IMAGES ACQUIRED
NIGHTLY JOURNAL
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DATE 3rd/4th August 2018
START : 23:39 WEATHER : IN 24.9 DEG C - 56 % Rel/Humidity - Moon 0% (below horizon)
FINISH : 01:00 WEATHER : Out 25.0 DEG C IN 25.0 - 64 % Res/Humidity
Trying to get the QHY168C in focus on the 12" with the off axis guider from Ian. Tonight I will attempt to slew to the Moon when it rises at 2:30am for me to get focus on the Lodestar. It may be the camera needs to go backwards towards the QHY or forwards more of it, not sure yet.
TARGET :
NEXT SESSION:
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DATE 2nd August 2018
START : 21:34 WEATHER : Out 27 DEG C IN 25 DEG C - 56 % Rel/Humidity - Moon 0% (below horizon)
FINISH : 01:00 WEATHER : Out 25.0 DEG C IN 25.0 - 64 % Res/Humidity
Trying to get the QHY168C in focus on the 12" with the off axis guider from Ian. Managed to get the stars focused but at the end of the travel of focus so much so I cannot bring the camera any further in so I am at 0. I cannot see any stars in the Lodestar.
TARGET :
NEXT SESSION:
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Tenerife July trip with BASEG
Journal - Night 1 Sat/Sun 14th/15th July
Arrived up the mountain early as Bob gave me a lift after checking into hotel. We had dinner at Restaurant P.. We then went to the observatory and I grabbed my bags from Bobs room, took them to area near the piers and started to setup. It took me some time to put the setup together and then align the 200mm lens with my new QHY168C on a target. I choose the Sag star cloud to start with. On the west side of the mount pointing just off the western edge of the last star in the spout of the teapot, I started imaging 2min exposures at -20deg c. Once I had around 48 of these my mount had run out of travel and the losmandy plate was hitting it. So on reseting the Astrotrac I choose another object.
This time I chose the sag star cloud about the teapot spout. Once again I took 2min exposures.
Then Pelican/North American Nebula as I could not find the Cocoon Nebula which transpired to be because I did not visualise the histogram properly.
TARGETS
Sag Star Cloud position 1 - Gain 7
Sag Star Cloud position 2 (out of focus) - Gain 7
Pelican Nebula - Gain 7
FLATS TAKEN
NEED TO TAKE DARKS AT GAIN 7 EXP 120 and Temp -20
NEED TO TAKE BIAS
Journal - Night 2 Sun/Mon 15th/16th July
Arrived around 8:40pm with Ginger Geek at the observatory. Setup and training the guider took a while and finally I managed to settle on the Sag star cloud again. One of my image sets from yesterday was out of focus as I must have inadvertently touched the focuser when I repositioned for another part of the cloud. I must make sure I always check the focus of the image before I setup for a run. I’m going for 2mins again tonight as there is still a chance of drift from the dec.
TARGETS
Sag Star Cloud M7 - Gain 7
Sag Star Cloud NGC 6520 Region - Gain 7
Sag Star Cloud Sting Region - Gain 7
NGC 7762 Emission Nebula - Gain 7
Journal - Night 3 Mon/Tue 16th/17th July
Arrived 8:33pm. When I started imaging the Trifid I went over to 3 on Gain vs 7. After this I went back to Gain 7 for the rest of the images. I will see when I process the images if a Gain of 3 or 7 is right for Tenerife.
TARGETS
Abel 2151 focused on NGC 6040 - Gain 7
IC 4592 Blue Horse Head Nebula - Gain 7
Trifid and Lagoon - Gain 3
NGC 6820 maybe
Journal - Night 4 Tue 16th /Wed 17th July
Arrived 8:50pm. Tonight was a lovely night, warm enough to not feel cold but not too warm to interfere with the cooling. All my cooling was done at -20degc. I probably could have taken down to -25deg for all nights as some nights -20deg C would be at 38% power and other nights as high but not very high at 51% power. I decided to image Antares region to compare with my image from La Palma in 2015. I now understand after 4 nights the limitation of the Astrotrac mount, in that I can only image for 1hr 20mins or so before the mount runs out fo travel. This will make me buy a new mount and with goto as star hopping to some of the fainter objects proved difficult. Also having the tripod low due to it’s lightness and fragility caused me much back pain kneeling down and looking through the red dot finder. Thus a larger heavier mount with a larger heaver tripod would allow me to set it higher and plate solve, removing the need to bend over. A full night and then took lights just before dawn and heading down the mountain.
TARGETS
Antares Region - Gain 7
Lagoon and Trifid - Gain 7
Iris Nebula - Gain 7
Bias - NOT TAKEN
Flats - NOT TAKEN
Journal - Night 5 Wed 17th /Thu 18th July
Arrived 8:50pm. Tonight was the first night of Lunar and Planets, although due to dust which drove us down the mountain by 2:30am, I only managed to get some data on Jupiter. The GR was not visible tonight.
