Proof that you can take Star trails with a #DwarfII !

Well, OK the photo was taken with an #OlympusTG4 - but it has a DwarfII in it, so that counts, right?

And yes, I know I have not cleaned up the residual noise.

Mission Control

2xDwarf2, 2xDwarf3 all in a dark sky reserve.

So mache ich Astrofotos

Durch Gespräche mit Leuten, die sich meine Astrofotos angeschaut haben, weiß ich, dass es teilweise recht falsche Vorstellungen davon gibt, wie ein solches Foto entsteht. Viele stellen es sich einfacher vor, als es tatsächlich ist. Deshalb möchte ich mal einen kurzen Überblick über meine typischen Arbeitsschritte geben.

https://www.spacetaxi.de/blog/so-mache-ich-astrofotos/

Das ist ein #Zeitraffer der heutigen partiellen #Sonnenfinsternis. Leider zogen immer wieder Wolken durch und haben den Blick getrübt.

Gestern Abend war der Himmel wieder ziemlich klar, so dass ich spontan nachgeschaut habe, von welchem Deep-Space-Objekt ich mal eine Aufnahme versuchen könnte. Bei meiner Recherche bin ich auf den Rosettennebel (Caldwell 49) gestoßen, in dessen Zentrum sich der offene Sternhaufen NGC 2244 (Caldwell 50) befindet.

https://www.spacetaxi.de/blog/rosettennebel-caldwell-49/

So last night I had a go at some fairly challenging targets.

This post is not about them, well it is, but it is really about what I did while my Dwarf3 was working on things that should really be left to a proper dark sky area, not the middle of suburbia.

I started the night with my Dwarf3 having a go at Barnard's Loop, using the wide angle lens. This is a massive structure, but very faint, and after 20 frames at 90s, I gave up, because the light pollution just killed any hope.

While that was running though, I pointed on of my DwarfIIs at the Tarantula Nebula, and got a solid two hours out of it before I crashed and shut everything down.

This is the result after some smoothing and enhancement in Google Photos.

480*15s@80

Last night we (myself, @leece , and her mum) saw in the New Year with a star party for family and friends.

To make it as accessible as possible, we found a park in Como that is almost completely dark, despite being only a couple of kilometres from the CBD. Adjacent to this park is the Como Croquet Club, so we hired their clubhouse as a base of operations.

Two days before, we got a panicked message from the club, asking if their members could have a gathering of their own - which was fine with us, as long as they did not want to turn on the field lights. So we had twenty odd people turn up, along with about the same number of Croquet Club members. As it turns out, the son of one of my workmates played in high school, and got his family into playing a game, much to the delight of the rather elderly club members.

We started proceedings with a couple of shots of the sun and the current sunspots (Me: "This is what it looks like right now!" 16yo daughter of a work mate: "Well, actually it's what it looked like 18 minutes ago." Me: Applause), and then ate dinner while waiting for the sky to go dark. At 8pm, we got our Dwarf3s aligned, and synchronised their schedules for the night. Then we fired up the DwarfIIs, got them running on some ad-hoc targets, and called everyone out, including many of the Croquet Club members, who were also interested.

We opened with some spectacular views of the Orion Nebula, the Sculptor Galaxy, and the Horsehead Nebula. We also started on a shot the Helix Nebula. Most targets we scheduled 30 minutes for, before the Dwarf3s would move on to new targets.

Aiding us in our explanation of what was on display was @ariaflame , a physicist from Murdoch Uni, and a good friend. We talked about the way clusters and nebulae are formed, how stars aged, and just how far everything is.

Around 8:30, the last of our guests arrived - workmate and Perth Observatory volunteer (and former professional astronomer) Steve Ewing, who had with him a 10" traditional telescope. By about 9pm he had it up and running, and was showing off Saturn and Jupiter, which are too small for our smart telescopes to resolve meaningfully. Steve's enthusiastic explanations of planetary dynamics were a highlight of the evening.

Sadly, as 10pm rolled around the sprinkler systems on the oval started up, and we had to rapidly tear everything down before they reached us. As Leece said - "Rain stopped play."

Despite this, it seems that everyone enjoyed themselves, and we got some great images to share with everyone after.

And that is how we saw in 2025.

#astronomy #StarParty #Astrodon #NYE2024 #Astrophotography #2025 #dwarf3 #dwarfII #SmartTelescope

Why do the skies have to be clearest when the main rig is down for repairs? Anyways, have Dwarf.ii, needs must...

7.5hr on M45, the Pleiades, last night.

EQ-mode worked, although I didn't notice the difference in the data anyway. Took two runs, giving 999*2 = 1998 files (half fits, half TIFF because the dwarf doesn't put timestamps in its filenames). Also took all day to process the stuff properly in PI.

Orion (or Nyingarn in here Nyoongar lands) is starting to rise at a reasonable hour, so I thought I'd take another look at this classic target.

