Invasion of the spiders

Posted by Ed Mann

HI folks

 

As you saw last night, my 8″ SCT has been invaded by a couple of spiders which explains why I couldn’t see anything clearly. Andy asked last night how much effect that would have, given the size of the scope mirror

I think the flat in the second photo says it all. It was taken using en electroluminescent panel , which gave the even illumination as mentioned last night

Cheers

Ed

M27 combine

Posted by Geoff Dryland

Neil suggested I should combine my two images of M27.

I didn’t know how to do this because they are of different scale and not aligned, plus, how to integrate only part of one image into another.

Well the first part turned out easier than I thought. I put the two images into MaximDL and selected align. Having chosen the two stars in each image and pressed align, it automatically re-scaled the images to match!!! Job done.

The next bit was the most difficult as it required layers. After searching the internet for a tutorial on layers, it took the best part of  6 hours to A. understand both the tutorial and the American accent and B. to get my Photoshop to work in the same way as the tutorial. Anyway this is the first time I have ever tried this and the result shows it.

So for what it’s worth here is M27 with the best bits from each. (You can clearly see the join!!)

Geoff

The Moon, Saturn and Jupiter

Posted by Angela Rodgers

 

Looking out of the window on the 1st August at 23.31 BST I spotted a gap in the clouds. It was just enough to let us snap this shot of the Moon with Saturn and Venus. Just used my compact camera, so pleased it even came out. Hope you can spot Jupiter, it looks rather like a speck of dust on my sreeen.

We are looking forward to trying for the various things Andy described in his description of the month ahead (at the Microsoft Groups meeting.)

Angella and Alan

M27 Challenge

Posted by Geoff Dryland

Hi All,

I had been waiting to get a night to take new data on this but time was running out , so I re-processed data from November 2019. Since I took this data I’ve found that DSS doesn’t stack it properly so I have re-stacked it manually and tinkered with it in Photoshop to come up with this.

You can see the star that is causing the nebula at dead centre. This was taken using RGB filters only, 1 hour each in 4 minute subs.

Then along came a clear night (finally). So rather than redo the image in RGB, I did it in Ha, O3, S2. Again 1 hour each but in 5 minute subs.

Stacked manually again and really processed hard to bring out the outer ring of blue.

 

For both images I used the RC 6 inch telescope with the Atik 314L+.

Geoff