The sky was mostly clear all day. I tried the PST during the morning, and worked it out for visual observation. I didn't get a chance to properly test out using the ASI 120MC or the DSLR on there. In the evening, the sky wasn't quite clear, but good enough to get out into the back yard with the StarAdventurer and the 200mm lens. The background was very bright, to I took the pictures with ISO400 and f/4, only 30s. Flats were taken with the new FF20. I forgot bias frames.

The targets were: * horsehead to great orion nebula * jellyfish nebula region * central auriga region * orion belt region * great orion nebula region

Ielwen: ED80 with MGEN on Alnitak and neighbors, test shot of Rosetta. Some tests with the 40mm pancake on the 7Dii towards Auriga, Orion, Perseus. Decent series of Auriga with the 50mm and 450Da.

While on holidays in the black forest region, this was the first clear sky evening. I set up the SA with the L bracket next to the building where we resided. While the sky was dark enough, I had trouble getting proper tracking with the 200mm lens on there. The 50mm presented me with a different problem, i.e. too narrow an angle of the sky usable without “hitting” the edge of the roof soon. I got a few shots of Orion, followed by a couple of series of the region between Orion and Gemini. No flats.

Second clear sky in a row, this time I went out to find a better site. No luck on the Feldberg, I finally ended next to the ski resort where I was in the morning, at Altglashütten. While getting a series of Orion, I noticed the stars were getting quite large - thin clouds up there, which got more dense with progressing night. I also did a few short series of Auriga, then between Hyades and Pleiades. No flats.

Attempts at the Sun using the 7DII

Clear skies (actually, sth like 3rd in a row, but only now next day off with the weekend). Cold though, very cold. And quite some wind. → off to Ielwen, with the ED80. With the half moon and a rather bright sky, hard to do much else than star clusters or maybe galaxies. I chose to do the Beehive with the ED80.

While setting up, I found that apparently the current converter for the MGEN is failing, causing burnt out fuses on the power supplies - both worked again after exchanging the fuses. I had to work w/o the MGEN. Thus, I used the programmable remote with the scope, but didn't have the simple one along for the second 450Da. So I used the SA with the 7D instead.

Also, having the FFB20 along rather than the flatinator, and the FFB20 needing the power converter… I couldn't make flats!

With the SA and 7D, I first took a few series of the general M51 Whirlpool region (200mm), followed by some pictures of the moon with the hyades, then the general region of the needle galaxy. In between I also did a test shot of the Beehive at 200mm.

I then switched to the 50mm lens and took a series of Canis Major, then again some pictures of the Moon with Taurus.

During the next weekend, I looked closely at the power converter. The cabling, where joining the jack resp. the converter itself, was somewhat loose, or at least the isolation part of it. A small rotation of the cable brought both poles together, resulting in a short. I applied some isolator tape as a quick fix, but I may have to gear up for a more permanent solution (i.e. exchange that cabling and fitting a non-changeable, proper jack).

Test shots of the Sun, 500D.

During the day, I did some tests with the PST, trying to picture the sun. I finally got into focus by not inserting the projection eyepiece fully. Still, quality remains far from what's visually seen.

In the evening, with CS and a half moon, I went to Limpach. Having fixed the cabling, this time around all went flawlessly including GoTo and Guiding. I went for the Leo triplet, using the Newton. The SA was first used with the Sirui ball head, with a nice result on the Whirlpool galaxy region.

CS, I was to go to Ielwen with F.S., but he called off. Instead, I went to Donatus chapel. While there was a little wind, I cautiously set up the ED80, later finding I could've gone with the Newton. Setup at first was strange, as I felt I was off by sth like 2h, but once done the GoTo was very precise. I went with the M96 group of galaxies. Then, I set up the SA, which got off to a bad start - massive trails. I removed the batteries and went with the powerbank via USB, all fine! The target this time was part of the Virgo Cluster.

