Author | Lightnews

joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 6d

I sometimes use it. It apparently speeds up images with "framing" quite a bit. I've used just a ball-head tripod. The club has a dedicated EQ mode #Seestar 🔭pier. The app guides you to set up the angles. Pretty quick and easy. I don't consider it essential, but i'm not a Real Astrophotograper.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 17d

If you didn’t explicitly set it, #Seestars don’t save the individual frames, just the auto stacked result.

joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 17d

If you’re willing to spend more exposure time, you can use ‘framing’ to rotate and/or expand the FOV.

joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 20d

Only if it’s humorous.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 20d

However, one _can_ "denoise" images in a plan even after the plan has completed, as long as you don't delete or restart the plan itself. #Seestar oddity.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 20d

I often get oddly colored background washes. Using the "AI Denoise" feature often sets them back to proper black. So far i haven't figured out how to retroactively "denoise" an image after the #Seestar is done with that object. SO, i usually "denoise" and download just before changing the image.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 24d

Looking at the "tentacles" made me notice that the whole image has thin, dark wiggly lines almost everywhere. There's a very good one near top right, which in turn errupts into thin branches, with a very long one running down until it connects with the body of the squid.

joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 24d

Barnard 139 is the elongated dark patch near the center of the image. It looks a bit like a squid swimming down & left, with tentacles stretching up & right.
The star field is quite dense: this is in the middle of the summer Milky Way.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 25d

Dark Nebula B 335, taken in a 20 minute exposure (of which 15 minutes of 20-second frames were stacked) with a #Seestar S50 🔭. The original image was quite blue. I used the apps "AI Denoise", then tweaked the brightness and contrast to make the nebula stand out more.

An image of a dense starfield, with hundreds of faint stars with a few brighter ones, contains a small dark blot. This is dark nebula Barnard 335, a cloud of gas and dust blocking the light of the background stars.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 27d

Green tree #frogs having a convention tonight.

In a scene lit by a night-sky friendly light, three green treefrogs are waiting for bugs. Two are on a screen door panel off its track and leaning against the house. The third is on the wall.

joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 28d

Mi tre sxatas la fruajn kantojn de Kajto:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xQg...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vxz...

Kajto - La Velŝipo Magdalena

YouTube video by Jacinto Yogui

www.youtube.com

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · 28d

Feliĉan Datrevenon!

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Oct 10

Usagi is a charter member of the Dead Worm Appreciation Society.

#dog #GreatPyrenees

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Oct 9

Topsail

joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Oct 7

Amazingly good image taken during the full moon. NGC 188 (also C1) was about as far from the moon as was possible, and i did tweak the contrast a bit to highlight the cluster stars, but still: this was taken during Full Moon!

NGC 188 (also called Caldwell 1) is at the center of the frame. About 100 dim stars are sprinkled over the field, covering about 1/2 of the frame from side to side, and about 1/3 from top to bottom,

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Oct 6

Zooming in on it helps a little…

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Oct 6

A bit of the faint nebulosity is visible. Not bad for light-polluted location.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Oct 6

#proofOfCat

This is Meep, our 16 year old cat, grumpy from being woken from a nap. Her name is the only thing she could say when we rescued her from a dog, 16 years ago.

A white cat with black patches on her head, body, and tail lies curled up on a multicolored striped towel.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Oct 3

First clear night in a week or so. In-between objects on the Dark Nebula and Caldwell observing programs, so i hit a couple of "Tonight's Best" with the #seestar S50 🔭. NGC 253 is a lovely galaxy- hard to belive i never observed it 'til a year ago. NGC 6960 is a segment of the Veil nebula.

against a dark field of dark space, with a few stars scattered across it, the Sculptor galaxy (NGC 253, also known as Caldwell 64) stretches diagonally across the field from upper middle left to lower middle right. The galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on, but a lot of internal structure is visible, especially dark blots where gas and dust blot out the stars in the galaxy's arms.

NGC 6960 is a portion of the Veil nebula, an enormous planetary nebula remnant, The whole nebula is essentially a ring, but it has broken into segments as it expanded. Many portions of the ring have their own NGC numbers. This chunk is sometimes called the "Witch's Broom". In this image, i crowded it over to the right side of the image to try and catch the many small dim blobs and whorls to the left and below the main "broom". The broom itself is rather bendy, and splits at into a fork the bottom end. There are many colors, mainly red and green, spread both on the body of the broom and in the "froth" below and behind the broom.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Oct 2

This was about two feet (.7 m) above the ground, attached to several stalks of golden rod. Anybody have speculation about what kind of #bird made this #birdnest?

In a field of yellow blooming goldenrod a birds nest is woven around several stalks. The nest is a lovely cup shaped construct.

joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Oct 2

A rather blurry picture of a spider whose GREEEEN fangs were gleaming in the sun.
#spider

On a gnarled fence post a black and white jumping spider is tucked into a recess. Its extremely green fangs were gleaming in the sun. In fact, the intense green color was what made me notice the spider on the post.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Sep 30

Doh! For some reason i read M44 as M41. Apologies.

Here's an actual image of M44, with Bonus Mars and Satellite.

20ish minutes with #Seestar S50 🔭

M44, the Beehive cluster, spreads across the field of view as strings of widely separated but bright stars, with lots of fainter stars in the background. At top right, the planet Mars glows (overexposed), and a satellite photobombs from the upper center down to the left.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Sep 30

Like many "close" open clusters, it can benefit from a wider field of view. Here's the same cluster at a lower power, allowing some more of the clusters stars in the image.

M41 lives in Canis Major, & gives some idea of what M42 (the Orion nebula) will look like when it grows up.
#seestar S50 🔭

Open cluter M41 in Canis Major appears as a set of stars concentrated towards the center of the image, but stretching nearly side-to-side, and occupying about a 1/3 of the image field of view.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Sep 30

Dark nebula Barnard 92, taken with a #seestar S50 🔭

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard...

Barnard 92 is a cloud of gas and dust blocking the light of the stars in the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud. Because of the star cloud, the background of the image is very, very full of faint stars, with a few brigher ones scattered about. The dark nebula is somewhat oval, oriented up and down at the center of the image, with a flattened area at the bottom and less dark extentions reaching the right edge of the image.

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joncst.bsky.social @joncst.bsky.social · Sep 30

Estas multaj rekontigxoj en Norda Karolina.

esperanto-nc.org

Info on Esperanto in North Carolina and the World - Esperanto in North Carolina

Join us for our June 2024 In-Person Event Disk Golf in Chapel Hill, NC Sunday, 9 June: Time 12-3pm. 12:00 noon: Lunch. Weaver Street Market, 716 Market St, Chapel Hill 1- 3pm: Disk golf. Southern Comm...

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