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The old NEQ6 has been sold and moved into her new home. The new owner is absolutely loving it and having a ball learning to drive it, as evidenced by the numerous messages I get on a daily/nightly basis. Like myself, Leon, the new owner, has made a huge leap in equipment coming from a EQ2/3 to a goto mount. I well remember the overwhelming feeling with such a huge jump in technology. Shane

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

Great to see your images being used mate. We wanna see the gaming mats once they are finished. I think they will look super cool. Ray

These two images were taken with a TRIAD filter from urban site in Pasadena California. Both were ten minute exposures. Used Stellarvue 102sv Refractor with a field flattener, iOpron CEM60 mount.

Very nice mate. I so need a terrestrial digital camera for AP. I still have over 20 rolls of kodak elite chrome 200 and three film bodies, which I will certainly use. when I upgraded my mount from a Losmandy G11 to an AP, the new owner of the G11 also loved it, as I did when I first bought it. AP is a journey of technical, scientific and cosmic knowledge. It is an incredibly rewarding and sophisticated pastime. Ray

Getting New or Used equipment that is in good functional condition is always a joy to experience. I have sold used gear and bought used gear as part of upgrades. One cannot always afford new. I sold my EOS 350D to a friend and she is having great experiences with it. Last week I took delivery of an used Canon EOS 7D Body, with low shutter count. Functions like it just came out of the new box. At $425 it has given me a step up in the photography world. Waiting now for the storms and clouds to disappear to try it on the 10" Skywatcher. Of course my collection of Canon EF mount lens are all compatible for terrestrial photography. Dave

Not sure if I posted this one years ago - but I just came across it again. A 9-microsecond freeze of an air rifle pellet taking out 2 eggs. The air rifle pellet can be seen off to the far left. And the eggs were later eaten by the dog - so no waste. 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

Man that is a "lot" of work. i collected around 15 hours worth of RGB and around 8 hours processing my first mosaic. Works out to 4.5 hours integration time for each RGB pane. I don't think I'll try for mor than 2 panes at this point. Trying to get my head around building a mosaic in PI from individual R, G, & B subs and merge them is a bit of a mind blower. Shane

Added Luminance 4 hrs each panel. Shane

Hi each N All. Just recovering from nasty Flu Attack and Bronchitis infection. First time for years. Seems like the vaccine I had did not include the beast that invaded me. Not a very nice 2 week session. Howsomeever, I had time to browse around and few pennies to spare and picked up this Canon EOS D7 body with low shutter count and in excellent condx for a little over $400AU. I have an almost full range of EF lens for my EOS 750D so they are interchangeable. The white thing ? It can also be found in black under the Opteka brand. This one, from Keldalens.com designed in Japan has Bell and Howell lens 650 to 1300mm Telephoto Zoom f/8 16 MF. Have looked through it terrestrially. - Skies at night are disgusting, after all it is winter and we are actually getting some rain as well However even on the Manfrotto RC2 tripod/mount, manually releasing the shutter causes wobblys. esp at 1300mm. I also have in my ditty box a T thread 2X converter from my 500mm Mirror lens, which is compatible. 2600mm !!??!! I think I will have to mount it on the EQ6Pro ! ATM I have a remote shutter/Timer control coming for the D7. That will be essential using this beast. Reviews appear to give similar overall views that the glass is of reasonable quality, but at 1300mm is pushing one's friendship a bit. The units do vary from who made the optics. Bell and Howell is a very old established company, better known for their manufacture of cinematic projection equipment. Will be interesting what it can produce astronomically with the moon as the subject. Hopefully I will be feeling more inclined soon and that a few occasional clear nights rock up. Quite impressed with the D7, which mechanically is based on the old 1N film camera (Which I also have) similarly built like a tank and weighs as heavy. Note: The photo with the lens extended to 1300mm does tend to indicate a bit of 'sagging' this is not the case the telescoping is very positive and has a lock ring. Its an optical 'confusion' and is quite straight One reviewer said he had issues focusing, for my part I found no difficulty - even with my ancient eyes. However it would be very unfair to compare it with a Genuine Canon Telephoto lens costing $5K!!. Dave.

