Much Has Happened, Little Has Been Written

 Last entry was mid January, it's now mid May. Looking back over the months, I've been able to image about 14 times on deep sky objects and, oh, several times on the moon. Some was experimentation, the rest, as usual, to see if I can get a decent image. All imaging has been with the Stellarvue; the Meade remains “forked”. For now, I can't see a huge reason to change from just the Stellarvue. For imaging on the moon, I can get at least as clear images (possibly better) and have a little more flexibility in that the field of view that matches the Meade is achieved by using a 3x Barlow lens. Remove the Barlow and I have another, generally good clear, focal length/field of view. And the transition takes less than 30 seconds.

It's been interesting learning a new mount and telescope. Skies are generally worse, being closer to a Bortle 5 or 6 rather than a 4 or 5. The light pollution really shows up in the images. However, one important lesson learned is that I need lots of flats and darks (calibration frames). By lots, I mean at least 45 each. I've also added another (as yet unused) filter, a 12nm wide Hydrogen Alpha. Shooting flats with it requires about a 5 second subframe (compared to subframes measured in tenths of a second for the other 4 filters). Shooting the flats (and flat darks) takes about 2 hours now compared to 15 minutes at the observatory. That said, I've worked out a method of shooting them inside instead of on the mount. I can set up the sequence in NINA and leave it to run unattended.

I guess by now you might want to see what I've got. So...

Good guess, it's the moon. However, it's a mosaic of 10 images in the original, so zooming in reveals a lot of detail. Not so much here, since I had to reduce the size from 400Mb to something much less. Sorry.

This gives an idea of the level of zooming available in the image above, and this is down sampled by a factor of about 10. It's tilted so that it, sort of, aligns with the moon as seen from earth without a telescope. The area is of Sinus Iridium.

M37. Light pollution gives it a color cast (greenish) that I haven't been able to remove. But...

NGC2175. This is an emission nebula that would be perfect for the H alpha filter. Still, it's not too bad. For a beginner, that is.

New Beginnings

Well, here's something I didn't expect to do: a new blog entry. Last entry was, I think, in April of 2021. Since then, MUCH has changed. We're at a new address, the old Meade LX200GPS is in semi-retirement (but soon to be reactivated), and a new telescope/mount has made it into service. The new mount is a Losmandy GM811 and the new scope is a Stellarvue SVX102T. So a 4” refractor vs. an 8” SCT. One of the main motivators for the change was the change in address; we are now in a continuing care facility. I no longer have the observatory, so I have to carry out the scope every time I want to use it. I can break the 811 into “chunks” of about 20 lbs. max to take out and set up vs. about 45 lbs. for the Meade. Hopefully, I will soon de-fork the Meade and put it on the 811. The 8” is still really good for the moon and planets. Plus, Meade is no longer, meaning that it went bankrupt and was bought by Orion Telescope. As such, the consensus is that the scopes are poorly supported now, if at all. If something breaks, there is little hope of repair. So, last night (January 11, 2022), I was finally able to get the scope out and get most things working. Since this was mostly a test run, I didn't bother to cool the camera. Nevertheless, I was able to capture an image, this time of M42, the Great Orion Nebula, as well as the Running Man Nebula, all in the same image. I didn't do much processing, since there wasn't much to do; only stacking and stretching the image. The image is 10, 1 minute images of each color band, LRGB, so 40 minutes total. I'm pleased with the first light. It's not perfect, but pretty good for a 1st attempt with the new gear.

M42 and Running Man Nebula (top right). First light image.