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I know I should be getting ready for bed as I'm getting old and I have a game to go to tomorrow but, the weather has been so shit recently that I find myself taking advantage of this evenings clear skies by setting up the astrophotography kit and testing the charity shop find lens with my astro camera and extension tube to grab some data of Bodes and the Cigar Galaxies.

I have already captured 3000 frames of video of Jupiter.

Tomorrow evening will se me tired but processing the data to see if it was worth it.

Would like to post something interesting but have just got back from our Friday night booze up at our MCC clubhouse.

I love astrophotography Fuzzy, but I really can't afford that gear (on top of my other photography gear. Look forward to seeing your stacks and end product. I'm in awe of some of the stuff produced and wish I had the time to do this as well.

However, I do still enjoy the night sky and so will often still take some "astro" images in the style of "how a human would see it". My trusty 300mm tends to bring some nice results. Good for capturing comets, asteroids and doing short tracking of star trails.

Got lens envy though with your deep space astro kit! Enjoy :)

Watching day 3 & 4 at Headingley and staying at a charming little pub in Pontefract. At 2am the music stopped and now I'm listening to Northern monkey's with there Northern tarts trying to get home. In another 5 hrs I'm off to catch a train into Leeds. What a fuck up. My fault, should of stayed in Leeds.

MCC & DCC  :bye:

Here is my Jupiter stack- best 75% of 3000 frames stacked in Autostakkert! A bit of work on the levels in GIMP, just quick and dirty. There is more detail in there but I haven't the time at the moment. One of the Galilean moons is just visible. There are two in the raw data and the second will be drawn out with further processing.
(https://i.imgur.com/lqOQFFq.png)

Wow, just wow.

Nice one Fuzzy, thanks for that. Decent early shout on that. The more visible moon will look awesome when the second one appears with further processing. Which should mean that Jupiter will be pretty jaw dropping!

Do post it if you wish, once you get chance to spend some more time on the RAWs. Top stuff! :thumb:

Well, colour me impressed.

When you consider how far away that thing is that's an astonishing image. I mate of mine runs an astronomy group on FB, Fuzzy. I'm sure he'd be interested in this image, I can pass on contact details if you like.

nice fuzzy

assume you are using some sort of auto tracker with the camera body on the a scope?

do you take several images at different stops? what's the exposure time like on each?

it's way outside my skill set, do I don't need a full explanation. just the general idea.

That is pretty impressive Fuzzy - good work

Thanks for the compliments folks.

As far as my imaging to date goes, that Jupiter is reasonable. Have a google for the work of the likes of Damien Peach though. There is a man with real talent (and a shit load more aperture than I can afford!). I currently do better with Lunar.

FH, yes please mate, pass them along.

Batch, yes, I have a driven equatorial mount set up on a permanent pier in the garden. The mount tracks astronomical targets across the sky to prevent 'streaking'. here is my set up during a solar session-
(https://i.imgur.com/DjUgdzF.jpg)

Planetary, Lunar and Solar imaging tends to be done by shooting video on the 'luck imaging' basis. Shoot lots of frames (in this case 3000) and then use software to sort and stack the best percentage into an image which is then subjected to processing in the likes of Photoshop or GIMP processing software to draw out detail. Lucky imaging means that you are using the frames that you shot when you were lucky that the atmospheric conditions were a bit more stable and had less effect.

Deep Sky and Wide Field imaging (Nebula, galaxies, nova, Milky Way etc.) tend to be multiple long exposures images (30 to 300+ seconds) with darks and flats (images with lens caps on the identify hot pixels etc. and images against a plain white filed to identify dust motes etc.) which are subsequently stacked in software such as deep Sky Stacker (does what it says on the tin) and then post processed to draw out colour or combine several images shot with different light wavelength filters. I'm nowhere near that level yet but working on it. I have seen some images where the total data capture is in the 40 hour plus range and then the same again in processing. It is an art but the results can be breath-taking.

cheers fuzzy..

sounds like a great hobby..

Impressive set up it must cost a few bob!

I'm having a glass of wine at my folks place in Spain having just helped out the local bar by doing a shift for them while they go out with some visiting friends while I'm here for a while (it's so much cheaper than France here). 

It was, of course illegal for me to be doing that as I'm no longer an EU citizen. I will never stop being upset about that, never.  1st of Jan 2021 I cried as a grown man that all the joys and possibilities at my fingertips, that I've enjoyed my whole life, just faded away against my wishes.

Sat in my bar with an ale at the bottom of the garden with a little fire which is slowly dying down.

Sat in the hot tub wondering at what point I lost the ability to just scoff any sort of food and be fine with it.

