Leaderboard

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

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

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

A complete reprocess of the central Lyra image. A 4-frame mosaic using the Canon 200mm prime lenses and Trius M26C OSC CCDs. Greg

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

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

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 looks much better than FB on my phone. Great job Prof. Shane

Impressive photo Prof. Ray

quick process of 8 hrs of Lum Shane

Stunning mate. Well done. Ray

Hi Greg, I have had 2 lamenectomies and a vertabrae fusion. I always have some pain but this time it was a lot worse than usual. I just have to deal with it as I have since it all started about 10 years ago. The way I look at it, even though I bitch at times, is there is always someone worse off than me. In other words "harden up princess" lol. Shane

For the fist time in yonks, the skies have been clear today until some idiot decided to start a bush fire. Moon came up almost full looking very bilious in the face. Probby dept doing a burn off. Anyway, I had made an adapter V Bar to fit the Mak90 scope I have and mounted it on the EQ6. Somewhat overkill but far more stable that the rickety EQ1 that came with it. Whacked the old Canon 350D on in prime focus and banged off a few shots. Not the best due the smoke etc, but the first time I been able to anything much for over a year. Tidied it up in "Paint dot net" (sort of a lightweight clone of Photoshop. Free & and has some nice features) At least managed to do something. Hopefully more as weather starts to warm N-Joy Dave

The main point of a UPS is not to keep your whole system going during a power cut - but only to let you close things down in an orderly fashion when the power goes off. So you don't put things like the dew straps and any heaters (dome rotators, aperture openers) or anything else on the UPS. So with a PC, 2 monitors and the mount (plus camera) as the only thing on the UPS, something around 1500W capability should be more than enough. Greg

We have had unusually hot weather recently and I have had to go out most nights with the hose to prevent the Missus' plants from dying. Noticed Superhydrophobicity at work on the Bulrush leaves, so I went out today to macro the effect. Wasn't expecting my little mate to be there as well - I'm always amazed at the antenna length of these beauties!! Greg

Over the years when I have been involved with medical issues, especially those of a serious nature, I have often turned to throwing a bit of paint at a canvas. It is a very relaxing hobby. but also at the same time a big challenge, one of the hardest things about oil painting, or in any other medium come to that, is the blank white space staring at you from the easel. I have rarely painted using photos or pictures and never copy other artist's work. In general I sit gazing at the blank canvas and mentally imagine a scene, describing the scene to myself. -- It also helps to be slightly mad to achieve this ! Here are a couple of my renditions. Not worth a lot ATM, but probably millions when I am dead. .....N-Joy I will soon be adding an Art page to my Website with more of my works. Dave. #1. Meadow Falls Oil on canvas 36" x 48" (The remotes are not part of the picture! Should have removed them off the cupboard!) #2. Mountain Fall Oil on canvas 24" x 20"

I think it is the most beautiful object on the planet - but then my brain is wired differently to everyone else Greg

outstanding delicate shape and details!