The Astronomy hobby thread

[Eric Hahl]

[QUOTE=Rusty Heap;11401495]Friend of mine just shot Andromeda.

[/QUOTe

Sure makes one wonder what or who is out there.

[Rusty Heap]

"them"

[Rusty Heap]

Shot Orion a couple years back from a remote island offshore of Belize.

the milky way was glowing super bright.



6 seconds at F1.4, iso 6400.

[Eric Hahl]

Nice one!

[masraum]

Very cool. I need to get out with my camera and shoot the milkyway a bit.

[flatbutt]

For anyone within a couple of hours of Cherry Springs Pa the Black Forest Star Party is on for Oct. 1. 2 3

https://bfsp.org/

[Eric Hahl]

I really need to get off my butt and start astro-photoing again. Looking back through some old images today. Thought I'd share a few. Seems my ne place is not very conducive for AP so I might have to get a smaller, portable setup.

Anyway, here's a few images I don't think I've shared yet. If I have sorry.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Eric Hahl

I really need to get off my butt and start astro-photoing again. Looking back through some old images today. Thought I'd share a few. Seems my ne place is not very conducive for AP so I might have to get a smaller, portable setup.

Anyway, here's a few images I don't think I've shared yet. If I have sorry.

Those are just awful! Amazing results!

Can you imagine if it were possible to see items like that visually?

THat's too bad about the new place. I remember at one point you were looking at a place that was going to be an improvement over the old place.

AP is a time suck, between getting everything setup, being up late/early, then there's the post-processing which is also huge.

[Eric Hahl]

Originally Posted by masraum

Those are just awful! Amazing results!

Can you imagine if it were possible to see items like that visually?

THat's too bad about the new place. I remember at one point you were looking at a place that was going to be an improvement over the old place.

AP is a time suck, between getting everything setup, being up late/early, then there's the post-processing which is also huge.

The new place has darker skies but it's much lower in the valley and seems to have crappy skies. Plus there are some large trees in way.

I've been eyeing up this type of mount. Maybe to use with a small, widefield scope.

Yes, the amount of time does suck but its a fun hobby for me none-the-less.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Eric Hahl

The new place has darker skies but it's much lower in the valley and seems to have crappy skies. Plus there are some large trees in way.

I've been eyeing up this type of mount. Maybe to use with a small, widefield scope.

Yes, the amount of time does suck but its a fun hobby for me none-the-less.

Ah, OK. Darker, but bad seeing and obstructions.

I'd like to do it, but I don't have the time, or I do, but I like to sleep.

Interesting mount!

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by Eric Hahl

The new place has darker skies but it's much lower in the valley and seems to have crappy skies. Plus there are some large trees in way.

I've been eyeing up this type of mount. Maybe to use with a small, widefield scope.

Yes, the amount of time does suck but its a fun hobby for me none-the-less.

Ugh...weird Chinese crap...

I Blueprinted a Celestron CG-4 mount (yes, the crappy white one) with a dual axis drive and ST-4 compatible port, and it will autoguide an 80mm f/5 refractor at .75 RMS arcseconds, or a 150mm f/5 Newt, close to it's weight limit, at about 1-1.1 RMS arcseconds.

Why go with some weird Chinese crap? ASCOM compliant, but with the LX200 driver? Probably the vestigial LX200 Classic compliance, which is almost just ST-4 level stuff? Yikes!

Heck, if you want a small sky tracker mount, look at the iOptron ones, everyone I know with an iOptron mount raves about it, we've Blueprinted more of them than any other brand, and they apparently have an impressive US based support system...they have shown to update mounts based on user input. Or find a used CEM25 or relatively new CEM26, they both punch WAY above their range.

[flatbutt]

Most of the imagers I know use an iOptron.

[Eric Hahl]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Ugh...weird Chinese crap...

I Blueprinted a Celestron CG-4 mount (yes, the crappy white one) with a dual axis drive and ST-4 compatible port, and it will autoguide an 80mm f/5 refractor at .75 RMS arcseconds, or a 150mm f/5 Newt, close to it's weight limit, at about 1-1.1 RMS arcseconds.

Why go with some weird Chinese crap? ASCOM compliant, but with the LX200 driver? Probably the vestigial LX200 Classic compliance, which is almost just ST-4 level stuff? Yikes!

Heck, if you want a small sky tracker mount, look at the iOptron ones, everyone I know with an iOptron mount raves about it, we've Blueprinted more of them than any other brand, and they apparently have an impressive US based support system...they have shown to update mounts based on user input. Or find a used CEM25 or relatively new CEM26, they both punch WAY above their range.

