iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 17/04/2026

A work in progress... M106. I need more data on this target. This is only an hour per channel, LRGB. 🔭 The weather has been awful, along with everything else that's kept me away from my hobby. Oh well, at least I got something! Lots of little fuzzies along with the main target. 😁

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 28/10/2025

And the image is nice and flat now. :)

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 28/10/2025

Wow! I was able to work on my 🔭 tonight, and get it all back together. My OnStep board is working great! On top of that, after a quick collimation, I now have ROUND STARS in the corners of my images. No more bats! 🤣 I have a couple more things to do before I can image again, but this is great! 1/3

This is the star Mirfak, and the surrounding star-field.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 26/10/2025

All the equipment seems nominal. Just waiting for the clouds to clear. Just a couple stars poking though now and then. Hopefully it actually clears up around 11pm (1h 40m from now).

An image from my astro camera. Mostly clouds but a couple of stars poking though.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 30/09/2025

I haven't been able to do very much astro stuff because of work. However I was able to attend a couple of days at the Black Forest Star Party at Cherry Springs State Park earlier this month. I did some #astrophotography but haven't had time to process. Here are some pictures from my phone. 🙂

A long exposure of people and telescope equipment at night dimly illuminated by red light

Milky Way shot. The Andromeda galaxy is visible on the right side vertical center.

Milky Way shot. I took this picture pointed straight up.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 13/08/2025

I've finally processed & published my image of #M16 the #Eagle #Nebula! This was my summer project, plagued by rain, clouds, bugs, & malfunctions. I had to toss much of the data, but what was left made this. Not too shabby! 🔭 More info and high quality on my AstroBin Page: app.astrobin.com/i/bf9nmg

M16 - Eagle Nebula [In SHO]
by BensAstroStuff

Published: Aug 13, 2025

Total integration: 8h 18m

Integration per filter:
- Hα: 2h 32m (76 × 120")
- SII: 2h 44m (82 × 120")
- OIII: 3h 2m (91 × 120")

Equipment:
- Telescope: Sky-Watcher Quattro 200P
- Camera: ZWO ASI294MM Pro
- Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
- Filters: Optolong H-Alpha 7nm 2", Optolong OIII 6.5nm 2", Optolong SII 6.5nm 2"
- Accessories: Sky-Watcher Quattro Coma Corrector, ZWO EAF, ZWO EFW 7 x 2″, ZWO OAG (Off-Axis Guider)
- Software: GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), INDI Library Ekos, KDEdu KStars, Nikita Misiura StarNet, Open PHD Guiding Project PHD2, SetiAstro CosmicClarity, Siril Team Siril, Steffen Hirtle GraXpert

For more information, visit AstroBin:
https://app.astrobin.com/i/bf9nmg

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 25/06/2025

This past weekend I was at the Cherry Springs Start Party. There was a single night that was good for astrophotography, and I acquired enough data to create this image of the Crescent Nebula. 🔭 Full resolution and acquisition details on my Astrobin page: app.astrobin.com/i/kejtxh

An Astrophoto of the Crescent Nebula, taken by Ben's Astro Stuff.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 26/05/2025

This is the beginning of my next major project. I expect it's going to take a few months. 🔭 The Eagle Nebula. This is only 90 minutes of luminance. My previous image of this target was three years ago, and can be found here: app.astrobin.com/i/ob5rlv

An astrophoto of the eagle nebula. Monochrome.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 11/05/2025

New image! I finally found enough free time over the past couple of weeks to process my images of M31, the Whirlpool Galaxy. 🔭 Full Resolution and capture information: app.astrobin.com/i/g7if5a

An astrophoto of M31, the Whirlpool Galaxy

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 29/04/2025

Everybody starts somewhere! Here's my first imaging setup back in 2021.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 29/04/2025

Hopefully the last of these thin clouds are gone before I start imaging tonight. 🔭

It's a picture of mostly sky. It's just after sunset and there are thin clouds in bands low on the horizon. There's an observatory with the shutter open in the lower left-hand corner.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 18/04/2025

I understand, but I only say 'not very big' because our astronomy club has things like this. I'd like to see what data you got with your radio telescope! There used to be someone in the club that did that, but it was before my time as a member.

That's not an observatory... *this* is an observatory!

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 18/04/2025

It's not too big. It's a Newtonian with a 200mm aperture. Here's a picture of what it's doing right now. Note that the door is for hobbits. It's only about 4ft tall. It's a small observatory.

A picture taken with a fish-eye camera of the inside of my observatory. The telescope is pointing out though the shutter in the dome.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 18/04/2025

Not 5 minutes later... another one. Not as easy to see the tail though.

