Great night!
Managed to polar align and work out Camera settings
It has been a long time or my brain is loosing data.
A bit of dew but nice and clear, lots of lights around me with massive new developments in North-west Sydney.
Well it's nearly 4am and I have just come in from the observatory, in my quest to observe the Encke Gap in Saturn's A-ring. The Seeing did hold up as i had hoped from earlier tonight, and i feel i was very close to seeing it at 167x on my 8" f5 Newt (12mm Plossl EP with my Televue 2x barlow); but alas it was just out of reach ( and I had no more power to throw on). Not even averted vision would tease it out. I was concentrating on the top and bottom points of the rings in their current orientation, as that is where the seems to be the best chance. Perhaps if I had the 8" f12 Cassegrain on the mount i might have been able to push the magnification more tonight, but I Don't like changing over scopes in the dark, if I can avoid it. The sky certainly seemed like it could handle more magnification.
As we move towards the opposition on the 20th of July, Saturn will get larger, and that will help a lot, provided I can get this Seeing conditions again at that time. Fingers crossed.
Great night anyway, such stability in the upper atmosphere has been rare lately.
It just now occurred to me..I really need a scope for visual..I have the 80 mm binos but with folk talking about splitting doubles, Saturn etc...so that's another box I need
I managed some decent data on the running chicken last night and I think I will just try and double it tonight..and try some more high ISO exposures on the other mount ...I am processing another from last night 25600 ISO but not desks to see what it's like..so far looks ok.
Good luck to all.
Alex
It just now occurred to me..I really need a scope for visual..I have the 80 mm binos but with folk talking about splitting doubles, Saturn etc...so that's another box I need
I managed some decent data on the running chicken last night and I think I will just try and double it tonight..and try some more high ISO exposures on the other mount ...I am processing another from last night 25600 ISO but not desks to see what it's like..so far looks ok.
Good luck to all.
Alex
I will be out there again Alex. Swapped over to the 8" f12 Cassegrain, so I am ready to try for the Encke Gap with higher magnification. Hoping the Seeing holds up as well as last night.
Clouds rolled in around 9:30 here in Canberra. Got about 35mins on Gabriela Mistral and have massacred it in gimp and phone filters for your viewing pleasure I will be back for much more.
Me and kid 1 also got another half hour on rosetta and sthn pinwheel. Great discovery today was that we can lock the remote trigger on the slr to just keep taking pics! No more standing there and clicking em off, though thats also some nice hangout time.
Clouds rolled in around 9:30 here in Canberra. Got about 35mins on Gabriela Mistral and have massacred it in gimp and phone filters for your viewing pleasure I will be back for much more.
Me and kid 1 also got another half hour on rosetta and sthn pinwheel. Great discovery today was that we can lock the remote trigger on the slr to just keep taking pics! No more standing there and clicking em off, though thats also some nice hangout time.
JP you can buy cheap interval timers for most cameras as well which allow you to set delay between exposures to provide cool down time etc.
There are some very nice apps that also run camwra s in Astro mode, like Backyard EOS and Backyard Nikon, but you will pay a fee for them, and you need a laptop nearby teathered to the camera. Great tools though, as you can pre-program a whole night's imaging run.
I did get out about 3am when Saturn got above 50 degrees but I knew walking out there what the Seeing was no where as good as the night before. I gave it a try but the conditions did not support using higher magnification. Packed up. Good luck to you.
I turned in 1 am because I was not functioning at all well.
I managed more data for the chicken..may even grab more tonight...and near 500 frames in high ISO on the Nikon mainly to always have something to process...
Alex
I am bumping this thread up again because it is New Moon week and the rain seems to have cleared from the east coast for a few days. Certainly, from the forecast, tonight and tomorrow night are looking good. Get your dew straps warmed up, as the residual humidty might be a problem if you had some rain recently. I had a chance to check out the Seeing last night after midnight, when the cloud disappeared, and the sky looked very stable.
