Episode 73 - The 7...2600 Club

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WELCOME BAAAACK to The Astrocast! This week, Roo takes you through many topics, including two beautiful comets (SWAN and Lemmon) that MAY become Naked Eye visible, as well as becoming a member of the 2600 club! We'll also sit under the stars and catch up with Tauras the The Pleiades for a bit, and wrap things up with some great recommendations! Hope you're all doing GREAT, and I'm super happy to be back! 

We'll be back next week with another all new episode, and until then - as always - CLEAR SKIES! 

<3

Roo

Transcript

00;00;29;20 - 00;00;37;20
Roo
Sorry. Ten nine. Eight. Six.

00;00;37;22 - 00;00;55;26
Roo
Five. Four Three. Two One. YOU ARE LISTENING TO. THE ASTROCAST. LIFTOFF!

00;00;55;28 - 00;01;43;03
Roo
Welcome back to the Astrocast! I'm your host, Roo. Today is Tuesday, October 14th, 2025. Oh. We are at a 40% waning crescent moon. Man oh, man. It feels like it's been an eternity since I've said that. I hope you've all been doing well. I know I have, for the most part, there's been, some crazy stuff recently as recent as today, in fact.

00;01;43;03 - 00;02;12;00
Roo
But I won't get into that quite yet. Happy to be back with you, though. Sorry for the, somewhat extended break. But Swan Song was a a very, very big deal for me. It was a project that I worked on for a long time, as you could probably tell, and I wanted to kind of give it room to breathe, so to speak, and make sure that everybody was able to give it a proper listen before we just move on to the next thing.

00;02;12;00 - 00;02;37;14
Roo
And I think giving it a couple of weeks as we did and releasing it, you know, on a Friday, which is not something that we typically do, was the right call in this case. I thought about putting out an episode last Friday just to kind of have a filler episode, if you will, but then I thought you know, let's come back strong with an actual proper episode on Tuesday like we normally do, and just get right back into the swing of things.

00;02;37;14 - 00;03;08;20
Roo
So I hope you guys are doing great. There's a lot going on, in the astronomy world, obviously we've got, two comets that are in the night sky right now. And they might end up being, you know, naked eye visible. Though I'm always super wary to say something's going to be naked eye visible. As you know, last year when we had, Sufjan and Atlas, you know, it did become naked eye visible.

00;03;08;20 - 00;03;30;04
Roo
And I can confirm, because I did indeed see it with my naked eye. But it was, you know, only visible for a few nights in my area anyway, in the northern hemisphere. And, it wasn't something that you could just walk outside, you know, from your regular light polluted area and look up high in the night sky and say, oh, there it is.

00;03;30;11 - 00;03;59;29
Roo
You needed a low, clear horizon. You needed, you know, relatively low light pollution. Although I was able to see it from like a Bordeaux five borderline six area. So not a very dark area. But that was pretty bright. Now, I will say these two comments are, currently magnitude, I believe 11 and nine. Last time I checked, I believe, I think it was Swan is the brighter one.

00;03;59;29 - 00;04;17;11
Roo
You know what? Let me check on that real quick. So yeah, Swan is indeed the brighter of the two right now, sitting at about magnitude nine, which is still, you know, three magnitudes higher than what you can see with the naked eye, though with a good pair of binoculars, you should be able to make that one out.

00;04;17;14 - 00;04;47;25
Roo
And I believe it's, low on the west northwest horizon just after sunset currently. And I was looking installed earlier. I believe the same thing can be said for Lemmon at this point as well. And they're supposed to be getting brighter and brighter. As the month goes on. And from most of the estimates that I've seen, the 20th through the 23rd might end up being kind of the brightest, time.

00;04;47;27 - 00;05;24;22
Roo
And, you know, I'm looking now and it looks like, yes, Swan is definitely going to be up pretty high in the night sky. So this is one that weeks ago, whenever it first started kind of getting out into the, the public domain, I guess you could say I went and looked it up in Stellarium and I noticed right away that on the night of the 18th, around 8 p.m., well, I guess you could say around all night long, technically until it sets, which isn't going to be that late because the Milky Way sets, you know, relatively early this time of year.

00;05;24;22 - 00;05;52;00
Roo
But, it's going to be right in scutum, which is right in the middle of the band of the core of the Milky Way, just just above Sagittarius. So if you wanted to get a photo of Comet Swan, that would be an ideal time to do it because it might end up being like rather breathtaking. If we can get a shot of this comet, if it ends up being, you know, relatively bright.

00;05;52;02 - 00;06;14;28
Roo
And that's right around the time when it should be getting relatively bright out of the 18 to a little bit early. But, you know, if it if it happens to be right there in the core of the Milky Way and scutum and it's, you know, bright enough to where it can easily be photographed, I think that could end up being just a ridiculously beautiful photograph.

00;06;14;28 - 00;06;39;09
Roo
So I'll certainly be trying to capture it. I know many of you will as well, and I hope to see your shots, so please send them in. As you get them. And like you say, common lemon as well. That one will also be available. No one really knows which of these two. If either of them will become bright enough to be, you know, naked eye visible.

00;06;39;09 - 00;07;19;08
Roo
Only time will tell. I get the vibe from everything that I've read that it's less likely than what occurred with such an an atlas last year, but then that's just what I've read. So I could be wrong about that. Take it with a grain of salt. But definitely look it up. I will tell you in Stellarium, which is a piece of software, that's available on PC and Mac, it's not readily apparent how you load new comets into the software, because if you if you just go in and search, you put in like C forward slash 20, you'll notice some comets come up, but not all of them.

00;07;19;08 - 00;07;42;10
Roo
And especially if it's like a, newly discovered comet, you'll say, well, where the heck is it? And you actually need to go in and hit some specific settings, which I can just very quickly tell you how to do. So after opening up, Stellarium, either on your MacBook or windows machine. I'm pretty sure you can actually do this on mobile if you have the pro version, though I wouldn't know.

00;07;42;10 - 00;08;10;01
Roo
I don't mess with, Stellarium mobile too often on the left hand side in the lower part of the, screen, when you have Stellarium open, you can see a wrench icon that says Configuration Window. Just click on that and then you'll get several different options. And the last one is plug ins. Click on there and then you want to scroll down until you see solar System editor and make sure that, load at startup is checked.

00;08;10;01 - 00;08;32;16
Roo
I believe that's already checked by default. But go ahead and click configure and then you want to selected the middle tile there. You'll be by default on configuration file. Select the middle one which says solar system. And then at the bottom you'll see import orbital elements in MPC format. Go ahead and click that. And then you can select the type.

00;08;32;16 - 00;09;04;22
Roo
In this case obviously I wanted to do comets. And then it'll ask you for a source. It'll give you a little drop down box. Go ahead and select NPCs list of observable comets. And then just click Get Orbital Elements. If you give it a moment, it should download all of the newest comets. And then you just need to close out of Stellarium, open it back up again, and then when you go to do a search, you should be able to see all of those newer comets and then plan accordingly.

00;09;04;24 - 00;09;38;13
Roo
But back to Swan Song. Man, I had so much fun writing, researching, and recording that episode. And it's more than an episode. It's more like a documentary, I guess you could call it. The sound scaping was super fun to do. That's something I've always enjoyed. I am a huge fan of shows like Radiolab. If you've ever heard that, which is an NPR show that I heard years ago, probably when I was a teenager, honestly, back when, Jad Abumrad was, hosting the show.

00;09;38;13 - 00;10;03;10
Roo
And, you know, they've influenced me in countless ways over the years and got me to, think more critically about a lot of things. And that's a style that I've always wanted to emulate, but very, very, very hard style to emulate because they make it seem so effortless when they do those musical transitions from one area to another, and it all just works together so well.

00;10;03;12 - 00;10;37;14
Roo
But that being said, I am very happy with how the episode ultimately came out and, I got really, really good feedback from pretty much all of the listeners. One, really cool thing that I didn't mention in the episode, because unfortunately, I didn't get it back in time. While doing the research on Henrietta, I actually went into the Harvard Historical Archives, so you can actually pull those up online, even if you're not a Harvard student.

00;10;37;16 - 00;11;07;17
Roo
And I was able to locate the actual, correspondence between her and Charles Pickering, whenever, you know, she was living back at home when she was sick and she would write to Charles and he would write back, they actually have all of that correspondence on file in a box somewhere. They literally have the system cataloged by the box number that it's in, probably in some, you know, file cabinet down in a basement somewhere.

00;11;07;19 - 00;11;40;26
Roo
And I did request copies of that correspondence. I haven't heard back yet. That doesn't surprise me. They probably get a lot of, archival requests that are a lot more important than what I am asking for. But if I do get those in the future, I think I might do a, Patreon member exclusive where we kind of do a little bit of a follow up episode and, just go over some of the, the correspondence, that I'm able to hopefully get, between Charles Pickering and Henrietta.

00;11;40;29 - 00;12;10;09
Roo
You know, another cool thing about that is, while researching her, I learned about all of the other so-called Harvard computers. And man, I mentioned at one point during the episode, but you could literally write an entire episode about all of those women, because each and every one of them achieved amazing things during their time at Harvard. Studying all the various glass plates and what have you.