TARGETS
Jupiter
Journal - Night 6 Thu/Fri July
Arrived much later after dinner with Mark Radice, Paul Cabreli and met JBS at the MONS. The dust was up and down again, hence everyone else stayed down the mountain. We had an most excellent session viewing the Moon, firstly with the MONS eyepiece which was excellent, the best I have ever seen. We then imaged various sections of the Moon below, some of which were Lunar 100 targets and the others random due to their appealing nature. Then we moved to Jupiter where the GRS was visible after 12am. We imaged for 45mins or so as the GRS moved off the limb. Lastly we imaged Mars, currently at it’s closest for 17 years and with a heavy dust storm on it. Irony plays it’s part here where we were imaging a dust storm on Mars through a dust storm on Tenerife. After a very good night we headed down the mountain after tidying the observatory at 2am.
TARGETS
L71
L63 x 2
L24
L29 plus L50
L93
Jupiter
Mars
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DATE 20th May 2018
START : 20:45 WEATHER : Out 15.0 DEG C IN 15.0 DEG C - 54 % Rel/Humidity - Moon
FINISH : 01:00 WEATHER : Out 12.0 DEG C IN 12.0 - 64 % Res/Humidity
ISS tonight.
Configuration
QHY168C prime focus 12"
Canon 600D piggybacked 200mm f2.8
TARGET - Sunday evening 23:43:34 BST (00:43:34 UTC)
Here is the Listed Passes
Here is the pass I tracked
Here is my FoV for 12" and QHY168C over the target star HIP 71924 in Bootes
Here is the Canon 600D on the 200mm f2.8 lens FoV (not rotated correctly)
I will place further information in document on google drive - ISS Pass 20th-21st May 2018 23:43:34 BST (00:43:34 UTC)
TARGET :
M3 - 50x60s
M13 - 50x60s
DARKS - YES x 20 (60s)
FLATS - YES x 12 (1s)
BIAS - YES x 50 (0.001s)
NEXT SESSION:
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DATE 5th May 2018
START : 19:57 WEATHER : Out 12.7 DEG C IN 16.7 DEG C - 47 % Rel/Humidity - Moon 0% (below horizon)
FINISH : 02:20 WEATHER : Out 8.0 DEG C IN 10.0 - 64 % Res/Humidity
Testing QHY168C on 12". I can only take 3min exposures else I get trailing. It may be that I am slightly off on the polestar. Either way I need an off axis guider. I think I sold mine which is typical! Due to this I am unable to image M101 as I will get trailing and needling exposures due to the faintness of the galaxy. Instead I will go for M3 as it is a glob that is higher in the sky than M13. The altitude when I started to image was +66. I then moved on to M13 once it had risen higher. I refocused when I started M13 as I thought the focus point had shifted. The software I am using for acquisition is EZCAP that comes with the QHY camera.
TARGET :
M3 - 50x60s
M13 - 50x60s
DARKS - YES x 20 (60s)
FLATS - YES x 12 (1s)
BIAS - YES x 50 (0.001s)
NEXT SESSION:
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DATE 16th March 2018
START : 22:07 WEATHER : Out 4.3 DEG C - 60 % Rel/Humidity - Moon 0%
FINISH : 23:20 WEATHER : Out 4.0 DEG C - 71 % Res/Humidity
Testing QHY168C on 200mm lens piggy backed on 12".
TARGET :
M44
NEXT SESSION:
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DATE 23rd-24th February 2018
START : 18:34 WEATHER : Out 0.0 DEG C - 62 % Rel/Humidity - Moon 50%
FINISH : 00:01 WEATHER : Out -1.6 DEG C - 74 % Res/Humidity
ZWO this evening to image the Lunar 100. I now have the Firecapture software on the Mac and successfully got it connected to the ZWO by using the blue ended USB 3 cable, installing the usblib code as r3commend3d by Torsten and rebooting. I get 440fps if the camera has the cap on and I am us8ng a region of interest ROI of 440 x 300. Clearly that is not acceptable so I run full mode and get less than 100 FPS and more than 100 ROI at about 1024 x 768. I took 3 Lunar 100 I ages this evening. I had a problem with the laptop in that it said it was no longer charging and when the power was removed it turned off. After a reboot it said it had 0 batte power on my MacBook Pro, after another reboot it at 100% but still turned off when I removed the power. I have left it plugged in copying data, also the mouse seems to disappear after using Firecature. No idea why by two finger right mouse click on another desktop br8ngs it back.
TARGET :
Moon Lunar 100
L45
L46
L4
NEXT SESSION:
Test on an object high in the sky.
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DATE 15th-16th February 2018
START : 18:52 WEATHER : Out 3.0 DEG C - 64 % Rel/Humidity - Moon 0%
FINISH : 00:06 WEATHER : Out 2.7 DEG C - 81 % Res/Humidity
Fitted my NEW QHY168C to the 200mm Canon lens and piggybacked on the 12". Took it out for a test., first light. I had lots of problems with software. Firecapture would not see it on the Mac, on the PC it did but would not image more than 1ms. SharpCap was unpredictable, it could not control the cooler and would not record properly. I gave up with both and finally found EZCap QT the QHY software. If is simple and just worked! Focus was a bit of a pain manually. I also forgot to stop the lens down to f4 on the Canon first. I managed to get good focus after a while and then took a handful of frames at 5mins an some at 15s. M43 was very low at this point.
TARGET :
M43
NEXT SESSION:
Test on an object high in the sky.
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