Still breathing

[TerryMcK]

I'm still around. I have been really busy with my new job, refurbishing my loft space (wood is being used but only construction grade) and taking up another hobby of astrophotography.

The new year may bring more input from me back into the forum, more woodworking in my shop and maybe more pictures of outer space taken from my backyard.

 

Here's one of the North America Nebula and Pelican Nebula I took from my backyard on Monday December 9th 2019 - it took an number of exposures totalling about 2 hours to get the picture as it is so faint. BTW it's got nothing to do with America it is a natural phenomenon that just happens to resemble the continent! It's about 1600 light years away and the Pelican is 1800 light years away. I don't think our tape measures will go that far! It can't be seen by the naked eye.

 

The red color is produced by ionised hydrogen called hydrogen alpha. If you are familiar with the night sky it is close by the big star Deneb.

 

 

Here is a picture of an old table (around 1920s English I believe) brought in by a client to be refinished. I think it looks OK now I've completed it and it still has the patina of age. Not my style but she likes it.

 

[treeslayer]

glad to hear you're still around Terry, great pictures of space are one of my favorites. nice job on the table, a happy client and a check are all that matter sometimes.

[JohnG]

Welcome back! I’d love to hear more about your astrophotography setup and see more pics! Either here or over in the Photography thread-

 

[Chestnut]

So you have a suggestion for a good inexpensive into astro head? I've wanted to buy one but hold off because i know nothing about them nor how to get information about them.

Good to hear that you are busy that's never a bad thing imo.

[TerryMcK]

1 hour ago, JohnG said:

Welcome back! I’d love to hear more about your astrophotography setup and see more pics! Either here or over in the Photography thread-

 

Hey John,

I have quite a modest setup a little of it is outlined below:

• Skywatcher HEQ5 with Rowan belt mod
• William Optics ZenithStar 73 with adjustable field flattener
• An IDAS D2 Light pollution filter (we have Bortle class 7 skies here and LED streetlamps everywhere!)
• Also just bought an Atair Astro Triband filter that filters Ha and OIII/Hb into separate bands for a DLSR or one shot color camera.
• QHY Polemaster that is awesome. No more looking through the polarscope to find Polaris!
• A guide scope (Skywatcher 50mm finder scope) that I modified to take a ZWO AS120MM-Mini guide camera
• A Canon DSLR 400D (Can't remember the US version name - think it is a Rebel XTi or something) with the IR cut filter removed.
• Lynx Astro 4 port dew controller which is computer controlled and heater straps.

All this is connected together with USB hubs, USB cables etc so I run power and a single usb cable from the mount into my imaging laptop computer (which is in a large plastic storage box with a lid and hole in the side) to keep the weather out!

Software on the imaging PC (Windows 10, 16GB, i5 and 250GB SSD)

• The mount is controlled by ASCOM on the computer and EQMOD. I like that software as is just integrates so well with everything.
• I'm currently using BackYardEOS for the imaging camera although I've also bought Astro Photography Tool to aid with plate solving
• Guiding is done with PHD2 using ASCOM to guide/dither the mount
• I'm using Stellarium and Stellarium Scope to find targets to image.
• Sequence Generator Pro looks good but I don't think I am quite ready for total automation yet.

Software on the processing PC (Windows 10, 64GB, Xeon with a load of disk space)

• Deep Sky Stacker
• Photoshop CC 2019
• I've been looking at Astro Pixel Processor too but that is really complicated, expensive, is in early days of development and doesn't turn out good results like Deep Sky Stacker (which is free - a bonus!)

I don't have an observatory but drag the scope out when the weather clears. I was able to leave it out for about 4 days a couple of weeks back just covering it with a telegizmos cover during the day. 

I also have a 200mm reflecting telescope that is good for planetary observations/imaging and is just about within the load capacity of the HEQ5 pro.

If you thought woodworking was an expensive hobby then astrophotography is just as expensive if not more so. Some of the dedicated astronomy cameras start at about 1000 GBP (probably 1000US) and climb higher than I can afford. Fortunately DSLR cameras are heavily used too and can be easily modified to be used for astro.

Telescopes and other hardware can also exceed budgets unless you have a lottery win!

