Been Busy

I've given the astrophotography and astronomy a little bit of a break for a while. Work and family commitments have kept me away from the dark skies for quite some time. I'm off to Australia son and hope to take some wide field shots down there, so will hopefully have some interesting shots to share when I get back.

In the meantime, check out my new photography site here. I've been spending more time shooting motorsports and photojournalism.this past year, picking up the odd official gig here and there.

Have a safe summer, and more astro images to come soon!

Cheers,

Phil

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy

This image is a combination of files taken two nights ago (8*8 minute light frames at ISO800) and files taken two years ago (10*8 minute light frames at ISO1250), combined in Deep Sky Stacker. I still had some mild guiding issues the other night, so there's a bit of an issue with respect to elongated stars, and the galaxy could be a bit sharper. For a change, I decided to do post-processing on my iPad using the Snapseed application. Came out OK and the app handled my requirements quite well!

M13 Globular in Hercules

Another night of autoguiding fun and games. This time I royally messed up. PC could talk to my CGEM mount, could clearly see guiding images from my Meade DSI-C with no bluescreens. However, no guiding could be done. Tried to figure it out for several hours only to realize when packing up that I had not tightened the RA lock well enough on the mount. Utter silliness. Anyway, NEXT time I'll be set.

For now, here's an image of M13. It's a combination of 10 two minute exposures at ISO800 and ten two minute exposures at ISO200 for the core, merged in HDR software.

Back in Business - Hopefully

Tonight was do or die. I'd had enough of my recurring blue screen of death issues out in the field and decided to fix it once and for all. I set up my scope in the back yard, close to my home wifi so that I could download any required software and drivers as needed. Also close to a nice supply of Guinness which helped!

After receiving two BSODs while trying driver re-installs, I decided to snag my wife's laptop and install everything there. It runs Windows 7 like my new machine, but has USB2.0 ports as opposed to mine which runs USB3.0. After another BSOD on my machine, everything had installed on the other laptop so I plugged my mount and Meade DSI camera into it and gave it a whirl.

Viola!

Ran perfectly. Saw the CGEM mount, saw the Meade DSI, calibrated just fine. I ran it again, unplugging and re-plugging everything back in. All good.

So, it looks like I'll be doing more dishes so I can use my wife's machine more often. I assume it has something to do with the USB port difference at this point.

Naturally, the wind is picking up and the clouds and rain are pulling in. I have a photo assignment next weekend so I I'll have to wait to get out and image something interesting. In any case, looks like I'm back in business!

Comet Pan-STARRS

This is a hard little comet to find naked eye! Anyway, here is a shot taken with my Nikon D7000 and Sigma 70-200mm F2.8.

M45

Under clear skies last night (and some gusting wind) I again wrestled with my autoguiding setup. My new laptop present me with a blue screen of death which I click on the "PHD Target" button within the PHD app. It sees the DSI guide camera and brings an image down, it connects to the scope. When I start to calibrate, the PHD app locks up and when I kill it, a BSOD ensues. Outstanding. Third time out and I tried uninstalling and re-installing everything. I'm convinced it's a hardware issue.

Anyway, in between BSODs and system restarts, I targeted M45. The image here is 22 minutes of unguided two-minute exposures @ ISO1250. Stacked in DSS but processed on my iPad using the Snapseed App, which I like a lot.