

Great One Greg: Down under in Perth WA we are having one of the worse viewing periods I have experienced since I took up Astronomy. Humidity up in the high 90s Clouds rolling in at night and evaporation creating instability that is taking images of even the moon almost impossible. As Ray was commenting this has been the norm this summer down under. It is most un-nice! Almost enough to drive me back to dear old Blighty ! Dave

By the way it was apparently an ArtSat. Ray

At least something works here ! Dave

Not in Pasadena where we live, but along the coast about 50 miles away its horrific and smoke is everywhere. this area of the coastal plain has a history of burning to the sea when off shore winds pick up for centuries, but now people have populated the slopes so its dangerous. I was out of the imaging business for nearly six months after changing out my mount and getting the new one up to performing. when skies clear I hope to do more.

Amazing mate. Bit of colour drifting amongst the void. Ray

Took the Canon 5D MkII and 15mm fisheye lens out last night at 10:30 p.m. (still pretty light) to grab these two Greg

too much flex so version 2 is being printed

Normally we go from November thru March with no rain. In 24 hours we had more rain than the whole monthly average. Late cyclones in the North West invariably track down the coast as tropical low pressure sytems. The past week has seen very cloudy hot and humid weather that tracked from Broome in the NW across to the Central wheatbelt and Goldfields affected large areas along the western coastline. Today saw clear skies, but another band is tracking down and the bureau threaten 30% chance of rain tomorrow. In the NW it is the "Wet Season" with monsoonal rains. But half the Top end in WA and NT is under water, roads and rivers have vanished under huge lakes. https://www.google.com.au/search?q=NT+Floods&rlz=1C1CHFX_enAU779AU779&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiu99iGxYzZAhVFbbwKHT9xCtkQsAQIUA&biw=1920&bih=949 I think they call it Global Warming. Over in the Eastern States they are breaking records for high temps like never seen before. The Weather Bureau has added an additional colour to their weather maps to cover temps over 45C. And of course we still have that dirty great hole in the Ozone Layer above The Southern hemisphere. UV index on most days is Extreme. 20 minutes laying unprotected in the sun and you end up getting burned. I see on TV that Greenland is having huge Ice melts exposing land never see before without ice and snow cover. Not sure where all this is going to end. Dave