Imaged at BLAS during the early hours of 17_09_12. QHY5 at prime focus of LX200. Stacked and wavelets in IRIS. Best 150 / 923 frames.

Paul.

Nice one mate...well done for braving the midges, but as a Scotsman shouldn't you be imune??

Cheers,
Paul.

Hi Arthur...plenty of detail in this image, but perhaps you overdid the sharpening? If you haven't already, I recommend you download and read the articles by Eric Roel and Sylvain Weiller on the Registax site. Looking forwards to seeing more solar images from you.

Paul.

Imaged on Saturday 7th from Pickering Park...EOS 550D movie HD mode.

Cheers,

Paul.

In a brief couple of hours of clear sky last night, I managed to image the ISS from George's garden at Brough.

Image details: Canon EOS 550D, Celestron EDR 80 with Jessops 2x teleconverter pushed to ~3x using extension tubes: 1/1250 sec at ISO 1600. Tracked by hand on a cheap camera tripod.

Minimal processing, just a little bit of noise reduction and up-sampling.

Paul.

I received this information by email - please keep your eyes open for any 'dodgy' gear sales...

Thanks,

Paul.

Break in at the Astronomy Centre Todmorden
There has been a break in at the Astronomy Centre Todmorden, Unfortunately a lot of kit has been stolen. A full inventory will follow. This is a public outreach facility and is Peter Drew's life work. This is a big blow for the club.
http://www.astronomycentre.org.uk/
Please be on the look out for new adds for Coronado scopes and Solar scopes that have been modified. Large refracting binoculars and large reflecting binoculars in particular. Please pass the word and inform the police and the Astronomy Centre if you have your suspicions.
If you can help by putting up warnings on any of the Astronomy forums,
that will be appreciated.
Thank you,
David
Peter has issued the following list :

Thanks for any help that might help this situation. Most of the missing items are my personal possessions, some irreplaceable. Regardless of this, I'm always prepared to face this risk to make equipment available to those interested in astronomy. And will continue to do so.
So far, the list comprises:-

Unique 6" F8 refracting Binocular telescope
Unique 6" F8 reflectng binocular telescope
12" Meade LX200 OTA
6" F8 black Helios refractor modded Ha scope
6" F8 blue Skywatcher refractor
3 Coronado PST bodies
2 black EQ6 mounts
1 white EQ6 Pro mount

The final lecture in this series, sponsored by the Institute of Physics, will be on 19th April at 7pm.

Venue: Basil Reckitt lecture theatre, Ferens building on the Hull campus.

Speaker: Dr Chris Arridge, University College London, Mullard space science laboratory.

"...Since the early 1960s starting with the flyby of Venus by Mariner 2, we have launched spacecraft into interplanetary space to study our solar
system. The light travel time from Earth to one of these spacecraft can be significant so these complex machines - these robots - must be
capable of working semi-autonomously. Together they've returned petabytes of data from distant regions of our solar system, with Voyager
1 about to leave our solar system and enter interstellar space within the next few years. In this talk I'll discuss the robotic exploration of
the giant planets with a focus on recent results from the Cassini spacecraft and the operations for this spacecraft. I'll finish up with a
look at the challenges for exploring the poorly-understood ice giant Uranus, and European efforts to launch a new spacecraft out to this
distant object."

Dr. Arridge was guest speaker at HERAS in March last year when he gave an excellent talk entitled 'The Plumes of Enceladus'.

Please support the IOP lecture series if you can.

Paul.
 

Good that you're getting 120secs unguided, you must have hardly any periodic error in your drive, and that has led to a good result.

With regards camera noise, I can already say that my new camera is a lot less noisy than the 300D - this is without using any of the inbuilt noise reduction and is based on a comparison of RAW dark frames in IRIS. Whether or not this is due to tech advances in chip design, or just that the 300D is 10 years old and has seen a lot of use. With the 300D, I found that the extra gain in sensitivity at ISO 1600 wasn't worth the extra noise. There is an article somewhere in the IRIS webpages that compares noise at different ISO settings. The general consensus of opinion is that ISO 800 is the optimal setting. There are a number of ways of reducing noise...the best is simply to take more images to stack. With 30 or so subs, a sigma-median stack in IRIS pretty much removes any stray hot pixels, and even does a decent job with satellite and aircraft trails.

Looking forwards to seeing more of your images.

Paul. 

First image with new camera Canon EOS 550D. Thought I'd have a go at Mars in the middle of the 'other' Leo triplet. Light from Mars pretty much ruined my idea of getting the galaxies, but I was lucky enough to fluke a new supernova (SN2012aw) in M95 (see spaceweather.com 22-03-12 ) it's currently at mag 13 and may brighten.

This is a crop from a much larger image.

Paul.

Second image with my new camera...Canon EOS 550D

Details: 26 x 2 mins at ISO 800, prime focus of celestron EDR80. Stacked / processed in IRIS, post processing in CS3.

Paul.

A better image, taken at Brough on Saturday night...Celestron EDR 80, EOS 300D 15 x 2 mins at ISO 800. Aligned, stacked and processed in IRIS (separate stacks for stars and comet) composited in CS3. Despite the moon, both tails are on show in the image. The comet was easily found by eye, using the club Skywatcher 8" Dob. No visible tail in the eyepiece though.

Paul.

Another great image Arthur...glad you've discovered Jim Solomon's article, I think its one of the best on using IRIS. I use a 300D and tend to go for about 700 pixels. I'm also convinced by his stcking method, although I tend to use the sigma median on the drop down menu which does the same thing.

Paul.

Observed on Saturday night...Easily visible in the eyepiece of a small scope as a diffuse coma. From my back garden, I couldn't see a tail, although there are hints in the image.
Poor image quality because I couldn't properly polar align...

The Comet is moving through Draco (along the Dragon's tail) towards Ursa Major. Close to Kappa Draconis on 12th March, Galaxy NGC 4236 on 14th March and Lamda Draconis on 16th March.

EOS 300D, Celestron EDR 80, 39 x 40 secs @ ISO 800. Processed in IRIS...one stack on 'stars' another stack on 'comet'. Composited in CS3.

Paul.

Hi Arthur...Good first image - sorry, but you're probably going to get the 'deep sky addiction' now!

The trick with masks is to blur the edges of mask(s) so that the the images blend smoothly...alternatively, start with a totally black mask and paint white into the mask over the area that you want to show through...if you use a well feathered brush and slow flow to paint into the mask, you can usually achieve a smooth blend.

Cheers,

Paul. 

Hi Mike,

Thanks for posting these...presumably done with the WATEC. It always amazes me how much detail you pick up with that camera.

Cheers,

Paul.