00;12;10;11 - 00;12;33;13
Roo
Annie jump cannon. What do you mean, Fleming? Just incredible work. All of them did. And I will also say that we will have more episodes like that in the future. So obviously, I don't have the time, being a one man army, to produce an episode like that every week, not even every month.

00;12;33;20 - 00;12;53;27
Roo
To be frank with you, but the hope is that I can put out something like that maybe quarterly or every six months. It does require a lot of research. I didn't use any. I, while doing the research, I didn't just say, you know, write me a script about Henrietta. Leave it, and, I'll read it.

00;12;53;27 - 00;13;21;04
Roo
That that's not what I did. I'm very, very pro human when it comes to art and history. And I really, really wanted to kind of get in the head of people. And I think the best way to do that is to do the research yourself and read about them. I was able to, you know, read the one book that I was able to find, which I reference to the author who did her, brief biography, but it was an excellent read.

00;13;21;04 - 00;13;41;27
Roo
If you ever want to check that out. But yeah, what an amazing woman, who definitely should have won a Nobel Prize and would have won a Nobel Prize if she was still alive. I have so many mixed feelings about the Nobel Committee not awarding posthumously, but that is how they do it, and that is how they've always done it.

00;13;41;27 - 00;14;13;05
Roo
So that's how things ended up, being for Henrietta. But I hope you guys all enjoyed the episode. It definitely, drove some attention to the Astro cast. I definitely think we got some new listeners out of it, which is really awesome. The feedback that I got was just wonderful. And thank you to everyone who listened and took a moment to, send me a quick message saying that they enjoyed it or that it inspired them or this, that.

00;14;13;05 - 00;14;36;16
Roo
And the third, it really means a lot to me. And, I just want to let you guys know that I very, very much do appreciate it. Now, on to other topics. I got something kind of fun to share with you guys that I somehow haven't mentioned on the show yet because of what the release schedule has been for the past few weeks, but I'm going to mention it now.

00;14;36;18 - 00;14;58;14
Roo
The Astro cast now has hoodies available, so if you're not aware, we actually, had another merch drop recently. We got our first hoodie just in time for the winter, so it's starting to get a little bit chilly out in the northern hemisphere. And I knew that the next thing that I wanted to do was a hoodie.

00;14;58;14 - 00;15;30;07
Roo
But I knew I wanted it to be good quality. And after testing many different samples, I finally landed on a brand that I actually liked. And it wasn't Gildan because I hate Gildan shirts. They're so uncomfortable and stiff. But it came out great. I really love the design of it. We've got like, kind of a tongue in cheek equation on the, front chest that basically says bottle one skies or less for all of Earth.

00;15;30;10 - 00;15;52;25
Roo
Which is awesome. And on the back of the show, we've got like, the collegiate stamp that says property of the Astro cast, establish 2024. And then there's a quote on the bottom that says, if you can read this, please turn off your light on. So it's pretty great. Certainly something that you can wear to star parties or just anywhere.

00;15;52;27 - 00;16;15;09
Roo
And, it's a good way to kind of start the conversation about light pollution, because people, often ask me like, how do you start conversations with friends and neighbors about light pollution to kind of get them to understand why it's so important to you? And a lot of times it's just as simple as having a good icebreaker, you know?

00;16;15;11 - 00;16;37;26
Roo
What do you mean, turn your lights off? Why is that important to you? You know what I mean? And that can that can really get people thinking. So, I mean, I've certainly seen it happen, throughout my neighborhood, we had somebody start a recent group, in our neighborhood. I saw, like, a, little thing hanging on my mailbox that somebody had started a local neighborhood Facebook group.

00;16;37;28 - 00;16;58;18
Roo
So I scan the QR code and join the group, and people were all introducing themselves. There's only about 13 people in the group whenever I joined it. And I introduced myself and just said, you know, I'm a local astronomer and I was thinking about maybe having a star party one night, let the kids all come out and look at Saturn and Jupiter.

00;16;58;18 - 00;17;21;17
Roo
You know, the typical fun for kids star party activities. And I posted a photo of the Heart nebula, that I took around New Moon. And everybody, you know, absolutely loved it. And a lot of people said, how did you take that photo from our neighborhood? Da da da da da. And that is what started a conversation about light pollution.

00;17;21;17 - 00;17;45;13
Roo
So there's there's a million different ways you can start it. But the important thing is to just start the conversation. Once you do that and plant the seed, then people will start thinking about it, and then they might mention it to someone. And we all know the, the six degrees of separation. If you can influence one person and they can influence someone, we can change the whole world before you know it.

00;17;45;13 - 00;18;14;02
Roo
So the other item, that we have, which I think is super cool, are bumper stickers. So I designed a, Astro cast bumper sticker. I actually got one on the back of my truck now, and I. I really, really like the bumper stickers. I think they came out great. They have the Astro cast podcast logo on them, along with a QR code, that takes you to the Spotify link for the show.

00;18;14;05 - 00;18;37;24
Roo
And then in the middle and, you know, big bold letters, it says just say no to light pollution, which is awesome. Kind of like a throwback to the, the dare. If any of you guys are like me. If you're like a 40 something grew up in the 90s in in America, and you went and took their classes, it was kind of, a little bit of a tongue in cheek reference to that.

00;18;37;24 - 00;18;58;10
Roo
So the bumper stickers are really awesome. I was able to keep those extremely reasonably priced. I think they're only like $9. So I wanted to keep it to where everybody could get one. The hoodies were a little bit pricier, but, you know, I don't have like, a million connections in the garment industry. I got them as affordable as I possibly could.

00;18;58;13 - 00;19;24;15
Roo
Just to make enough money, to keep making them, essentially. So check them out. If you'd like to get one, you can go to QC Rukam forward slash store. I'm also working on a, new domain for the astro cars to stay tuned for that. A couple other cool things to note with the show. Our Patreon is doing, very, very good.

00;19;24;15 - 00;19;44;27
Roo
Actually, I think we're up to, like, 33 members in our discord now. Like to, give a shout out to our newest member, Lex. Lex, who just joined, thank you so much for joining the discord and the Patreon. We love having you there. It's good to get to to know people. I think you were in Belgium.

00;19;44;27 - 00;20;08;23
Roo
If I'm not mistaken. We have so many European listeners. You know, somebody, asked the other day in the discord. It was, it was Ben. I always get Ben and Tim confused because they've become like good buddies and they send each other stuff, back and forth in the mail. But anyway, Ben asked. He said, how far is the reach of the Astro cast now, I wonder?

00;20;08;26 - 00;20;30;22
Roo
So I realize that I hadn't actually looked in quite some time. I know that, you know, obviously our listening numbers have been getting better and better, you know, every month or so. But I wasn't checked, and we've actually been listened to in 53 different countries, which is just crazy, if you think about it. But yeah, 53 different countries.

00;20;30;22 - 00;20;56;22
Roo
The, the Astro cast has been listened to. So thank you so much to everybody from all around the world that has tuned in. We have a, ton of listeners in Canada and in Europe. A lot down, down south to like down under that is Australia, New South Wales, New Zealand. We've got listeners just all over the place and that is really, really cool.

00;20;56;26 - 00;21;24;27
Roo
We actually had, one listener from Luxembourg, which apparently has more corporations than people. I don't know if that's like a tax haven country or something. We got a few people in Asia as well. I saw Singapore in Japan, Hong Kong, the Middle East is there representing Iran. Showed up. We've, got plenty in the, the Caribbean area, Trinidad and Tobago.

00;21;25;00 - 00;22;01;26
Roo
I saw Bangladesh, Lithuania, Russia, the Philippines, Greece, Austria, Italy, Thailand, Taiwan, Chechnya, Malaysia, Belgium, the UAE, Finland, France, Poland, Vietnam, Brazil, Israel, Hungary, Turkey, India, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, UK and US. So I figured I might as well just rattle them all off, because if I was listening from one of these countries like Cyprus, and I didn't hear my country get rattled off, I would be upset.

00;22;01;26 - 00;22;33;09
Roo
So shout out to everybody. That is an international listener of the Astro cast. Very happy to have you. Also in the discord, we recently had our, Astro Cash Society 2.0 launch, which is super duper cool. So I am, I'm an extremely busy guy. Like, I work obviously a full time job outside of the show, and it takes up a lot of time.

00;22;33;12 - 00;22;50;04
Roo
It's not just a regular 9 to 5 kind of job because I'm a manager, so, you know, often I have to do things after hours. I might get early phone calls in the morning, those sorts of things, and I'm in it. So if you work on it, you know, when problems happen, you have to jump on them.

00;22;50;07 - 00;23;09;03
Roo
I'm also married. So I have to take care of my home life. I have to make sure my wife is happy. I have three pets. I have two dogs and a parrot. That keep me very, very busy. Outside of my work and personal life, obviously, I have the show, and I love making this show.

00;23;09;03 - 00;23;31;15
Roo
It means so much to me. It's like, it's my passion. It really is. And the community that we have built around the show is incredible. And I really, really, really encourage you, if you've been on the fence about, joining the Patreon and becoming a member of our discord, I would highly encourage you to try it for a month.

00;23;31;18 - 00;23;55;10
Roo
If you decide it's not for you, by all means. But I can tell you, to date, we have never had one person cancel their Patreon membership, not one. So everybody who's become a member has stayed one. And, to that note, I would like to, send a huge thank you to our new admin and moderator, Tim.

