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Here's the reprocessed image using up to date calibration files. The two bright red stars over to the left are both Carbon Stars. Greg

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

This is a composite image of Coddington's nebula together with Carbon star SAO 15274 (bottom left hand corner) taken with the Sky 90 array. 5 hours last night and around 12 hours over 2 nights some time ago. Greg

Thanks Shane and Ray Here's 2 more from last night. These two were taken with the 6" f5 Achromat Focal reduced 0.7x Who says fast Achromats are crap? Cheers, Ken

I have been very impressed with absolutely every facet of the Moravian cameras. I would certainly get another if the need arose. Shane

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.

I got 18 x 15-minute subs with the 200mm lenses on this region last night and combined it with some earlier 200mm data. Greg

This is an image taken from suburban Pasadena Ca. under light polluted skies, using OPT Corp's TRIAD filter. Lets ionized H alpha, Beta and Oxygen wavelengths only through so it pretty well cleans up light pollution. This was 10, 15 minute exposures, with a QHY8L camera and Stellarvue 102SV Refractor on an iOptron CEM60 mount.

Tracking with PHD guiding is really superb

Happy Australia Day Dave

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

1. Power Unit Amp and foot Pedals 2. Power Unit 3. Foot pedals removed - Coated in muck 4. Pedal Frame cleaned and restored 5. Cleaning of Pedal boards and Volume control unit 6. This beast weighs a ton. Solid timber housing. Note the home made dolly to shift it around ! 7. Partially restored Roller and top of housing. 8. Roller and part panels removed to access switches 9. Restored stool. Had been used as a "coffee table" 10. Quick shot of the Yamaha HC3W Fully restored to 100% working condition.

this is bloody aweful. massive tracking and guiding issues. LRGB around 70-80 minutes I think it was. I think I might be needing a new mount. lots of noise and colour calibration didn't work properly either, also prob a bit over colour saturated. Having whinged about all that at least it is something. Shane

Then again ever considered a squadron of UFOs flying in formation? I note that the latest mounts have done away with gears and now use belts. My old EQ6pro is still chugging along OK. Dave.

Awesome mate. I'll keep an eye out for him. Ray

I have a water cooler for it but I have never used it. I sometimes put the aircon on inside the obs to cool it down from the day time heat, but that's about it. Ray

The EC must be phenomenal as it reportedly can take images without guiding, however as you can see on this map of the graph, with minimal guiding the CEM60 is really the best I've ever used by a long shot. I am used to seeing some sawtoothed motions recorded on the lines of both axes on the graph, but this mount seems to be able to track superbly, and for the price its hard to beat. I've used the smaller CEM25P with this same 4" refractor with similar guiding results. That is why I bought its bigger brother for my 9.25" SCT and 80mm guide scope. Its load capacity is listed I think at 60 pounds which is a lot, so i'm using only about half of that on my pier. Erratic guiding messed up some much time and effort in the past, that having this thing just perform so smoothly with no hassles, makes the tediousness of imaging go away. I'm using an OPT TRIAD filter that eliminates a lot of light so exposures here run 12-20 minutes per frame. In each session I've had not bad frames due to tracking errors. Even on its flip at the meridian, the target is dead center in the field of view... have to re-calibrate the guiding for the opposite hand, but it works flawlessly. If I sound enthusiastic about it, its because I've spent 8 years fighting all manner of mount deficiencies! cheers, I think the minister would approve of this purchase and hopefully you'd have similar good fortune using it!

That is pretty impressive Greg. Ray

Same set up as for Rosette, Triad Filter on 4" refractor. imaging from "light pollution central" can be fun.

Nice capture. As usual Perth and West Coast is plagued with cloud cover every night. The Met Office are forecasting a more than average hot Christmas this year for 6 years. Dave

Epic mate. I almost got some photons tonight but just as I was doing my PA cloud rolled in. At least one of us is getting some telescope time. Ray

Just for a laugh I combined some old Canon 200mm lens on Canon 5D MkII data with the recent Sky 90 data to see M31 in perspective Greg

Very nice mate. Ray

Incredible Prof. Well done. Ray

Beautiful Prof. Unfortunately my job trial ended in abject failure due to my back incapacitating me, so I have not been able to get out. Rather typical as I have had some nice clear skies and inabilty to take advantage. Shane

Lovely shot my friend. Ray

Grabbed a couple of more last night...If I could've got started just a bit sooner, I could have went for Venus as well. Four planets spread out across the sky. Quite awe inspiring.

Would love to see a sky like that. In fact I would just like to see a sky without 100% cloud ! But it is winter here I guess. Snow forecast on Bluff Knoll in the Stirling Ranges today. Dave

Yep - the sky was too light for a single 6-minute exposure. Greg

Not bad at all Ray. Congrats on getting something. If it's not cable probs it's the bloody weather here keeping me from getting anything, I'm having withdrawals lol. Shane

So much has happened and so much time has slipped by. But here is a quick update. My Oncologist at Fiona Stanley Hospital has decided on hormone treatment due to my age and some minor heart issues. Been on pill for a week now and in another week will change to a slow release subcutineous micro pill injection. That will last 12 weeks and I will return et seq every 12 weeks for replacement. Periodic Pathology will be called for to monitor my PSA and other indexes. So far very little side effects, just battling these freezing nights here in the West !