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10 hours data, Ha sii and oii with tak 106 reduced bit of a play, process was a nightmare will have another try later

I'd like to share this news with you. On my birthday 26th July, the Royal Museum of Greenwich released a press announcement about the international competition - Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 shortlist. It is an honour to learn that they have shortlisted my image "Near Earth Object 164121 (2003 YT1)" – an asteroid that came near to the Earth on Halloween’s Day last year. My video of the asteroid was selected by East Midlands Stargazers, as image of the year 2016. I have been invited to the Royal Greenwich Observatory for the awards ceremony on the 14th and 15th September 2017. There are a number of links to the news of the press announcement. I understand it was on the BBC news yesterday, but I missed it. Here’s a link that was sent to me. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in September. If you spotted reference to it in any of the newspapers, I would be grateful if you would let me know which newspaper and I’ll try to find a copy. Thank you. https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fscience%2F2017%2F07%2F25%2Finsight-astronomy-photographer-year-2017-shortlist%2Fnear-earth-asteroid-164121-2003-yt1-made-close-encounter-earth%2F&h=ATNBF8UTVEiZleZnzEcykaGk79IRyo0yTO3ksj12Fu3XKfszBM0tiBBIuSmg0L9eKR0Ho5rELPzUrDfH_hefZ6LekIH-3yBmVwNYwDBLc28EEJkDeS_3sFHei-LYzuAMvAOQ7b804eMtjOo

Well I have finally got a home observatory! After living in light polluted Arnold for 15 years with a back garden surrounded by tall trees I moved with my new wife to the border of Derbyshire with a back garden looking west over fields. Obviously there were certain priorities on the house front before a dome could make its appearance like decorating, curtains, carpets, rugs, furniture etc. but eventually she was happy for the astronomy facilities to evolve beyond a dob and eq mounted refractor stuffed in the back of the garage. June saw the laying of the concrete base and early July saw Pulsar deliver and install a shiny new 2.2m full height obs. The first job was a wood false floor covered in rubber matting to protect anything that may be dropped from the concrete base and give a space to run power and data cables underneath and up the pier. Halfway through this carpentry chore I saw that the rain we were having (sorry, that must be my fault with a new dome!!) had seeped under the silicone that sealed (or so I thought) the obs to the concrete base. So it all had to come up, be dried off and a new better water seal applied. The base was covered with 2 coats of concrete/pave seal and the interior has been sealed with Sikaflex EBT. The exterior leaky silicone hasn't been replaced yet, I'm waiting for some drier warm weather but after last nights heavy rain the interior seal has ensured the obs in dry as a bone so the floor is going back in. After re-reading the Pulsar base laying instructions I can't see any mention of sealing the surface of the concrete before they come and install the dome, but in the instructions for doing the installation yourself they do mention that sealing is a good idea. Obviously after my experience I say definately SEAL THE BASE FIRST!! So far I have a pier bolted to the concrete and nothing else. I have a AZ EQ6 ready to go in and an getting a second hand Celestron C11 OTA hopefully in the next week or so when the seller comes back off holiday. I have had a test connection through EQMOD of my mount and laptop and can't wait for the lift off of dome observing at home. Lets hope we all have some good clear skies this winter!

TS IS71 SX694 baader 7nm ha Astronmic 12nm O3 600 for each sub 3 x 600/pane ha 4x600/pane O3 reduced to 50% click for full res

Cloud did not let get me the other data

4 panes of 600s each TS IS71 and SX694 click for full size

I took both of these on Aug 12th.

Managed to grab a few AVI's this afternoon between the clouds. 60mm Lunt Double Stacked. Blackfly Camera Captured in Firecapture Stacked in Registax 5. Quick lick and false colour added in PS 6. Close up of Sunspot.

6 pane of Ha and O3 taken over 2 nights. Just 3 subs /pane /filter of 600 secs TSIS 71 and SX694 I may go back and reprocess but quite like this one. click for larger image

With the high cloud moving West to East and the low cloud moving North to South finding a gap for this first light with the new to me Black fly was a tall ask. Finally managed to grab a 1000 frame vid. Big thank you goes to Steve ( IBBO ) for his assistance in setting this up. I must say I am very impressed with the new camera. Capture rate averaged out at 52 FPS. 60mm Lunt double stacked. Black fly Captured with the latest edition of Fire Capture. Stacked in Registax. False colour and a tiny bit of tweaking in PS6. Had to reduce it to 75% in size to upload but click on image for full res.

Finally got a clear night so I could sort of finish this one off. GT 81 Atik 414 EX SUBS 8 Hours of HA 6 Hours of OIII 4 Hours of SII All captured and stacked in Maxim Processed in PS 6. Not quite sure what has happened to the Red channel it seems to have gone pink when I reduced it down in paint to fit one here.