Some days off, clear sky. Off to Donatus chapel I went… to find a farmer driving his tractor around, heavily lighted. So I continued on to the Berdorf Aquatower. Due to wind, I set up the ED80 rather than the Newton - in hindsight, I could've used the Newton. Anyway, I targeted the couple of whale and fishhook galaxies. GoTo setup and Guiding went fine, when this was up and running I put the 7Dii onto a normal tripod and started taking pictures of the aquatower with surrounding stars - in the rythm of 5 minutes, same as the long exposures of the ED80, for my very first star trails image. I then also set up the StarAdventurer and tried for the Virgo Cluster… but got trails. I then went for other regions, with probably better balance of the setup - auriga central, beehive, perseus double cluster, even (already!) Antares. Unfortunately, focus had gotten knocked out somewhere along the handling, thus only the perseus double and antares pictures were properly focused.

Second evening in a row, I went to Ielwen this time. Compared to the east part of the country, the view south is much infected with light pollution. Since there wasn't much wind, I set up the Newton, and targeted a classic, the Whirlpool galaxy. Guiding didn't work at all, I first couldn't find a guiding star, then it just “ran away” - and I ended up just not using guiding. Later, I targeted the Black Eye galaxy, where I had less of a hard time finding a guiding star, but had the same issue with “running away”. It turned out my 5 minutes exposures were too long, i.e. I got trails, no round stars. The 7Dii again was used for star trails, this time I left only 3 minutes between individual exposures, using the built-in timer. The SA was again put to service with the 200mm lens, properly focused this time. I targeted the region of the Iris nebula in Cepheus, then the already visible (but low) center of Cygnus.

First try at capturing Jupiter using the ASI 120MC camera, on the EQ6 + Newton scope and 2x Barlow. Jupiter was still rather low over the horizon, and it wasn't dark yet, seeing was pretty bad.

Considering the rapid rotation of Jupiter, I only took videos of 20s each.

I tried stacking via Registax and AstroStakkert, preferring the results from the latter. All in all, the final image remains smallish, and anything but detailed.

Attempts at photographing the Sun using a DSLR and the Coronado PST. I finally got into focus by not inserting the projection eyepiece fully, which is apparently an usual trick with solar scopes.

Post-processing the pictures is… well, something else.

More tries at photographing the Sun using a DSLR and the Coronado PST.

I tried different post-processing, i.e. first converted the picture to b/w before anything else, indeed getting better definition.

Still trying to picture the Sun using the Coronado PST, this time using the ASI 120MC. The projection eyepiece had to remain rather far out to achieve focus, and it was impossible to get the entire disc of the Sun on a single image. Post-processing was attempted with Registax and AutoStakkert, the latter giving better results.

I still got the recommendation to use a b/w camera.

Jupiter: another attempt at picturing Jupiter via ASI120MC, using the ED80.

Sun: another attempt at picturing the Sun via ASI120MC on the Coronado PST.

Moon: with the moon showing as a very narrow crescent, I took a series of pictures using the 7Dii and the 100-400mm lens.

With the moon still being quite a narrow crescent, and with Venus quite close to its right, I chose to picture this… especially with a nice sunset illuminating a few clouds in red colors from below.

Later that evening, I did another attempt at Jupiter, this time using the Newton scope with the ASI120MC - both with and without TS 2x barlow lens. Thanks to instructions found in the astrophotography book by Roland Störmer, I got a bit farther with post-processing - not only stacking, but then applying the wavelet filter from Registax. The timing was rather good, as the great red spot came into view during my filming attempts. Intermittent clouds caused some pauses, and also a breakoff around midnight. I am in doubt regarding the moons visible on certain pictures, as data from Stellarium indicate that Io should have disappeared from view behind Jupiter before the great red spot became visible, but I still have 4 moons there… could that be Thebe? The other 3 are quite obviously Callisto, Europa and Ganymede. From the interactive app at Sky&Telescope, it seems like it should have been Io very close to Jupiter.

Another try at the Sun using the Coronado PST and the ASI 120MC. At first, I had once more trouble getting into focus, until I realized I had forgotten to put the 40mm ring between the T2 adapter and the camera. Once done, I actually got pretty nice results, but was unable to identify the protuberances on screen, which I could visually see. I took several videos of differing length (between 20s and 60s). I then added the 2x Barlow from TS, which made focusing even more difficult, but also provided decent results.

