Skipper Billy

Well done - tough one to image - I have never had any success on that target.

Well done - you should be proud of that!!!

Very elegant light touch processing - well done - you should be proud of that!!

Thanks Gina - it was a bit of an experiment really before the target disappears from view for the season.

I used starnet++ to remove all the stars and create a star mask. Then in Photoshop repaired all the holes left by the star haloes using clone stamp (very time consuming) - then processed the stars to make them tighter and brighter then blended the two images back together.

Lovely image. Well done.

Bloated stars fixed .....

Thanks for that Bryan - I am always open to feedback ! I never use deconvolution - for two reasons - firstly I have never managed to get a result that I am happy with - it always seems to make the image dull and flat. Secondly its the one process that to me identifies it as processed in Pixinsight! I still have work to do on the stars - its something i always struggle with and I will try your very helpful suggestions. Thanks again. Watch this space!!!

M42 and NGC1977 - The Orion Nebula and the Running Man Nebula. Imaged 10th Feb 2021. 3 hours Luminance in 600 second subs binned 1x1. 45 mins each of RGB in 120 second subs binned 2x2. 4" frac and Atik mono camera. Processed in Pixinsight with a full set of calibration files.

A clear night forecast for the Scottish Highlands tomorrow - no moon - no wind but -14 degrees. I may need a light fleece!

NGC 2174 - The Monkeys Head Nebula. 5 hours Ha in 1200 sec subs binned 1x1 from a couple of weeks ago and 3 hours OIII in 600 second subs binned 1x1 from last night. The OIII was weak and sketchy and it clouded over before I had as much data as I really wanted. If its clear again tonight I will grab a few more hours of OIII and reprocess it as I had to push the OIII really hard (too hard). Or I might image it in SII and make a 'Hubble' pallet image.

'Star of Bethlehem' - I am seeing in the media more and more reports about next weeks conjunction being a re-run of the 'Star of Bethlehem'. For a kick off they are NOT stars! Giving them poetic licence and ignoring that fact I looked the location of Jupiter and Saturn around the alleged date of the happening and they were nowhere near each other!! Not even close. See attached and notice the date - Christmas Eve just before the 'event' - I also scrolled backwards and forwards a few years each way and they were never even close to conjunction !! For the pedants - you are quite right my mod

I am with @KevS on this one. I don't have the technical background that he does to explain the why, what and how but my simple brain tells me that the ceramic bearings that I use in the miniature gas turbines (jet engines) in some of my model aircraft are required to go from ambient temperature to many hundreds of degrees in a very short time and idle at 40000rpm and run flat out at 180000 rpm whilst having very low axial load are going to be a very different beast to bearings that turn once in a night with almost no temp. change but support a heavy weight. My simple brain also tells me that g

PS - when you get your scope rings dont forget that you need to balance in all 3 axis - something a lot of people forget and is often missed from instructions on balancing.

Are you 'tuning' your mount at the same sort of temperatures that you will be imaging at ??? I had a Sirius (Heq5 but black) and I couldn't figure out why it had zero backlash in the lounge but did when it was outside - all down to the temperature!!