It’s our sons 3rd birthday today so we’ve had a few friends round and then family - so naturally did a kid friendly but adult acceptable spread of party food, which I have been grazing on all day.

My stomach is really not taking to it well and I actually have a massive headache.

Why? Why is this a thing?  Why did it not effect me as a kid, in my teens, 20s, early 30s....

At what point do you lose the ability to comfortably eat junk food?

Usually around the same time as when it decides it’s going to start making you fat too, when I was younger I could eat what the fuck I liked and was still a skinny cunt, now I need to just look at a sausage roll and my tits get bigger.

Was fine at 33. Still could eat whatever. Still playing football Saturdays and Sundays. Could just go out for a run on a whim and cover 10km the same pace I always could.
33-36 has been a right killer. For the first time in my life I’m above 11 stone and 15% body fat. All of it on my stomach - no football and the rare occasion I played I really feel it and reckon I’d struggle to run 2km before my back & knees hurt and I was struggling for breath.

Walking, walking is fine. I cover about 15,000 steps at work over a shift. Anything more intense than that.

It’s ridiculous because you think it’s something that happened to your parents but will never happen to you...but it does...

Yep.

I’m exercising now more than I ever have before simply because if I don’t I will just get bigger and bigger, but fuck me I know about it the day after now if I have been for a run or been to the gym.
I could eat relatively well all week, gym or run 3/4 times, but if I have one day where I have a bit of a blow out I will almost always have put weight on that week.

I love my food so it’s bloody hard work.

I can’t help but feel I’m going this way.
Seen as football and pavement pounding running are out the question I need to get back in the gym.
It’s finding the time. Working nights, having my son morning to early afternoon then sleeping early afternoon to evening then going to work. I can’t work out where to get the time from.

Another year till he goes to school (and even then we have the option to defer for a year because he will literally turn 4 then go to school a few days later.)

What weight v height  are you guys as I'm 5 10 and weigh 92kgs and need to lose a little

Just finished a virtual cheese tasting. Now sitting here almost entering a cheese coma be and feeling uncomfortably full.

Like DV said, my mid thirties haven't been great for my tolerance to eating lots of food.

I developed IBS in my early 40's which flares up now and again. I think after 40 your lifestyle up to then really can have negative effects going forwards.

5‘10 and 72kg

So on most of the scales and charts I’m probably in a healthy range based on those numbers
How I feel is a different matter, as is how I look. It’s all belly so it looks like I’ve got a small beer gut and it’s probably been about 13 years since I drank beer and even then it didn’t drink much.
I’ve never had a 6 pack but always had a flag stomach.

Just feels like a slippery slope that’s only going to get worse.

Hoping as the boy gets older it’ll free up some time

It won't 🙂.

I'm 57 and followed the same path as you as I was low 70kgs in my early to mid 30's but gradually put on weight mainly due to eating all hours because of shift pattern and booze at the week end.

Like you describe yourself I'm not really fat just have a bit of a belly even though I don't eat much crap these days or drink much booze but as you get older it's harder to lose. I do a few miles walking in a week but ten years ago I used to cycle quite abit in my spare time and lost 10kgs so it is achievable with a little comittment.

What’s with all the kgs shit? Stones and pounds, ffs!

I had to work that out...202lbs 😀

Well, what with working nights and being awake during the day - he’ll be at school during most of my ‘awake but not at work’ hours.

That’s the hope I’m clinging onto...still a year away

5'11" and 16 stone 7 lbs. *All muscle.





*apart from the 2 stone of belly fat I need to shed

Belly fat is the worst to lose as I know so lots of sit ups and stomach exercises which become very boring!

I'm 6 foot and 78 Kgs. Right on the cusp between being healthy and overweight.

I've probably never been in better shape my entire adult life. I'm fitter than ever and with improving muscle tone; I'm still 'skinny' but if I keep on developing for much longer then one might say that I'm looking ripped.

But I have a belly that just won't shift.

The fat was coming off for a while when I was just eating apples in the evening but I got sick of them. I ate 3 of the fuckers one evening and still went to bed hungry. What's the point? I'm exercising to feel better and not eating enough is hardly conducive for that. I don't eat unhealthily. No junk food - everything's made from fresh ingredients (asides from the occasional trip to Burger King)

I'm going to start stepping up the training to hopefully compensate. But more training tends to mean more hunger so I don't know how that will work out yet. I'm hoping there will come a point when the additional muscle helps to start burning the fat off.

Oh, and sit-ups won't burn belly fat just because you're exercising the belly. It doesn't work like that. The fat is an energy for the whole body, not just one part.

