iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 13/11/2024

It's good to have you here :-)

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 26/11/2023

It really depends on your camera -- the 174-mini comes to focus in the eyepiece holder 🙂

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 31/10/2023

Total of 10.5 hours of exposure: 42 x 300s Sii 42 x 300s Ha 42 x 300s Oiii Taken using an Altair 26M Pro TEC Camera through a Vixen AX103S Telescope with Vixen 0.7x Flattener and Antlia filters (36mm 3.5nm Ha and Sii, 36mm 3nm Pro Oiii). Captured using N.I.N.A. nighttime-imaging.eu

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 31/10/2023

This is a "false colour” image representing emissions of ionised gasses Hydrogen Alpha (Ha), Oxygen 3 (Oiii) and Sulphur 2 (Sii), mapped to RGB using the “hubble palette” but tuned to increase the contrast between the channels. Taken from Light Polluted London (bortle class 8, SQM 18.45).

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 31/10/2023

Here is a photo taken at the start of last year : IC410 The Tadpoles Nebula. This 100 lightyear wide region of ionised gas is some 12000 light-years away from earth. The “Tadpoles” that you can see are themselves ten light-years long and are considered by NASA to be sites of ongoing star formation.🔭

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 21/10/2023

A trick I use to point a DSLR (assuming you know the sky "manually") is to point a Green laser pointer at the thing you want to image. The laser appears brightly in the DSLR live view and you can use that to frame your image even if no stars are visible! A more advanced option is plate solving...

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 21/10/2023

You can actually do a lot by just stacking shorter exposures, especially in your skies! The background image on my website astrophotos.uk is a bunch of 12 second exposures on a static tripod, taken in the mountains somewhere in Vermont. Wide angle and rule of 500 let you take great images untracked.

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 02/10/2023

My first ever Hydrogen-Alpha Solar image! Many serious problems with it, but pleased that prominences and sunspots are visible. Taken with a Coronado PST (visual solar scope) on my AZ-GTi portable mount with my ASI 174MM Mini astrophotography guiding camera, through mostly cloudy skies! #solar 🔭

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 27/09/2023

Software: N.I.N.A. -- Capturing PHD2 -- Guiding ASTAP -- Plate Solving EzSuite — LiveStacking and Calibration PixInsight — Stacking and Processing Affinity Photo — Collage and Tweaks

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 27/09/2023

Hardware: Altair 26M Pro TEC Camera Vixen AX103S Telescope Vixen 0.7x Flattener for AX103S Pegasus Falcon Rotator ZWO EFW3 Filter Wheel Antlia 36mm 3.5nm SHO Filters DeepSkyDad AF3 Autofocuser SkyWatcher HEQ5 Mount SkyWatcher Evoguide Guide Scope Altair 290M Guide Camera

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 27/09/2023

Since it's cloudy...here is a photograph of the night skies taken over three nights of the full moon at the end of March 2021. This is NGC2237, the Rosette Nebula, imaged from Light Polluted London (bortle class 8, SQM 18.45). Total of 4 hours of exposure: 16 x 300s each of Sii, Ha & Oiii #astro🔭

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 22/09/2023

Yes, yes you did. As for old, just think how old the universe is and it’s doing just fine…

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 18/09/2023

One of my #astrophotography rigs. This is a 9.25” SCT (Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope) on an Avalon Linear Equatorial Mount, with separate cameras for imaging and guiding, all controlled by a mini PC running the open source Astrophotography suite to which I contribute, N.I.N.A. nighttime-imaging.eu 🔭

Large black SCT on a red equatorial mount.

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 18/09/2023

This is where I do most of my #astrophotography — all of the images on the Website were taken here. Those in the know will see the Sky Quality reading of 18.27 and gasp in horror! This is Light Polluted London, 2023. My future plans are to do more dark-site camping with #astro gear… 🔭 #astronomy

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 18/09/2023

Thank you! What’s really needed imho is for the Bluesky team to enable in-app control of a curated feed like yours, such that people can apply in the app and you can add them here directly. It seems like such a logical thing to add…

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 18/09/2023

Rather than "I can reuse it for other fellowships" aren't you meant to be thinking positive with "I'll never need to apply again because I'm totally going to get this one!"? 😀

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 18/09/2023

Does this post show up in the feed? If it helps, the gmail account I used to log in to signup.astronomy.blue was: szymon (at) kapadia (dot) pl bsky.app/profile/astr...

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 18/09/2023

As an aside @emily.space it was your great article emilydoesastro.com/posts/230824... which pointed me to the idea of changing my handle to my domain name, so it's your own fault that this happened! 😂

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 18/09/2023

No problem! Erm…good question :-) I think it was simon_szymon (with the default domain, something like bsky.social I think?). Hope that’s enough to find it!

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 18/09/2023

@emily.space not sure if I’m doing this right — did you see the above message ? :-)

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Simon Kapadia @astrophotos.uk · 15/09/2023

Hi there. New to bsky. I signed up to post to the feed, but then I changed my 'handle' to be my domain name, and suddenly realised that means you won't find my original handle when processing applications. Could you add me to the astronomy feed please? Many thanks! :-)

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