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Old 15-04-2016, 02:23 AM
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Am (Andrias)
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Hi from a northerner from the Faroe Islands

I've already had the pleasure of meeting a few members of IIS at the Takahashi Star Party last weekend. It was absolutely great, so many great people and not to mention telescopes!

Just wanted to say hi in here as well and introduce myself to the rest of the forums, where I will undoubtedly spend some time while I'm in Australia.

I'm an astrophotographer and amateur astronomer from the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic Sea. This is a very cloudy region of the world, with a long bright summer, but occasionally we get Northern Lights and even clear skies!

It's 3 years since I bought my first telescope, a 5" dobsonian that I still use regularly. I took up astrophotography almost right away with the dob, first by doing simple stuff like making an adapter so I could put my smartphone up to the eyepiece to photograph the Moon, like many people start out with, and then moving to using dslr on a 8" Newtonian with tracking & later autoguiding. I'm still learning a lot about astrophotography all the time and I enjoy it a lot.

I like doing deep sky, planetary, white light solar and just recently I bought a Lunt 50mm Ha scope, so I'm going to be doing a lot more Ha imaging when I go back home to the Faroes, (only taken 1 image so far,) it'll be good for those long bright summer months!
I also like doing night timelapse, daytime stuff and sunrises/sunsets.

I came to Australia after traveling South East Asia for 3 months, I went to Indonesia in March for the Total Solar Eclipse and managed to view and image it from an island called Mare, close to the volcanic island of Tidore. I'm pretty pleased about that trip, as last year when the Total Solar Eclipse of 2015 was back at home in the Faroes, it was almost completely clouded over at my location and I had zero opportunity to image it.

There are pictures from the solar eclipse trip & the Takahashi Star Party on my FB page if anyone is interested.

For my trip to Australia I brought a mobile tracker and 2 cameras (well 3 if you count my GoPro) and a few camera lenses. I've already got a lot of use out of them, I got to do a Milky Way Center sequence last weekend at the Takahashi Star Party, which is something I've wanted to do for a long time, that was really awesome. Lately I'm practicing doing polar alignment on my SW Star Adventurer to the SCP, I got close the other night, but I'm still not happy with the tracking, it's much more difficult without Polaris, but I'm sure I'll have it sorted soon. I have managed to do some 5 minute exposures on my Star Adventurer at 200mm when it was polar aligned really well, so I'd like to get close to that performance again.

I'm going to be attending the South Pacific Star Party in May, it will probably be the highlight of my trip, looking forward to it. Might see some of you there!
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Old 15-04-2016, 04:55 PM
Kunama
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Hello Andrias, how are you getting on in Cooma? I saw some of your timelapse imagery from the Faroes on Stargazers Lounge, excellent.

Hope to catch up again,
Matt
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Old 15-04-2016, 08:09 PM
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Am (Andrias)
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Originally Posted by Kunama View Post
Hello Andrias, how are you getting on in Cooma? I saw some of your timelapse imagery from the Faroes on Stargazers Lounge, excellent.

Hope to catch up again,
Matt
Matt it's been great here at John's house Cooma so far! I have an unlimited supply of tea and a place where I can quietly sit and process some of the data I've accumulated on my journey so far, which is really nice and convenient. John and I went on a nearby dark site on a mountain/hill a few kilometers away the other day where it was clouded at first, but opened up nicely later on. One cool object we observed was the Sombrero Galaxy, an object I've wanted to image for a long time, I could make out the band going through the core in John's 4" refractor, which was cool, will be nice to put some more aperture on it later on, and perhaps image it. John left 2 days ago and I'm just enjoying my time here and hoping to get to do a bit more astrophotography before the Moon becomes too bright and the SCP asterism becomes harder to discern.

The Moon is brightening rapidly so I'm trying to see how conditions are when it's set, last night was not so good, southern horizon obscured and sky was not so clear. Hopefully tonight is better.
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Old 15-04-2016, 08:20 PM
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Atmos (Colin)
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Was great to meet you up at Tak Attack, sounds like you are thoroughly enjoying your time in Aus. And getting more clear skies than I am down here in Melbourne
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Old 15-04-2016, 09:24 PM
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Am (Andrias)
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Was great to meet you up at Tak Attack, sounds like you are thoroughly enjoying your time in Aus. And getting more clear skies than I am down here in Melbourne
Hey Colin, was nice meeting you top! Seeing features on Mars for the first time through your scope was amazing, I couldn't believe I was watching the polar ice cap and surface features, all I ever saw in the newtonian back at home had been a red/orange blob, your telescope will undoubtedly serve you well.
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Old 16-04-2016, 08:46 AM
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Atmos (Colin)
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Hey Colin, was nice meeting you top! Seeing features on Mars for the first time through your scope was amazing, I couldn't believe I was watching the polar ice cap and surface features, all I ever saw in the newtonian back at home had been a red/orange blob, your telescope will undoubtedly serve you well.
I totally agree with that sentiment, all I ever saw of Mars through my 10" LX200 SCT was a large red blob, like Betelgeuse in our neighbourhood
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