This time I threw on the OIII/Ha filter, and it seems that there is not much going on in the OIII band, because the end result is just about pure Ha.

DwarfII, OIII/Ha dual-band filter, 240x15s@gain 80. Post processed in Snapseed and Google Photos.

So we headed down to the beach in the hopes of the Kp index going up and granting us an #aurora but it is not playing ball tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

While waiting, though, we thought we'd run our #DwarfII scopes. I targetted a little #OpenCluster called #NGC6451, or The Tom Thumb cluster.

All sorts of fun stuff going on around it.

Very early and cold but clear of smoke and clouds, #Comet #tsuchinshanatlas looking great before sunrise this morning in #PerthWesternAustralia

Straight out of camera for you this morning we have I think probably about 15 frames on the left and just one frame on the right. The frame on the right was taken later, just before it became a mug's game due to that naughty Sun coming up like a bully in the playground.

Shutter 5 gain 60 as I recall.

One of Australia's largest birds, the #Australian #Pelican, at #Gallup, #PerthWesternAustralia .

Shot on a #DwarfII , and post-processed in #Snapseed.

So this morning we got up a while before dawn to see if C/2023 A3 Tsushinchan/ATLAS was going to play ball at last. Things were a bit dicey because of smoke from many, many prescribed burns going on, but we had a go anyway.

And we were rewarded! The comet is increasing in brightness (now at +5.1, a full magnitude brighter than at the start of last week), and moving away from the rising sun just enough to get in a set of 50 subframes before the sky gets too bright.

(This is all Southern Hemisphere-centric.) Because of the combined movements of the Earth and the comet, it will appear to move back towards the sun from our perspective after Wednesday, and then reappear in the evening towards the start of October. During this time it is expected to continue to brighten, possibly even becoming daylight visible, with peak visibility expected around October 14.

#Comet #TsushinchanAtlas #C2023a3 #Astrodon #Astronomy #Astrophotography #OrbitalMechanicsAreWeird

#DwarfII 50x8s@80 Postprocessed in #Snapseed and #GooglePhotos

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS early this morning. Unfortunately the Dwarf ii didn't want to do any stacking this close to the horizon so this is just one frame. Hopefully I can get Siril to help later.

But still, it's a photo of a #comet I would not otherwise have, and look at how pretty green it is!

Last night was clear! After running some errands as my Mum's fridge has broken down, we set up our telescopes. The South Australian Astronomical Society has published their September what's up there recently - I recommend them for us Southern Hemisphere people with telescopes and binoculars - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmQm4M-rh3Q and I was reminded I hadn't gotten a decent shot of the Helix Nebula - Caldwell 63 yet.

So while Rob amused himself with M8, which if you'll recall I had a look at earlier this year, and also a look at Saturn I set up for a look at what some call The Eye of God.

@rdm lent me his O3+Hydrogen Alpha filter, I dialled up the gain to 110, and sat down and too 539 frames over a couple of hours or so at 15 seconds an exposure.

I took a save before the A.I enhancer kicked in, and played with it myself in Snapseed and Google Photos.

While I'd like to do some more work on it, I think it would be nice for you to have a look now.

I really like how you can see stars shining through this planetary nebula.

#astronomy #Astrodon #astrophotography #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #dwarfii

We've had a little bit of opportunity, here and there, after a lot of clouds, so here's a couple of images for you.
It's unfortunately been weeknights, so we couldn't go too long.

I present to you the Eastern Veil Nebula and the Grus Quartet of galaxies, with very casual post processing.

Can anyone tell me anything about the object OCI999.0? I found it on the catalogue of my Dwarf II, and it seems to be an open cluster with a nebula.

I cannot find anything about it! Not even which catalogue it is from!

#dwarfii #stellarium #astronomy

@CosmicRami ? @futzle ? @ariaflame ?

Today's #Sun and #Moon . Taken 10 minutes apart around midday.

Both shot with a #DwarfII

Sun: 10*1/320@0 with ND1e6.
Moon:100*1/200
Postprocessed in #Snapseed and #googlephotos

Here is a lesser-known nebula: #NGC6820, and the open cluster #NGC6823 .

This shot covers about 1 degree by 1.5 degrees, and is the result of about five hours of data collection over the course of three nights, using two #DwarfII smart telescopes.

1 hour's worth is without any filters, 1 hour is with a Svbony CLS light pollution filter, and 3 hours with a OIII/HII filter.

Then I fed the 1237 frames into #Siril and started crunching numbers. 72 frames were not usable, leaving me with 1165. These I stacked, and then ran through the "Hubblematic" #HubblePalette emulator and DSA Star Reduction scripts. Finally I did some additional reprocessing and smoothing with #GooglePhotos.

Most images of the area cover the cluster, rather than the rather large area of nebulosity that surrounds it, and just concentrate on the (admittedly very pretty) nebula around the cluster. This shot covers a much wider field, and even it does not show the true extent of this faint but magnificent region.

#Astrometry by Astrometry.net .