Episode 75 - Legendary Mic Edition

 ✨ Agena Astro | 🔭 High Point Scientific | 📦 Amazon | 🌌 First Light Optics

Welcome baaaack to The Astrocast! We celebrate a large milestone this week with our third, and FINAL (hopefully) microphone! Please welcome, all the way from broadcast Nirvana, the Shure SM7B! If the Astrocast was Goku, we'd have some GIANT hair by now!

If I sound particularly silky smooth this week - get used to it! I finally took the plunge and upgraded the trusty Rode PodMic to the legendary Shure SM7B. A giant thank you to all the supporters and longtime listeners of the show, when I started The Astrocast I remember looking at the SM7B and thinking, "I'll never have one of those!" - and now we do! Thank you!!!

THIS WEEK on the show - Roo's recent great luck with clear weather has clearly run out - with a veritable lake of rain hitting Charlotte over the last week, with no end in sight. At least the kids will get no rain for Halloween! Reactions to last weeks episode on Reflect Orbital, plus the man who "finished" astrophotography! We also go over the many uses of GPT for AP, which you may have not thought of! That and so much more, all on this week's Astrocast!

If you haven't yet, please consider donating to the show's Patreon and (more importantly) becoming a member of our private, members-only Discord!!! If you just wanna be awesome, you can also show your love by buying me a coffee! This show is 100% ad free because of listeners like you, and supporters like Dark Dragons Astronomy! 

The Astrocast may make a small commission from any affiliate links used in the show notes, thanks for your support! 

Transcript

00;00;51;17 - 00;01;11;10
Roo
Welcome back to the Astrocast I'm your host, Roo. Today is Wednesday, October 29th, 2025.

00;01;11;12 - 00;01;26;07
Roo
We are halfway through the new moon. Got a, I guess technically speaking, it's still a crescent, but 50% through.

00;01;26;09 - 00;01;56;22
Roo
I hope everybody has been. Well. God, it's been so rainy in Charlotte. Guys. When we're not battling companies like reflect orbital or, battling nature, am I right? So just to clue you in on what I've been up to for the last week since we last spoke, a whole lot of rain. That's what's been going on. So I have indeed, not been able to break out the scopes.

00;01;56;24 - 00;02;21;22
Roo
I went out this morning and I pulled the cover off of my peer just to check in, see where my, desiccant level was at, because, you know, obviously with it raining, there's going to be more humidity in the air. And luckily for me, they're not all green yet, so got a couple more, rain cycles before I have to completely reset that.

00;02;21;24 - 00;02;41;04
Roo
That was actually the, second recording of the intro that I had to do because I, messed up on the mixer. I pretty much never do that anymore. I usually pretty, pretty handily nailed that on the, first go around, but the, the the sound for the countdown actually wrapped around a second time, and I said, darn.

00;02;41;04 - 00;03;11;08
Roo
And I messed it up, so I had to, stop and restart things. So if you, are a long time listener of the show, you you may know, that when we originally started recording, the Astro cast, it sounded a lot different than it does today. So when we started with episode one, I actually was recording the, a, just a USB microphone.

00;03;11;08 - 00;03;32;04
Roo
It was the, Yeti nano, which I still have. I still have that microphone, and I still love and cherish it, and it works great as a back up mic. And if anyone is ever thinking about getting into podcasting, I would highly recommend it. As a, great way to get started for an affordable, entry into the world of microphones.

00;03;32;04 - 00;04;14;18
Roo
But just like anything, you know, you got your high end and your low end and that's probably on the lower end of, obviously not the low, low end. You can get some really cheap microphones. But I would not recommend anyone do that. Just like anything in life, to me, quality is always better than quantity. But that being said, after using that for the first few months of the show, I had one episode where we had a whole lot of, like, pops and clicks and general audio problems, and I realized after the fact that it was the USB interface that was giving me trouble.

00;04;14;21 - 00;04;40;10
Roo
And I said, man, I cannot let that happen again. So I finally invested, kind of my first bit of money into the show when I got the, the RODECaster duo, mixer interface, which allowed for an XLR connection, which XLR is kind of like the audio standard, for, you know, music, podcasts, any kind of recording that you do, you're going to use XLR.

00;04;40;10 - 00;05;03;25
Roo
It's a balanced signal. That gives you a much more, clean signal than you would get with something like USB. And I love the RODECaster duo. It has been phenomenal. And I actually bought the, pod mic to go with it, which is the, the microphone that is, very affordable, but, you know, very good quality.

