AM5 – IMT3b Observatory

Viewing Report 2nd January 2025

16:09 – 02:15

Planets tonight with the Mak180.

I then went on and imaged beautiful Venus as a half crescent.

Next up was Saturn and the faint and vaguely tilted rings.

Then I moved onto Jupiter capturing the great red spot GRS in the process.

Last on my list and slightly low at this time of night was Mars.

I could see Syrtis Major even through the turbulent air.

A good night even at this point. I then packed away the travel setup and the Mak180 and opened the dome. However, due to problems with the ASI1600MM camera cooler I did not really get anything done. I also had power problems with he noise creating in which last time I saw this was the PSU itself. I will investigate tomorrow and replace the PSU as needed. The ASI1600MM is beyond repair from a coping perspective. I’m not going to pay to have it fixed, instead I have decided to keep it as a guider with the APS-C chip which is much better than the tiny chips that come with the ZWO planetary cameras. It will work perfectly on the new ONAG On Axis Guider I have just purchased to replace my friends one he lent me.

Viewing Report 30th November 2024 Teide

1:30am – 3:30am

We arrived at the villa at 9pm.

By the time I had eaten and unpacked and built the telescopes on the mount it was 11:30pm, it then took another 30mins to decide where image from as Polaris was round the front of the property so not visible from the patio. it the. took me another 1.5 hours to sort out and calibrate the scopes and setup an image run on IC434. I had a problem with the focal length of the SharpStar 61 which turned out to be 275mm and then plate solving worked. I finally at 1:30am set about imaging and 30mins later Orion crossed the meridian. It then started imaging again.

The temperature tonight was around 6℃. I went to sleep at 3:30am and left it running but it lost connection to the mount and did not send guiding information to it so all my images from that point were no good. I will try again tonight on the same object.

Viewing Report 13th September 2024 Tenerife Adeje

21:00 – 23:00

My second night at the villa with the family. I’ve taken my Sharpstar 61 refractor with me this time with an effective focal length of 272mm. I normally use this a my guider for the Esprit 100 or 120. And I’ve placed it on the AM5 and have attached the trusty 50mm Skywatcher guide scope to it.

Ready to image

Luke has helped me setup this evening after managing to have an accident yesterday which caused me to have butterfly stitches to my shin 🤦‍♂️

So after about an hour of setting up, finding focus, working out the focal length and polar aligning we have set off to test the first image from this little setup. The FoV is 4.94 x 3.30 degrees.

Plate solve of the first image

NGC 7000 the North American Nebula that is almost overhead, thus removing problems with the pool lights that I have not yet worked out how to turn off.

We are taking 12 x 5mins with the ZWO ASI2600MC colour camera, cooled to -10℃ as the temperature outside is a balmy 21℃.

Single 5min exposure

Once done I will call it a night as I really need to turn off those pool lights.

Screenshot of 5min exposure

Darks – 6 x 300s

Flats – 12 x 0.35s

Single Flat

Viewing report 8th & 9th March 2023 Tenerife Los Gigantes Villa

Between 9pm and 12:30am both nights

A week with the family in Tenerife afforded me the opportunity to test out for the 2nd time this year the Skywatcher 100 Esprit on the AM5 harmonic mount with the ASIAIR in control and the ASI2600MC with a new Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter.

Over the period of the week I picked 2 nights when I wanted to observe. Because of the clement environment of Tenerife and the Canaries and unlike the UK, you can decide when to go out and image as almost all nights are clear, the weather warm, around 22 deg Celsius and the bed not that far away from the pool. Given when we were on holiday which was decided around other activities, the Moon phase was Full.

The one problem with renting a villa is when the owners will not pinpoint where on a map it is. There is normally a reason. In this case it was because of the proximity of the local sports buildings. A swimming pool to the front of the villa including a floodlit pitch and 2 more flood lit pitches to the left and right of the villa at the rear.

So yes it was bright, very bright, as can be seen on the villa party wall.

So given all that light pollution I was then pleasantly surprised how well the final image came out of the singular target I chose. NGC 2244, the Rosette Nebula.

I exposed for some 75 x 300s over the 2 nights. All the images were on the West side of the Meridian to make it easier without a flip.

I found stacking 75 images instead of just the first night of 30+ images gave a much smoother background and nebula, much less noise and easier to work with the data.

So not a bad photo for Full Moon and 3 flood lit pitches. I look forward to testing out the kit at the top of the mountain later in the year under New Moon dark skies.