The stacking went well for the shorter clips, less so for the longer ones - both in AutoStakkert and the much slower Registax. Registax was used to sharpen the output (conv file) from AutoStakkert, then GIMP was used to crop the result and add a little contrast.

More testing of the ASI120MC at the Sun.

More testing of the ASI120MC at the Sun during the day, various targets in the evening: Venus, Saturn, Albireo, the Moon, more Saturn. It turned out that “seeing” really is a thing, which one doesn't realize so strongly when doing deep sky. Especially the moon at moonrise was a wobbling blob. The difference in quality between the first Saturn pic (when it was just above a neighbor's roof) and the later one (at least a bit further up from the horizon) is very noticeable.

More attempts at picturing the planets Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. Having set up back in the garden, I wasn't quite so pressed with filming Venus, but it really would need much more focal length (than the 2m I can currently do). Jupiter is already so far to the east I couldn't go for it very long, and got a moment without the great red spot. Saturn on the other hand was still quite low, seeing not good either.

Sun during the day, between clouds, with the ASI120MC - caught a protuberance.

In the evening, with rather clear sky announced, but still passing thin clouds, I went to Beidweiler to the Donatus chapel. With the grass not yet mown, the maize still standing in the field, I went farther back up the lane than usual, finding a decent spot with a good view south.

I set up the NEQ6 with the ED80 first, targeting the Lagoon and Trifid nebulae. I ended up with 65x 2min ISO800 of that.

Next, the StarAdventurer plus 200mm lens got started on the Veil nebula. Here, I went with 1min shots, 120 of them.

Wanting my normal camera on a tripod, I finally also set up the LXD75 mount (not perfectly aligned) and did some varied shots around, including the milky way (Tokina 11-16), Cygnus (40mm pancake), Andromeda galaxy (100-400). With the mount not properly aligned, the wide-angle shots were ok, the tele ones ko.

Very interesting this evening was the planet's parade - first Venus in the west, Jupiter in the south-west, then Saturn to the south, finally a bright Mars coming up. Very late (or rather, early) the moon came up, ending the session.

With another supposedly clear sky saturday night, I again went to Beidweiler. I set up the NEQ6 with the Newton, targeting the Eagle nebula. When starting, the sky wasn't entirely dark yet, so only 2min per picture, later it was possible to go to 4min per picture. In the end, I took several more shots of the Dumbbell nebula.

With the big stuff set up, I also oriented the StarAdventurer and the LXD75. The ED80 was put on the LXD75, going for the Bubble nebula first (2min / picture), later the Iris nebula, finally a few more shots of the Andromeda galaxy. The orientation was less than optimal, the system could've used guiding.

On the SA, I first tried the 200mm on Andromeda, but got trails - indeed the 7Dii is rather heavy, especially combined with the 200mm. Thus, I opted for the very light 50mm and went for Cepheus and the Southern Milky Way using that. Later, I switched to the 11-16 and did some more landscape and Milky Way shots.

First attempt at astro pics on Fuerteventura (canary islands). I used the 450Da2 on the StarAdventurer with the 50mm, later the 11-16mm lenses.

It later turned out that alignment was far off, as I'd mistaken Kochab for Polaris when doing the setup - Polaris being much lower than at home. It is very noticeable there that the sun is much farther up to zenith, sagittarius and scorpius are also much higher in the sky (rather than skimming the horizon).

Kalima (wind with Sahara sand) was still going strong, the moon was already at more than half, going towards full.

Picture-wise, I mostly went for the southern milky way region, as these parts are only badly visible from home. Results were pretty bad though, thanks to Kalima and moon. Also, with the 450Da, impossible to get into proper focus using the 11-16mm.

2nd try on Fuerteventura. The moon being bigger, things didn't go much better than the previous evening. 200mm impossible to use, still that alignment problem.

Next try on Fuerteventura. The sky was clearer, the setup went better, good enough for using the 200mm lens. Still, with the moon close, I could only go to 20s ISO800 on the Antares region (as opposed to 30s ISO1600 around Sadr).

This was to be the “big day” of the total moon eclipse. I had to wait quite a while though before the moon actually became visible, long after moonrise - which happend in the mist over the ocean. Indeed, Mars was visible a while before the moon, which was above (and left of) it. While taking a number of different kinds of pics of the moon and Mars, I noticed the milky way coming out nicely, and went for that - until the partial phase of the eclipse started, then going back to the moon.

