Das ist ein #Zeitraffer der heutigen partiellen #Sonnenfinsternis. Leider zogen immer wieder Wolken durch und haben den Blick getrübt.

So last night I had a go at some fairly challenging targets.

This post is not about them, well it is, but it is really about what I did while my Dwarf3 was working on things that should really be left to a proper dark sky area, not the middle of suburbia.

I started the night with my Dwarf3 having a go at Barnard's Loop, using the wide angle lens. This is a massive structure, but very faint, and after 20 frames at 90s, I gave up, because the light pollution just killed any hope.

While that was running though, I pointed on of my DwarfIIs at the Tarantula Nebula, and got a solid two hours out of it before I crashed and shut everything down.

This is the result after some smoothing and enhancement in Google Photos.

480*15s@80

Last night we (myself, @leece , and her mum) saw in the New Year with a star party for family and friends.

To make it as accessible as possible, we found a park in Como that is almost completely dark, despite being only a couple of kilometres from the CBD. Adjacent to this park is the Como Croquet Club, so we hired their clubhouse as a base of operations.

Two days before, we got a panicked message from the club, asking if their members could have a gathering of their own - which was fine with us, as long as they did not want to turn on the field lights. So we had twenty odd people turn up, along with about the same number of Croquet Club members. As it turns out, the son of one of my workmates played in high school, and got his family into playing a game, much to the delight of the rather elderly club members.

We started proceedings with a couple of shots of the sun and the current sunspots (Me: "This is what it looks like right now!" 16yo daughter of a work mate: "Well, actually it's what it looked like 18 minutes ago." Me: Applause), and then ate dinner while waiting for the sky to go dark. At 8pm, we got our Dwarf3s aligned, and synchronised their schedules for the night. Then we fired up the DwarfIIs, got them running on some ad-hoc targets, and called everyone out, including many of the Croquet Club members, who were also interested.

We opened with some spectacular views of the Orion Nebula, the Sculptor Galaxy, and the Horsehead Nebula. We also started on a shot the Helix Nebula. Most targets we scheduled 30 minutes for, before the Dwarf3s would move on to new targets.

Aiding us in our explanation of what was on display was @ariaflame , a physicist from Murdoch Uni, and a good friend. We talked about the way clusters and nebulae are formed, how stars aged, and just how far everything is.

Around 8:30, the last of our guests arrived - workmate and Perth Observatory volunteer (and former professional astronomer) Steve Ewing, who had with him a 10" traditional telescope. By about 9pm he had it up and running, and was showing off Saturn and Jupiter, which are too small for our smart telescopes to resolve meaningfully. Steve's enthusiastic explanations of planetary dynamics were a highlight of the evening.

Sadly, as 10pm rolled around the sprinkler systems on the oval started up, and we had to rapidly tear everything down before they reached us. As Leece said - "Rain stopped play."

Despite this, it seems that everyone enjoyed themselves, and we got some great images to share with everyone after.

And that is how we saw in 2025.

#astronomy #StarParty #Astrodon #NYE2024 #Astrophotography #2025 #dwarf3 #dwarfII #SmartTelescope

Why do the skies have to be clearest when the main rig is down for repairs? Anyways, have Dwarf.ii, needs must...

7.5hr on M45, the Pleiades, last night.

EQ-mode worked, although I didn't notice the difference in the data anyway. Took two runs, giving 999*2 = 1998 files (half fits, half TIFF because the dwarf doesn't put timestamps in its filenames). Also took all day to process the stuff properly in PI.

So Astrofest is done and dusted for another year. For the first time since the early 2000s (when we did model rocket displays) we were volunteers. This time we were running one of the telescope pods - the Smart Telescope pod, which, unlike the other pods, was not limited to a single target. We were all over the sky, making the most of the ease of control and versatility of these fun devices.

@leece and I had three DwarfIIs, there was a pair of Seestar S50s, a Unistellar EVScopeII, and even a Vaonis Vespera II (which is a work of art, as well as being a stunning telescope).

We even had someone doing it oldschool with a guide mount and a DSLR with a very beefy lens!

We started the afternoon with sun and moon viewing - made challenging with the sunlight on our screens. After, one of the S50s continued with the moon for the rest of the night, while the rest of us went on to other targets, including 47 Tucanae, the Cat's Paw Nebula, C65 (The Sculptor Galaxy), The Lagoon Nebula, the SMC, the LMC, and even a random star that someone had the coordinates for tattooed on their arm!

We were on our feet pretty much from 2:30 when we set up to 10:30 when we finally departed, and talked to the public almost non-stop from about 4pm. We answered questions about what these weird looking devices were, and why people were not looking through them, what they could do, how much they cost, and which were the best. This last one was a tough one, as we own one brand, and there was another brand in the same price bracket right next to us :) We were fair, though, and highlighted the pluses and minuses of each. And explaining, many times, that we were not selling them.

Early in the evening Leece did duck off to watch the Astrophotography competition awards, as she had been shortlisted. And, to her surprise, she had just sat down when they announced the winner for the Night Sky Friendly Lighting category - with her image of the rising galactic core over a resort near Bindoon taking the prize!

