Category Archives: Astroimaging

Temporary halt on Deep Sky Stacker port to Linux

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

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Stacking on Linux, deeply

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

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Definitely not a meteorite :(

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

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A first attempt at M51

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

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Guidescope in need of TLC

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

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Interesting guiding drift plot

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

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Odd diffraction spikes from a refractor

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

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Odd Maksutov reflections

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

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A revisitation of M27 revisited

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

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A second attempt at processing the Crescent

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

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