While the weather isn't looking up and thus no AAL observation can take place, I've practiced some image processing of old data - from 2015 and even 2014. I must have learned some since, as my basic workflow already gave much improved results. I've discovered certain functions in fitswork I didn't use yet, and have improved on my workflow, specifically a bit less background noise.

It's been a long while since CS, things don't look very promising for the next future - including 21st in the morning for the eclipse of the moon.

I've been thinking lately about controlling the whole equipment from the computer. This means installing the EQMOD platform (Windows), seeing about the physical connection between mount and computer (hardware needed, at least an EQDirect adapter for the EQ6 and/or an USB/RS232 adapter for the LXD75 - possibly going through a bluetooth connection). It would allow controlling the mount from e.g. Stellarium, which could be really nice. It would imply a whole new workflow for the GoTo alignment. It would also be the preferred setup when at some stage moving on to a cooled mono astro cam with filter wheel etc., might as well start getting used to it. Even better if it were the beginning of an actual fixed observatory, but…

Series of the moon, processing with PIPP, AutoStakkert, Registax, GIMP

On the eve of the eclipse of the moon, an almost full moon rose in the east-north-east… right next to the clock tower - nice shot to be had. With the eclipse the next early morning and work after, and with that full moon, no astrophotography session for that night.

Getting up around 04:45 and out of the house around 05:00, the eclipse was already well into the partial phase. I first went to the plateau du Rahm for shots of the reddish moon above Luxembourgs old town - but it was actually quite a bit higher still than I expected. I went down to Neumünster for more interesting views, and indeed got a few nice shots with the St. Michel church. One mistake I made then was to use too long an exposure with the 400mm tele setting, losing sharpness due to the movement of the moon. I went on to Kirchberg and got more shots with the modern buildings there, including the Philharmonie. By then, totality was over. I went on to the office after around half partial eclipse, and still got a shot of the last phase from there.

With some holes between the clouds, and having recently read about some sunspot activity on the Sun, I set up the Newton with the white-light Baader sun filter hoping to image some spots. I wanted to try first a number of shots with the DSLR to be stacked with AS, then filming using the ASI120MM Mini. Alas, there weren't any spots visible now, also there wasn't much to see besides passing clouds.

I ended up switching to the PST and chose to try again using the ASI120 Mini. While I knew there'd be trouble with getting into focus, I tried the cam without the protective glass in front of the sensor to avoid newton rings. Indeed, I hardly got newton rings (if at all, a much smaller effect), but the cam barely hung at the outside of the 1.25“ eyepiece holder. The thing is, the thread for attaching the module with the protective glass to the camera is different from the normal filter thread (M28.5×0.6), so that the extension I'd need doesn't fit directly on the camera.

Now the problem is to find some adapter from that camera-side thread to the normal filter thread - I want to keep the protective glass intact, so no simply breaking out the glass.

As there was some clear sky for a change, I went out to the back yard after being back from my usual tuesday night outing. With the 450Da and the 50mm on the SA, I started with a short series of Orion, having to end quickly (~10 min) as the neighbor's house came into the picture. I moved on to Auriga near zenith, but as I saw later I must have touched the focus, ruining it, wasting ~40min worth of exposure time.

Surprisingly, over-pushing the stretching of the result, Barnard's loop can be identified in the Orion picture, despite being taken from town, with a rather short total exposure.

Valentine's day, clear sky, a bit more than half moon… the Newton got set up in the back yard.

With the 500D, I went for the moon itself, taking a longer series for stacking. Also, I took several short series at different exposures of the M42 Orion nebula.

I went on experimenting towards Deep Sky with my ASI 120MC. FireCapture was configured for FITS output, using up to 30s exposures depending on the chosen target (Orion, Pleiades, Sirius, Horsehead, Running Man, Rosetta). I probably should have used my FH80, as the effective focal length was a bit long, drift was noticeable.

Feldberg / Altglashütten, clear sky… 2 days before full moon. One series of pictures at 50mm of the Orion constellation, with that moon shining into it. Some more pictures at 200mm of the Pleiades.

Feldberg / Altglashütten, clear sky… 1 day before full moon, i.e. 99%. Again a series of Orion, this time at 200mm - from flame nebula via horsehead to running man and great orion nebula. More pictures of the Pleiades. Also, a series of pictures of the moon.

Full moon at Feldberg/Altglashütten, clear sky. A series of pictures of the moon, no more - too tired from skiing.

Feldberg/Altglashütten, clear sky, right after full moon - another series of the moon.