00;23;55;13 - 00;24;18;14
Roo
Tim actually offered to give me a hand with the discord because I think he knows that I only have time to do so much in the day. And I I'm well aware that discord can do a whole lot more, than what ours was doing. And it can look a lot cooler, and it can have a lot more features and areas, and it does now.

00;24;18;14 - 00;24;39;07
Roo
So Tim was able to build out some bots and build out different areas and add some flair. And I just want to send a huge, very heartfelt thank you to Tim for all the hard work that he has put in. You know, with his own time, because I know that he is busy too. So thank you, Tim, for doing that.

00;24;39;07 - 00;25;11;27
Roo
I greatly appreciate it. And, it certainly will not be forgotten. Obviously we're still in the early days of the show. But it will continue to grow. And as it continues to grow, who knows where it will take us. So, other things to note. We recently got a spot on buy me a coffee. So if you ever want to, give, like, a one time donation of the show, if you feel like, you know, being nice and not joining the Patreon, but you want to, like, you know, throw two bucks, to help the show, you can do it there.

00;25;11;27 - 00;25;32;21
Roo
So I'll have the, the link for that in the show notes. And then all of our affiliate accounts, which I'm working on getting more as well, are also there. We've gotten some huge purchases, through our affiliate accounts lately. Perish. Thank you so much. You made one really big purchase through High Point Scientific recently.

00;25;32;23 - 00;26;02;26
Roo
Which was awesome. And then, I believe Ben did the exact same thing. So thank you guys so much for using those. I try to put them at every episode's, show notes at the very top. So if you ever would like to make a purchase through a Gene Astro high point Scientific Amazon first light optics, please consider using those affiliate links because it does help the show a little bit with, each click that you do.

00;26;02;29 - 00;26;25;28
Roo
So yeah, man, everything seems to be going so well. For the podcast. It's it's crazy because we're going to be, coming up on two, two years very, very soon. I think in January we will be hitting our two year birthday. And, you know, what is this episode 73. Now, before you know it, we'll be at 100 episodes.

00;26;25;28 - 00;26;44;13
Roo
And, you know, we'll have to do something really special for that. I do have a few more interviews planned for the future. I know I've been saying that forever, but it's tricky getting interviews lined up, particularly with, I'm not going to say famous people because I well, I don't know. I guess it depends on who you ask, right?

00;26;44;15 - 00;27;04;11
Roo
Everybody's a celebrity. Depending on who you're who you're, asking. But it can be tricky scheduling things because people are busy or we live in a very busy world and it's hard to get, you know, schedules to line up properly. And that's obviously what happens most of the time when I can't, get one of these interviews lined up right away.

00;27;04;11 - 00;27;32;09
Roo
But we will be having more of those in the near future, so definitely stay tuned for that as well. And other astronomy news. I do, have some pretty cool, news on the camera front. So I have officially joined the 2600 MC Pro Club. After, you know, thinking about it for years and years and years.

00;27;32;11 - 00;28;08;00
Roo
Zwo. If you didn't know, recently released a refreshed design of their 2600 series camera. And really, it's just a paint job. From what I can tell. I mean, there were some minor differences, I think maybe like a slightly deeper. Well, and a couple other, like a really small frame rate difference. But I mean, for all intents and purposes, it appears to be the exact same camera, but with a newer, you know, look to it, which is fine.

00;28;08;02 - 00;28;32;22
Roo
But when they did that, they discounted the original one significantly on, all of the major retailers site. So I finally decided to pull the trigger on that. So that puts us at, what, 585294 and 2600 and you. Which gives me a lot of different, effective focal lengths when I'm using the various scopes that I have.

00;28;32;22 - 00;29;10;25
Roo
I was actually looking at the 2600 MC Pro with the, the C8. When you have the reducer installed, it can really frame up some nebula very beautifully. So I'm super excited, to get that going. Right. So the 2600 club, your boy who's officially a member. It's taken a long time to get here, and, I'm happy to finally have an Aps-c size sensor.

00;29;10;28 - 00;29;35;11
Roo
In astrophotography. I'm a little shocked. It took me long this long to get one. Because, you know, being into terrestrial photography, as long as I have been, I know how important it is, in low light situations to have a larger sensor. So, you know, honestly, I'm a little shocked. I don't have a full frame sensor yet.

00;29;35;13 - 00;30;06;23
Roo
But one of the things that, you know, we don't talk about as often when we're differentiating between the two, terrestrial photography and astrophotography is, it's not just about low light performance. It's about effective focal length. And having a smaller sensor doesn't always mean that you're just not gathering as much light or, you know, getting as quality of data as you would otherwise.

00;30;06;25 - 00;30;36;01
Roo
And what I mean by that is take my five, eight, five MK Pro, for instance. That thing gives me so much more effective focal length. And even though I know the sensor is smaller, they pack in a 4K image into that very small sensor. So even though it is small, they're packing in a whole lot of pixels into that small sensor, very similar to what modern cell phones do.

00;30;36;04 - 00;31;05;06
Roo
And I don't think too many people would argue that, you know, for wide frame shots at least, modern cell phones have really, really gotten good in recent years compared to what they were just ten years ago. You know, you could not compare city shot, I guess you could say, you know, like a range 25 to 50 millimeter, maybe tight shot on a cell phone to a dSLR or just ten years ago.

00;31;05;08 - 00;31;36;24
Roo
But now with your modern iPhones and Samsungs and Pixels, you would be hard pressed to pick out the difference between a city shot and, or, I'm sorry, a cell phone shot and a mirrorless camera. And I really do believe that. Now, the big difference there is when you get into the telephoto. So obviously cell phone cameras cannot do telephoto because they don't have lenses built into them.

00;31;36;24 - 00;32;04;04
Roo
But luckily for us, even if we have a smaller sensor similar in size to what you would get in a cell phone like the five, eight, five and C Pro has, we can attach them to very nice, very long focal length lenses, and in some cases they don't even necessarily have to be super long focal length, you know, anywhere from, you know, 135mm up to, you know, 264, 400mm or more depending.

00;32;04;04 - 00;32;33;28
Roo
You know, if you're shooting with an 80 millimeter doublet or something along those lines and you get that, that optical reach that you need while still maintaining that quality image by having the high pixel count. So, you know, with all that being said, though, I do kind of struggle to see where my 294 fits and now I get keeping the 585 that I definitely get.

00;32;34;00 - 00;32;55;04
Roo
But now that I've got the 2600 MK Pro, which is, as I stated earlier, an Aps-c size sensor, I do wonder why I would keep the Micro 4/3 sensor, which is the 294. And you know, if you guys have any reasons other than it's good to have an extra camera, which I'm not going to argue with you on.

00;32;55;04 - 00;33;16;10
Roo
I'd love to hear them. If you can think of like a particular reason where having that particular, effective focal length could make a big difference. You know, I would definitely, like to hear about it. It's so weird how this camera came out. The. So the 2600 has been kind of the gold standard for quite some time now in astrophotography.

00;33;16;10 - 00;33;38;06
Roo
I mean, honestly, since I've been into the hobby, lifestyle, I guess you can say now the 2600 has been kind of the gold standard for, I guess you would say, like the prosumer level hobbyist who wants to take really good quality shots. Obviously you can go higher, you can go full frame with something like a 6200, and if you're nuts, you can go medium format.

00;33;38;08 - 00;34;07;27
Roo
I don't see myself ever doing that unless I hit the lottery and build an observatory, like a real observatory somewhere. But yeah, I mean, the majority of people are going to be more than happy with the, Aps-c sensor when shooting, deep field objects. It gives you a wide enough field of view where, you know, if you're using a Redcat all the way up to, you know, C8 or C12, you're going to be able to get that big enough field of view with enough pixel count where it should look really great.

00;34;08;03 - 00;34;33;07
Roo
Well, with a wide variety of telescopes. What confuses me about this camera is the why. Why did they come out with the new version? And I would love to know why. I think we see a lot of, well, we don't see a lot of information around these things from Zwo because obviously they're a Chinese company, so we tend to lose a lot of things in translation or we just don't get the news at all.

00;34;33;07 - 00;34;58;00
Roo
But if anyone from Zwo is listening, I would love to talk to you and just understand the thinking behind it, because on paper, pretty much the same camera. I mean, yes, you could argue it can make a couple more frames per second. I think there's a slightly deeper, well, if I remember correctly, and forgive me if I speak about this later in the episode, but really it's pretty much the same camera.

00;34;58;02 - 00;35;19;12
Roo
So I wonder if maybe they ran out of parts, or if a supplier was unable to continue supplying something to them that was crucial to make the camera. That obviously was not the Sony sensor that they use. And for that reason, they had to go to a new one. Or maybe they just figured they weren't selling that great and a refresh might help.

00;35;19;14 - 00;35;41;11
Roo
It could be as simple as that. Oftentimes it is, but it is weird because, you know, to not $200 off of a pretty expensive camera, you know, 16, 15, $1,600 is nothing to sneeze at is, you know, not chump change. I don't know if it was cheaper during those holiday sale last year or not. I'll have to look and see.

00;35;41;11 - 00;36;06;16
Roo
I can't really remember, but I mean, at that price point, I was certainly willing to have a look. But I say all that to tell you, I am currently outside if you have figured it out by now, and I have got the 2600 set up on the, Sky 55, and I am taking my first few frames of the Pleiades.

