Category Archives: Astroimaging

Temporary halt on Deep Sky Stacker port to Linux

Posted on February 21, 2024 by james

I think I’ve reached the point where I can’t do much more with this for the moment, unfortunately. Unless I fancy creating a BITMAP-type library for Linux so I don’t have to port all of the code that uses Windows … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged | Leave a comment

Stacking on Linux, deeply

Posted on February 10, 2024 by james

Pretty much anyone who is into amateur astrophotography will be familiar with Deep Sky Stacker (aka DSS). It’s a great application that takes combinations of light and dark frames (amongst others) and merges them to produce a single stacked output … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy, Computing, Linux | Tagged | Leave a comment

Definitely not a meteorite :(

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

After M51 I decided to move on to a new target and have a crack at M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy. There’s been a lot of fuss about Elon Musk’s starlink constellation and the effects they’re having, and here’s the first … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A first attempt at M51

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

Through March and into April I attempted to image Messier 51 with my Skywatcher ED80 and Atik 314L+ (mono). I ended up with twenty-six five-minute luminance exposures and nineteen three-minute exposures for each of red, green and blue for a … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Guidescope in need of TLC

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

I recently purchased a used Celestron 80mm guidescope with a focal length of 600mm. Normally I’d probably have gone for another ST80, but in fact I wanted this one to use with a slightly longer focal length OTA anyhow, so … Continue reading →

Posted in Astro Equipment, Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Interesting guiding drift plot

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

In relatively poor seeing recently, the drift plot for guiding in Ekos showed up like this: An interesting pattern, I thought, like three circles on a line through the centre of the plot. I can’t explain either the circles or … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Odd diffraction spikes from a refractor

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

The other night I was framing an image using my 80ED and Atik 314L when I noticed that some stars in one corner of the image had odd diffraction spikes: I couldn’t see what the problem was at all at … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged | Leave a comment

Odd Maksutov reflections

Posted on June 10, 2020 by james

The other night when I slewed to a bright star to check the focus on my Skywatcher 127 Mak I got this image from the ASI174MM camera: I’m thinking the off-centre ring must be a reflection of the bright star, … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy | Leave a comment

A revisitation of M27 revisited

Posted on January 16, 2020 by james

A while back I posted an image of M27 and it was suggested that I grabbed some OIII data which would show up the outer wings of the PN. As almost no-one in the UK will be unaware, the weather … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A second attempt at processing the Crescent

Posted on January 16, 2020 by james

I’ve had another crack at this and I think it’s better in some respects, but I’m coming to the conclusion that I really have to get rid of the stars and process them and the nebulosity separately as trying to … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment