Great Conditions South Coast NSW

[Startrek]

After all the cloud and rain over the past month on the South Coast NSW it’s nice to see some clear nights over the next week
The clouds cleared this afternoon and the wind dropped to leave a beautiful evening, so powered up the NexDome and rig to image some galaxies
Also testing my custom made Dome rotation control system which so far is working well
Anyone else out tonight on the east coast or south coast ??

[strongmanmike]

Very nice here in Canberra, have the 3 C's ie. clear, calm and cold :thumbsup:..currently 0.5C, ice on car, looks like it may get down to -4 or -5C here tonight :cold:..supposed to be clear again tomorrow night here too, so :thumbsup:

Mike

[Saturnine]

Yep, the rig is humming along well despite a bit of breeze here in the 'Gong, not upsetting the guiding much, thankfully.

[multiweb]

It's been good here too. Seeing has been gradually improving since Friday. Best being Monday if it's still clear. 4th night of imaging tonight. :stargaze:

[Craig_]

Seeing was diabolical in my area last night. It was clear and calm but the data was poor. Hopefully better tonight.

[Saturnine]

Tonight is shaping up to be another good one, clear and a bit more calm than last night, so should probably have another crack at my target. The rest of the weeks forecasts look pretty good too so some sleep deprivation is on the cards.

[Sunfish]

Very nice out there tonight after a beautiful Sunday. Still and clear and cool now.

[Saturnine]

Must be in a different universe, after a beautiful Sunday afternoon and a promising start to the evening, the westerly wind picked up and became too gusty to be able to attempt any astro. Was shaking the scope around so that a steady image or guiding was near impossible and I have no protection from that direction but the sky was very clear and transparent at least.
Anyone else south of Sydney have the same problem last night or is it just a local phenomena induced by the local topography.

[multiweb]

It was dead calm here but transparency wasn't as good as yesterday.

[Sunfish]

Anyone else south of Sydney have the same problem last night or is it just a local phenomena induced by the local topography.[/QUOTE]

Great at first for 30 minutes until the wind started gusting. All over after that. I did manage to test a guide scope set up in that time but used up a free night. Looks good on Tuesday night?

[multiweb]

Anybody out last night? I took a break and went to bed. :zzz2: Woke up to blue skies. Just wondering. Back at it tonight for one last session. Take five for me. Particularly good new moon this one. Then a lot of processing to do. :cool:

[Startrek]

Tonight’s looking good on the South Coast
I’ll be powering go up the Dome
Fingers crossed

[Saturnine]

Was out again last night, had to, it was clear (mostly) and calm. Finally got to bed about 4:00am, didn't actually start imaging until after 11:00 and then had power supply problems to the camera and lost some time there but it intrigues me that for a 4 hour session, minus the 30 mins. time lost because of the power issue, that total time of the subs collected is only about 2.5 hours.
Seems to be a time related paradox, where does the missing imaging time go to. Anyway, hope to be out again tonight gathering photons as the forecast is still good.

[Startrek]

Jeff,
Every time I’m out time flies and just to capture say 2 hours of data takes me 3 hours as you have framing , focusing , dithering , delay or pause settings and meridian flips etc ...
and then throw in the odd passing cloud bank here and there
I suppose there’s challenges in the hobby everywhere you look , that’s what makes it so satisfying when you nail a good image after all the hard work , issues , fatigue and so on .....
Martin

[multiweb]

I had a feeling last night would be hit and miss. Tonight's forecast looks more solid. What I'm interested in is the better seeing. It wasn't too bad the past few nights but truly atrocious over the week-end, Thursday night being a write-off. Even at 500mm FL / 2.1asp. And I'm not talking about guiding. Just bubbling sh|t.

[Saturnine]

Marc

After I finished imaging my DSO target this morning I swapped scopes and had a peek at the planets and they were swimming around happily. The seeing, although clear, calm and transparent was not as steady as it seemed at lower magnification.
Hope tonight is better steady seeing, certainly clear and cool outside.

[Saturnine]

Hi Martin

I was being a bit rhetorical, am aware of the delays between subs but in my case that is only 8 sec. . The framing and guiding set up could account for 20 or 30 mins I guess. Should take note later when setting up again how long it takes before actually beginning to image. Don't bother with dithering but I should give it a try some time just to see if it makes any difference to my results but I'm not after award winning images, only using a modded 450D and can't afford to upgrade to cooled OSC cameras, nor really want to anyway though the results they get are amazing.

[xelasnave]

Jeff you sound like me but your first Ha imagine with change your view immediately. There is nothing quiet like seeing your first Ha. I think mine was Corona Australius ..stacked it immediately and coloured it blue...I was very apprehensive about my purchase thinking Ha would take very long exposure and low gain and good guiding etc but I think I used 60 second exposures and 200 gain ..should not work but it did....
Alex

[Startrek]

Night started out ok at 6.30pm with guiding around 0.70 to 0.80 arc sec, but now at 10.30pm it’s up around 1.30 to 1.40 and slowly getting worse ( guide Star is a Mexican jumping bean ) so I’m going to finish up for the night
Looking up at the Milky Way under Bortle 3 skies at the moment, seeing is quite poor , very opaque not crisp and clear
It’s a shame , not a cloud in the sky and no moon
Maybe jetstream is up ??
Over and out ....

[multiweb]

Yeah it got progressively worse but still better than a few nights ago. All packed up now. It was a good new moon overall. Seeing not as good as April but certainly a good run of clear nights.

[Startrek]

Yes thankful for the clear nights
Moons up so time to break out the L Extreme filter

[Saturnine]

Alex

I do actually have a mono camera and filters but haven't really used them (yet) as Imaging with the DSLR is much more simplistic, or so it seems. If and when I actually give NB a concerted attempt I may find that it is no more complicated than OSC. The biggest obstacle, in my brain, is the processing involved with NB and whether I could be bothered spending hours teasing out the best possible detail etc. As it is, I do minimal processing of my OSC images, but I know that I could get better quality if I learnt the ins and outs of Pixinsight, Gimp or similar.

[Startrek]

Tonight is so much better than last night , guiding numbers are good 0.65 to 0.70 arc sec total ( last night 1.20 to 1.45 ) and guide Star HDF is 3.90 to 4.50 ( last night 5.10 to 5.90 )
The downside is there intermittent passing high cloud , so only capturing 1 in 3 good clean subs. Forecast is to clear by 9.00pm to midnight but I can see high cloud way back to the mountain ranges in the south west which are 40km to 60km away. Pushing on regardless
Anybody else out ?

[Craig_]

I thought tonight might be an unexpected imaging night as it was clear when I thought it was supposed to be cloudy. But there's been high cloud blowing in so I didn't bother setting up. I had a good run last night though, got my OAG up and running and guided at ~0.65" from then on. Seeing was great too, whereas it had been poor over the weekend.