00;36;06;16 - 00;36;26;13
Roo
So I decided to go with the Pleiades because it really does frame up well on this telescope. It is a wider field of view for certain, but I'm hoping I can get some of that, in strength. There. I guess it'll depend if the moon comes up in a few hours. Probably. Not be able to get too much of it then.

00;36;26;13 - 00;36;51;03
Roo
But before then, I should be able to say I'm doing three minutes of exposures, and I've got it's set up to basically run all night. So it's going to be clear skies all night long. A couple things I'm noticing right away. Much larger file size. So my 294I believe they were like 20 something megabytes, maybe 24 megabyte files.

00;36;51;03 - 00;37;12;28
Roo
These are 15 megabyte files. So significantly larger file sizes. Which means when you're in the preview screen and, you know, I'm often in the preview screen when I'm first setting up my scope and trying to get things dialed in and what have you, I'll, you know, snap a photo and then wait for it to load, just like a two second filter to make sure I'm in focus.

00;37;12;28 - 00;37;31;24
Roo
And or maybe I flew to a target and I want to make sure I got it framed up right. Anyway, it takes a lot longer to load, and I've got my router, you know, set up very close by, and it can often hit one megabyte a second or more, on the transfer rate, but it's just a very large file.

00;37;31;24 - 00;37;57;16
Roo
So even with good connection speeds, you're looking at, you know, longer wait times and obviously with much larger file sizes comes a need for, more storage. So it goes without saying, but I'll probably be looking into, a bigger SSD in the future. So this is something I've already been struggling with as of late, just keeping up with all the data.

00;37;57;18 - 00;38;18;15
Roo
This is a discussion that we have a lot on the discord. People talk about what they do with their data. Do you keep it or not? And, you know, my stance is always I only keep really special data. So like if I go on a dark sky trip and I get really great data, then yeah, I'll hold on to that.

00;38;18;18 - 00;38;41;12
Roo
But if I'm just like shooting in my backyard and shooting the, you know, same target for the fifth time or what have you, I'm generally going to process the image. And then once I have the finished hit file, I'll say that. But then like the lights and darks and flaps and all that, I get rid of them when I'm done because man, they can really eat up some very serious storage space.

00;38;41;15 - 00;39;04;06
Roo
In a very, very short amount of time. Man, it is really clear out here tonight. I picked a good night to sit out here with the mic for a few minutes. I knew I wanted to, call this episode the 2600 club. It's a little bit of a tongue in cheek reference. That, friend of the show Mark will get.

00;39;04;08 - 00;39;32;16
Roo
If you grew up, in the 90s, when I did. And you grew up, poor, then you didn't have cable TV. And on the weekends you would often see the 700 club come on TV. And it was this guy name. I think his name was Pat Richards or something like that. Anyway, it was this, like, really crazy, televangelist television show.

00;39;32;19 - 00;39;54;24
Roo
Heck, it might still be on there, I don't know, but, I just thought it was funny, so I figured I would go with the 26 club for this, episode title. But yeah, the first clubs come in, and it's it's great. I mean, it looks wonderful. I've got some very good nebulosity. I am using the new filter, that I've got on long term loan from, Leviathan optical.

00;39;54;24 - 00;40;11;06
Roo
So thank you to James at Leviathan for letting me hold on to the filter for a little bit longer. I did message him, just to be clear, and I said, I know you probably want your filter back, so send me, the address and I'll send it back when you're ready. And he said I could hold on to it for a bit longer, if I like.

00;40;11;06 - 00;40;30;25
Roo
So thank you very much for that, James. I do greatly appreciate it. Also told him, I'm planning on purchasing this filter, down the road because it is that good. And though it is expensive, I think I, I don't know, I don't know if I'll ever be a mono guy, to be honest. I just, I really, really enjoy one shot color.

00;40;30;27 - 00;41;00;24
Roo
I enjoy the simplicity of it. I enjoy working with the data. I don't mind splitting up RGB channels, in Pix insight and working with them whenever I do, like dual narrowband or Hubble palette. So I don't know for the foreseeable future. Anyway, I plan to stick with one shot color, and as such, I don't see why I wouldn't want to have what I consider to be the best one shot color filter that's available on the market today.

00;41;00;27 - 00;41;38;14
Roo
Man, it's so clear out here, guys at Cassiopeia pretty much directly overhead right now. Just looks like a mountain range. Did you guys, happen to catch when I was talking about Salon Bailey in Peru? During Swan song, I was talking about how he was looking up at the night sky and seeing all these strange sights, like giant ships and two cans and those were all, constellations from the southern skies, that I was referencing.

00;41;38;14 - 00;42;00;22
Roo
And I thought that was kind of a cool little Easter egg in the episode. I don't know if he caught it or not. I think one of my favorite things about the episode, without a doubt, was the horse tram man. When I when I read about that, I thought that was so cool because I was reading about Henrietta and where she grew up and what it would have been like.

00;42;00;22 - 00;42;22;29
Roo
You know, actually taking the trip from Boston all the way out to the college 700 miles west, and how she would have gotten there and how she would have gotten to the train station and everything. And in Boston at the time, the horse tram was how you would have gotten to the train station most likely. So most likely that is what she did.

00;42;23;01 - 00;42;52;12
Roo
What is what I'm hearing right now. There's a dog barking and. It's a I don't know what the other animal is. Sounds weird. It's like a I don't know I don't know if it's a bird or a chicken or what, but it's making a weird kind of noise when the dog is barking. Oh, man. The Hyades is starting to, appear earlier and earlier.

00;42;52;12 - 00;43;15;23
Roo
I mean, I'm out here at. It's about 1140 right now, and the Hyades is well up looking at Aldebaran, the eye of the angry bull. I always think of it as the horns of the bull. I don't know why, but I just do. I guess it's that V shape. It just reminds me of horns. But yeah, these winter constellations, man, they are coming and they're coming fast.

00;43;15;25 - 00;43;47;22
Roo
Are you guys ready for winter? You ready for, Orion coming back around. I'm loving seeing the Pleiades. It's so beautiful, man. When you really get a great shot of the Pleiades, it's something special. And it's just. It's one of those clusters that forgive the term, but it just looks like diamonds thrown on velvet to me. It just.

00;43;47;22 - 00;44;33;20
Roo
It's so beautiful and just makes you wonder, you know? Certainly makes me wonder. Me and my sister were talking about earlier today, speaking of space, there's going to be a movie there, a future for Project Hail Mary, I believe it's coming out in March of next year. So about five months, and I'm pretty sure I've recommended Project Hail Mary on the show will offer as a, recommendation and specifically the audiobook, because the the voices of the characters, you really need to hear them.

00;44;33;20 - 00;44;58;23
Roo
And I won't give you any spoilers because it's a big part of the story. The voices. But yeah, Project Hail Mary, it's it's a phenomenal book. It's definitely in my, like, top ten all time favorite novels. Without a doubt. If you have not read it yet, I would highly recommend it. It's by Andy Weir, the same author who wrote The Martian.

00;44;59;00 - 00;45;19;01
Roo
Coincidentally, I'm not the biggest fan of The Martian. It did not do it for me in the same way that Project Hail Mary did. And I think a lot of people would tell you the same thing. I don't know, maybe Matt Damon trudging around with duct tape ruined it for me. But Project Hail Mary looks like it's going to be awesome.

00;45;19;01 - 00;45;42;16
Roo
They got Ryan Gosling, I believe, playing the main character. And it's it's it's looking really, really good. So hopefully they pull it off and they adapt the book very well. It's a great story that I think can be fit to the movie very well, all things considered. So fingers crossed that they, they pull this off. Definitely go check it out.

00;45;42;16 - 00;46;00;18
Roo
And like you say, you got five months before it comes out, so definitely got plenty of time to read it. Check it out on audible. If you got an audible account. Speaking of audible, give me a little quick tangent real quick. Just because this happened earlier today. You know what? What am I talking about? I talked about this in the show earlier.

00;46;00;22 - 00;46;19;08
Roo
I was about to tell the story about the book, but I realized I told it at the end of this episode, which you will hear in a few minutes. I'm just going to shut up about that. I told my wife earlier, though, and it just really blew my mind. And now I'm going to do, I'm going to record that section of the book.

00;46;19;11 - 00;46;42;05
Roo
I'm going to bleep out the particular word that causes the bad thing to happen. And I am going to go on Twitter and I'm going to at the publisher and ask them to edit that and bleep it out, because it needs to be bleeped out, because most people listen to audiobooks in their car. Well, I don't know about most people, but a lot of people do.

00;46;42;08 - 00;47;06;29
Roo
And that means that it's playing over Bluetooth speakers in the car, and therefore bad things can happen. You'll know what I mean when you get to the end of the episode. So forgive me, I'm dropping a little nugget for you, a little foreshadowing there. Yeah, 2600 Macpro I can't believe I finally got it started off with the, Rebel Teeth.

00;47;06;29 - 00;47;31;11
Roo
Barry. I still have that camera. Astro modified. I bought it on cloudy nights. Classifieds for $200. Was a great camera to get me started, but the sensor on it was just beat the hell. It was worn out and yeah, I could never really get a quality image out of it no matter what I did, but it was a good learning tool for $200.