Been playing with the settings and stuff on the Blackfly today. This is the final set of setting I arrived at through many series of trials and errors. Mostly errors I might add. 60mm double stacked Lunt. Blackfly Camera. 5000 frame AVI captured in Fire Capture. Stacked in Registax. Polished up and false colour added in PS 6

Flat not working too well today best viewed at full res

I thought i would put this up for anyone wanting any information on this observatory modification, there are other videos uploaded by a few people which i give thanks so i have followed in their footsteps and done the same, the parts required are very easy to source the most expensive being the chain at £25 for 5m but only 2.5m was required, i have posted links to the parts used and they was the cheapest i could find at the time so if anyone is wanting some information in the mean time please ask away.. 08B-1 Roller Chain half inch pitch, £25.80 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dunlop-Btl-08B-1-Roller-Chain-Din818-7-British-Std-5Mtr-/131991390744?hash=item1ebb4cca18 3 x 08B1-11 Sprockets half inch pitch, £1.97 each + £0.99 postage http://www.bearingsrus.co.uk/4sr11 Motor speed controller , was purchased from Hong Kong but received in a week, £5.99 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DC-30A-12V-SoftStart-Reversible-Motor-Speed-Control-PWM-Controller-PWM/201944328448?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2648 Second hand wiper motor from eBay removed from a ford Ka 98/08, £7 All in all about the same price as a second hand garage door opener which was the other option but i had to basicly massacre it to make it work and not even sure if it would so this option was the best for me, the motor is moving a roof at 3m x 2m..the project will be finished shortly when a project box arrives to tidy all the cables and somewhere for the switch to sit, Thanks for watching.... YouTube

Picture shows when I paste the link but the link is reduced to above, will try jpg Thanks Pete

Finally got a break in the clouds this morning. Unfortunately not a great deal of action going on. 60mm double stacked Lunt. Blackfly camera. Captured in Firecapture. Taken advice from Steve and reduced the number of frames to 1000. Stacked in Registax 5 at a quality setting of 95% to reduce the stack size down even further. Total number of frames stacked 172. After advice from both Steve and Mike I reduced my use of wavelets to a barest minimum to keep from over sharpening it. Quick touch up in PS 6 using the shadows and highlights function. For full resolution image. Click on image for full screen. Click on image again to go to the original. Click on this for full res. Colour added in PS 6.

Following changes to Dropbox a while ago, a lot of people seem to struggle to put Dropbox images into posts. So did I and the Dropbox instructions didn't help. Eventually I put the query out on a Dropbox forum and got the answer. The key part (that they seem to keep secret) is step 5 below. It is very simple when you know how, and here are the instructions tailored to posting on EMS. Try it... 1. Go into your dropbox folder and right click the image icon you want to post. 2. From the drop-down menu click "Copy dropbox link". 3. In the EMS post click "Insert other media" then "Insert image from url". 4. Paste the link into the box. 5. Change the dl=0 at the end of the link to raw=1. 6. Click "Insert into post" and the image will appear in the post wherever your cursor was placed.

I thought i would chuck these two up that were taken last night just as the moon started showing its face, both are 18 second exposures using my modded canon 500D and the standard 18/55mm lens at 18, ISO1600, 1st is of the Deneb area which i intend to pane with the scope as soon as we get more clear, and the second is south facing, Saturn just to the right of frame and a glimpse of the nebula's there...for 18 seconds i was pleasantly surprised...Thanks

Managed a good run on the old girl this morning before the clouds rolled in once again. Took a total of 30,000 frames in ten sessions. Put all the AVI's into PIP and reduced them down to the 10,000 best ones. I then ran these through Registax at 90% of the Reference frame. This brought the final stack size down to 5,600 Tweaked in Wavelets then a quick polish in PS 6. False colour added in PS 6. Close up of the Sun Spot. Same process as the full Disc using 12,000 frames.

One of those nights when woke up in middle of night and couldn't get back to sleep. So I got up turned the TV on - that lasted 4 mins - rubbish. Then I look out the Window - thats clear I can see stars - lots. So I went outside and WOW the night was really clear and the Milky way was mint - spotted lots of greys by naked eye and there were that many stars it took me longer than normal (lol) to spot the W. One of the best Milky ways for a good while - then I remembered this was the first "Astro dark night" of the new season. Even spotted a couple of shooting stars in the 10 mins I was outside. Pleiades and Venus were visible even if Venus was very low but Pleiades reminded me that the "old favourite" Orion would be up soon. If it wasn't 2.45am AND the clouds hadn't looked like they were rolling in from the west I would have got the kit out. So its a taster of things to come. Still I was able to get back to sleep

smaller JPG file so I could upload instead of link

Taken at a rush before they darted away. Both are at extremes of the 300mm (600mm in 35mm full frame terms) lens so pushing it a bit. The second one I was so busy concentrating on the bird on the left (I actually had him centred in the frame, this is a crop) I didnt notice its mate at the edge of field. The other guy in the hide said he could see 2 but I thought the other was on a different perch until I got home and had a look at the images

Was searching the net for ideas for home made friction adjusters for dobsonian altitude bearings. I'm expecting that I might have the odd eyepiece balancing problem! I found several home made ideas, and then found this ready made from Teleskop Service. At the price I thought why bother trying to make one... http://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p6767_TS-Optics-Friction-bearing-for-altitude-axis---for-ATM-mount-and-Dobsonian-construction.html

Captured a few beautiful Perseids with my Canon 1100d, fixed tripod. 18mm. I saw this Perseid and was brighter than Jupiter. I would go as far as saying, Venus brightness. Time 02:25 BST 13/8. I was able to run the radio setup from 12/13th Aug, which showed some echoes, though there is not always correlation with optical or visual detection because the ones detected by radio might be outside the UK (I think - e.g. nearer France) . I've not yet got round to looking at the optical and radio data together (too much to do). I managed to get a pic on BBC East Midlands weather on Monday night, but I missed it.

