By pure luck I re fitted my AllSky camera back outside on the 8th of October, then on the evening of the 10th it was pretty clear so looked at the live images from the camera, and was blown away with what I saw, so ran outside with my iPhone and started clicking away at the night sky towards the north east, the images are shown I. This video and on the Aurora 2024 page on this site, taken with handheld iPhone and 10 second exposures, I think they came out pretty well. Check out the full video.

I have been having a bit of an Astro slump as of late, and have lost my mojo a bit, so I decided to give it some thought as to why. So in this video I run through some of the reasons why I think this has happened and leave the viewers with a couple of questions, I would really like to hear from you and if this happens to you, and also why, and whether you feel sometimes just going back to basics helps.. enjoy.

In this video I show you how to speed up your PixInsight installation by around 30% or more, by adding more swap folders. PixInsight installs one swap folder by default, but you can add more, I show you what they are, why we use them and how to install more on your system, so take a look and let me know what your think.

So after 18 months of issues and hours of head scratching, I finally found my perfect guide / wide field imaging scope. This for me is exactly what I was looking the for, as it was a perfect combo of the two previous small scopes I owned, and used for this dual purpose. Check out the video for more info and full details on my new purchase. 

Here is my latest Youtube  video on 3D printed accessories for astrophotography. I have designed and printed quite a few items that have been extremely useful, and saved me a load of money in the process. It’s not that expensive to own a 3D printer, and it would pay for itself really quickly in this expensive hobby, so what not give it a go. The software of choice for me to design my accessories is Tinkercad, which it totally free and available as an online account, so your account can be accessed from any PC on the internet. Please take a look at this video for some ideas from myself and others.

Check out my latest YouTube video. Balancing any mount is really important, when you want the mount to track the night sky as well as possible, and as accurate as possible. Balancing a GEM mount in 3D is a well known procedure, but Centre Equatorial Mounts or CEM for short, are a different beast altogether, in this video I show you how I balance my mount in all 4 dimensional axis, and also how to add a DIY counter balance weight for mounting on the saddle of my CEM70 mount, and links to the parts needed on Amazon.

This is part one of a two part review video on the Astroasis motor focuser, I am  in the market for a new focuser unit and this one seemed to fit the bill really well. In this part one I will discuss the focuser unit in full, describing all its features and selling points, also a full unboxing showing all the parts that come in the box, and describe how it fits to the telescope. See the description for all links for more info from the Astroasis website along with links to purchase.

Touptek very kindly sent me this fairly new camera to use for a short period. So due to the very poor weather we are having here, I decided to split the review video into two parts, the first part showing the unboxing, connection to PC and some very basic indoor testing on the PC.

Hopefully in a few weeks I will get the camera connected up to my imaging telescope and get some real world testing done and hopefully some images, and this will form part 2 of the camera review, so stay tuned for that. Affiliate Link to Touptek Astro Website, please use at no extra cost to yourselves but helps me out:  https://www.touptekastro.com/stewart

Mele computers reached out to me a week ago after seeing my review on their superb Overclock 3c mini PC. They have sent me their new Overclock 4c to do a full review on. Well, it arrived a few days ago and so I have been using and testing for the last 48 hours, and i am very impressed, the video is here on youtube YouTube, and also in the YouTube videos section of this website…

This is the first item that has ever been sent to me free of charge and I don’t have to return it either, but it has not biased my review at all, they have no creative control over anything I said about the product. 

So take a look at the review and leave any comments you have.

Tonight I thought I would have a go at imaging the PAC-man nebula, I tried this a few years ago with my then CCD camera, and did not come out too well. So using my newly acquired Optolong 3nm SHO filters, I settled on 50 x 180 second sub exposures through each filter.

The night started pretty good with guiding well below 0.6 RMS, as you can see in the image on the left, which shows it as low as 0.39 RMS, but as the night progressed it slowly but surely increased into the high 0.8’s, I relayed this was due to the very poor seeing, and although I constantly adjusted settings within PhD2 it did not get any better for the rest of the night. I managed 50 x 180 second of Ha and OIII, but had to get the SII a few nights later. The PAC-man does need quite a bit of integration and I totalled about 7.5 hours, which is not a great deal for this target, especially as there is very little signal in SII.

The stacking, calibration and all processing all done in pixinsight, was a bit of a challenge as the Ha data completely swamped the OIII and the little SII, so took quite a bit of work to get to the final SHO palette i was haply with.

The final processed PAC-man nebula image is below, and also in the gallery pages, with more capture details.

Comments welcome below.