00;47;31;11 - 00;47;57;27
Roo
It let me learn. So I'm still glad that I have it. From there, I eventually got the 294, which has been a really great camera in its own right. It's got a little quirks, though, and glows, but, you got to obviously take care of that. With darks. I always do darks anyway, so that doesn't bother me, but it's nice to not have to deal with and blow.

00;47;58;00 - 00;48;15;07
Roo
And then the flats are a little bit quirky on the 294 you have to do at least, you know, a couple of seconds, or you can end up with these weird band artifacts. But as long as you handle those two things, great images. I'm really happy with the quality of the two. Nine four. Can't complain about that.

00;48;15;07 - 00;48;41;05
Roo
Then I got the five eight, five. It just it was so affordable and I needed a, a secondary astronomy camera for the dark sky trip that I took last summer. I pulled the trigger on that one. I'm glad I did. No ample on that one. Regular flats are fine. And now it comes full circle when I've got the, 2600 MC Pro.

00;48;41;05 - 00;49;13;28
Roo
So quite, quite happy to finally have it. You know, it's funny, though, I didn't realize. So one thing that's a little bit quirky about the 2600 is it has a, like a plate bolted on to it with screws. And I don't know if it's like a built in tilt adjustment plate, perhaps. I haven't really researched it yet, but I know that you can use it to, screw accessories directly on to it so you don't have to worry about connecting them via threads.

00;49;14;00 - 00;49;35;29
Roo
So like if you have an off axis scatter, you can screw it directly on to the camera. I remember reading that when I was looking at that Celestron OAG and anyway, I didn't realize I set this camera up the other night. I had clear skies for a few minutes, and I wanted to see if I could get it focused, and I basically just swapped cameras out and I couldn't get focus.

00;49;35;29 - 00;50;02;18
Roo
And mind you, I've got to, That's fine. So to not be able to get focus, I got to really be out of whack with my back spacing. And it turns out I was because with that, pre-installed plate, if you will, on the 2600, it actually adds, 17.5mm of back spacing compared to I want to say it's like nine millimeters on the two nine, four.

00;50;02;21 - 00;50;36;06
Roo
So, you know, a significant amount of difference. And I think if you take it off, it goes down to like seven or 7 or 9 something along those lines. But yeah, basically I had to, remove a 21 millimeter threaded extender tube thingy. So after I took that out and then screwed it back on. So it goes from the telescope into the filter drawer, and then I've got a 16.5mm, extender and then right to the 2600.

00;50;36;06 - 00;51;02;08
Roo
And now it's able to focus perfectly. Took a little bit. But I did get it there. And it's focused beautifully now. So hopefully it'll just run nice and smooth all night long and give me nice, beautiful stars. That's what I'm hoping for. Also found a, a new target that I'm going to be going for. I didn't go for it tonight because I want to get it with the C8.

00;51;02;11 - 00;51;34;02
Roo
But the, CTB one, it's the Garlic Nebula. I've seen it more frequently as of late. Actually, I have a friend of mine. She, she grows garlic. It's like her passion. And she didn't know that there was a nebula called the Garlic Nebula. So I'm going to surprise her with a print of it. So that's going to hopefully be, the first thing that I capture with the 2600 in the car.

00;51;34;05 - 00;51;55;28
Roo
So that's what I'll be aiming to get over the next couple of months. I'm hoping I'll be able to, to get it before, you know, Cassiopeia gets into an awkward spot. Although, honestly, I should have enough time to to get it with where it's at right now. On the sky. So should have plenty of time before it's out of the way.

00;51;56;00 - 00;52;20;22
Roo
Man, I hope I can get that. Comet next week on the 20th. The way I'm telling you guys, if you get a chance to get low western skies on the 20th, southwest, you know, looking at the Milky Way, the core of the Milky Way in the south, that's where it's going to be. And it'll be right in scutum, right in the dead center of the Milky Way that night on the 20th.

00;52;20;22 - 00;52;36;02
Roo
And it's going to be beautiful. So that's the night to try to get a shot of that comet. If you can Swan.

00;52;36;04 - 00;52;39;12
Roo
Crickets are loud the night.

00;52;39;14 - 00;53;11;07
Roo
And the cicadas. If you guys can hear that or not. Sometimes I try to pick up some of the, background noise, and sometimes Adobe just cuts it all out. I kind of like having the, cicadas in the background, though. When I'm out here, it kind of lets you know we're in the Dark Towers Observatory. My, my neighbor actually moved out of his house.

00;53;11;09 - 00;53;37;17
Roo
The neighbor that, has the crazy lights. I will say, he's been extremely generous about leaving his lights off for the last. God, 3 to 6 months. I mean, I have to ask once. He's just pretty much always have. If and if it's a clear night, he's out. I'm off. So big shout out. And thank you to you guys for being awesome neighbors.

00;53;37;19 - 00;53;59;21
Roo
While you were here, all I can do is cross my fingers that the next people that come here, good people. I do think, tell me if it's a shady after they're gone. Gone. But before the new people move in, I'm going to go over there and I am going to adjust that floodlight that they have in their backyard.

00;53;59;23 - 00;54;23;05
Roo
And I'm going to point it more down because that thing shines directly into my backyard, like to the point where why bother setting up your telescope? And if I happen to get neighbors that are not cool and they will not, you know, ever turn their lights off for whatever reason? I don't want to, you know, have my nights ruined every single night because of that.

00;54;23;07 - 00;54;51;25
Roo
I was also thinking, put a Bluetooth bulb. This might be too much. Put a Bluetooth bulb in the front porch and, just have it on my phone. So when it's midnight, I can just turn it off. Did you turn the light off, honey? No. Are you sure it wasn't you? That awesome? Would that be? Oh, man, I think I might do it.

00;54;51;27 - 00;55;07;13
Roo
And Orion is going to be coming up shortly. Here. I didn't realize how close it was already. Man, is he coming up at midnight already? Sure looks like it.

00;55;07;15 - 00;55;10;29
Roo
Yeah, because the Hyades is.

00;55;11;01 - 00;55;30;09
Roo
Like 20 degrees up already. But if I stood up and walked around, I could see Beetlejuice. As a matter of fact, that's. That's a belt. No way. That's not the belt, is it? Let me go. Look at you. Stand up. More comfy in my chair.

00;55;30;11 - 00;55;44;00
Roo
Let's see. Is that the belt?

00;55;44;02 - 00;55;48;27
Roo


00;55;49;00 - 00;56;23;02
Roo
No, it's not the belt. I think that is, You know, let me open up. Skysafari has been eight years since I've seen Orion. So. He. Okay, so it's the shield that I'm seeing right now. That's what I was thinking, but I wasn't certain. I want to open my mouth and say something dumb. So that means that Beetlejuice and co were right behind.

00;56;23;04 - 00;56;53;06
Roo
Coming up quickly. Oh, what did I just step on? Sorry, I stepped on something back here. Just give you an idea. This is a, very, very dark backyard, and, Yeah, I'm usually wearing flip flops whenever I'm, at home. So I like to be comfortable. Well, I mean, I guess if I can see the shield, that means within the next hour, Orion will be totally visible.

00;56;53;06 - 00;57;24;00
Roo
So, yeah, I want I am now Orion's up. That's crazy. Man. Does it make sense, though? I mean, it is, What, mid-October now? So. Yeah. Yeah, tis the season. I think I'm going to miss the Milky Way, though. I feel like we got kind of robbed this year on the Milky Way, though I will say, as bad as the summer was for the Milky Way, I think first light definitely made up for it.

00;57;24;02 - 00;57;48;27
Roo
Being able to have the view that we did have for that whole long weekend, every night being just so beautifully clear. That was something special, man. And those photos that I got with us all looking up in the Milky Way stretched out in front of us. Those are nano, man. Those are special. Definitely to be holding on to those.

00;57;48;27 - 00;58;16;18
Roo
You talk about data that you want to keep. That's data that I will definitely be keeping because that was incredible. God, I want to get back up to that cabin. Mark, you got, post another first flight? Oh, man. It's it's a it's, it's an ordeal, man. For me to for me to get out of here. It's hard because, you know, we are adopting right now.

00;58;16;20 - 00;58;39;26
Roo
That process is rolling along. We're getting through all the forms and papers, and, man, there is a lot of paperwork, as there should be for adopting. But, you know, we got our pets, you know, two dogs, one of which is, old man border collie. Now, who does require a lot of attention. We got the parrot, Zach.

00;58;39;26 - 00;59;05;29
Roo
He needs a lot of attention. Do. And, you know, these are our lives. And, you know, they preclude us from doing a lot of things. But, you know, that's what we chose, and that's what we love to do. So it's okay. But I need to make time for me too. So I will say at least once a year, I will allow myself to leave and go on a nice, you know, long dark sky trip.

00;59;06;01 - 00;59;29;21
Roo
I like it to be 2 or 3 times a year, and that's why I'm going to be, aiming for to, make that happen more frequently because I do need to travel more and, you know, get out of the, day to day rat race a little bit more often. You know, I don't got to leave every month or anything, but, you know, every 3 or 4 months, get out of here and go see something new.

00;59;29;23 - 00;59;48;16
Roo
With that said, guys, I think I'm going to, let the scope keep running. I just wanted to, kind of tell you a little bit about the 2600. Now that it's out here going, I want to, thank all of you for listening, and I'm going to, pass it back to Roo in the studio. Clear skies.