00;05;03;25 - 00;05;31;11
Roo
That road sells alongside its podcaster series of mixers. And, that was the setup for the last, you know, year and a half. It's been working very, very great. But like all things, we are evolving and I, you know, took a long, hard look at the show over the last few weeks. And I was listening back on Swan Song and Particular.

00;05;31;14 - 00;05;55;16
Roo
And there are times when I really can't isolate the sound quite as well as I would like to. That is not the pod mics fault, to be clear. That's really on my own for not having a sound treated room. There's probably a lot of things that I could do, to help that situation, but I don't have my, permanent area set up yet.

00;05;55;23 - 00;06;31;25
Roo
So until I'm out in my, garage slash office slash studio, I can't really set up permanent things like, you know, sound barriers and sound dampening on the walls and these sorts of things. So in order to get the desired outcome, my real option available to me was to look at microphones that are very good at capturing audio and, you know, really blocking out all that outside noise, like parrots whistling and dogs barking and, you know, heaters cutting on and off and fans and all that.

00;06;31;25 - 00;07;03;22
Roo
And don't get me wrong, I absolutely love, when Zach makes his guest appearances on the show, and I'm sure he still will from time to time. I don't care how good of a microphone you have, that bird is loud. So when he wants to be on, he's going to be on. But we were able to upgrade, to a new microphone, which is the short smart seven B, which is just, absolute legend in the podcast and just music and vocals, category for microphones.

00;07;03;24 - 00;07;30;03
Roo
You may not know it by name, but you have absolutely heard it. If you've been listening to music or podcasts, for any amount of time, it's kind of the gold standard, for podcasts. So happy to be on it. I hope that it sounds good. It certainly should sound good. I did a couple of quick tests, before hitting the record button, and I'm sure I'll get it dialed in over the next few weeks and get it exactly how I like it.

00;07;30;03 - 00;07;53;13
Roo
I'm kind of going with just a base roll off and out of the box settings for the most part, for this first week's episode, but I'll, I will tune it and dial it in a little bit more. Over the coming weeks. So in Astronomy news comment, lemon and Comet Swan, a lot of you guys have sent in photos.

00;07;53;13 - 00;08;26;20
Roo
Thank you so much for sending them in. Beautiful images that a lot of the listeners have gotten of these, awesome rare comments. And I'm just so upset that I haven't had a chance to see them because I'm such a big comet hunter and generally love tracking them down. Whether that means, you know, waking up at 2:00 in the morning and driving a few hours to a dark sky location so I can track it for one hour before sunrise or, you know, doing the same thing in the evening skies.

00;08;26;22 - 00;08;54;00
Roo
I'm usually pretty good about tracking them down, but man, these clouds have just not cooperated at all. So I think I'm, a little bit of an honorary Brit, this month in that I, talked to some of our listeners in the UK, and they were complaining about the overall cloudiness and dreariness that they have been dealing with and unable, to view comet, Lemmon and Swan and, I get it.

00;08;54;00 - 00;09;25;14
Roo
Believe me, I know how it is that it is unfortunate, but it's a part of being, astronomer. And it's something that we all have to deal with. You know, we just we cannot control the weather. And I am okay with that. As long as, you know, humans do control what they can control. Like we talked about last week, there was a lot of feedback that we got on the, the reflect orbital piece that I discussed last week.

00;09;25;16 - 00;09;49;23
Roo
I got a lot of really good feedback. I got a lot of good suggestions, from listeners, a few people wrote in to talk about, potentially, you know, reaching out to local legislators and state representatives, etc., etc.. I don't know that I will personally be doing that yet. I'm looking into some other options as well.

00;09;49;26 - 00;10;25;16
Roo
I do hope that a lot of you will at least write them a letter and, you know, tell them your feelings on the situation. And by all means, if you have suggestions, please feel free to send them my way through at the Astro Ascot. Com. I'm all ears. I love hearing about it. But I do worry that, like I say, even if we were to, do something legally here, that maybe they would just go to another country and launch their, so I don't know, you know, that being said, somebody did point out to me that, you know, I don't I want to believe that not a lot of people

00;10;25;16 - 00;10;49;07
Roo
would tolerate seeing absurdly bright things flying through the night sky every night for hours at a time, especially if it's thousands and thousands of them, as they're planning to do. So you would like to think that we would be able to come together as humans and say, okay, we're not going to do that. But again, if there's money involved, people are greedy.