Feldberg/Altglashütten, clear sky, 40 minutes before the moon for a series of the Jellyfish nebula IC443 and M35 star cluster region. Again, a series of pictures of the moon.

Back home, clear sky, try from the back yard in town: ED80 for the Rosette nebula NGC 2244 with guiding, 200mm towards central Auriga. It turned out that the relatively few pictures (3min each ISO800) gave a rather unsatisfying result (lots of noise) - the bright sky of town certainly didn't help there.

Last clear sky for a while, another go from the back yard despite illumination at the neighbor's: ED80 with guiding, incl. random displace, for the Jellyfish nebula IC443. Also, 200mm for the Rosette nebula NGC 2244. Still, lots of noise in the pictures.

Full moon. I decided to capture it using the 500D through the 8” Newton. When orienting the scope, I noticed I couldn't control the 2nd axis, so I just went and did that manually. Later, when - due to the quite approximate north alignment - I had the moon at the border of the picture, and I wanted to correct the situation, I had trouble with the 1st axis too - and strange noises in the mount. So I broke off the session after about 135 pictures. I'd have to look after the mount during the weekend.

A bit of sun.

More sun.

Clear sky on a friday evening - off to Beidweiler.

Trouble with guiding, so none used.

First target was the seagull nebula, but with it being in the light pollution from Luxembourg city, I moved over to the flaming star nebula. The scope used was the ED80.

The 200mm was used on the central part of Auriga again.

More sun.

More sun.

With the USB EQdirect cable finalized and the setup tested in a “dry run”, it was time to test the setup in the back yard: EQ6, laptop, plus the ASI120MC. Starting EQMOD and StellariumScope, from there Stellarium, one gets the connection up and running. Unpark the scope (EQMod), navigate to a star from Stellarium (select then Ctrl-1), fine-tune using the EQMOD controls, then sync (Ctrl-3) - rinse and repeat for a few stars, and the result will be a very precise goto. Here, it worked very precisely with 4 sync points, despite them being roughly in the same regions of the sky (east/south/zenith).

I then proceeded to picture the Whirlpool galaxy using the ASI120MC. To get decent signal, a long exposure was needed (I went with 300s and gain 30), but the effective focal length and tracking quality meant that I got trails rather than stars. Thus, I added the MGEN guider. While drift was much less than before, it was non-zero - probably the effective focal lenght of the MGEN on its mini scope was insufficient to properly guide for the extreme focal length of the Newton scope with the ASI120MC. After 20 light frames, I went for some flat and bias frames. Then followed a few sequences of the Moon. Finally, some dark frames were added for proper processing of the Whirlpool pics.

While processing the Moon sequences was pretty standard (AutoStakkert plus registax for wavelet sharpening and final processing in GIMP), the Whirlpool pics are another story. regim and DSS failed stacking the light frames, even siril didn't give a decent result. I'll have to explore this further. Probably there's too few identifiable stars in the picture, with the galaxy filling almost the entire frame.

First light on the ASI1600MM Pro. I tested it from the back yard, mounted on the FH80/400 (which may not have been the best of ideas). Rather than running the intended quick test, I ended the session around 2 o'clock, with sets of pictures with each filter on both the ring nebula region and the dumbbell nebula region.

The handling of LRGB and especially narrowband is new and needs practice. One lesson learned: need a set of flats *per filter*. A suprise: regim can't handle the TIFFs produced by SharpCap, while DSS can use them.

AAL observation meet, this time at Burschent near Napoleon's tree. From there, view to south with Kirchberg directly visible, Cattenom only just hidden but clear view of the nuclear plant's cloud. To the north, view up to belgian windmills, to the east, deep view into Germany. At north-east, view of the Vianden water basin on Nikloosbierg. Only the west view is barred by a hill planted with windmills.

When it got dark enough, setup of the EQ6 and Newton. After it got really dark, most public and AAL members were gone, and I took a series of pictures (no guiding etc.) of the Sombrero galaxy M106.

First attempt at picturing the Sun using the ASI1600 on the Coronado PST. It ain't easy getting into focus!

First serious test with the ASI1600 on the ED80. First target was the dumbbell nebula, where I did the whole series of LRGB + Ha/O3/S2 while cooling to 10C. I then switched to the tulip nebula, where I did LRGB + Ha, plus a final picture in Ha of the firebird (part of the veil nebula). The NEQ6 mount was controlled from the laptop, too.