00;59;48;19 - 01;00;14;26
Roo
I've also done some more work on the C8. The. Yeah, the 120. Man, it can be really tricky, to get that to work properly with the C8 just because it doesn't have that wide of a field of view. So I'm probably going to get a, a bigger sensor. I still haven't decided if I want to go with the basically the $500 guide camera or the $300 guide camera.

01;00;14;28 - 01;00;41;29
Roo
I'm leaning towards the $300 one because I've seen some people say they can get the 122 work. So I'm thinking if I can get like a sensor that is at least a little bit bigger than the 120, I can probably make it work. And then I also, saw ASRock, one of our original discord members, he's been active on the, the discord again as of late.

01;00;42;01 - 01;01;10;09
Roo
He's got a beautiful set up, with his Celestron Schmidt Cassegrain, and he actually has the Celestron, OAG off axis guider. And he said that it's wonderful. So it is expensive. It's a $300 off axis guider, but it's very, very high quality and it's, you know, made by Celestron. So I would think it would work well with their, OTAs.

01;01;10;09 - 01;01;37;11
Roo
But you know, you never know. And I believe he also has an edge edge HD if I'm not mistaken. And mine's just like a regular C8. So I don't know if there's any differences there technically speaking, but I'm definitely going to look into that, Celestron OAG as well. So yeah, Celestron OAG definitely, definitely worth considering. He also, taught me a few things about, the prism placement.

01;01;37;11 - 01;02;00;22
Roo
So you got to make sure that your prism is not covering up, your sensor, essentially, because it can cast a shadow if you have it in the wrong position. Which is honestly kind of where you would naturally put it when you're installing your imaging train. And I realized that was exactly what I had done the first night when I was testing it out.

01;02;00;24 - 01;02;16;19
Roo
And I've had nothing but cloudy skies for weeks now, so I haven't had another chance to test it out. And it's killing me because I really want to play around with that. C8 and the, you know, off axis guiding that I do have to at least see if I can get it close. You know, in column eight, the scope.

01;02;16;19 - 01;02;36;01
Roo
I got the, the bob's knobs and the mayo and all that. So I, you know, I got work to be done on it. But I just haven't had a chance to because it's been so cloudy. I will say, when I, when I looked at the moon, it looked good, but I suppose, collimation probably doesn't affect the looks of something so big and bright, like the moon.

01;02;36;01 - 01;03;12;18
Roo
It's probably more delicate details, like stars, because the stars definitely did not look so great. So I definitely need to, consummate the scope. And that's going to be, you know, first on the list. As soon as I get some clear skies, I'll be doing that. I did see where you can, You can do it indoors if you get basically like a single LED and use it as essentially like a fake star and put it at the end of a hallway and then point your okay directly at it and then use that as a star, in column eight.

01;03;12;18 - 01;03;33;00
Roo
Based on that, you know, if I'm feeling froggy enough, I might do that because I do have like one area in my house that's got a long strip of hallway where I could set the OTA on the kitchen counter, and I could probably, column eight that way, but I don't know. I'm just waiting for clear skies, for now.

01;03;33;03 - 01;03;57;13
Roo
I also want to get another few nights out with that filter. Man. Oh, man. The Leviathan optics filter is really something special. I've been messing with the rest of the data. Because, like I say, I was able to gather the Heart Nebula and the Soul Nebula. And I would like to, see, the problem is, I processed all the Heart Nebula data the first night that I did it all.

01;03;57;13 - 01;04;14;28
Roo
And then I captured all of the soul data, and then I went to go back and processed that, but I wasn't able to process it in the exact same way, no matter how hard I tried, to make it look like the exact same, you know, image that I had done for the heart, which isn't surprising at all.

01;04;15;00 - 01;04;36;21
Roo
So really, what I what I should have done was put the two images together as one mosaic after incorporating all of the calibration frames and then stretched it and edited it and all that kind of good stuff. But I wasn't able to do that. So what are you going to do? So I'll basically have to start from scratch with that edit process.

01;04;36;21 - 01;04;56;29
Roo
It's a real shame, though, because man, I love how that Heart Nebula came out. I did such a good edit on it and I was so happy, with how it came out. I also, while I was away, I was able to, meet one on one with one of our, longtime members of the Patreon and Discord.

01;04;57;05 - 01;05;15;21
Roo
Shout out to Kelly. She is our, for now, our lone female member in the discord. I think we had another one early on, but we haven't seen or heard from her in so long, so I don't know where she is. But maybe she's. Listen, if you are, feel free to pop in and say hi sometime. But Kelly, she she's really cool.

01;05;15;21 - 01;05;36;15
Roo
So she basically, lives on a farm. She's a mom. She's got older kids that are, teenagers. And she just decided one day that she wanted to get into astrophotography, I guess. I don't know if you if she saw, like, an image online and said, man, this is beautiful. I want to try this. But she decided she wanted to get into it.

01;05;36;15 - 01;06;01;14
Roo
And I guess she's the kind of woman that just nothing's going to stop her when she gets started. So she, she joined the discord, and she asked us questions, you know, and we helped where we could. And a couple of times, me and Nate got on, video chats with her to help her out with things like auto guiding and these sorts of things.

01;06;01;17 - 01;06;30;21
Roo
But one of the things that she had not been able to do yet, was learn pix insight. So pix insight is a lot to learn. The first I'll never forget the first time I opened up Pix insight. I was like, what the heck am I looking at? Because there was just so much to see and do and so many different areas, and none of it is intuitive.

01;06;30;23 - 01;06;55;01
Roo
So you really, really, really have to follow guides or have a teacher and not everybody can learn with, you know, just watching YouTube videos and following along. That just doesn't work for everyone. And I can definitely appreciate that. So Kelly really wanted us to, get with her one night and, you know, just kind of show her the ropes on pix insight.

01;06;55;03 - 01;07;18;28
Roo
And as I stated earlier in the episode, I'm an extremely busy person, so it's tough for me, to, you know, get a free night to show somebody, even if it is just for a couple of hours. It's tough for me to do. But last week, my wife, Jess, she actually went out of town with my mother in law.

01;07;19;00 - 01;07;45;00
Roo
They went to the beach for a week to have, like, a girls week away. And that was actually payback. For the first light trip that I took to Wisconsin back in August. Shout out to all of the first Light Crew. Miss you guys, and hope everybody's doing well. But I figured that was the perfect opportunity, to get with her and spend a little bit of time teaching her the basics of pix insight.

01;07;45;00 - 01;08;15;24
Roo
So we got together, and I had her set up, Google Chrome Remote Desktop in advance, because I knew this was a situation where we would want to be able to share screens and let me take over the mouse and keyboard so I could show her exactly where to go and what to do for certain things. And to my delight, when I, got into her computer, she had already, purchased all of the RC Astro.

01;08;15;24 - 01;08;37;27
Roo
It's all so, like, here's somebody who literally hasn't processed an image yet and pix insight, that I know of anyway. And she already had blur. Exterminator and star exterminator and noise exterminator. And I'm just like, Holy crap, Kelly, you already got all this stuff and you haven't even use the software. And she's like, yep. I'm like, man, you are not playing around, girl.

01;08;37;27 - 01;08;58;00
Roo
So, we, we started working on it and, she had some really, great data of the heart Nebula. So we started going through a data and I was showing her how the blink feature works. And it's funny, she. I think she said her cow was probably, like, bumping into her mount or something, if I'm not mistaken.

01;08;58;00 - 01;09;23;14
Roo
I don't know if it was Astro or who it was, but we noticed every few frames that the stars were wobbling, so something was definitely bumping her mouth. And I was concerned about that because I know pix insight will automatically reject, if you've got, you know, a really bad image with really wobbly stars. But I wasn't sure about adjusting that limit.

01;09;23;16 - 01;09;51;18
Roo
Like, I knew there was an area within weighted batch pre-processing where you'd go and say, you know, reject this percentage. But I just hadn't done that yet because what I had always done in the past was I would go through blank and I would just jot down the numbers of the bad subs and then manually remove them. I realize now that that was a complete waste of time because she had a lot of data, like she had ten plus hours.

01;09;51;18 - 01;10;10;28
Roo
I want to say, and what I noticed is while we were going through blank and writing them down, but it was taking forever because there was a little bit of delay, because we were on a remote connection and everything. And I was like, if we sit here and write all these down, we'll be here all night just counting, you know, Fitz files.

01;10;11;00 - 01;10;37;19
Roo
So instead we just said, let's throw them all in as lights and the weighted batch preprocessor and just let Pi sort them out. That's what we did. And lo and behold, it came out perfect. So it automatically rejected all of those bad frames. And she ended up with, really, really great data. So, I walked her through the basics and what, what I like to do, with pix insight.

01;10;37;22 - 01;11;09;12
Roo
If I'm teaching somebody how to use it, I do not teach them, like, super advanced stuff, like generalized hyperbolic stretch and curved stretching and all that. I don't recommend that to very, very new people. To pix insight. I recommend that you download all of the tools available like Easy Processing Suite and City Astro, and you use those tools wherever you can until you can get a pretty picture.