Awesome mate. When I get back there I will definitely pop in. It is always dangerous for me to visit telescope shops. Ray

Got the pier plate home today, now waiting for the paint to dry. And guess what, the bloody rain is coming down and looks like it will be cloudy for the next week at least. I should have known all new astro gear comes with cloud, just been a while since I've made any new purchases.LOL. Will post more pics later as I get it all commissioned. Shane

ja, ja, ja, geesuz! for some strange reason only known to the Universe I share your enjoyment. Send us some pics once it is setup on Monday or Tuesday my friend. Enjoyment in AP comes from a good mount, everything else is just trinkets (to an extent). Ray

Meet my latest grand child, Isabelle Rose Crabb. Shane

Last week I went to a place called Thornwick Bay in Flamborough on the East Yorkshire Coast to shoot some time lapse and star trails. It wasn't the perfect night for it although the sky was clear as the moon was quite bright and high in the sky for the whole night. I set up two cameras, my Sony A7Sii and Samyang 24mm f1.4 lens to do a Holy Grail Time lapse and my Sony A7iii and Samyang 12mm f2.8 fisheye lens to do an ordinary time lapse and some star trails. I set both tripods up about 15 yards further in than the tide would go (worked out by deposited seaweed on the shore). I had a few people who showed interest and asked about what I was doing and there was also a couple of families out of camera shot on the right of the beach having a BBQ, they packed up just as the sun was sinking behind the cliff tops when it got quite chilly. Due to the moon being quite bright I had to use a much lower ISO than normal and even with this it looked as though the beach was bathed in sunlight even though it was midnight. Out of all the data I have done a selfie, a star trail image an animated star trail video, a normal time lapse and a holy grail time lapse so I still managed to get a fair bit done in the 4 hours of darkness. I have incorporated all this in the video clip below which can be seen in HD and 4K https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEqUYNyVVmg

I sent my Losmandy G11 to the U.S and imported my AP1600GTO from the U.S to Perth. Yeah shipping isn't cheap but there are good deals out there for slower air freight, just steer clear of the overnight express methods. Ray

Epic mate. Keep us posted, we like to share in other's excitement. Ray

Geesuz! Nice toy mate. Can't wait for you to get it. Ray

Greg

3's a magic number Greg. Very cool. Ray

Dragon Man! Where have you been hiding! Good to see you are getting some photons my friend. 19 cameras is a bit steep, my missus would kill me. Welcome back. Ray

Yep clouds here as well. super annoying, still have to polar align and calibrate the guiding before doing a test run. Shane

Alright, procrastination is over. Mount has been removed from pier and ready for a service and check up. There is something not quite right inside and it's time to find out what. Tomorrow I will start the disassembly. Hopefully I find an easy to fix problem that will reinstate decent guiding, and allow me to get back to imaging. I have missed quite a few good nights trying to solve the guiding issue and then procrastinating over stripping the mount and servicing it. I'll report back any findings. Ideally I would like to upgrade the NEQ6 but alas funds (read Minister of Finance and War) wont allow it at this time. Shane

No defocusing, that is animated star trails effect using starstax and Premier Pro. I only use my Sony cameras now. I sold all my telescope kit as I had nowhere to set it up to use it Best wishes Gordon

I've felt 50 degrees in Crete and Arizona - it feels life threatening walking down the street. Greg

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

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

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

A not so empty place in the sky! caught a lot of gnats there! Nice view!

smoky place !

With a full Moon (red circle) for size comparison. Greg

I didn't refocus during those 110-minutes, but it was coming up to refocus time Usually need to refocus the Hyperstar every hour on a cold night. Greg

Epic effort Prof. Man that focus must have been sharp for the detail in those dust lanes. How often do you need to refocus? Ray

spectacular Prof. Shane

Beautiful Prof. Would have been a nice intense nebula in that location before those stars formed and sucked up all the gas. Ray

WOW that is a lot of stars. Shane

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