May 9-15 2010 not conducive to a healthy lifestyle

[h0ughy]

I don’t know if anyone has really been paying attention to the sky’s over them in the past week – for me it has been clear and with a few fog affected mornings/evenings and the moon waning through to a crescent moon late in the mornings to a new moon by Friday. I have been normally out imaging from after astronomical twilight to midnight or later then up at 6 to go to work etc all of last week; I was actually looking forward to a break for mother’s day as the forecast was for rain/cloud on Sunday – that did not happen. So I was out imaging again last night and I decided to target one object for this whole week when I can - the target --> Centaurus A. I have involvement with the kids Tuesday night and Wednesday night which may put a dent in the collection quota but so far I have just on 7 hours of data. We are forecast clear skies until the weekend with frosts on Thursday and Friday. I hope that after all of the effort it will pay off for a lack of sleep for the week, if not I must be very sick puppy treating myself like that ;)

[jjjnettie]

It's good to see you're just getting in some training for Astrofest Dave.:thumbsup:;):D

[h0ughy]

this training will either make or break me ;) . Tania has said something about it already which is why my current imaging window is between 7 and 10.30 because the past few nights i havent been getting to bed before 2.30am and i get the blame for waking them up LOL. Though friday will be open slather - hope to pull an allnighter:lol:

[h0ughy]

I might have to rethink this. well i am dissapointed - here i was thinking that i could get better data by stacking three nights worth of data totalling 7 hours - to end up with rubbish unless i am at a dark sky site i think the light pollution extinction factor is crippling me in this endeavour. i have severe noise from the amp glow because i have pushed this really badly so as t osee how far i need to go, but I have no where near enough information. I am sorry Mr Sidonio - I have failed your master class.......

DO i continue???:help:

[Screwdriverone]

Hi Houghy,

I have set the black point using Gimp to an area i think should look Black. This has brought the levels down. What do you think, any better?

I am not a processing guru by any means so I wont mind if anyone disses me...

Cheers

Chris

[h0ughy]

Chris that was not my problem (and i will reprocess later to just do that). what i was trying to show was the extent of the data i had - i knew it was bright and badly pushed. Quite sinply i need more good data - and from a dark site

[Screwdriverone]

Oh I see, sorry, I missed the point. I did notice a lot of amp noise in the bottom right corner, even after the change.

Maybe there is a better way to remove it? Darks, flats etc? Or like you say, get out from under the skyglow.

Still, I would be ecstatic to get anything near what you have, I can't even manage an M42 with my set up....

Cheers

Chris

[mithrandir]

I know what you mean about the weather. I had the most amazing sky on Saturday. We went to visit the relatives at Willow Tree. Totally cloudless, almost dead calm, no sign of humidity, around 7 deg at 23:00.

SQM 21.2 to the NW. SQM 20.8 from the Milky Way just to the west of Crux. There was one outside light we (that includes the owner) couldn't figure out how to turn off would have have made it even better.

Coal Sack, SMC and LMC all standing out like the proverbial.

So many stars I've never seen from Sydney made alignment difficult. If only the jolly mount would behave. Must threaten it with replacement.

[Jen]

:thumbsup: Dont give up just yet Houghy keep going :):)
If that was my pic i would be so excited to get something like that :lol::lol:

[h0ughy]

What a comedy of errors last night was. I got home from work late, tried to setup and refocus as the warmer weather has changed the focus slightly - did that and even put in the memory card. found cent a and then started to guide - ok no obvious problem here - but here comes the kicker - once again i forgot to remove the focus mask - DOH 1h into the run...then to my surprise i found that the timer was going but no images were being taken on the camera - the plug, for some reason did not work - it did when you moved it 45 degrees in the hole? go figure then after all that and fixing the problem there 2 images into the next run - my memory card failed. HOW THE HELL IS THIS MEANT TO BE? So i gave up, turned everything off, and walked out and locked up!! Wasnt my night? was a beautiful evening and the seeing was pretty good.................