So last night we put our #Dwarf3 telescopes on the studio roof at the back of the house, loaded up some schedules, and let them go all, night.

Inspired by @malcircuit 's post a little while ago, one of the targets I programmed in was Markarian's Chain, a string of galaxies.

This is 170x60s@gain 60, post processed using the automated online denoising tool that Dwarf have made available, and finished off in #Snapseed

Recently the Dwarflab app got a very interesting update in the beta stream. But not for telescope control - no this is in the album side. It now has options to upload your images to temporary AWS nodes for automated reprocessing. Star de-trailing, full star removal, and advanced denoising.

Most of these can be handled by well-known and publicly available neural networks, which is probably what these tiny AWS nodes are running.

The real fun, though, begins when you combine the results.

In this shot, I have taken the starless version, and added to it a heavily darkened an contrasted denoised version. This has the effect of reducing the stars, while maintaining the details of the nebula.

A bit of deblurring and sharpening, and this is the result.

C72, The Eta Carinae Nebula, Dwarf3, 60x90s@80, OIII/SII filter. Recomposed to reduce stars, and post processed in Google Photos.

I ordered a #Dwarf3 telescope to take to Bhutan. The telescope is back ordered and probably won't get to me before I go.
Annoyingly, the tripod for the telescope arrived yesterday.
They taunt me.

Recently we have been blessed with the presence of Comet c/2024 G3 (Atlas) so we were wandering down to the beach hopefully. Naturally it being high summer one would expect clear skies by we actually had an overcast sky and rain one of the best viewing nights! High winds also did not help at all the next day or two, but we did get some shots.

I have many more photographs of the comet but this will do for now, took it with the Dwarf 3. rdm had an interesting discovery, this comet is going to move toward the south, and stop setting, a bit like that Pole Star the Northern Hemisphere folks have and we're totally not jealous of because we can do that thing with the Southern Cross and the Pointers, and anyway we've got the Carina Nebula so nyeer.

*Deep Breath* So anyway we've been giving some attention to the Pleiades and Hyades, and other stuff that's a bit North for us. Nyingarn, the Echidna (or Orion if you like) is in the clear for us at home so stuff around there is good to look at before bedtime.

We all know by now that I'm a nebula kinda girl, so when I was scrolling around the Star Atlas I found a nebula that was just the right size for my telescope's field of view. It's called the Monkey's Head Nebula or NGC 2174. Unlike a lot of these fancifully named objects, it, to me, really does look like a primate head, although more apelike - even gorilla like than monkey. See what you think - here's a shot straight out of camera for you.

A couple of hours there.
In the same area we also have the Jellyfish Nebula, so the next night I targeted that. The photo will follow, I've run out of room to post it here.

Again only a couple of hours - but that's the gap we get of usable dark sky between astronomical night and beddybyes. I think it needs more time but even so straight out of camera we do get an intriguing image. I shall dicker with it some, but I like to share the unenhanced image with you first.

If you embiggen it you can see that there's plenty more nebulosity kicking around so more time and a bit of enhancement may be rewarding, I'll report back. rdm is getting us a funky SIIOIII filter so that will be interesting compared and combined with the inbuilt HAOIII in the Dwarf3. You know, I love these nebulas - I'm always looking for things that aren't tiny in the screen of the Dwarf and these are nicely sized, these along with the Rosette Nebula (aka Unicorn Nostril) are just the thing to have fun with the telescope.

And for me they don't have dirty great buildings and trees in the way which is unfortunately the case at home for most of the interesting stuff to the South, you know that Galactic Core and Carina stuff.

#WesternAustralia #PerthWesternAustralia #astronomy #astrophotography #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography #dwarf3

I'm feeling ambitious tonight.

Let's see how I go with SH2-264.

I've programmed in 120*60@80 with an Ha/OIII filter.

Wish me luck!

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

Over the last week I've been going out every couple of nights and shooting C/2024 G3 Atlas as it slowly disintegrates after the front fell off.

Here are a couple more of my Dwarf3 shots, along with one from my phone. One is very heavily processed to bring out the side-tails.

20-50 frames of 15s at 80.

Last night we went down to Scarborough Beach, and hunted for C/2024 G3 Atlas - the current brightest comet.

It was still to close to the sun to see in the glare, but a bit after sunset my Dwarf3 had just enough dark to calibrate, and picked it up just 1 degree above the horizon!

The telescope had just enough time to snap 10 frames and stack them.

The skies finally cleared so I managed to try out my new #Dwarf3 #smartscope. Very impressed!

#M45 #Pleiades 15x60s, gain 60
and #M31 #Andromeda Galaxy 192x15s, gain 60

I've been following #astrophotography hashtag for a while now. Learnt many things, and am very tempted to get my first device. I'm an #IT guy, so I'd love a "smart" version, to ease my entry into that world and make nice pictures.

I'm very tempted by the #SeastarS50 , I've also read about the #dwarf3 , but I'd love to take shots of our planets. Looks like those devices can't do it.

Are there beginner friendly recommended models to capture pictures of our planets?

Is it better to buy a telescope on which you plug my #iPhone (but then it won't follow moving stuff), or a standalone device?

Is it possible without spending more than 1000€/$ ?

Thank you!

This is what happens when you run a high-ISO wide angle astrophotography camera too close to a light polluted horizon.

I was trying to capture the faint aurora that was manifesting, but that green glow is not it. That is pure light pollution.

It is, however, an extremely funky image in its own right, so a bit of post to clean up the noise, and to bump the saturation even more, and here we are with it. Note that we still get Crux, and A and B Centaurus (the Pointers).

#Dwarf3 1x15s@60gain wide angle. Post processed in #GooglePhotos .

Aurora alert for Western Australia, including Perth!

We took this shot about 30 minutes ago from Como!

This also answers the question "Can a Dwarf3 image the aurora?". And the answer is "yes".

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