 

Here is a picture of the Andromeda Galaxy (my first one) that I took in September 2019. My wife and I saw it in the reflector "live" and she nearly keeled over with excitement when see saw it. 2.5 million light years away, 220,000 light years across and we saw it as a fuzzy blob in the light polluted backyard.

When I set the imaging rig on it and took about 3 hours of exposure of it I couldn't wait to process it next morning. I was astonished with what I got.

 

No guiding on this and I didn't have the field flattener at this stage so it has a few egg shaped stars  !

[RichardA]

Nice to see your still around. I missed talking with you. And your new hobby is going to drive me to drink. Though it doesn't take much encouragement.  

[TerryMcK]

6 hours ago, RichardA said:

Nice to see your still around. I missed talking with you. And your new hobby is going to drive me to drink. Though it doesn't take much encouragement.  

You would have thought I would have had enough of computers in my day job Rick. But I just can't help myself. I still have woodworking to take me away from it though.

I work for a US company now, DXC Technology, used to be called Hewlett Packard Enterprise and am “virtually” in the US every day controlling computers. Today for instance I am "in" Plano, Texas and the other day was in Suwanee and Alpharetta, Georgia. All done from my office at home in the UK! I can see my shop out of the window!

[Chet]

Glad to hear from you.  I miss your travel pictures.   I have spent a fair number of cold nights gazing through my small telescope in the backyard and on camping trips which is real nice because of the lack or light in the campgrounds.

1 hour ago, TerryMcK said:

I can see my shop out of the window!

This can be a distraction, No?

[treeslayer]

I’m glad you kept it to a modest setup, otherwise I’d be soooo confused

[RichardA]

2 hours ago, TerryMcK said:

You would have thought I would have had enough of computers in my day job Rick. But I just can't help myself. I still have woodworking to take me away from it though.

I work for a US company now, DXC Technology, used to be Hewlett Packard and am virtually in the US every day. Today for instance I am "in" Plano, Texas and the other day was in Suwanee and Alpharetta, Georgia. All done from my office at home in the UK! I can see my shop out of the window!

With your shop so close to your work, you must be tripping over your tongue trying not to go out there.  It's really nice to know your still with us.

[Mark J]

Good to see you, and fantastic pictures.  But just because you have no woodworking (or sky watching) to report doesn't mean you can't drop by with a snappy retort.  

After all it's up to you to represent the UK.  

[wtnhighlander]

Good to see you back, Terry! Those are some really sweet photos. How long can you expose without streaking if you have no tracker for the camera?

I've used my phone to make 30 second exposures of a moonless starfield. The resolution makes a surprisingly good image, but very wide angle. My son's camera is lower res, but has a 40x zoom lens. It also has a much lower max exposure. I'd like to try taking multiple exposures and merge them in software, hence the question about maximum total time.

[Coop]

Terry! Welcome back you old fart! Even though your second post was completely incomprehensible!  Always good to hear from you! 

[Tom King]

My best friend, and I built telescopes when we were teenagers in the mid 1960's.  We ground the mirrors by hand, with the largest being a 12-1/2" in an observatory building that the roof rolled off of.  We couldn't afford even motorized drives, so photography was done by hand turning a knob on the end of a flexible rod, with one eye on the crosshairs in the finder scope, for as long as we could concentrate.

My friend, before he recently retired, was one of the lead scientists on the James Webb Space Telescope, and had one of the end hall offices in the Applied Physics Lab building at Goddard.  We're still best friends, and I see him every few weeks.

I don't even know what some of the things you listed are, but kind of understand.  Nice shot of M31, and Nebula's!

[TerryMcK]

4 hours ago, K Cooper said:

was completely incomprehensible!

Yes sorry about that! It’s like somebody listing what golfing equipment they use to me.

5 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

How long can you expose without streaking if you have no tracker for the camera?

Not long. A few seconds maybe. My mount tracks the sky at sidereal rate and I can easily get 5 minute or even longer exposures at a time. In practice I’m limiting myself to 3 minute subs just in case an airplane flies over. You get a red and green streak across the picture which can’t be removed. But you can put that frame in the trash and you’ve only lost 3 minutes.

[Tom King]

Just for fun, try 20 minutes on M31, and see what difference you get.