With the moon rising later and later, there's a window opening for taking pictures of the milky way

While the moon rises later and the milky way is clearly visible, passing clouds mess with proper pictures. I still tried for shots between the clouds.

I tried the 17-55 on the 450Da, which gets into focus only with zoom between 24 and 55mm. The same lens on the 7Dii is fine though.

Back home, first saturday of the month, clear sky… AAL meet at Dippach-Gare resp. Limpach. There was quite a bit of public. After most people were gone, I tried for my first Mars pictures using the ASI 120MC. Results are pretty poor though.

Big Perseides observation at the Beidweiler Donatus chapel. There were very many people around, some estimated about 400-500. It was certainly more than a couple of years ago, with the field towards Beidweiler being used too, not only right next to the chapel. There even was a TV crew from FranceTV, for a short report aired 2018-08-12 in the France 3 Lorraine journal.

I went for wide-angle pictures: LXD75 with the 7Dii and the 11-16mm towards zenith, 500D and Sigma 17-70 @17mm on the photo tripod towards north-north-east (Beidweiler antennae) for star trails, and I later set up the StarAdventurer with the 450Da1 and the 50mm lens towards Cassiopeia.

Having missed the Beidweiler event, I was asked by N.S. about a go for Perseides. We went to Ielwen, where I set up the Newton the the EQ6 going for the ring nebula. The SA was used on a region between the northern milky way and the big dipper, hoping for some shooting stars. Guiding didn't work out due to cabling issues with my 12V→9V DC/DC converter. We did end up seeing some shooting stars.

I again went to Beidweiler, going for the Andromeda galaxy using the ED80 and guiding. I also went for the California nebula, which got me a couple of Perseides. Trying for the 21P Giacobini-Zinner comet, I also shot the region of Heart and Soul, with little success - I ended up with the comet actually on pictures taken with the 7Dii and the 100-400 lens at 100mm. A series of the Veil nebula was off center, thus of little interest.

AAL meet, I set up the Newton for a series. I wanted to go for the tulip nebula, but realised it is in the Sharpless catalog, which isn't known by the SynScan databases. I ended up with a nearby target NGC6871 (open cluster with nearby nebulosity), no tulip in the field of view.

It caused me to properly look into how to target “synscan-unknown” stuff, which may be solved by using the SAO catalog of stars (mag 8 at least) known by SynScan or just using RA/DEC coordinates.

With the arrival of my ZWO ASI 120MM Mini, I obviously wanted to test it for the purpose I got it for - i.e. on the Coronado PST to get pictures of the Sun. Alas, what I feared came to, i.e. newton rings messing up the picture, typical for this sensor.

Btw, no luck with the 3x barlow, but it worked nicely with the 2x.

Interestingly, firecapture wouldn't recognize the camera, whereas SharpCap did nicely.

With the newton rings, I didn't bother with more than a rough processing of the pictures.

A new test with the Mini on the PST, including attempts at generating flats - which didn't work out in the conventional way: neither with the flatfield box nor with a matte screen towards the sun could I get decent flats with the max. 5s exposure that SharpCap offered. Anyway, this time around I did a proper processing with sharpening in registax etc.

I did get a hint from J.S. as to how to get a proper flat, which I'll try next time: on purpose go for an unfocused pic of the sun, which should result in the newton rings by themselves. Divide the light by that flat, and one should be rid of the newton rings.

Sun

Testing the ADC on Mars, with the ASI120MC. Tried the ASI120MC for Deep Sky with the M57 Ring nebula.

Friday evening, clear sky, worse announced for the saturday evening… off to Beidweiler with the N200/1000. Some days, Murphy is worse than others, this was one of them. My old power converter 12V/9V had its issues again, of course my new one isn't ready yet. I ended up repeating the guiding setup 3x, and had to give it up in the end. Then I made the mistake of still going for 4-minute individual exposures, which was too much for the Newton - thus slight trails for the stars instead of dots. Next issue, with the target I chose, the scope ended up hitting a leg of the tripod before completing the 1h-series. I still did a couple more series on other targets.