Good self assessment of which I can relate to. I don't know what age group you're in I'm guessing maybe 35-40 apologies if I'm way out. In the past I got my weight down to under 12.5 stone losing a couple of stone by cycling several hours a week over a period of 3-4 months but the problem was the weight loss was noticed more in my face and can make you look gaunt rather than around my waistline which has always been a problem from my late teens when I started drinking so if exercising the stomach muscles don't work I'm not sure how to shift it.

Liposuction. Extreme I know but depends how much you need to shift.

Back to this - I weigh every Monday morning.

In the last 7 days, I’ve had 3 personal training sessions, 2 8k runs and a 10k walk.
I have a couple of slices of toast on the morning,  taken pasta and tuna to work every day for lunch and cooked Hello Fresh meals every evening.
Saturday at football I treated myself to a football special from the chippy, with a bottle of full fat coke.
I haven’t touched any alcohol this week either.

I’ve put on 2lb.  :suicide:

I'm Ok just a little fat I don't like when I look in the mirror and can be disguised with the right clothing!

I’m 5ft 10’ and weigh 73kgs. (I’m 52). I run ( a lot) to compensate for my sweet tooth and general love of food :-) Fortunately I don’t drink much or do take-always though. I have a bit of a belly and no abs but don’t see that ever going away now

Sounds like you have the perfect balance and dropping under 70kgs probably wouldn't look good as you've got older

My failing body parts are something else that's holding me back.

Just opened a HiiT session and tweaked my dodgy left hip straight away. That's me done for the day.

That doesn't shift belly fat  ;)

Flashheart said the same earlier so losing it around that area is quite a challenge

When I lost all the weight and got fit that was what never went.  Just hung there.  Never worked out a way to sort it.

It's a tricky one as losing even more weight would make you look ill.

In the garden again, grabbing some more Jupiter data.
Got a X2 Barlow (magnifier) in the imaging train tonight to get a bit tighter onto the planet.

Hey Fuzzy, can I ask when you first started out in astrophotography, did you begin with a SLR / DSLR camera?
If so what did you use?
Or was it a case of diving straight in with some medium to high end kit?
Thanks.

Having driven for nearly 12 hours and 550 miles, a massive JD and Coke is being smashed while watching Gogglebox.

I started with a Sony dslr either through a telephoto lens or via an adapter through my scope.
I still use my Sony a6300 mirror less sometimes.

I'm 71 kg and 5' 10 ", aged 79, with not much belly fat, its mainly on my arse.

Cheers, have been looking at Nikon dslr's. Similar spec to the Sony, so on the right track at least.

Bit of P and D. Commentary later with brush in hand

Can you see what it is yet? did Rolf touch you as a kid? :D

Where to where?  Long old poke, that.

Dragged my 13 year old up his first munro, Ben Lomond, this morning.  He's in bits right now, but I'm super proud that he dug deep when he needed to.  Superb effort.

Watching SSN right now, and stalking the TEF Match Day thread.  Praying for an upturn in the 2nd half.

Drinking beer after that display this afternoon.

Devouring a large tub of fresh cockles with malt vinegar and black pepper.

Working.  Black Stone Cherry gig in Lincoln.  Avoiding football.  Especially ronaldo wankfest.

Just finished a busy day in Resus. Now sat with a beer and a curry cooking in the oven before I have to do it all again tomorrow :(

Just finished eating KFC

Big respect for you there, Magic.

If you are thinking about astro photography, consider Canon kit as there are loads of widgets available for Canon. Probably the best served dslr brand in astronomy imaging accessories.

Thankfully today was quite a quiet day in comparison.

Jupiter from last night.
A stack of the best 500 from 5000 video frames.

Just visible on the full image are 3 of the 4 Galilean moons- 2 to the right and 1 to the left.

(https://i.imgur.com/dzuz673.png)

Saturn from later the same night.
Same specs.
(https://i.imgur.com/0Cl2cG9.png)

Magnificent Fuzzy. I didnt have one before but Saturn is my favourite planet!

Those rings  :eek: 270,000km in diameter but no more than 100m thick. Over 1.2 billion km away.

Bloody amazing. Even more so put in those terms

We, here's an owl from 10 feet that was put there by it's keeper..

Did you know that owls have really long legs?

No.

Did you know as birds go, they are actually a bit thick?

It is a bit special isn't it!

Well fuck my old boots. Never really thought about it before. Owls are thick but they have nice legs.

I know some people like that.....

You can keep your old boots on but it does bring up the question of the saying "He's a wise owl."

Was it an actual mockery originally, like several sayings? Similar to when we say something like
"You know Dangerous Dave, he's a bit special!"

Is that like saying, as brief as Bamboo?

Something like that *irony at my conciseness*