John, that target is blocked by a tree to the north of my location. Care to nominate an alternate to the east or south?
Again seeing was poor down my way, but transparency better. I have a one hour window for 2 Leo, between the trees as it transits the meridian. An easier target for you all may be Mu Velorum - much brighter than 2 Leo, quite tight and needs a reasonable sky. It is one of my "test" stars for conditions.
Again seeing was poor down my way, but transparency better. I have a one hour window for 2 Leo, between the trees as it transits the meridian. An easier target for you all may be Mu Velorum - much brighter than 2 Leo, quite tight and needs a reasonable sky. It is one of my "test" stars for conditions.
John, is that double also known as Alherem in Vela?
Tonight is shaping up to what looks like the best night of this week. Let's keep the Star Party going.
Tonight I will tackle John's Double Challenge first off. For anyone using Sky Safari the Double in question is shown as Alherem in Vela (southern sky). SAO number is in the post below if you need it.
Clouded out last night and tonight in Brisbane's outer Western suburbs. Thursday night, for some reason, I decided to observe all the J Herschel doubles in Leo and Cancer. I packed up at the end of the session thinking that John Herschel had the patience of a Saint.
Yep, I'm in again, best night so far in the can, and I've got polar alignment happening. Very psyched will be having a Kloud and more whiskey at some point
Ok John, I have managed to split that Double in Vela (to the Haas figure eight criteria). The sky is swimming around abit and it will get better later i am sure. But i have them separating at 162x with my 8" f12 Cassegrain.
Continuing with other targets,
I will return to Alherem later tonight when higher magnification might be feasible.
Out having a run. Lots of moisture. The mount needs to rotate to the South a fraction of a degree but it's close enough for a wide field.
Having a great time.
Alex
Well I am exhausted and cold but have pretty much finished everything I intended to do tonight to finish testing the new scope, and further calibrate my mount to give me spot on pointing accuracy with this new long focal length scope.
The 8" f12 Classical Cassegrain is great for splitting Doubles, Triplets, and obviously all bright objects like the planets, and it even managed to show me Pluto tonight. Great planetary reach and should be pretty good at planetary imaging using frame stacking, when I get to that. It also does a pretty good job on bright compact clusters, with a 30mm 2" eyepiece. Not so good on anything dim and nebulous, so galaxies, Omega Centauri, and the usual nebula targets like M8, M20, M16, etc. But i do have my f5 Newt for that sort of work which is where it shines.
I will be getting some rest for the next few nights but maybe back out by the New Moon, giving the Newt a run. Hope the good weather continues for those that have enjoyed it this week.
Round 2 of me vs aligning my scope was a small step forward. I did a star alignment (sirius, hadar, canopus), was 6 to 10 deg out. Did another star alignment (sirius, canopus, rigel and was at under a degree in both! So did one more (sirius, canopus, alpha centuri) and it was all looking good, both sirius abd canopus were in my finder field after slewing, but to alpha centuri put me way, waaaay past (35deg or so) until i was actually looking at Menkent. A similar thing happened the night before, it seems aiming at stars toward the SCP throws the the thibg massively.
Is there an obvious thing going on here? I'm still motivated to sort it out, but I'm wondering if i should go back to reading some books and so on until i can meet the CAS guys and have someone go through it. It seems so simple! True sputh and inclination are both locked in, it seems fine along one axis... anyway, shout out if you have any ideas, otherwise i will probably sit tonight out
so it was day 4 of self isolation, and the night was looking promising.
The wind had come up, so I opted for a refractor.
Target was Orion again.
This time using a modded DSLR for imaging.
It was good to be communicating with members who were also out
enjoying the night sharing texts and such through the night.
Images were taken using Astro Photography Tools.
I have posted a sub ISO 6400 30 seconds in the hope of having
some insight as to the strange `7` shapes in the stars.
I am thinking it may be the lack of guiding at that point ?
A Batinov mask was used to as focusing.
Thanks for looking.
Paul.
Paul, so I take it your photo is a single exposure of 30 seconds, is that correct. If so I have two possibilities: one that wind you mentioned may have gusted the rig during the exposure. Two, it was bumped during the exposure.
I suggest a couple of things: take more exposures so that you can cull bad ones out and stack the good ones to build the signal. There are Image grading apps that can run through a set of images and score them in terms of quality. Or you do it visually by looking at each one. This allows you to build an image with only clean sub exposures.
I would drop the ISO, as Orion Nebula is very bright photographically speaking, and the higher the ISO the greater the likelyhood of 'burning out the core detail', and usually the greater the noise. Try 800 or 1200, and take twenty or so sub exposures, then check them visually, then stack them using DSS (Deep Sky Stacker). That should give you a pretty good result.
Round 2 of me vs aligning my scope was a small step forward. I did a star alignment (sirius, hadar, canopus), was 6 to 10 deg out. Did another star alignment (sirius, canopus, rigel and was at under a degree in both! So did one more (sirius, canopus, alpha centuri) and it was all looking good, both sirius abd canopus were in my finder field after slewing, but to alpha centuri put me way, waaaay past (35deg or so) until i was actually looking at Menkent. A similar thing happened the night before, it seems aiming at stars toward the SCP throws the the thibg massively.
Is there an obvious thing going on here? I'm still motivated to sort it out, but I'm wondering if i should go back to reading some books and so on until i can meet the CAS guys and have someone go through it. It seems so simple! True sputh and inclination are both locked in, it seems fine along one axis... anyway, shout out if you have any ideas, otherwise i will probably sit tonight out
JP
Hi, I only ever do a two star alignment and I have found that its best to pick two stars close and in the same hemisphere. Sirius and Canopus are good for me atm.
I took many images during the night, and varied the exposure
times as well as ISO.
Agreed, it does produce a very bright core, especially at such a
high ISO for that long an exposure.
I seemed to have had a `sweet spot` of 10 seconds at ISO 1600,
that night, but wanted to see what I could get the camera to provide over every available setting,
as it was the first time I had used it.
I think you are correct, it would have been a gust of wind that
gave me the unusual image, as there are none to be found in other
images taken.
Though it does look like a fleet of starships or such in flight across the sky...…?
The Celestron Skyportal was doing a fairly good job keeping things
where they should have been, with only a slight amount of drift occurring.
A word of thanks to Turbo Pascale (Rob) and Startrek (Martin), for their posts on finding Solar Noon,
it was a great help with alignment.
Hi, I only ever do a two star alignment and I have found that its best to pick two stars close and in the same hemisphere. Sirius and Canopus are good for me atm.
Rick
Thanks Rick! I take it this doesn't then mran that your scope is only aligbed for that hemisphere? I'll lock it in on those two tonight and see how i go
Thanks Rick! I take it this doesn't then mran that your scope is only aligbed for that hemisphere? I'll lock it in on those two tonight and see how i go
The third star just seemed to mess things up for me, keeping it simple seems to work better when using the handset, the third star is there to try and compensate for physical misalignment between scope and mount "cone error". Another thing to try is upping the magnification to get the star closer to the center of the eyepiece, or use an illuminated cross hair eyepiece.
Rick
The third star just seemed to mess things up for me, keeping it simple seems to work better when using the handset, the third star is there to try and compensate for physical misalignment between scope and mount "cone error". Another thing to try is upping the magnification to get the star closer to the center of the eyepiece, or use an illuminated cross hair eyepiece.
Rick
Awesome, thanks. I'll do that, will use the zoom eyepiece to bring it in to centre step by step.