00;10;49;07 - 00;11;12;28
Roo
So we will have to wait and see. I, I, you know, I certainly hope that I'm wrong on that. But I just don't know. But thank you to everyone, who wrote in and, you know, gave a little bit of feedback on last week's show. I definitely do appreciate that very, very much. And, if I hear anything else about the situation, I will certainly keep you guys posted on it.

00;11;13;01 - 00;11;41;06
Roo
So in the meantime, why don't we talk about something a little bit more fun and enjoyable? So, you guys probably know if you're longtime listeners of the show, that I use, GPT for a lot of, mundane, you know, work related tasks, though I'm very, very, very anti AI when it comes to, anything artistic or human centric.

00;11;41;08 - 00;12;04;19
Roo
I don't have any problem with it solving problems for us. You know, in the same way that a calculator would solve equations for us. I have no problem with, you know, GPT solving problems that I could otherwise, you know, figure out if I had ten hours to sit down with a notebook and a pen and, you know, just write it all out.

00;12;04;21 - 00;12;24;23
Roo
That said, I have, used GPT in the past. And if you guys don't know, by some chance, GPT is an AI application. There's a million of them out there. You can, you know, insert Grok or Gemini or whatever it is that you may or may not like to use. Just for me, I use GPT.

00;12;24;25 - 00;12;53;26
Roo
But anyway, I was talking to, friend of the show perish, who has actually been on the show. If you listen to the first light episode from, September, you can hear from him. And he was telling me about some ways that he employs ChatGPT in his, astro workflow, and I thought it would be kind of cool, to share some of the ways in which he employs these tools.

00;12;53;26 - 00;13;15;01
Roo
And then I also had a couple of ideas that I also want to explore, and I haven't had a chance to explore yet, unfortunately, because it's been so darn cloudy here, for the last two weeks, cloudy and rainy. I'm actually looking outside right now and it's still raining. It's been raining for like four days straight this week, so just nonstop rain.

00;13;15;03 - 00;13;49;01
Roo
But in any case, so the first thing that he suggested doing is to essentially start up a new project in GPT, and you'll probably want to do this from your desktop computer. You can do it from mobile, don't get me wrong, but it might be a little bit easier to do it from your desktop computer just because you'll have access to your full keyboard and maybe a ten key if you have a lot of numbers to type in, like I did, open up a new project and call it astrophotography.

00;13;49;04 - 00;14;19;02
Roo
And the first thing you want to do is just tell the AI bought that, you know, you are an astronomer and an astrophotographer and you want to tell it all about the types of astronomy and astrophotography gear that you have, so it can help you plan sessions and come up with ideas or targets to shoot and interesting new ways to use your gear.

00;14;19;04 - 00;14;51;10
Roo
And I say that because it can legitimately come up with some interesting new ways for you to shoot your gear in interesting ways for you to maybe, frame up shots that you had not thought about before, or maybe come up with an interesting idea for a project like a mosaic. Or maybe you frame up a super wide shot, and then within that super wide shot, you do lots of zoomed in shots with whatever scope you have that has a deeper view in the space.

00;14;51;10 - 00;15;12;06
Roo
Anyway, if anyone can figure it out, it's these AI bots that are very, very good at it. So we were talking about this, and basically what you want to do is list out, piece by piece, every single piece of kit that you have. So, you know, if you've only got one rig, great. You know, that makes it a lot quicker.

00;15;12;06 - 00;15;45;08
Roo
But if you've got a lot of different rigs, or a lot of different gear, that's even better, because it will allow for GPT to perhaps combine those different pieces of gear and ways that you might not think of off the top of your head, particularly if you're, like, looking for a target to frame up that would fill up a frame nicely on a night when maybe you've already kind of shot everything that's occurred to you.

00;15;45;10 - 00;16;13;19
Roo
Go ask GPT for something to shoot, and you can even say, I've already shot, you know, the North American Nebula, the eastern and western veil. I've already shot row. I've already shot this, that, and the third. What is something else I can shoot? And then it can give you ideas for targets. Now, going further beyond that, you can localize the session quite a bit.

