the drought is broken ;)

[h0ughy]

I say that because last night I used my observatory with a mount and telescope for the first time since August 2011.:D:D:help: its now feb 4 2012

Scott Alder came over in a rare event - clear skies - but that didnt last for long with intermittent low and high cloud but that didnt stop us, and we set to setting up the titan and meade 14. drift aligning still needs a tweak but its good enough to guide with if push came to shove. We also used Al's collimation aid using sirius as the target star and defocussed- brilliant we got the collimation done in about 3 minutes. So then we went on a bit of a tour - the only camera loaded was the DMK41 mono so we went to mars - pretty good. then onto the trap in M42 - i cant wait to put the dslr onto this...... then the obvious target was the moon.
Then there was a very important history making event - i imaged the moon for the first time with the meade 14 and the dmk41 - had lots of fun. what better event then the moon being the most north for a while. imaged at native f10 with the dmk now i have to work out how to use registax and process the avi files. major learning curve there:rofl: with about 7 gig worth of data:P

Many thanks Scott:thumbsup: I have a lot of setting up still to do but the important thing is i am close to the pole:lol::thumbsup:

[jjjnettie]

:) glad you finally got some clear skies Dave.

[Tandum]

The clouds are missing here tonight Dave, first time in a long time. Stars are all twinkling but at least I can see stars in the sky for more than 20minutes. Got my alignments done by about 9pm, it's now 2:40am and haven't lost a guide star all night. Unbelievable ......... :)

All over at 5am :D

[mozzie]

yes it is good to see some stars...come in after a early morning start....the planets were looking good this morning with some visual markings on mars being seen :thumbsup::thumbsup:..well that will be it know for another 2 months i suppose :lol::lol:

[sheeny]

Good to hear Dave.

Nearly got into my obs yesterday too, but clouds rolled in just as about to. I'm hoping to get my first sunnage for 2012 this morning if I can beat the clouds...

Al.

[h0ughy]

that was short lived with clouds rolling through and thickening up at 12.30

yeah rub it in. glad you got some photons

propably right, but its better than nothing - still dripping wet up there?

sunnage Al sunnage - -also need it to dry out everything

[kustard]

Good one Houghy, I got home from seeing "Chronicle" and noticed a distinct lack of clouds so even though we had some friends over for dinner I set up my scope in our small courtyard with about 20 degrees of North sky view and ended up giving an astronomy lesson about Orion and M42 and a little bit of the moon.

Our friends were very excited and I got to try out my 13mm Nagler I got for my birthday back in December. It was the first time I've had the scope out since November and considering the state of the light pollution it was a decent bit of viewing.

[spacezebra]

Good one Dave

Looking forward to seeing the results.

Cheers Petra d.

[h0ughy]

well here is my very first avi processed in registax - i had no idea what i was doing and i am sure it could be better - but hey they are photons captured through a telescope. no idea what area. image scale is dmk41 at f10 through 14" lovely optical glass

[Satchmo]

Beautiful sky here at Berowra last night. I viewed with my 14" until 11pm then got up from 3am until sunrise. 3am until 4am, was a bit of a nightmare- stepped in dog poo- got an electric shock plugging in a wet hairdryer into an extension cord and had to pull a leech off each ankle - but after that everything fell into place :)

The seeing was superb- stars were tiny pinpoints even an high power. Edge on galaxy NGC 4945 showed mottling. Not bad for 40km from center of Sydney. Mars showed loads of detail. Saturn was my favorite 30 minutes before sunrise on the meridian with 5 moons still visible.

[sheeny]

Good moonage Dave! (There's a mental image I don't need!:eyepop::P)

If it helps you come to grips with Registax here's a guide from what I do:
1. On Align tab: scroll through frames at 100% and pick a sharp one. Tick the Full Image box. Use multiple alignment points (6 to 12 say) 128 size box (but you can very this up or down). Don't let the alignment boxes touch or cross. Align. Adjust the Limit slider if necessary (frames are sorted by quality at this point). Press the Limit button.

2.On Optimise tab: create a reference frame from the best 10 frames or so. It will automagically stack the best 10 frames and stop at the Wavelet tab for you to sharpen. Wavelet 1 is finest, 6 is coarsest. Select Guassian Linear wavelets. I have a few different wavelet schemes but they all started life as "Dennis Wavelets": 1 = 20, 2 = 10 the rest =1.0. When you have it sharpened and adjusted how you want it, Press Do All and Continue. Thuis returns you to the optimise tab. Press Optimise:).

3. On the Stack Tab, open the stack graph. The top graph is the quality graph. Sometimes its shape will suggest how many frames to stack. Move the slider across to eliminate the worst frames and leave the best about 250 or so. At the least get rid of all the concave down part of the quality curve;).

Now the bottom graph is a quality and difference graph for each alignment point. Drag the difference slider down to eliminate the worst aligned/placed frames till you are left with the best 100 or so. Do this for each alignment point(!) then press the Stack Button. Save the image.

4. On the wavelet tab, your reference frame settings should be remembered... if you're happy with them, press do all.

5. On the finish tab rotate and crop the frame if you like and then Save.

:)

Go on. Repro. Already! You know you want to...

Al.

[Matt Wastell]

Hooray!

[h0ughy]

thanks AL - you now its been cloudy all day here

[h0ughy]

that dog poo sounds like a SIRIUS moment :rofl:

not so the electric shock:help:

[h0ughy]

they are there - just need a repro or three

[DavidTrap]

Good to hear Dave, I managed to get my gear outdoors last night. Sorted out some problems and found some more!

DT

[h0ughy]

David, i haven't even begun to delve into the challenges that lay ahead for me. have yet to put on the dslr on the beasty, let alone the guider. one main problem i have is accessing the finder scope. its ok when at zenith or low on horizon but when its elsewhere can't access it at all.

but there in lies the challenge;)

[multiweb]

Looks good. Any imaging time is a bonus these days. :thumbsup:

[sheeny]

Had a glorious morning here, so I have got my first sunnage for the year!:D Just processing now. I might have to wait till morning to upload though - satellite peak bandwidth has taken another flogging.:rolleyes:

Al.

[tornado33]

I put the moon videos through registax here and came up with these.
Ive never seen a Titan mount operating before, gee it tracks well unguided, the object just sits there, though lunar rate must be selected for the moon :)
Scott

[Jen]

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: yayyyyyyyy way to go Houghy did you pull an all nighter just in case you dont get to see anything for another 6 months :lol:

[h0ughy]

WOW you make it look easy.

I added the cameras and other stuff tonight - need help to rebalance the gear though I did take a couple of shots unguided through the 14. BTW the focal reducer was in the image train so the image was at f6.2, not f10 as i thought. So here is the field of view i get wit hthe scope with the canon 40D and the F6.2 reducer.

[h0ughy]

no Jen - small victories ;) wins the war.

I have to get everything else setup then it will be ready

[bartman]

Loving that last shot David!
Thanks
Bartman

[h0ughy]

thanks bart. the funny thing is not long after i took that shot i decided to slew to various parts of the sky and when i returned the scope to the original position it moved - i forgot to rebalance the scope after i added all of the camera gear - DOH