01;11;09;15 - 01;11;30;06
Roo
And then once you get to that point, because believe me, it's not easy to get from just a bunch of fits, files and darks and flats to a pretty picture that you can share on Facebook or whatever it is you want to do. So once, once you can get to that point, then you can start adding on little things here and there.

01;11;30;06 - 01;11;54;27
Roo
Like then you can start doing, you know, star removal and you know, blur, exterminator and shrinking the stars and spurting, you know, all these little different things that you can do and manually stretching the image using gas and these types of things. So that was my plan. And I'm glad that I stuck to that plan because it legitimately took us.

01;11;54;27 - 01;12;13;21
Roo
I think it was like two to 2.5 hours to go through it and get it all done for one image. Now, we did have to set up quite a few things like, I know Graph Expert wasn't set up properly and we definitely needed it because there was a big gradient in the image from where the moon light had been coming in.

01;12;13;24 - 01;12;36;12
Roo
If you don't have Graph Expert somehow, I highly, highly recommend that you check it out. It's an excellent tool. It's free, it integrates with Pix Insight so you don't have to run it as a standalone application. And it just works wonders for removing gradients. I use it on pretty much every image that I do. I have heard some people say that it can remove data.

01;12;36;14 - 01;12;53;25
Roo
I I've personally never had a problem with it, and I'm very happy with how my images come out. If I put enough time into them, could there be more data there? Yeah, I suppose there could be, but, I'm happy with it. So I think at the end of the day, if you're happy with what you're getting, then who cares, right?

01;12;53;28 - 01;13;14;00
Roo
So anyway, we, we went through and it took about two to 2.5 hours, and we ended up with a finalized photo that I think look really good. For a first image that was processed and pics inside it look damn good. Nice round stars. There were small, we used blur exterminator on it. We used expert on it.

01;13;14;02 - 01;13;41;18
Roo
We use the, easy processing suite and the, I think it's called easy soft stretch to do the stretching, to convert it from linear to nonlinear. And overall, Kelly was very happy with the results, too. But when I got done with the call and hung up, I was like, man, I hope she can remember all this stuff because I threw a lot at her, and I did.

01;13;41;18 - 01;14;03;23
Roo
I mean, because as you guys know, when you're learning pix insight, there is a lot to it. But she came back two days later, and boy, oh, boy, I shut up real quick because she came back with another photo that she had processed entirely on her own in Pix Insight using those same methods, and it came out great.

01;14;03;23 - 01;14;28;22
Roo
So I just want to applaud you, Kelly, you're doing an excellent job. It's not too often when you see, you know, a mother of teenagers who's, you know, living in a rural area, who decides to get into astrophotography, person who is, by their own admission, not a very technical person, but you're doing a great job.

01;14;28;24 - 01;14;50;00
Roo
You're keeping up with us. And every, you know, every aspect of the word. So keep it up. Keep using pix insight. I'm more than happy to show you more stuff if you want to learn it. I think we got all the big stuff out of the way. So the, the next class can probably just be 30 minutes showing one tool at a time.

01;14;50;00 - 01;15;18;13
Roo
So she's just doing an excellent job. And I just wanted to, to call that out, because I think a lot of people get overwhelmed with pix insight when they first pull it up and they end up not using it, and they go to an easier tool that maybe just kind of automatically does everything for them. Like I used app early on because it basically you just click through all the steps and then it spits out an image at the end and it's it's not bad.

01;15;18;13 - 01;15;45;18
Roo
Don't get me wrong. But I feel like it's more rewarding when you can really dial in that data yourself. And once you start realizing what these different tools are doing and how to effectively use them, and then especially when you start getting into things like narrowband imaging and splitting channels, man oh man, it opens up just a whole new world of possibilities to you.

01;15;45;24 - 01;16;14;13
Roo
In an application like Pix insight, I'll also say to we have listeners that don't have Pix insight for whatever reason yet. Maybe you just don't have the coin yet to drop on it to get it. And I completely understand that. I just want to mention serial is an excellent open source alternative to Pix insight. It's maybe not quite as robust as Pix insight is, but it is free and it does work very well.

01;16;14;13 - 01;16;36;21
Roo
And you can get very similar results as you would two pix insight with serial. So if you're looking to kind of take your processing to the next level, check out pix insight or Serial. I bet most of you that are listening to this are probably Pix insight users already. But if you aren't, for whatever reason, those are two very good options.

01;16;36;29 - 01;17;02;17
Roo
To get you started in the world of astrophotography. I will say, though, with all of the money, that we spend on this gear, $300 just isn't that much. In the grand scheme of things, for software that is good enough for NASA to use to process images from James Webb. So again, NASA, uses it for James Webb and Hubble.

01;17;02;17 - 01;17;26;05
Roo
So if you spent five grand building your rig, spend $300 and get pix insight. It's worth the money. I know it's a lot of money to drop at once, and I know we're not accustomed to spending, you know, $300 on applications, but it does do a lot of stuff. And there is a lot of development that goes into products like these.

01;17;26;08 - 01;17;54;19
Roo
And then it also opens you up to all of the awesome plugins that you can use with it. Like Ceti Astro. Like I mentioned before, city Astro man. Oh man, their tools are growing rapidly. They have, so much new stuff coming out. In fact, the team at City Astro have just recently released a, brand new method of stacking images.

01;17;54;19 - 01;18;36;02
Roo
So it's called the image m m as in Mike. Mike. And it's getting rave reviews. I haven't had a chance to try it yet. But with whatever data it is that I capture next, I am planning on using this new method, to stack my images. And it's supposed to be really, really good. From everything that I have heard, it's based on some work that the creator of City Astro read about and a paper, and then he was able to take, the equations that he read about in said paper and apply them into formulas within city Astro's plug ins and pix, insight and voila!

01;18;36;02 - 01;18;58;15
Roo
He had a new stacking algorithm, so I can't wait to try it out. Very, very excited about it. Actually emailed. The guy who runs City Astro and asked him if we could talk about it on the show. I haven't heard back from him yet. I'm really hoping I do though, because this is definitely something worth having a conversation about.

01;18;58;17 - 01;19;19;27
Roo
So if you would like to check it out, I will leave the, the website, where you can visit the City Astro page and the show notes. And then there's also a YouTube video that explains exactly what it's doing and how it's doing it, and all that kind of good stuff. I will leave that link to in the show notes as well.

01;19;19;29 - 01;19;46;26
Roo
So yeah, MGM by City Astro looks like it's going to be a, a very, very cool feature that we'll all be able to use, for years to come. Hopefully another, astro news. I don't know if I mentioned it or not in recent weeks, but the am3 n is officially out and available. Of course, that happened to come out just weeks after I purchased my AM3 for the same price.

01;19;46;29 - 01;20;09;10
Roo
Yeah. Gotta love when that happens, right? But it's it's not a huge difference. I mean, it's it's mostly quality of life stuff. I would like to have a power port and a Type-C port right on the saddle to make it a little bit easier on the cords. But at the same time, I've done what I think is a pretty phenomenal job with cable management on my AM3.

01;20;09;13 - 01;20;31;10
Roo
Considering I usually have the, NASCAR running on it. So I'm not too worried about that. Would it be nice to have? Yeah, it'd be nice to have, but we'd all love to have more astro gear, wouldn't we? To that point, I might be selling a couple of my pieces. I've actually got more than I need now, and some of it's starting to collect dust.

01;20;31;12 - 01;21;04;00
Roo
We are putting together a classified section on the, Astro cast. Discord. So we've already got, I think, one mount up on there. It's just something for members only, and it's just for friends to trade again. Nothing serious, but I might put it up on cloudy nights to. Haven't decided yet. I'm thinking about selling the 294 MK Pro just because I get keeping the 585 because of the longer effective focal length and the 2600 obviously is great.

01;21;04;02 - 01;21;24;25
Roo
I don't know if I still have room in my kit for the 294. I don't know that I got to think about it for a little bit. I think I counted it all up, though, and I it's like five cameras and five mounts. Now, if you count everything like the move, shoot, move and the Skywatcher Pro for my Opteron and all that or Sky Guider Pro.

01;21;24;27 - 01;21;48;21
Roo
So it is a lot of gear, and the last thing I would want is for any gear to go to waste, or collect dust. So definitely, something to consider. I think in the spring time I'm planning a trip out to Texas, so I am going to make a trip out to the remote observatory in Texas.

01;21;48;24 - 01;22;13;19
Roo
That's, star front observatories of, of course. And, Parrish, a good friend of the show. He was at first light. You actually heard from him on the show because we spoke to him during first light. He actually bought a whole new rig and had it shipped directly to, that observatory, and he wants to join me, when I make that trip out.

01;22;13;19 - 01;22;45;10
Roo
Because I actually want to drive down there and see it and maybe, interview the guy who runs the place. I've reached out to him in the past, but I haven't heard back. And I'd really like to talk to him about his process and the scaling and everything. Talk about a genius idea, man. That is, if you wanted to do astronomy for a living, that is, definitely one way to do it, but I know they got to be working their butts off there because I think they get 3 or 4 telescopes every day or something along those lines.

01;22;45;12 - 01;23;03;21
Roo
But anyway, I want to go check it out, with my own eyes and see it in person, and I. I'd hate to ship my rig and end up having something happen to it. I just don't want to do that. But at the same time, I've decided, you know, I've got enough gear now. Why not have one rig set up under a portal?

