Greetings from Southern California

Denis, welcome!

Hey I lived in Thousand Oaks for while, small world!

Ever go into the English import shop on T.O. Blvd (I think)? Are those Scottish ladies still in there? They always gave me free sweets like I was little boy.

Thanks for the warm welcome and for the kind comments on the pics. To answer a couple of questions posted, yes I'm using a wedge for polar alignment, the setup is on a permanent concrete pier which I built prior to the observatory in another bust of activity that the missus regards as hard evidence of loss of reason. Some photos of construction and setup are at home.earthlink.net/~dslattery1/images/Obs/ .

As for the Scottish ladies in the import shop on Thousand Oaks Blvd., I believe they're still there but I never got any free sweets! Maybe that's because I only go there once a year since they're the only place in town that carries Easter eggs!

Ever go into the English import shop on T.O. Blvd (I think)? Are those Scottish ladies still in there? They always gave me free sweets like I was little boy.

hey John/Denis,

those Scottish ladies get around (or cloned) . . . they are in the English import shop in Santa Monica as well! And they had free sweets over Christmas too!

all the best,

John F.

Slatts,
Welcome aboard, Those images are very good, I'd imagine the weather in Tipperary might not be as good as what you have there, and you call that a low bugget setup ??
You must be the only person on the planet who'd swap the weather of southern California for southern Tipperary

A number of us here have thousand oaks filters and were pretty happy with them, you're doing a good job , , you must hear that alot. :lol: only kidding, again welcome.

Hi Denis, Welcome!

What have you got... some sort of link to Hubble?

Those are super pics. Check out M45_12-15-04.jpg and M81_82_3-26-04.jpg lads.

Liam

I suppose exchanging the Southern California weather for that of South Tipp might be more evidence of declining faculties. But home is where the heart is, as they say. And -- on the rare clear nights when the Milky Way blazes overhead and I can hardly recognize the constellations with all the extra stars, SoTip weather looks pretty good compared to light-polluted SoCa!

So when we're not making filters here in Thousand Oaks , we're pointing yokes at the sky. In this case it's a Toucam behind a 4x Powermate on the 8" SCT. This was a rare night of good seeing and even though Saturn was next door to a very bright Moon I thought it came out decent enough. Best couple of hundred frames from about 2000, 1/33s and 5 fps, done in Registax 3:

home.earthlink.net/~dslattery1/images/saturn_1-21-05.jpg

Clavius was one night past its best presentation, but we take what we get when the seeing's good. Also done in Registax, same optical train:

home.earthlink.net/~dslattery1/images/Clavius_1-21-05.jpg

Now that I've explored the forums a bit more I realize I should be posting these in the astrophotography group, so I will from now on.

Cheers,

Denis S.