Partial eclipse of the moon. I set up the Newton on the NEQ6 with the 500D for photography, and the FH80 on its EQ1 for the kids (and myself) to watch. The moon did take a while to become visible, due to clouds and obstructions (greenery and neighboring buildings). In the meantime, I showed Jupiter to the boys. When the moon became more apparent, they were interested in that, too. Later, the older boy was interested in hearing from other objects, too. He interpreted Saturn as an eye, and was very happy to have identified the ISS passing by. While I did take some series of pictures of the moon, this effort was hindered: on one hand, by the permanent thin layer of clouds present throughout the evening, and on the other hand by technical issues: the mode selection wheel on the EOS 500D is obviously out of whack, and I may have to retire that body alltogether if I can't fix it myself (repair by a pro would obviously cost more than it's worth).

Mostly clear sky, hottest day ever (for Luxembourg). I set up the NEQ6 with the ASI1600 and the 200mm lens, MGEN autoguiding, mount control via laptop. The target of the evening was the veil nebula, to be imaged in narrowband. I had some trouble with focus, as it turned out that my focus from the luminance filter didn't fit for hydrogen alpha - I refocused also for O3 and S2. I may have to check on the filter wheel, maybe the orientation of the filters.

I also put the new 6D body on the StarAdventurer, using the 50mm lens, targeting Cygnus. Thin passing clouds had me throw out a bunch of the individual pictures, the first ones also still being too bright as I started “too soon” after sundown.

For the summer holidays on Lanzarote, I had taken along the StarAdventurer and a 450Da. The immediate surroundings were quite light-polluted, no way to get into better surroundings. So I just set up on the balcony of the hotel room, which featured a view to south/west. As there was no direct view of Polaris, I had to set up by location coordinates and compass alone, in turn forcing me to stay with short focal length and exposure times. Additionally, there were both some humidity a way up over the horizon (being right next to the beach) and lights from the hotel, and some passing clouds.

I tried for the head of Scorpio with Jupiter and a bit of the milky way, using the 50mm lens. The end result was pretty bad though, while post-processing I found that there must be some dust on the 450Da's sensor - I'll have to clean that up.

Same as the evening before, but using the 17-55mm at medium focal length, avoiding focus issues at wide-angle. The weather was better in that there were hardly any passing clouds in the earlier evening. I went for Scorpio and Sagittarius again, including the milky way. The results are much better than from the evening before, but still disappointing.

Much the same as on the 2019-07-29, but using the 7Dii with the 17-55mm. Passing clouds made the attempt mostly futile. The sensor appears to have been mostly clean.

Same as the day before, getting better results but with added dust in the optical path.

Perseides observation by AAL and Naturmusee at Beideler. Arriving early, there were still thunderstorms around, but weather cleared up on time for the observation - i.e. between 22h and 24h. I'd brought the ED80 for visual observation, but forgot the finder scope - had to locate my target through the scope using the 25mm eyepiece, then switching to higher magnification. I mainly showed Saturn and Jupiter, plus Albireo during a phase when clouds hid both planets.

I set up the 6D + 40mm lens on the fixed tripod, with a series towards the Beidweiler antennae, and the 7Dii on the StarAdventurer with the 11-16mm, going for the milky way. I'm quite impressed with the quality provided by the full frame sensor of the 6D. The session on the wide-angle was more disappointing, with too few individual pictures, a gradient due to either the moon (one corner) or the Beidweiler antennae (opposite corner). Unfortunately, I didn't get even a single perseide on a picture - lots of airplanes though.

Beidweiler site, Newton in action with a 450Da capturing the Cocoon nebula. As the MGEN had trouble with the camera connection, I had to work without guiding.

The SA carried the 200mm with the full-frame 6D, going for Deneb and the North America and Pelican nebulae.

Additionally, the 7D was used for star trails with the Beidweiler antennae, with Perseus and Cassiopeia in the background.

Black forest, Altglashütten. First evening there, I went to the ski lift as in february, using the SA with the 200mm and 450Da on the veil nebula. I used the 7D on the small Sirui tripod for star trails, finding this tripod is really not for astro use.

I got to see quite a meteor right at the start of the star trails session, even capturing it on the first picture. It was visible towards the west, coming in from the south.

The black forest sky is really much darker than home, the milky way much more visible. There's quite some airplane traffic too, though.

Still in the black forest, I set up on a parking right off the main road to Feldberg, with a view down to Bärenthal and Titisee. The SA and 6D were used on a patch between Cassiopeia and Cepheus, while the 7D caught star trails towards Titisee resp. some untracked shots of the milky way.

The cable remote for the 450Da has refused to work, there must be an issue with the cable itself, as the electronic parts seem fine. I'll have to track this down.