Good luck, and post up here regarding what your getting up to.
I know there are a couple of gents out at Coolah for the New Moon, hopefully they can find the time to give us a report from beyond the Black Stump.
I am bumping this thread up again because it is New Moon week and the rain seems to have cleared from the east coast for a few days. Certainly, from the forecast, tonight and tomorrow night are looking good. Get your dew straps warmed up, as the residual humidty might be a problem if you had some rain recently. I had a chance to check out the Seeing last night after midnight, when the cloud disappeared, and the sky looked very stable.
Good luck, and post up here regarding what your getting up to.
I know there are a couple of gents out at Coolah for the New Moon, hopefully they can find the time to give us a report from beyond the Black Stump.
I love this, and reckon it should just keep on rolling! As if a virtual star party ever needs to end?!
Tonight not looking great for Canberra, but tomorrow night is a chance
I set up last night under clouds, expecting that my cosmic-eagerness-force (CEF) would part them at some stage, but it was not to be.
Waiting on two v exciting bits of gear, and hope that the new gear cloud induction capacity (NGCIC) isn't going to overwhelm my CEF for too long.
I'll report back with even the most mundane progress made
Well, my apologies, it looks like the weather forecast has significantly changed since a few hours ago. Just stuck my head outside to confirm what the Bureau sat photo was showing, and the cloud has come out of no where. I was all set up to do some star testing tonight but it looks like it is off. The four day prognostic chart shows significant front movement, rain, and possible East Coast Low development; about as different as possible from the two clear night's of high pressure area indicated earlier today.
I got out last night. A bit windy and some bars of clouds coming across, but really wanted to try the mono camera, baader coma corrector and APT. Aim was to just be able to tocus and get the system going ok, but ended up getting almost 4 hours of subs. Still no guidescooe, so it was 120 x 1min in Ha, then 20 x 1 min each LRGB.
Haven't processed the LRGB yet, but here is the Ha.
In other news, i spent almost the ahole time out there w ok the rig. Got some thermal tights and also was sat in a sleeping bag the whole time... i was super toasty! Happy to be getting a more comfortable system down. Thinking about getting a shorter refractor to do some visual out there while waiting for pics.
Being a coastal dweller in Sydney and south coast NSW we don’t get a break from these darn big low pressure systems off the NSW coast that push cloud in and dump rain on us
Clearing towards the end of the week , hopefully
May was a quiet month for imaging ( 1 x glob and 3 galaxies ) and observing with less than favourable seeing
Hopefully June will be better with a nice chunk of the Milky Way rising earlier ( Lagoon, Triffid , Eagle , Omega etc.... )
Being a coastal dweller in Sydney and south coast NSW we don’t get a break from these darn big low pressure systems off the NSW coast that push cloud in and dump rain on us
Clearing towards the end of the week , hopefully
May was a quiet month for imaging ( 1 x glob and 3 galaxies ) and observing with less than favourable seeing
Hopefully June will be better with a nice chunk of the Milky Way rising earlier ( Lagoon, Triffid , Eagle , Omega etc.... )
Clear Skies !
Absolutely, the East Coast Low makes for interesting surfing vision but prevents any sort of astro activity. The tendancy of these systems to strike twice, or continuiously, as they at first drift south then come bsck along to coast northward as a High pressure area pushes them, is particularly galling.
I feel like a jerk for having somewhat clear skies!
Processed the LRGB, from last night, colours aren't really where I'd like them, but the stars are aligned and it looks pretty much like a colour picture, so I'm calling it good.
Eggy stars and not super sharp, but hoping that guiding will help that... this is the goal for the end of the week, have guiding going, shoot some SHO and process in Hubble palette
I could not believe it. I drove back up yesterday (10 hours) cloud all the way but when I went out about 8 pm it was clear ..I was too tired to respond but I bet if I had set up it would have coulded in by the he time I set up.
Hope it's clear tonight.
Alex
I will be back for much more.