It was a fantastic, if exhausting experience, and one we look forward to repeating in Feb 2026.

Orion (or Nyingarn in here Nyoongar lands) is starting to rise at a reasonable hour, so I thought I'd take another look at this classic target.

This time I threw on the OIII/Ha filter, and it seems that there is not much going on in the OIII band, because the end result is just about pure Ha.

DwarfII, OIII/Ha dual-band filter, 240x15s@gain 80. Post processed in Snapseed and Google Photos.

So we headed down to the beach in the hopes of the Kp index going up and granting us an #aurora but it is not playing ball tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

While waiting, though, we thought we'd run our #DwarfII scopes. I targetted a little #OpenCluster called #NGC6451, or The Tom Thumb cluster.

All sorts of fun stuff going on around it.

Very early and cold but clear of smoke and clouds, #Comet #tsuchinshanatlas looking great before sunrise this morning in #PerthWesternAustralia

Straight out of camera for you this morning we have I think probably about 15 frames on the left and just one frame on the right. The frame on the right was taken later, just before it became a mug's game due to that naughty Sun coming up like a bully in the playground.

Shutter 5 gain 60 as I recall.

One of Australia's largest birds, the #Australian #Pelican, at #Gallup, #PerthWesternAustralia .

Shot on a #DwarfII , and post-processed in #Snapseed.

So this morning we got up a while before dawn to see if C/2023 A3 Tsushinchan/ATLAS was going to play ball at last. Things were a bit dicey because of smoke from many, many prescribed burns going on, but we had a go anyway.

And we were rewarded! The comet is increasing in brightness (now at +5.1, a full magnitude brighter than at the start of last week), and moving away from the rising sun just enough to get in a set of 50 subframes before the sky gets too bright.

(This is all Southern Hemisphere-centric.) Because of the combined movements of the Earth and the comet, it will appear to move back towards the sun from our perspective after Wednesday, and then reappear in the evening towards the start of October. During this time it is expected to continue to brighten, possibly even becoming daylight visible, with peak visibility expected around October 14.

#Comet #TsushinchanAtlas #C2023a3 #Astrodon #Astronomy #Astrophotography #OrbitalMechanicsAreWeird

#DwarfII 50x8s@80 Postprocessed in #Snapseed and #GooglePhotos

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS early this morning. Unfortunately the Dwarf ii didn't want to do any stacking this close to the horizon so this is just one frame. Hopefully I can get Siril to help later.

But still, it's a photo of a #comet I would not otherwise have, and look at how pretty green it is!

It's International observe the moon night. #ObserveTheMoon #Dwarfii #Astrodon #Moon #Luna
#astronomy

1/1000 146 frames through my Dwarfii straight out o' camera.

Today is International Observe The Moon Night!

https://moon.nasa.gov/observe-the-moon-night/

#ObserveTheMoon #astronomy #Astrodon #PerthIsOK #astrophotography #Moon

#DwarfII
100*1/1600@0 Postprocessed in #Snapseed

Last night was clear! After running some errands as my Mum's fridge has broken down, we set up our telescopes. The South Australian Astronomical Society has published their September what's up there recently - I recommend them for us Southern Hemisphere people with telescopes and binoculars - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmQm4M-rh3Q and I was reminded I hadn't gotten a decent shot of the Helix Nebula - Caldwell 63 yet.

So while Rob amused himself with M8, which if you'll recall I had a look at earlier this year, and also a look at Saturn I set up for a look at what some call The Eye of God.

@rdm lent me his O3+Hydrogen Alpha filter, I dialled up the gain to 110, and sat down and too 539 frames over a couple of hours or so at 15 seconds an exposure.

I took a save before the A.I enhancer kicked in, and played with it myself in Snapseed and Google Photos.

While I'd like to do some more work on it, I think it would be nice for you to have a look now.

I really like how you can see stars shining through this planetary nebula.

#astronomy #Astrodon #astrophotography #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #dwarfii

We've had a little bit of opportunity, here and there, after a lot of clouds, so here's a couple of images for you.
It's unfortunately been weeknights, so we couldn't go too long.

I present to you the Eastern Veil Nebula and the Grus Quartet of galaxies, with very casual post processing.

Can anyone tell me anything about the object OCI999.0? I found it on the catalogue of my Dwarf II, and it seems to be an open cluster with a nebula.

I cannot find anything about it! Not even which catalogue it is from!

Edit: Mystery solved with the aid of a co-worker .

It is actually OCL 999.0 aka Trumpler 24 . The issue was a font failure, I vs l.

#dwarfii #stellarium #astronomy

@CosmicRami ? @futzle ? @ariaflame ?

Today's #Sun and #Moon . Taken 10 minutes apart around midday.

Both shot with a #DwarfII

Sun: 10*1/320@0 with ND1e6.
Moon:100*1/200
Postprocessed in #Snapseed and #googlephotos

I own a #DwarfII, not a #Seestar_s50, but everything in this article applies to any #SmartTelescope.

A great introduction to #astronomy outreach.

https://urbanastrophotography.com/index.php/2023/12/07/guide-to-using-a-seestar-s50-for-public-outreach/