Post-processing: the pictures from the 6D have turned out hard to stack using regim (java out of heap space) or DSS (very unclean parts in the resulting pictures). siril has come to the rescue, delivering proper results. I guess I'll be using that much more often, even if it is really wasteful with huge temporary diskspace requirements.

First attempt using the ASI1600 on the Newton scope. What works is to connect the T2 ring directly to the MPCC III and putting that on the Newton focuser. The wheight is quite something, I guess I'll have to re-tune the focuser (or maybe even exchange it for a better model, possibly even motorized?).

After first having focused on a star, I went for the (full) moon. Capturing frames, I quickly noticed I had quite some drops, probably due to a slowish USB connection to the camera. Also, the size of the resulting .ser file got quite impressive - some 200 frames were at over 3GB! I took two series, one with the L filter, one with Ha.

Then, I went for the bubble nebula NGC7635, and the M52 cluster next to it. It turned out I couldn't get both fully on there (at least without rotating the camera and thus re-focusing), so I did a second series for the bubble nebula alone. With the full moon, I only did Ha - 5min per exposure, helped by MGEN guiding.

I did have an issue with the flats - they created a sort of dark ring in the final result, probably from a less-than uniform light distribution in Ha at least. My final images thus had to be processed flat-less. Stacking failed in siril (too dark / too few stars identified), but worked fine in DSS.

ED80 on NEQ6 in the back yard, with the ASI1600. The main target was the bubble nebula / M52 cluster combo. I did short RGB series plus longer Ha O3 S2 series, plus flat, bias, dark frames. Additionally, I tried for the gamma cas nebula in Ha. Also, I did a few short RGB frames of Andromeda, guiding didn't work out there.

Post-processing has been quite a pain. The flats were just strange, showing a ring around the center. Maybe sth to do with the 12V rather than 9V applied to the FFB? Also, getting the proper color balance was almost impossible (RGB - green seemed too pronounced. RGB + Ha, way too much red). An attempt at Hubble palette got me a strange result. Finally, the bicolor version seemed best.

I'll definitely need longer RGB total exposures for proper results there, the 5 min frames for narrowband seem appropriate, even if longer exposures might be better - I did have guiding issues there though.

A test printing one of my more recent pictures (veil nebula, 200mm, ASI1600 narrowband bicolor) on the family's Canon Selphy CP1200 has turned out surprisingly well, even if the print is on the smallish side. It's definitely encouraging for trying a good quality print with a good provider.

I finally placed my first order for an alu-dibond print, 30cm x 40cm. I was ordering another VIP (very importand picture) anyway, so this got tacked on. I'm very keen on seeing the result.

Yay, the print order has already arrived at the pack station - the date of Dec 7th was announced for arrival at first. The result is surprisingly good, this won't be my only such print.

Evening: clear skies, for a change, quite cold though. Considering the “reachable” sky and the neighbors illumination (no care for lightpollution there), I opted for the ED80 and narrowband, going for bicolor only (Ha and O3). I started out with IC405 in Auriga, switching to M42 Orion, and doing individual test shots of horsehead and rosette.

Really hardly any clear sky these past weeks and months. Except maybe later in the night, or when I have to be fit for work. This evening is no change from that, but at least I got to see the thin moon, and rather close to its right, Venus.

Clear sky. A. (age 9) had asked to be along, so I showed him all the setup steps - but did put up the FH80 / EQ1 combo so he could have a look around (Pleiades, Orion, …). The setup was the EQ6 with the Newton, including guiding etc., with the ASI1600, going for M1 (Crab nebula) in bicolor (Ha, O3).

Difficulties:

• the finder scope was quite off, I had to fiddle some before I had it aligned with the Newton itself.
• I had the usual issues with disconnected cables, which had to be re-screwed on - I'll have to re-do the wiring to entirely avoid screwed connections (at least unless protected against pull).
• I also had trouble with the smaller battery (which I used for guiding) - apparently it is discharged, and wouldn't re-charge.
• More: I forgot properly balancing the scope with all the attachments.
• After about 1 1/2h of operation (6x 10min for Ha, then 10min frames of O3), I noticed the pictures getting darker, after which I broke off. I did a test shot of 5min Ha towards the cone nebula, there was nothing to be seen except some stars. As there was nothing to be seen on the scope, I guess the sensor had started frosting over - I'll need to fix the heating strip to the camera front (sounds crazy, cooling in the back but heating in front).
• The neighbor in the back again had his lights on (illuminating the back of his house), which is quite disturbing for my purposes. I'll definitely need to talk to that guy, as I can see no positive purpose for that amount of light there.