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Taken tonight in conditions of very poor seeing. GT81 Atik 414 EX 27 subs at 600 seconds in HA, OIII and SII (9 in each ) Captured and stacked in Maxim Assembled in PS 6.

Grabbed 10 minutes on Orion before pulling the shed roof over last night. Not bad for 9 mins

Having a few days away chilling out in Scarborough. Very nice here, but no sunbathing on the beach, though we've come well dressed for the weather. Got my binoculars and if I don't get to use them on the stars, I'll be using them on the sea and land. 😊

Busy night last night - managed 4hrs on this before hitting the hay. C8+Hyperstar and 178 MC Cool combo

BigBins is a pair of Helios Stellar II 20x100 binoculars. They are huge – 1’6” long and 3.8 Kg with a 3.2° FoV. They come in their own aluminium case. I tried them with both the parallelogram arm mount on the Orion tripod, and the AZ5 mount on the 1½” iOptron CEM25P tripod. The parallelogram arrangement worked OK, but the pan/tilt head wasn’t really happy with the weight of the bins. It was difficult to lock into a fixed place, and tended to drift lower with time. I used the extra counterweight, but it may not have been necessary: the problem was with the pan/tilt head, not the parallelogram arm. The AZ5 mount was altogether better in terms of locking the movement, although it clearly was slower to move about. Since the FoV is restricted, that’s probably no bad thing. The mounting bar needed to be slid along towards the back to allow room for the cones to fit in the mount frame. However this didn’t seem to adversely affect the balance. The securing knob on the top of the bar didn’t seem to want to lock solidly, Maybe some mild abuse will cure that. It was clear the first night, so I tried the bins out against real targets. It quickly transpired that whilst the parallelogram arm looks cool, it isn’t worth the hassle of using it with the BigBins. I’ll retain it for my 15x70s (MidBins) and reserve the AZ5 for the BigBins. The BigBins are bright. Significantly bright, which makes them a joy to use. But I found the individual eyepiece focussing fiddly to use – to the extent that I had to set up on a bright star to get the focus - in both eyes - right before sweeping around for targets. Since I wear glasses,that meant I needed to make the decision (glasses or not) at the start, and focus accordingly. A centre-focus arrangement would have been so much easier. I had created a list of stars which I knew would be visible and ought to be spottable, whichever mount I used. I had made up some blocks to allow my red dot finder to fit the bins, and this worked well enough until the double-sided tape holding the blocks on gave way. Araldite needed! Having set up on Vega (and discovered that I really do need a decent observing seat for high-altitude targets!) I quickly found the Double-Double but couldn’t really split it. I know what they should look like so it would be easy to kid yourself that you had split the doubles, but honestly I hadn’t. Having got a crick in the neck I decided to go for something more horizontal, so cruised around Capella and split 11 Camelopardalis and Kappa Tauri. Returning to Vega I took in Sheliak on my star-hopping way to Albireo. Sky Safari on my iPad was invaluable for these excursions but it occurred to me that there was a better use for the position above the bins (occupied by the X-shaped iPad frame in the photo): I could put my 8x40 general-purpose bins up there as a viewfinder. That should please the purists who think you shouldn’t use anything bigger than 10x50s and make cruising around the heavens easier.

WO132 Chameleon cam IR742 filter

Total 196mins :- 40 x 240 sec ISO400 , 36 x 60 Sec ISO400 20 darks, 100 bias , 30 flats. Stacked in DSS, processed in AP

I thought focusing was a little trickier than normal... Didn't think to check the objective until packing up for the night. 🙄 Come on, admit it, I'm not the first am I! 😂

The Bubble Nebula in HaRGB - 7h 48m in all, shot through an Astronomik CLS clip in and Baader 7nm Ha filter. Took me about a month to process (On and off, cannot make mind up on looks), but im very happy with this one. Canon 1200D modded, NEQ6, SW ED80.

Dodged a few clouds last night but got enough time Mr Ghosty to make an image. Taken with the C8+Hyperstar & 178 MC Cool combo

WO132 Chameleon cam IR642 filter

Finally getting somewhere only 6x300sec /flats x25 Bias as darks x25 Dithered ,stacked in DSS ,processed in Startools comments welcome as usual good or bad

Had a go at birds in flight today, first time I've ever had a go, and it was quite hard especially with the Canion 6d. As some of you will know it's not got a great focusing system and only tracks with the centre point so it was quite tricky. Anyway I took about 50 shots and got about 5 keepers. Also took a few photo's of Little Egrets and Great Crested Grebes.

12 x 1200 each S2 Ha O3 with the TS71 IS Work in progress as it is a bit noisy at the mo but shows promise. Give it a click or 2 for full res

Tak 106 Poor skies really Ha filter

Here is one especially for Halloween. IC 59 and IC 63. Unfortunately the clouds moved in before I could get much data on this. Managed to grab only 7 subs at 600 seconds in both HA and SII. Could not find any OIII so ditched the channel after a couple of subs. Had to frame this to loose the bright star on the top edge from blowing out the entire image. Used a copy of the SII as a false OIII channel to process this in a semi Hubble pallet fashion. Turned out reasonably ok for so little data.

Decided to put the Tamron on a tripod today. Turned off the vibration control and wow so much sharper then hand holding. Note to myself must learn to hand hold a lens at 600mm. It gave me an idea to design and make my own gimbal head.

Close up of the Clavius area. Skywatcher 200p, EQ6, Asi120mc & 2.5x Powermate. 900 frame stack from 2000 captured.

30 x 300sec @ ISO800 with darks, flats and bias frames Taken with a Sigma 70 - 300 telephoto lens @ 200mm UHC Clip filter Processed in Startools and finished in CS2

Captured between 26 September and 9 October over several sessions in Ha and RGB with the ED80. 26 September I had my best guiding results to date so presumably down to some good seeing. Camera was QHY IMG2Pro at -20 deg. Exposures were Ha 20x 900s and RGB 20 x 120s each filter. Tried a few tools from the Pixinsight box very little used (by me) before, including deconvolution, dark structure enhance and NBRGB combination. First image is the Ha processed master. Then combined with RGB master adding some Ha to the red channel. Not happy with the star haloes, but I suppose it is a result of combining small narrowband stars with the larger RGB stars. I am planning to add some OIII and SII data soon.

Dodged some clouds and the moon to grab 2 hrs on this one yesterday (Sunday) evening.

Yesterday I was privileged to attend the wedding of one of the most significant members of this forum. Craig married his gorgeous girlfriend Emma Hefford in what can only be described as one of the most spectacular weddings I have ever attended. The theme was Harry Potter and my God, the attention to detail was just amazing, everywhere you looked every little nook and cranny had something to do with Harry Potter lurking in it. The venue had also gone all out to to make this a special day for them, it was so warm and homely too. Emma looked absolutely stunning and Craig, I didn't know you even owned a tie! No you looked fantastic mate, you scrub up quite well. So, Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present Mr and Mrs Booth. My very best wishes to you both. (Sorry for the poor quality phone camera image)

Hypercam to Canon EOS-EF adapter on a dovetail. Little 50mm lens for approx 15 x 10 degree wide field. Got a 70-210mm zoom coming with same fitting. It is a really nice, useful bit of metal...

Just getting my tea tonight when I notice this spectacular scene out of the window. Just had to grab the Canon and get a picture or ten ☺️

WO 132 Chameleon cam 9 panes click through for full res