Another airplane putting streaks in my astrophoto.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 18/04/2025

So I'm imaging M51 tonight, and this just happened in one of my sub-frames. You can make out the tail of an airplane, lit up by it's own lights. 🔭

It's part of a single frame astrophoto. You can see the ghostly shape of an airplanes tail in between the streaks from it's lights.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 19/03/2025

Horsehead has dropped too low to image properly. I've switched to M101. I'm going to leave it here to run on it's own while I try to sleep. Hopefully I'll wake up to a full hour of each L/R/G/B. This is the last of the L.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 19/03/2025

The Horsehead & Flame nebula in Oiii. Trying to get as many subs as possible before the moon comes up and washes it out. This is a single 5min sub-frame.🔭

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 16/03/2025

Clouds and rain all weekend. I won't be able to do any imaging. 😢🔭 There may be some clear nights this coming week, but that means trading sleep for it. I've done that plenty of times. We'll see.

A fully overcast, cloudy, and rainy sky over my observatory.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 14/03/2025

Want to see something kinda cool? Here's my mount slewing from park to the horse-head (previous post), with the dome rotating to follow it. 🔭 The dome is an old 8ft ExploraDome, and the rotating motor is from NexDome, which I modified to work with it.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 03/03/2025

This is a pretty old mount, and I got it used. It originally came with a serial port. 😅 I've always had issues with the Dec axis. I've been slowly working the kinks out over the past couple of years, and I think this is the last of them. The Dec worm gear had a flat spot when I got it. See pic.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 03/03/2025

And as they say, the proof is in the p̶u̶d̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ guide graph... wow.... .38" RMS.

It's a PHD2 guide graph. It's really flat.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 03/03/2025

So... two things. First, in my last post I misremembered how bad my declination backlash was. I thought it was 2000ms... it was MUCH worse: almost 8000ms. Tonight I was able to test test again after the mount rebuild and it's 2130ms. That can be managed. Second: Here is the before/after graph. 🔭

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 02/03/2025

This was the sky tonight. The crescent moon and Venus. I did get my telescope and mount back together. I was able to guide at ~0.65" RMS. I was not able to do a lot of testing, but the dec backlash seems to be greatly reduced. Hopefully tomorrow night I'll be able to fully test it. 🔭

A picture taken just after sunset. The crescent moon and Venus are in the center. The horizon has silhouettes of trees.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 19/02/2025

I built this device a couple years ago, and it's still useful. It's a digital amp gauge that shows the current drawn through it. By watching it as the mount slews, you can find areas in the worm gear that are hanging up because the amp draw spikes. I built it with parts from Amazon. 🔭

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 19/02/2025

The weather is terrible. It's either cloudy and rainy or brutally cold and windy. Nothing in between for a while. The last testing I did showed that I had issues guiding. There is really bad backlash in the declination axis. It's time for a rebuild. 🔭

It's a picture of my Atlas EQ-G mount. It's mounted to an adapter plate and bolted down to my workbench.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 08/02/2025

I was able to get a new Coma Corrector, a Skywatcher Quattro model, which was made specifically for this telescope. It's a *vast* improvement over the Baader mkiii MPCC. The mushroom shaped stars are gone. I still have some minor tilt issue, causing some stars to be over-corrected. Next time...🔭

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 05/02/2025

Moving on to the next 🔭 problem, I have been unable to find the right coma corrector spacing to eliminate the coma, and not get mushroom shaped stars in the corners. Then I find reports that the CC I have (Baader mk3) is known for this on larger sensors... so I need a different CC.

Mushroom shaped stars in the corners of the camera image due to incompatible coma corrector.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 05/02/2025

I'm trying to figure out where the tilt in my imaging train is coming from. Here are two frames in a loop. I rotated the entire imaging train in the focuser by ~180 degrees between them. That's not precise, looking at the diffraction spikes. Tilt seems to be following the imaging train. 🔭

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 02/02/2025

I got some tilt. I'm not sure how I'm going to solve this yet. I don't have much backfocus left to work with. I also have too much backfocus from the coma corrector, and will need to shorten it up a bit to get the stars round in the corners. In better news, I was able to get the OAG dialed in! 👍🔭

An image of a star field with a graph overlaid showing the apparent sensor tilt.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 27/01/2025

Here are the planets visible with the unaided eye from my house earlier tonight. 🔭 I don't know how to add captions yet. For those that can't hear, the first bright dot just above the trees is Mars, then Jupiter, then Venus (really bright), with Saturn just below it, much smaller.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 24/01/2025

Here's the 60sec image. I don't have guiding set up yet, so this is just the mount tracking. I don't see any triangle stars anymore, and the autofocus graph was a lot cleaner. If I'm reading the stars correctly, I need more backfocus.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 24/01/2025

I installed the Baader Click-Lock on my telescope. I should do a short review of this thing when I get some time. I was able to reach focus, and take a quick image. I *think* it's better... I still have some coma that I need to adjust for, but it looks much more uniform across the fov. Out of time🔭😴

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 22/01/2025

It came early! But it's cloudy... 🔭

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 21/01/2025

Friday.... Hopefully it's not delayed further.

