Posts Made By: Paul Walsh

You and your kind are legion, my friend :-)

I'm 51 and own a CCD camera and *almost 6 telescopes (*my Lady, Valarie, claims ownership of our 18" Starmaster which she has dubbed "Starmistress")

For my calm wind, daylight hours, I live a mile from an AMA certified field and I own 2 R/C planes; a DHC2 Beaver and a P-47 Thunderbolt. They both rock and Valarie gets a kick out of watching them.

She enjoys the fish, too - As I write this, I am glancing over at the 10 denizens of my latest hobby; freshwater fish. I have 5 Columbian Tetras, 2 Yoyo Loaches, 2 Panda Corys, and a powder blue Dwarf Gourami.

I guess I'm lucky, getting to have things both ways a little - I'm content to while away the hours completely alone and enthralled with either my hobbies or researching associated info about them on the web - but any time Val is interested in joining in, we make it a duet and enjoy them together (She's already completed a 109 object Messier-a-thon - OK, she was using the DSCs but, hey, she turned around the following night and recapped about half of them the old fashioned way. She's quite the star trooper.)

We have both enjoyed team-teaching astronomy at a nearby facility for the severely head injured and helping them to put together a working observatory. My brother(a film maker) and I have just completed a screenplay based on that experience.

Hobbies rule. And they are so much more than a way to idle away the hours. My astronomy hobby had inpired a real fire in the mind of my youngest brother's neice. At Thanksgiving, she sat with me at the computer and spent a whole hour touring the solar system using Celestia (Google it).

Her questions and her focus amaze me - she's only 5 and she's got way more on the ball than most of the adult newbies I talk with at starparties.

There's a long an nefarious list of evil things a man without a hobby can get into. We are wise men to have developed one or more of them and I think our women are lucky to have it so.

I'm aware that some men submerge themselves too deeply and to the intentional exclusion of their spouses - or to escape reality in some way. As with all things, balance is everything but it's been my obsevation that these men are by far the exception.

It may, indeed, be the seeing in your area.

I live in an area near Seattle, WA called the Convergance Zone where all the Pacific Ocean weather split by the Olympic Mountain range, meets back up to cause havoc with seeing, power lines and you name it.

Attached is my best effort ever and I've been trying for several years now.

I do have a C8 OTA to use but I took this one with a Tuocam-740k, Sky90/ExtenderQ/Shorty Barlow(rated at 1.75x),640 frames assembled in registax and finished in PaintShop Pro.

Without applying some kind of geographical handicap, a guy living down in the Gulf States will top me every time, any time, all night long.

Don't get discouraged. Do what I do and simply compete against yourself. I know that as long as I keep seeing improvement in my shots, I am right up there with the best - because that's exactly what they do. I've sat beside some of the best imagers in the country as they tweak their stuff and, trust me, they aren't comparing themselves to others - it may be ego :-) but they consider themselves to be their only competition.

It's one of those "Winner's Tricks" that works no matter where you find yourself in life and it works for just about anything.

-Paul S. Walsh

Not sure exactly what's happened or why it's missing but I have sent an email to the key programmer.

-Paul S. Walsh
Editor, AstroMart/ATWB

If all else fails, you might consider using QCfocus for capturing.

I use it with my Tuocam 740k and I love it (I used to use Vega)

Here's the link:

http://www.astrosurf.com/astropc/qcam/programme.html

Don't let the French bother you - once you load it, you can choose English as a preference and he also offers Documentation in English.

A nice, clean little program.

Best of luck, whatever you decide.

-Paul S. Walsh

As a fellow Sky 90 user, this is way ultra cool.

I just did a close comparative inspection of your image and found PGC-40844 at 16.60 mag and PGC-40592 at an astounding 18.89 mag.

Deep, indeed. You and the little guy are to be commended big time. Or should I say, Deep Time :-)

-Paul S. Walsh

Whoa people are posting some very nice shots here. Great capture.

Certainly not named for it's diminutive size. That's one big kitty.

Just picked up a German Blue Ram. Love those electric blue lips and tail filaments.

I have a Sky Patrol-II and have mounted a my Sky-90 and ST-7 on it for some successful imaging.

Results are here (M42):

http://www.nwlink.com/~filmdos/m111/images/sky90m42a.jpg

and here (Horsehead):

http://www.nwlink.com/~filmdos/m111/images/sky90horse1.jpg

My airline portable visual travel pack contains the following all in one standard overhead compartment sized, carry-on piece of luggage:

Sky 90
Sky Patrol II mount
Bogen 410 head
Velbon 640 full size carbon fiber tripod legs
4 eyepieces
Red light
E. Karkoschka's "The Observer's Sky Atlas"

See photo here:
http://www.nwlink.com/~filmdos/m111/images/sky90apsys.jpg

This set up ain't nearly as stable as it is on my EM-10USD mount and full timber tripod legs but it gets the job done and I don't have to turn diddly squat over to the luggage mishandlers when I fly.

-Paul S. Walsh

This device now has its own forum right here on AstroMart:

http://www.astromart.com/forums/list.asp?forum_id=211

-Paul S. Walsh