Hello from the PNW USA. Introduce yourself! · KlickitatAstro · ... · 2 · 91 · 1

KlickitatAstro 0.00
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Hello everyone,

I'm new here.  Been dabbling with this hobby for a little while and recently re-caught the bug after a long cloudy winter.  In an attempt to learn the features of this platform I'm going to try to post a link to my first real effort below.  I've done M31, M42, and M45 in the past as half hearted/learning/heartbreaking/exercises in frustration/$$$/etc attempts at insanity but I think I've worked out most of the  main frustrations.  A little trouble with SGP and auto flats scheduling remain but I've gotten to the point where I can set up, polar align, and run a sequence fairly reliably although it seems like some small hiccup occurs every night.  Tonight it was autofocus.  Somehow backlash compensation got set to zero.  Trying for Crescent Nebula tonight.  I have clear skies, calm winds and cool temperatures.

Comments welcome/encouraged.  Planning on "promoting" the image soon but just wanted to use the share option and forum before promoting.

Thanks

Clear Skies

Mike

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ashastry 2.81
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Hi Mike,

Welcome to AstroBin and very happy to hear you re-caught the astro-bug! There are several of us here in the PWN area.

After imaging from these skies for a while, and fighting the incessant clouds and bad seeing, I went remote late last year and haven’t looked back. While I do miss the mechanical tinkering, trading that for getting tons of acquisition time under quality skies has been worth it so far.

That is a beautiful shot of IC 1396! Love the colors!

Clear Skies,
Ani
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KlickitatAstro 0.00
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Hi Ani,

I watched Nico's video about starfront remote observatory on YouTube.  It's very tempting.  You could rent a space for a long time for what it would cost to build an observatory and get lots of clear skies.  The tinkering is fun but nothing says you can't keep a rig at home.  I was thinking that if I was to rent a remote spot I would build a dual rig with both a wide field and a longer focal length for variety.

I'm in the Columbia River Gorge and the only thing I wish was different about this place is the cloudcover at night.  :-)

Thanks for the compliment.  Not really sure what I'm doing.  PI makes pre-processing easy.  Noise reduction and and general corrections like gradients etc have gotten a lot easier than I remember from a few years ago.  I bought the RC Astro scripts for PI and it kind of feels like cheating.  I'm hoping that the stretch isn't too offensive.  I just played with it until I liked it.

Clear Skies

Mike
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