Screenshot of USPS tracking on my telescope parts. Expected delivery on friday the 24th.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 21/01/2025

More telescope parts coming hopefully by Friday. Maybe there will be some clear skies and I can finish getting it up and running. 🔭🤞

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 18/01/2025

So ... fail. I couldn't quite reach focus with this telescope either. I'm very disappointed. Here's pictures of what I was trying to do. Even with the focuser completely bottomed out, it was donuts. So... I ordered a Baader 2" ClickLock instead. Hopefully that will resolve the tilt. 🔭

All the new parts, installed and labeled

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 14/01/2025

I ran out of time trying to figure out the perfect back-focus for my coma corrector. I think tilt issues as well, which makes it difficult to figure out. I have noticed that the diffraction on this Newtonian is very clean. It came with a CNC spider and a primary clip mask, and it shows.🔭 (unguided)

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 14/01/2025

First light! I might get to the OAG offset later... I need to get the backspace of my coma corrector fixed first. Not sure if I have too much or not enough... I think not enough. The horrible gradient is because the moon is big... Great time for testing, horrible time for imaging. :P

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 13/01/2025

If this forecast holds, I should be able to get the scope focused and the OAG properly offset tonight. 🔭 I'm currently cleaning up the wiring. This morning I was sick, so I'm glad that's over. ... At least I think it's over... 😅

A screenshot of the app 'Astrospheric' forecasting somewhat clear skies for the evening.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 12/01/2025

Continuing from my previous post, this is as far as I got with the collimation tonight. I couldn't get the secondary perfectly centered, but it's close. Everything else went pretty smooth. Hopefully it's good enough. This is my first F/4. I couldn't star test, since I don't have a cloud filter. ⭐☁️🔭

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 12/01/2025

It's Alive! 🔭 I have a lot more work to do, but the new control board is functional. I'm going to try to get it collimated tonight.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 11/01/2025

I'm freezing my butt off, but I'm working on it! I just installed the new control board in the mount. The (very) old one was giving me some strange issues during goto. Hopefully this fixes them. Otherwise I'll need to build an onstep controller for it. ... Paint doesn't match... 🤷🔭 First Light soon?

An image of an Orion Atlas EQ-G mount with a replacement SkyWatcher control board. The new control board's face plate is white, and doesn't match the black paint of the mount.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 07/01/2025

I haven't been able to work on the new gear as much as I'd like, but I did get most of it installed. I had to add a weight to the counter-balance. It's significantly heavier than the old one, but still far within the capacity of this boat-anchor of a mount. Here it is after balancing. 🔭 It's so 🥶

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 03/01/2025

This is going to be a pretty epic 🔭 upgrade for me. From 150mm F/5 to 200mm F/4. And this new OTA has some nice upgrades, like a CNC secondary spider. I've got a lot of work to do to get everything together.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 31/12/2024

Big things coming soon.... Just waiting on some little adapters to get it all hooked up. 🔭

A workbench covered in astrophotography equipment

A 7 position electronic filter wheel filled with 2 inch mounted filters. LRGB,Ha,Oiii,Sii

A d:200mm fl:800mm F/4 Skywatcher Quattro 200p Imaging Newtonian Telescope

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 30/12/2024

Here is an #Astrophoto from earlier in the year, on my 2nd visit to Cherry Springs State Park in September. I had one good night, and was able to image the #Iris #Nebula for 7hrs. I always want more exposure time, but the weather didn't cooperate. Details & High Res: app.astrobin.com/i/ozpwim

An astrophoto of the Iris Nebula from Cherry Springs State Park, taken by Ben's Astro Stuff.

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Ben's Astro Stuff 🇺🇦 @bensastrostuff.com · 24/12/2024

I didn't need to modify it. The bracket that came with the EAF worked. I did mount it so that the focus motor was toward the front of the scope. That gave me some more clearance to balance it. Here's a picture of the setup.

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