God bless Baader Wonder Fluid. I was checking my 127mm Refractor and there was some sort of blooming on the objective lens. It looks like where condensation has dried but there was a fine layer of mould on it. A good clean with the old wonder fluid and we are back to good old shiny and clean again. Fortunately it was on the front of the glass and not in between the lenses.

They're using it on the James Webb before it goes up. No, not really... If they had enough I bet they would though! Its also just the thing for cleaning my 50 inch TV screen. Mix it with orange juice and it makes a super screwdriver too.

Just testing Pete's solution to pasting Dropbox links. And it works No more having to reduce images to post. Click on the image to get full screen then click on it again to go to the original, click on this image to get full resolution. Pete you are a star.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-norfolk-40886835/giant-pipes-wash-up-on-norfolk-beaches ah here is the tube of the OTA to hold the mirror . Going cheap !

Nice time lapse... http://bgr.com/2017/08/08/curiosity-mars-news-nasa/

4 x 600 for each pane SX694 and the TS IS71 click for full size

New Pimaluce canon 700Da cooled camera. Just need some clear sky to test it Chris

Same price as I charge all EMS members for small odd bits and pieces.

Had this site on my back up pc worthy of a look http://www.deep-sky.co.uk/index.htm asterisms page worth a look toohttp://www.deep-sky.co.uk/asterisms.htm

Removed the tilt adaptor

I was invited over to an Astro buddies house for a star gazing session last night. Well, I was a bit dubious about the weather at first, there was light cloud across half the sky, but no moon, and it was pleasantly warm. But I thought what the heck! Let's do it! So I gathered a few bits, 3 sets of bins and an iPad, and headed over to Bilsthorpe, a village 4 miles away. He had already got his 10” Meade ‘push to’ dob set up and was searching for M27 when I arrived. We had, over time, modded his scope with a lazy Susan, azimuth 360 deg. Setting Circle, and wixey inclinometer etc (as per Daz Type-R mods, cheers Darren!) and these along with live info from Sky Safari 5 Pro, about each objects altitude in degrees above horizon and it's current azimuth position really works well in locating faint fuzzies. We dropped on M27, M57, M56, M13, and M31 was observable… several other globs were seen too. We also spent an enjoyable time trying to see the Western veil NGC 6960, we had located 52 Cyg easily but could not see the veil at first. We tried various eyepieces with an OIII, but finally cracked it with a UHC filter. This was a first time see for my friend, an 81 year old, life long veteran of astronomy. He was quite emotional and very excited about the experience too! The Milky Way was eminently visible by 00.30 hrs… wow! We used my Vixen 2.1 mag bins and scanned the Milky Way running through Cygnus to Cassiopeia taking in the tens of thousands of stars… the coat hanger burst into view, the North America neb… so much richness in countless stars across the whole sky…! It was a great show! Perseus was there and the double cluster could easily be seen naked eye… Saturn was still visible but low to the horizon. The ISS floated over bright and beautiful! We wrapped up around 01.15 am, Yes, another wonderful, memorable night spent with a happy likeminded astro buddy. Brilliant stuff! Thanks for reading! 😊👍

Cleared a bit late in the day Todya I manged o get the plastic bag flat to work on a full disc image Best viewd at full res

I thought this looked interesting? Apologies if it's already been discussed. http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/press-release/seti-institute-unistellar-partnership-promises-revolutionize-amateur

Thanks Clive. I plan for it to weigh only marginally more than my 14". It will be far heavier when I put an eyepiece in. The plywood mirror box will be strategically reduced and far less bulky than you see above, but structurally triangulated for strength in the right places. It won't look much like a hexagon when I've done, but will be something far more stealth like. There will be some lightweight super rigid carbon fibre structure to come. I intend for it to be very quick to strip down and set up. It will go into the car in three or hopefully just two pieces and fit together with just one or at most two hand tightening bolts. It will be a radically different design to almost any other dob. A grab 'n go 20"!!!!

HI! I am still up for my usual week away and frankly I can't wait. No worries Alan, it didn't bother me, I just couldn't believe how stupid Kelling were being. It took me a couple of day's until I got to speak to someone in charge. Would I be right in assuming you will be attending in the Rylands Hyatt!

Thats a beauty. Love the subtle colour scheme

Yep its the interference pattern called Newtons Rings A tilt to the sensor or flats will remove it but the flat did not take care of it today also known as bloody annoying