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5th January 2023, 21:05
| #16 |
| BHPian  Join Date: Apr 2022 Location: Chennai
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| Re: Coorg Star Party - An Astrophotography / Visual Observation Trip to Talacauvery, Coorg Thank you for finding time to reply and  for the great suggestion. Have fun at Coorg and please do post the images. |
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3rd February 2023, 18:19
| #17 |
| Team-BHP Support   Join Date: Nov 2013 Location: Coimbatore
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| Re: Coorg Star Party - An Astrophotography / Visual Observation Trip to Talacauvery, Coorg Coorg Star Party - January 2023, Galaxy Hunting BAS conducted the 2nd star party of the season in Talacauvery from 20th to 23rd January 2023. This time I went for all 4 nights. As I was traveling solo, this time and as there was more space in the car, I decided to take my long focal length setup. This is an 8" Ritchey Chretien telescope made by GSO with a native focal length of 1600mm. With a 0.78x reducer, the effective focal length is 1250mm at F/6. This provides a much tighter field of view. So, the theme for this trip was galaxy hunting. As always the BAS volunteers had done a fantastic job with arrangements. After the last star party in December, there was a newspaper article about the event in Hindu.  Post this article, there were many more registrations for the January star party. On 3 of the nights, we had 50+ participants. On Saturday night, the strength was 72. The participants had a great time learning about astronomy and viewing lots of interesting objects through the various telescopes. Some participants who had attended a star party the first time in December also came again with their own photography and visual equipment which they had bought after learning about the options in their first visit. A few pictures from the star party. All the equipment collected.  Equipment loaded in the car.    A beautiful sunrise somewhere near Bhavanisagar dam.    Introductory sessions from a couple of days. During these sessions, BAS volunteers introduce the participants to various subjects like astronomy, types of objects, constellations etc. and also brief them on do's and dont's in the event.   The astrophotography area.  My astrophotography setup.  A few group pictures from various days of the event.    Group pictures courtesy: Mr. Subhankar of BAS A timelapse of the 1st day evening where all the telescopes are being setup. Video credit: Mr. Srinivas of BAS |
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3rd February 2023, 18:35
| #18 |
| Team-BHP Support Join Date: Nov 2013 Location: Coimbatore
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| Re: Coorg Star Party - An Astrophotography / Visual Observation Trip to Talacauvery, Coorg Problems faced during last star party and solutions: I had faced three challenges in the December star party which I have listed in the first post in this thread. This time, I fixed all these issues. 1. The first issue I had faced was the power fluctuations and the equipment getting reset. The solution was not to depend on power at the site. I got a 100AH LiFePO4 battery with solar charger. Used this battery on all the 4 nights and did not have any power or reset issues. 2. The second issue was the heavy dewing in Coorg and the DIY dew heaters that I had earlier were not able to handle the dew. This time, I got proper dew heaters that operate on 12V and have variable power setting. With these dew heaters, I did not face any dew problem this time. 3. The third issue was the tracking. I had suspected the number of cables that were coming down from the equipment (4x power cables and 4x USB cables). I made a DIY power distribution box which I fixed to the bottom side of the telescope and also moved the USB hub to the bottom side of the telescope. With this arrangement, only one power cable and one USB cable go up from the ground to the equipment. This in turn removes any cable snag issues. This greatly improved guiding. But I still have an occasional spike in tracking which results in some of the frames being scrapped. The 100AH battery pack with state of charge indicator.  The distribution box with three 12V and one 19V outputs  Picture below shows the complete setup powered by the battery and only two cables going up from the ground.  Picture below shows the telescope with the new dew heaters and the distribution box.  Note: These pictures were taken at home before the star party Used the solar panels to charge the battery at the site.  Astrophotography: I had a very productive trip this time. Of the 4 nights, three nights were very good and on one night, had some haze for one half of the night. Even during this haze, was able to collect some data. Following are the objects that I was able to capture.
Below are a couple of collages of the images of the above targets. Click on the pictures to open full resolution images.   I have uploaded individual images with details on the object and exposure details in my astrophotography thread. Link below: Rendezvous with the Universe | My Astrophotography Hobby Visual observation: During the last star party, I did not spend much time on visual. But this time I had planned to dedicate at least one half of a night for visual. On the 3rd night on Sunday, spent a couple of hours showing the new participants various objects through the 10" GoTo dobsonian. Following are the list of objects that I managed to show.
On 4th night on Monday, only 8 of us had stayed back. Spent 5:30 hours from (8:30 to 10:30PM and 2:00 to 5:30AM) observing. Below is the list of objects viewed in this session.  I also created a PDF document with pictures shot during the trip with details of the objects, exposure details etc. Document attached below. Coorg Astrophotography January 2023.pdf Overall, another very satisfying and productive event. I would like to once again thank the BAS volunteers for organizing these wonderful events and spreading astronomy among the masses. |
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