Huh, all of the mounts you mention happen to come from China. Just sayin'.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by Eric Hahl

Huh, all of the mounts you mention happen to come from China. Just sayin'.

I think that "weird" was the key word in my rant!

At least iOptron and Celestron have local sales and support, and a strong online community.

[masraum]

I took my new EP out last night, Televue Panoptic 24mm, Televue Delite 15mm, Baader Morpheus 12.5mm and Televue Nagler 9mm. Wow! Nice wide FOV EP really make a huge difference. The EP that I have now provide "wow" views, compared to the Plossls that I'd previously had with this scope. And with a focal length of 2000mm, I really "need" the extra FOV, especially when looking at things like the moon, Andromeda galaxy, or Pleiades.

I also made a dew shield which may/seemed have worked really well, or maybe we just weren't that dewy last night. Every other time I've been out observing, I've had tons of dew on the corrector plate when I packed up for the night. Last night, I didn't have any dew on the corrector, but there was some due on the grass and the scope.

I spent a fair amount of time looking at Jupiter and Saturn. I checked out the moon, and i took a tour of about 25 other subjects. I'd never before seen the Cassini division because when I got my first scope, Saturn was nearly edge on, and by the time the angle had opened up enough to see the rings well enough, I'd moved and sold the scope. Jupiter and Saturn, while relatively easy subjects are always fun and exciting. Seeing the GRS, bands, storms, and moons of Jupiter is always exciting. Seeing the rings and bands and moons of Saturn is always exciting. Hell, just looking at the moon (especially if it's only partially lit) is also exciting. Last night, I bumped the magnification on the moon up to 450x. That's one of the subjects that seems to take to high mag despite bad seeing, I assume because it's BRIGHT and BIG.

Some of the globular clusters that I looked at were amazing. The swan nebula was also breath taking.

Clouds rolled in and it was only about 2 hours of observing, but it was still great to get out and take the new EP for a spin.

The one thing that seems a little odd to me is how small the Televue EP are. I was expecting the Nagler, for sure, to be like a hand grenade. The Baader Morpheus are much larger by comparison, than any of the TV that I've got, although that seems a little less surprising since the Pano is only good for 68º and the Delite only 62º. Usually a wider FOV seems to be associated with larger size.

[masraum]

Just a short session tonight looking at Saturn, Jupiter and the moon. I got a great view of the Great Red Spot.

Holding the cell phone up to the EP which, of course, doesn't do the views justice. And the moon is fairly snoozy when it's full compared to a quarter moon or anything with a strong limb showing.





It's not super clear, but of the 2 central bands, the top, lighter band, off-center on the left is the GRS.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Holy crapola, I've never done planetary imaging before, this was just a whim. I didn't even get to use my hi-res camera, and I was looking over the neighbor's roof at about 40 degrees, so probably terrible seeing.
But...the "new" software and techniques make it easy! 30 frames per second, collect afew thousand frames in a video, then free software analyses the video, extracts the sharpest frames, and stacks them. Like, it took me about 15minutes to download, learn and run the software. Again, I've never done planetary work before, and this is FAR from optimal equipment. It's not even the best stuff that I have.

Here's an image from a client's scope. Meade 12" LX200R, 2x barlow, same Phillips webcam. 4000 images at 1/60th sec each.
Whole different ballgame.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Here's an image from a client's scope. Meade 12" LX200R, 2x barlow, same Phillips webcam. 4000 images at 1/60th sec each.
Whole different ballgame.

Yeah, AP is cool, but time consuming and generally pretty expensive, but planetary isn't too bad, and cool. I've wondered about getting a webcam to do a little planetary.

[herr_oberst]

Thought some of you might be interested in this....
A friend of mine is doing a solo bicycle ride across America right now. He updates his blog nightly and today he pitched his tent in Marathon Texas. Here's one of the things he saw he saw and commented on:

(Here's the link to his blog if you're curious, but the below image is the only part of the ride (so far) that's astronomy related)
https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=1mr&page_id=623553&v=y

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

Thought some of you might be interested in this....
A friend of mine is doing a solo bicycle ride across America right now. He updates his blog nightly and today he pitched his tent in Marathon Texas. Here's one of the things he saw he saw and commented on:

(Here's the link to his blog if you're curious, but the below image is the only part of the ride (so far) that's astronomy related)
https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=1mr&page_id=623553&v=y

It's a telescope farm, there are probably 8, maybe 10 in the country? Basically, you can buy a pad, build a small automated dome, and run remotely, just as he said. Small colleges and rich amateurs do it, as well as some asteroid or comet hunters.

My old friend Mark Trueblood built one of the first, he wrote early software to automate a scope, camera, dome, filter wheel, etc.