Another clear night last night – what is going on??  Fired up the miniWASP array, this time using the 2 x Canon 200mm prime lenses and the Trius M26C 10-Megapixel OSC CCDs.  Target – the rich Milky Way region in Lacerta.  I was originally going to take a 2-framer of this region JUST showing a huge star density, but when I looked at the region on a planetarium program I saw that this was not a good choice.  If I took the frame to the right, rather than to the left – then instead of just having a mass of stars, I would also get a pile of dark nebulosity as well as the Cocoon nebula.  So I took the right hand frame.  Left hand frame was 16 x 10-minute subs and right hand frame was 14 x 10-minute subs, so a total exposure time of 5-hours but with only 2 and a half hours of actual (real) imaging time.  Registar says there are 250,000 stars in this image.

Having swapped out the Master Computer and mucked around a bit with Sky 90(1) I had some clear sky last night to take some test shots to see what needs fine tuning.  This image is just 12 x 5-minute subs with the array.  I now know that I need to very slightly flatten the Sky 90(1) chip and I need to re-align Sky 90(2) and Sky 90(3) to Sky 90(1).  Then the Sky 90 array will be ready for the new season.  The Canon 200mm DSLR array is of course fine and needs no attention!!  I wish now that I had built the whole array out of Canon 200mm lenses – live and learn 🙂

From 05/08/2016 Canon 15mm fisheye lens and Canon 5D MkII DSLR.

Most of the 6-minute pass at 11:11 p.m. last night.

I have recently finished the Second Edition of the Springer publication “Making Beautiful Deep-Sky Images” and it has been sent off to them to make bookworthy.  Springer then sends me back the draft (with all the page numbers) and I then have the final (mind-destroying) job of putting the Index together.  You will see the new 2nd Edition in the shops next year (I’ll let you know when) and if you have the 1st Edition, there’s enough new stuff in the 2nd Edition (including completely new chapters, and completely re-written old chapters) to warrant raiding your wallets for a second time.  The biggest change you will see on the front cover is the removal of the sub-title “Astrophotography with Affordable Equipment and Software” – with a chapter dedicated to the New Forest Observatory mini-WASP Array – some of the equipment is now anything but affordable.

Noel Carboni recently processed the 22-hours of data from the Sky 90 mini-WASP array.  This data comprised 15 and 20-minute sub-exposures.

It the recent Winter Solstice 2015 to Summer Solstice 2016 Solargraph.  I think I had the tilt angle towards the Zenith a little too large for this one 🙁  Never mind, you still get the general overall picture 🙂

Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work.

Today’s Earth Science Picture of the Day is a pinhole camera Solargraph of the Sun’s path across my southern horizon from Summer Solstice (June 21st) until Winter Solstice (December 21st) 2010.  An EPOD Encore is showing an earlier EPOD that was a Viewers’ Choice Winner from the past.

Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work 🙂

I have only just stacked ALL the data on this one from late 2014.  This is 69 subs using 15.20-minute exposures for a total of 22-hours on this one.

The Sky 90 array on the mini-WASP. f#4.5 3 x Sky 90s and 3 x M26C OSC CCDs.

Got today’s Earth Science Picture of Today with that recent wide field of M44, the Beehive Cluster, taken with the Canon 200mm lenses on the mini-WASP rig.

I am particularly fond of this image as it is something I have had in my mind’s eye for something like 4 or 5 years before I got the kit together and the weather finally played ball.

Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to show my work 🙂