Astronomy

[mexico red]

I'm a Virgo, what does that mean?

[Bob's Orange]

I'm a Virgo, what does that mean?

It means pot as many balls as you can.

[BambooToTheFuture]

So Fuzzy, can 4D not purchase some software that locks on to certain deep sky objects and autotracks it?  Or is that Dobo not compatible for that type of stuff?

I know folk who do that for stacking their images of say Saturn for example via a combo of PIPP and Autostakkert

[BambooToTheFuture]

It means pot as many balls as you can.

Was just about to quote Big Break myself 

[4D]

Space Cadet 4D, welcome to the ranks. 

Always in my blood, from this......

[fuzzy]

So Fuzzy, can 4D not purchase some software that locks on to certain deep sky objects and autotracks it?  Or is that Dobo not compatible for that type of stuff?

I know folk who do that for stacking their images of say Saturn for example via a combo of PIPP and Autostakkert

A Dobsonian mount is not driven and does not allow for the rotation of the targets as they transit the sky. Because the axis of the earth is tilted by around 23 degrees, so the things you look at don't follow a straight line thorough the sky.

Imagine watching a car cross a hump back bridge- as it goes on the the bridge, the front of the car points at the sky. As it drives off the bridge, the front points at the ground. Astronmical targets do the same thing- the leading edge angle changes as it transits so, without accounting for that motion, you can't effectively track.

Driven mounts tend to be Equatorial mounts where one rotating axis of the mount is set up to point at the celestial pole (the bit of the sky that the earth rotates around) which, for us in the northern hemisphere, is as close to Polaris (Pole Star) as makes no difference for visual observing.

Some scopes are sold with driven alt/ az mounts and GOTO software to help locate and follow targets but, they tend to be much shorter tubes than 4D's dob. You can get Push To adapters and apps that help get to targets with a big dob but following tends to be manual.

[4D]

I aligned the finder on an aerial down the road, easy enough. Need to order a T ring for my camera.

[fuzzy]

This is what happens when you get into astronomy- you lust after new kit and spend hours sitting in the dark trying to see things or image them.

I recently acquired a new (to me) refractor telescope (lenses as opposed to mirrors) to try and improve my astrophotography.

The following images are the first run of captures using it. Very messy as I only took the detail images, not the flats to remove dust motes etc. Both are of targets I have tried before and both have resulted in much more detail than I have previously managed. Each is 30X 30 second exposures on my Sony a6300 at ISO3200, mounted to the scope using and adapter so the scope was the lens. I then used stacking and processing software to show the detail.
The first is M31 Andromeda Galaxy and the second is M82/ M82- Bodes galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy.

[4D]

That looks good fuzzy, sounds a bit technical to me. I was hoping to point and click 
Looks like I'll have to watch some more YouTube videos.

[fuzzy]

That looks good fuzzy, sounds a bit technical to me. I was hoping to point and click 
Looks like I'll have to watch some more YouTube videos.

Point and click is doable, certainly for lunar and planetary. Deep Sky stuff (galaxies, nebula etc) tends to need longer and multiple exposures which can prove challenging on a medium sized Dobsonian due to the tracking issues.

You should get some great images of the moon via your scope and Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus should give some pleasing results.

[fuzzy]

After Wrexham, Mrs F and I spent a few nights on Anglesey, staying on the north West coast near Almwch.

Knowing the area had some pretty dark skies, I took the camera, tripod and my Omegon clockwork tracking mount.

Night two, I we popped out of the hotel and drove a short distance to a viewing platform overlooking the coast.

Not perfectly dark as there was an LED street light about 50 yards away but, I set the kit up, pointed it in the general direction of the Milky Way and ran off a handful of 30 second exposures. This is the result of some of them.

Sony a6300 through stock lens at 16mm f4.5, ISO3200. 6 X 30 second exposures, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and then tweaked in SIRIL and GIMP.

[4D]

Fantastic.

Got my nikon d3100 adapter, just need to read up on how to use.

[Jimmy HaveHave]

Waiting patiently for some photos 

[The Artist Formerly Known as Audrey]

From the James Webb Telescope

[fuzzy]

From the James Webb Telescope

The scale of that image never fails to amaze me.

The left most of the 'Pillars Of Creation' is around 4 light years from base to tip, or 23.5 trillion miles.

If the earth rolled down the pillar like a marble at the same speed it orbits the sun- 58408892.07 miles per year, we would take 402,336 years to go from top to bottom.