In parallel, I'd started for the milky way from the StarAdventurer, but my 2nd 450Da wouldn't focus with the wide-angle lens… I may have inverted the two bodies, this will need some testing. So I used the 7Dii instead, but the battery ran out quickly, no flats no bias no darks, and the backup battery was flat too! I switched to a different lens that would focus on that 450Da body, so all wasn't lost.

While packing up, I managed to physically hurt myself, yay! Nothing really bad though.

At home, I found I had another issue - after a recent upgrade of my operating system, my preferred stacking software wouldn't start up any more, and I had to upgrade to a current version of that. Despite using the same parameters as on the old version, I got b/w pictures of 1/4 resolution… something's obviously wrong in how the RAW is interpreted.

Lots of stuff can go wrong, and it will!

Using the ASI120MC on Mars

Using the ASI120MC on the Sun

Used the ASI120MC on the moon - using autostitch to compose a mosaic. Only a little piece remained missing. Results with usage of the barlow lens were a bit disappointing.

First saturday of the month… AAL meeting. The sky wasn't too clear, but still clear enough to show some things to the ca. dozen of visitors. We had a few scopes around, myself with the ED80 on the LXD 75.

I went for: the Pleiades, Mars, andromeda galaxy, ring nebula, lyra double double (I think it's actually the first time I properly resolved the 2nd double part there), bode/cigar galaxies. I also tried for the whirlpool galaxy, but that was simply un-seeable being very low over the horizon, and with quite some humidity in the air.

There were quite some questions about when to use which eyepieces and/or barlow lenses.

In the afternoon, I'd been working on a DC-DC converter, what with my existing one causing trouble. The entirely self-made one got barbecued again, possibly because of a short on the “out” end (connections to the hollow plug may have inadvertently caused it).

With the existing converter, I re-did the cabling, re-soldering new cables on there - that worked!

At Beidweiler, used the ED80 on the Pleiades. The 7D captured series for star trails, once with the Beidweiler radio antennae, once with the Donatus chapel.

A new attempt at the moon - using the ASI 120MC on the N200/1000. This time around, I made sure not to miss any part of the moon. Filming some 2000 frames per region, stacking the best 20%, stitching using autostitch gave me my best moon so far.

A different attempt at the moon - using the 7Dii with the 400mm on the SA. Stacking a series of pictures gives a decent enough result, but remains very far from the previous technique. And - there's quite a notable difference in quality between stacking the JPGs or the RAWs, of course in favour of the RAWs.

Went to Limpach, hoping for some holes in the clouds at least, but no luck. I had to turn back home without any results.

From the top of the hill, next to the cimetery, I tried for 46P/Wirtanen using the SA and the 200mm lens. I oriented towards the difficult-to-see Menkar (brighter star in the tail of the whale), hoping to get the comet down below. As it turned out later during post-processing and availability of Stellarium, I'd narrowly missed the comet, it was just under the area I pictured.

Having learned from the previous attempt at 46P/Wirtanen, I started in the back yard (less lights around) at 55mm - which gave me sufficient field to actually locate the comet - which had wandered quite a bit from a couple of days before. After mostly centering it, I took a first series of pictures, then switched to the 200mm lens. After some orientation, I again had the comet in the sights, and went for the next series… realizing I hadn't optimized the focus. After doing just that, I took a final series before clouds came up again. While taking the pictures, it seemed to me I'd observed a geminid (shooting star), but wasn't 100% sure.

While on a little retreat with the family at Malberg (Eifel), I tried for a few night shots on christmas eve - which included the manor of Malberg with the milky way (cygnus and lyra) above it. Big question is, how to process such a single-shot picture.

Still in Malberg, I tried for a star trails series, but fog kept passing over (no wonder with the Kyll flowing by closely). Remarkably, the milky way could be seen from inside the village, despite the street lights.

I took an old picture (the original regim stack) of the Lagoon nebula from 2015-07-10 and reworked it using my current standard workflow. Going through fitswork, stretching in GIMP etc., the end result looks much different from back then. It also showed some flaws in the original picture which might turn out better now.