Last night's effort, with some #Snapseed and Google photos editing with advice from @rdm for OCl 999.0 with Prawn Nebula.

#SmartTelescope #Astrodon #Astronomy #Astrophotography #DwarfIII #Dwarf3 #DwarfLab #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography

So last night was pretty successful and I am still really amazed the #dwarfiii did not just stop when it had the focus issue fixed, it just calibrated and went straight to the second target. Here are the rushes. It's a pretty big ClusterFudge all up.

Some of these are already #LCFCatalogue objects, some are new, so they'll be added to the list presently.

#Astrodon #SmartTelescope #Dwarf3 #Astrophotography #BackyardAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography #StellarClusterFudge #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy

@buddhawilliams well, I've had an exciting time with my clusterfudge. Firstly my final one just kept closing when I went to check on it, so, unlike the Titanic, was unsynchable.

So I quickly entered up another, well as quick as I could, on another tablet in case my first one wasn't stable because of the Beta Dwarf App. Phew, got that done.

Then my DwarfIII tried and tried to calibrate, but it looked like something was wrong with the focus, so @rdm found the option to reset the 0 point for the second target to my immense surprise. I had no idea it was THAT resilient!

Hope yours is going well too!

My Dwarf 2 has settled on the VDB 102 reflection nebula for much of the night and the Great Winter Solstice-ish ClusterFudge is underway!

#astrodon #LeecesClusterFudge #astronomy #SmartTelescope #DwarfII #DwarfIII #dwarflab #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography #Astrophotography #LCFCatalogue #BackYardAstronomy

So continuing with my ramble about the Gingin trip we had to take some astrophotos. So you're sitting in the siding, next an open paddock as your photos stack, and suddenly a loud noise starts up and continues for quite some time.

https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/272712152

It sounded like a fox to me, I've never heard one that close before, so see what you think.

A couple of Gingin policemen helpfully drove over with all their spotties on high beam, but turned them off apologetically when they realised we were not the droids they were looking for and then got very interested, and received a quick course in astronomy.

So things can be quite eventful when you're just sitting around, getting those frames stacked.

Here's a couple of photos that @rdm took of me on the last night, where we just set up behind our accomodation just to do a little. You can see I have Sandqvist 149 there, and the other photo I'm sharing with you today.

For your viewing pleasure I fed it into nova.astrometry.net so you can see what's what. But the simple answer is the Tarantula Nebula and friends. I accidentally stopped part way through - even the new long press required isn't foolproof, but with the new mega stack function I was able to start it again and squish the two sessions together so it turned out very nicely.

#DwarfII #DwarfIII
#WesternAustralia
#Astrodon #Astronomy #Astrophotography #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy

So to continue with highlights from our #astrophotography expedition to Gingin, another subject I had some fun with was Sandqvist 149.

Yes, I'm aware of its other, more popular name but let's let the discoverer have some kudos, huh?

This is a dark nebula, a star-blotting-out mass of dust that looks like a crack in the sky. You can see some stars in front of it which gives me a sense of three dimensionality to the usual flatness that I get of looking into the infinity of the night sky, and gives perhaps the sense that it is a dust cloud there, not a crack in reality.

The image on the left I took with the #dwarfiii - 60 second exposure, with a gain of 80, and stacked 40 of them.

That's coming to us straight out of camera, and I'll do some post to it sometime.

The image on the right was taken with the #DwarfII with shutter 15 and gain 80, for about 330 frames - and is the first time I've used a stellation mask.

I think that they look a bit silly - because stars don't look like that and it's a really artificial sort of prettiness that's a bit kitsch to me. Sorry to everyone who uses them - I mean they can look pretty, I admit...but for me they're usually meh.

I thought it would be funny to use one for a dark object.

#Astrodon #AstroPhotograhy #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #DarkNebula #Sandquist149

Hello folks, it's been a little while so lets get some sky happening down here in #PerthWesternAustralia

I've been enjoying my Dwarf3 telescope, so let me share with you the unicorn's nostril (true, you look at Monoceras and that's where it is!), the Rosette Nebula, or Caldwell 49.

We also have IC 2944 another great Nebula, but one I'm in extreme doubt about its popular name to the extent that I'm going to use my own name for it, so let me introduce you to the Rising Phoenix Nebula. If you want to use the other name that's fine but lalalalala I can't hear you.

Both those images are straight out of camera. I think at least 400 frames but I'd have to check my records as it was a week or two ago.

The next subject is a bit small, I've cropped it a bit to make up for it somewhat. It's NGC 2997, a spiral galaxy in Antlia the Bellows. Why have I bothered given that I like an apparent size of 20 or so minutes, and this doesn't even get to 10? Well, it's one of these rare, to my view, straight on spiral galaxies, it's not edge on, so it gets a pass. And this got a good couple of hours last night, and turned out really well, I dickered a little with Snapseed. We had some rain, and wow, the sky was very clean and clear, and this object shows it. I really want to do a longer exposure, even if it's little.

And the last one is one that did get that longer treatment - it's the notorious Centaurus A, commonly known as the Hamburger Galaxy. I left this one on the roof overnight preprogrammed for a good few hours and this comes to you also from straight out of camera. It really is a peculiar galaxy, and sports a couple of supernovae and a dust cloud that gives it that split look.

#astronomy #BackYardAstronomy #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography #DwarfIII #DwarfLab #Astrodon