01;23;03;22 - 01;23;24;24
Roo
One skies year round? More than likely, it's going to end up being the Asgard that goes out there. I haven't decided which mount yet. Initially I said probably the Am three, but you know, I'll probably need the AM3 for the C8 because it's going to be a lot more accurate, for guiding. And I don't know if the CM 26 can handle that.

01;23;24;24 - 01;23;53;10
Roo
So I don't know. Maybe I'll bring the, the guy down there and we'll we'll have to see. Maybe I'll bring the CM 26. I don't know, maybe I'll bring three different mounts and, ask, the guy who runs the place what he thinks would be the best option. Also, I realize the other day, I've been looking for these mini computers on Amazon, to run the observatory, and I realized that I have a nook PC that's running my home assistant right now.

01;23;53;12 - 01;24;15;08
Roo
Which is like a, smart home operating system, essentially. That would be perfect, for running a remote observatory, like Neenah or imaging software or what have you. And I just need to install, you know, on it. And really, I can run home assistant on a Raspberry Pi. You don't need that much power, to run it.

01;24;15;08 - 01;24;39;28
Roo
So I'll probably do that pretty soon. Swap it out, and maybe I'll just, run that on my local peer here for a little while so I can kind of get used to using Neenah again and go through the winter using Neenah on my remote pier here. And that way, whenever we do make the trip out to star front, I'll be ready to go and already know exactly what I'm doing.

01;24;39;28 - 01;25;20;24
Roo
So very much looking forward to that. Hoping. Like I say, I'm hoping to get to do that trip in the spring if everything works out properly. I'm hoping, it'll be a nice, boring time, to get a wide field rig out there. I don't know, though, man. You get probably some really incredible views. With a wide field rig, if you get into Leo and all those galaxies and just, you know, if it's portal one skies and no rain, could you imagine getting into an area like Mercury and chain and imaging for, like, 20 nights and just every night, night after night after night after night at like a 300mm focal

01;25;20;24 - 01;25;35;08
Roo
length, how incredible. That could end up looking. So I don't know. We'll have to we'll have to see what happens. But I'm definitely excited about the possibilities. So stay tuned for that.

01;25;35;11 - 01;25;59;14
Roo
For recommendations this week. I've only got one thing that I could possibly recommend to you. And I can't remember. Forgive me. I can't remember if I talked about this on the show a few weeks back ago or not. If I did, I'm sorry. Ignore me. I have a terrible memory, especially short term. Blame high school for that.

01;25;59;16 - 01;26;24;04
Roo
But the, there's a game that I've been playing pretty much every night, and that's not like me at all. I usually get bored with games pretty quick and set them down and yada, yada, yada, but this one, man, I can't put it down. It's like, it's got me like breath of the wild had me or tears of the Kingdom had me or Claire obscure had more than Claire obscure.

01;26;24;04 - 01;26;51;11
Roo
It's it's got me. It's sucked me in. And the game is hollow Knight silksong. So such a good game. It's a metroid. Veiny, is the type of game which is a cross up between Metroid and Castlevania. It is a very, very difficult game, and it's actually a, sequel to a game that came out back in 2017 called Hollow Knight.

01;26;51;14 - 01;27;21;10
Roo
And, Hollow Knight was by an indie developer named Team Cherry. I played it back in 2017 when it came out and absolutely loved it, beat it, loved it, and they there was a character in that game named Hornet, who showed up and was a total, bad self. Sorry. I'm trying to watch my language. And anyway, she was amazing and everybody wanted more of her.

01;27;21;12 - 01;27;48;04
Roo
And the developers announced that they were going to do special Hornet DLC called Silksong. And everybody was all very excited. And like, a year goes by and no one's heard anything. And then anyway, the developers came out and said, you know what? This is too much to make DLC. We're just going to make silksong. Its own game. So everyone was very, very excited.

01;27;48;07 - 01;28;07;27
Roo
And then they showed a trailer of it and, I think it was like E3 2020 or whatever the video game conference is in 2020. They showed a trailer of it in 2020. It didn't come out in 21, it didn't come out in 22. And by 2023, it was almost like vaporware. It was almost a joke. It had become a meme at that point.

01;28;08;00 - 01;28;31;13
Roo
Everybody was like, is Silksong ever going to come out? Many people assumed it wasn't. And long story short, the people, the developers at Team Cherry, announced in, I want to say it was August, that it would be coming out in just a few weeks. And sure enough, it came out and everybody was kind of shocked.

01;28;31;13 - 01;29;01;28
Roo
They're like, wow, it's finally coming out after all this time. Silksong is finally coming out. And it was, certainly worth the wait. So it is a, it's a very difficult game. So it punishes you? You can't just go in and, you know, mash buttons to get through it. It's one of these games where you have to learn the exact motions of bosses and, you know, you have to, get upgrades in different areas before you can access certain places.

01;29;02;01 - 01;29;31;01
Roo
And another thing about it is it's huge, like it is a massive game. So just to give you an idea, you know, I was playing it every night for several weeks and I got to what I thought was the last boss. Seemed like it could have been the last boss and I. I beat them and then after I beat them, the words asked to appear on screen and boom, the map explodes.

01;29;31;01 - 01;29;53;24
Roo
And it's this whole new giant area. So, yeah, it kind of blew my mind. And has continued to do that, for the past several weeks and will continue to do it until I beat it. And that will happen because I can't put this game down. It's so, so good. So if you played Hollow Knight in 2017, chances are you've already heard about Silksong.

01;29;53;26 - 01;30;13;25
Roo
But if you're a fan of that style of platformer game called Metroid Mania, and you somehow have not heard of Hollow Knight or Silksong, I highly recommend you play them both. I will say don't go into silksong playing it. If you haven't played Hollow Knight, you will throw the controller. You'll be like, why is this game so hard?

01;30;13;25 - 01;30;32;14
Roo
I don't understand what's happening here. It won't make sense to you why it's so difficult. You really need to kind of play a hollow knight to learn how to play silksong, because they really did up the difficulty. And I'm a, you know, 41 year old dude. I'm not as fast as I used to be. But I'm keeping up.

01;30;32;14 - 01;30;53;26
Roo
You know, it might take me a few more tries than a, 17 year old, but I'm, progressing through the story. As fast as I possibly can. And honestly, I don't want to go too fast because I'm enjoying it way too much. So, outside of that, I've also been reading Dan Brown's new book, The Secret of Secrets.

01;30;53;28 - 01;31;13;22
Roo
I've always been a big Dan Brown fan. He's actually the author that kind of, spoke my curiosity with reading, when I was like 18, maybe 19, I got The Da Vinci Code, which was like a worldwide hit. You know, that's what put him on the map. And I love the book. I couldn't put it down.

01;31;13;22 - 01;31;37;16
Roo
And I've read all of Robert Langdon's adventures since then, and I believe this is his last one. I believe that, Dan Brown's on record saying this is Robert Langdon's swan song. No pun intended. So, very, very good book so far. I'm about a third of the way through it, listening to the, audible version and then also reading the hardback when I can.

01;31;37;18 - 01;32;11;12
Roo
I will say that I was listening to it today while I was out driving around, and they did something very, very, very on goal for an audiobook. And I'm honestly like, I'm not the kind of guy to write a letter, but I think I'm going to write a letter this time. The author said he was quoting someone in the book and essentially says, hey, iPhone assistant hole 912.

01;32;11;13 - 01;32;38;05
Roo
And I just completely changed a couple of words there to make it impossible for that to happen on your end. But imagine if it said, exactly what you needed to say to call the authorities on an audiobook while you were in the car on your Bluetooth headset. Like, are you kidding me? So like literally my stereo. I heard that and, s I r I picked it up and then dialed.

01;32;38;05 - 01;32;55;10
Roo
I was able to hang it up quick enough to where it didn't connect the call, and I didn't get a call back from the police, thank goodness, because I don't know how I would have explained that. Sorry. I was listening to an audiobook and it called you like, that's ridiculous. So, just a fair warning. It's around chapter 32.

01;32;55;10 - 01;33;16;15
Roo
When that occurs. So just, I don't know how you avoid that. I don't know, maybe it's a switch over to Android for that chapter. But just a heads up. If you're checking out that book, but otherwise, great novel. I'll write an angry letter and, hopefully they'll change it. So that's going to, do it for us this week.

01;33;16;15 - 01;33;42;07
Roo
Guys, I greatly appreciate you tuning in, as always. I missed being behind the mic. It's so good. To catch up with everyone. We will be back to our normal schedule, at least over the next few weeks until we get into the holidays. I might take a week here and there as the holidays approach, but, for the foreseeable future, we should be back to Tuesdays, Wednesdays and what have you, over the coming weeks.

01;33;42;07 - 01;34;17;04
Roo
So thanks so much for tuning in to the Astro cast. I am your host, Roo, and as always, clear skies.

01;34;17;07 - 01;34;29;07
Roo
For.

01;34;29;10 - 01;34;34;06
Roo
So.

01;34;34;08 - 01;34;48;02
Roo
You might want to watch. Yes. You.

01;34;48;05 - 01;35;02;07
Roo
Oh! Oh, my.

01;35;02;10 - 01;35;19;09
Roo
000, I'm. Oh oh.

01;35;19;11 - 01;35;21;06
Roo
Oh.