[Bankstick]

Two things here- 1. Your space photos are out of this world! 2. My complements on the refinishing job! Thanks for sharing both.

[TerryMcK]

I am of course still getting into the shop when I can and show a couple of projects.

Earlier this year I completed a couple of guitars. One a five string fretless bass and the other a hollow body Telecaster shaped synthesizer guitar.

First the five string

 

This is swamp ash bodied and the neck is bolted on maple with a rosewood finger board - no frets but I did inlay position markers (thin slivers of mahogany) with mother of pearl dots. The fingerboard is coated with multiple layers of CA glue and polished to a very high gloss.I veneered the headstock face with a piece of oak burr veneer I had left over from another project. The headstock has mahogany binding around the periphery.

• The electronics are Seymour Duncan SSB-5B in the bridge pickup, EMG 40HZ humbucker in the neck pickup. The preamp is a 2 band Seymour Duncan STC-2P
• I didn't like the natural finish of ash as it is in two pieces and not bookmatched so I painted it gold with Nitrocellulose.
• The hardware, bridge tuners and strap locks are all Schaller. The nut is bone.
• Scale length is 34" and the tuning is low B (B-E-A-D-G) - strings are handmade flatwound Legend from DRStrings (A USA company). It has 26 (ish!) fret positions even though there are no frets and does the characteristic MWAH sound of a fretless. The flatwounds help greatly there.
• The fingerboard radius is 12"

I finally finished this project in October 2019 after a few stalls.

 

The other project I finished  in October 2019 was a Telecaster shaped 6 string guitar with synthesizer pickup. This is a hollow bodied guitar made entirely from walnut. Even the neck!

• Body - walnut
• Neck/Fingerboard -walnut - green abalone inlay (my TMC logo) and dots. The fingerboard just has lemon oil applied to it - no finish
• Binding - mother of toilet seat (plastic to you and I)
• Electronics are Seymour Duncan SH-2N4C in the neck and SH-4JB in the middle (both humbuckers) - push/pull pots are also fitted for phase/serial/parallel selection
• I have also fitted a Roland divided pickup at the bridge with its GK3 controller.
• The hardware is Schaller M6Mini locking tuners and strap locks. The bridge is a Fender modern 6 hardtail.
• The neck is a bolt on and I used a Fender neck plate - I find these are simply the best as they are thick and rigid. For you guitarists the neck rear profile is a vee shape. The radius of the fingerboard is compound starts at about 9" and goes flatter as you get up the to the dusty end and is around 14" radius.
• The nut again is bone
• I line all the control cavities of guitars I make with self adhesive copper foil for grounding.

The tuning is conventional EADGBE and the scale length is Fender-esque 25.5"

 

Now the finish of this guitar is interesting as I had to seal the walnut first of all with thixotropic pore sealer called Jecofil made by W.S. Jenkins & Co Limited. I used the dark walnut version.

Then I applied a red gel stain on the face. The rear of the body has green, yes dark grassy green, gel coat! The whole lot has multiple coats of clear satin nitro cellulose and the bindings were scraped free of crap (red/green overspill essentially) prior to around 3 coats of clear gloss nitro. I then polished the whole lot (after 4 weeks of curing) with some 3M 09639 Finesse-It Finishing Material Compound on a powered detail polisher. I wish I had discovered this stuff years ago as well as the detail polisher. It makes finishing so easier. I will be using this on other woodworking projects in the future as it takes all the hard work out of it.

Even though the guitar is semi hollow it is still a reasonable weight and sustains like a Les Paul. I guess walnut is a good tone wood! It's not very loud acoustically of course but is not meant to be.

[Coop]

Beautiful work Terry. I know nothing about guitars either but I especially like the second one. 

[Chip Sawdust]

I have about 7 guitars and a Telecaster made in '86. That looks like a real fun guitar to play. And the bass of swamp ash I can imagine sounds perfect I don't have a bass guitar, wanna trade it for a 12 string Fender? I'll throw in the case!

[Chestnut]

I know there was a bit of astronomy talk here. I figured I'd share this link here for any one interested that hasn't yet found it.

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/glimpse360/aladin

 

[Mark J]

I didn't see a caption.  Do you know what it is a picture of?

[Tpt life]

Infrared Milkyway.