#seestar

Too much thin cloud with too much Moon on targets that were too faint. No overnight imaging successes. The framing on the SMC is better than the previous effort, though. Mind you, I am vaguely impressed that I got any data on NGC 6820 at all. It only rises to about 26 degrees and would be barely above the trees. #astrophotography #space #seestar

Over the weekend I got some good data on the Horsehead Nebula so now I have decent images of both of the big showy nebulae in the constellation of Orion. All data taken with my Seestar S30 Pro from my Bortle 7 backyard in Sydney, and processed in Siril with RC Astro, GraXpert and VeraLux scripts. Both images have about 4 1/2 hours of exposure time in them and I feel like they could both do with some more, but they'll do for now. Maybe I'll do a big mosaic covering both nebulae a bit later in the year when I can start imaging them before 2 am. #Astrophotography #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #TMMT #ThirtyMillimetreTelescope #Siril #RCastro #VeraLux #GraXpert #SmartTelescope

Huh, I thought I'd already done about as good a job on the Helix Nebula as I was going to be able to do with the Thirty Millimeter Telescope, but increasing the total exposure time from 11 to almost 20 hours, doing a 1.5× drizzle upsample, and refraining from pushing the brightness so hard have together brought rewards. Maybe I should keep going on this even longer. #Astrophotography #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #TMMT #ThirtyMillimetreTelescope #Siril #RCastro #VeraLux #SmartTelescope

My god, it's full of stars. M24, the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, and neighbouring bits and pieces. Just over 4 hours 10 minutes of total exposure time over the last two nights with the little Seestar S30 Pro and its UV/IR cut filter. Not bad considered how irritatingly bright the Moon was being at the time. Processed in Siril with SyQon and VeraLux scripts. I should have been using the light pollution filter under conditions like that, but I've already done all the big HII regions that are conveniently placed at this time of year so I've been trying to do stars and dust despite the Moon. #Astrophotography #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #Siril #VeraLux #SyQon #ThirtyMilliMetreTelescope #TMMT

The Thirty Millimetre Telescope is back outside and cooling down, tonight's Plan has been prepared, and now it's just a matter of waiting for it to get dark. I will check the polar alignment before starting the plan just in case, but I have found that as long as I don't move the tripod I can detach and reattach the telescope without needing to realign it afterwards. #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #ThirtyMilliMetreTelescope #TMMT #Astrophotography

That's better. I'm going to call this done now. "Eta Carina in Context", all shot with the Thirty Millimetre Telescope (Seestar S30 Pro) from suburban Sydney (Bortle 7), mostly during full Moon, using the built in light pollution filter. Processing in Siril with SyQon and VeraLux. 50% scale version in this post, full resolution (6047×3411) here: https://drhotdog.smugmug.com/Nature/Seeing-Stars/i-RXPkcWj/A #Astrophotography #ThirtyMilliMetreTelescope #TMMT #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #Siril #SyQon #VeraLux

The Eagle and its Nest. This is what my telescope has been spending most time on for the last couple of nights, 9 hours in total. It's the Eagle Nebula, M16 and, below (north) of it, is something the Seestar app calls "NGC 6604 - Nest Nebula". As far as I can tell it would be more accurate to refer to the nebula as Sh 2-54, NGC 6604 is the star cluster near the centre of it. Edit: I wasn't entirely happy with the processing so had another stab at it. It's better now. #Astrophotography #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #TMMT #ThirtyMilliMetreTelescope

This, meanwhile, is a preview. The Large Magellanic Cloud is only just rising high enough to take images of right at the end of the night, plus the Moon is currently almost full which pretty much forced me to use the light pollution filter with everything. I will return to this in a few months when I can hopefully get lots of time in better conditions, and I can try imaging it without the light pollution filter too. #Astrophotography #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #TMMT #ThirtyMilliMetreTelescope

Since my telescope was still running when I got up this morning, and the skies were still clear, I did take the opportunity to snap a few pictures of the day star, too. It's a not a fantastic solar telescope but it does alright for its size. Slightly better results would be achievable by saving raw video and applying the the standard planetary imaging workflow of stacking and sharpening in AutoStakkert!, Registax, whatever but I'm spending enough time processing the night time data so I'm content to just use the in-telescope processed stills. Word on the street (well, Seestar FB group) is that using Baader Astrosolar film instead of the included solar filter also helps. I think I've got some of that in the cupboard somewhere. #Seestar #Seestar30Pro #TMMT #ThirtymilliMetreTelescope

The weather forecast is promising two completely clear nights in a row so I made sure to get home just as it got dark and quickly set up my telescope. I already had a plan ready for it to execute so it should now run for the rest of the night fully automatically. #Astrophotography #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #ThirtyMillimetreTelescope #TMMT

I'm still considering this a work in progress for now, but it's looking promising! It's a mosaic of the area around the Eta Carina nebula put together from three pointings from tonight, plus a deeper stack of Eta Carina that I already had. I had to crop the combined image just a little more than I'd like due to some gaps, so I'll take some more data at the start of tomorrow night to fill those in. #Astrophotography #Seestar #Seestar30Pro #ThirtyMilliMetreTelescope #TMMT