00;16;13;19 - 00;16;36;16
Roo
And this is where it starts to really get interesting. But before we get there, what you'll want to do is actually first, you know, create the bot and tell it about all of the equipment that you have. So just to give you an idea, I went ahead and pulled up the history from mine so I can tell you the prompts that I gave it.

00;16;36;19 - 00;17;02;26
Roo
And then you can kind of edit my prompts to fit your needs however you see fit. And if you've never used GPT before, it's as easy as going to, Google and typing in chat GPT, I believe the, let me get the actual, web address for you. Sorry. Dutch chat gpt.com. So it's just when you type it in, sometimes it takes you to chat.openai.com.

00;17;02;26 - 00;17;28;00
Roo
But you will also, want to make sure that you sign in. It's really important that you sign in because you're going to want it to be able to remember the things that you tell it and to be able to have persistent sessions. And that's really key here, because you don't want to have to start over telling it all the gear that you have every single time that you want to, you know, bring up GPT to ask it a question about something to shoot that night.

00;17;28;00 - 00;17;49;23
Roo
So, once you get logged in, you know, using your Google account, or if you want to just create your own account using your email address, you can do that as well. And also point out you can do this all for free. You do not have to have, the paid version. I do have the paid version, but that's because I use it for work and a bunch of other things, and it just makes sense for me to have that.

00;17;49;25 - 00;18;21;18
Roo
But anyway, once you get it, all set up and logged in on the left hand side, you'll see projects, and you can just click on the, the plus sign where it says new Project there. And the initial prompt that I provided states, you are my astrophotography assistant. I will be telling you all the various gear that I have collected over the years, including cameras, telescopes, mounts, filters, etc. as well as where I am located and what I want to shoot.

00;18;21;20 - 00;18;44;13
Roo
And then you will give me ideas for targets to shoot on any given night. And also, I would love ideas for unique ways to use my gear that I may have not thought of before. You'll get a response, something along the lines of great, I'll be your copilot, etc. etc. and then it's going to start asking you for your gear and I would recommend that you break it up into different sections.

00;18;44;13 - 00;19;09;28
Roo
It makes it a little bit easier. So like I started with my telescopes and then we moved on the cameras and then we moved on to mounts like, for example, on my, telescopes. And, you know, something else that's really cool about this before I actually read off the telescope prompt is you you can get a lot of the specs right up front for all of your gear.

00;19;09;28 - 00;19;39;05
Roo
So if you're ever in a situation where you're like, what was the focal length of my one scope again? And what is the effective focal length? Whenever I am using my 294 MK Pro on it, these are the kind of questions that all become really trivial once you have a, ChatGPT bot built for your astrophotography and I'm telling you, man, that that can be extremely helpful, depending on the situation that you're running into.

00;19;39;05 - 00;20;08;28
Roo
So, like, for telescopes, I say, you know, I've got a NASCAR star, 55, I've got a Celestron C8. I also have a reducer for the C8, the 0.67 reducer. I have an S v Ebony added along with a reducer. I've got a Celestron Nexstar 127 Newtonian, and I have lots of camera lenses, including a Rokinon 135 and several primes between 8 and 50mm.

00;20;09;00 - 00;20;39;01
Roo
So after that, it kind of gives me a, like a brief, summary of each one of my telescopes. And what's cool is it'll tell you the aperture of each of the scopes. It tells you its focal length, it tells you what it's ideal for. Like, for example, it says, you know, my ACR is really great for a large nebula, whereas my C8 is a precision instrument for small galaxies and detailed regions of emission nebula.

00;20;39;04 - 00;21;11;10
Roo
And then it says the 70 is the great, you know, man in the middle. And then it even tells me about the, the 135 and how it's a legendary astrophotography lens, etc., etc.. So after that, I just fed it all of my cameras. We've got five different cameras at the Astro cars, so two nine, four, five, eight five, the recently added 2600, and then the trusty R5 and R7.

00;21;11;12 - 00;21;45;27
Roo
What what I really loved about this is it immediately returned not only the size of the pixels for each of these cameras, but also the size of the sensor. So like on the 2944.63. And forgive me, I don't know if that's pronounced I always say pixels and a micro 4/3 sensor. The 585 is 2.9 pixels with A1/1. two inch sensor.

00;21;45;29 - 00;22;19;11
Roo
The 2600 obviously has 3.76, pixels. It's an Aps-c size sensor, the R7 is Aps-c, and then obviously the R5 is full frame. So then, you know, just with those two quick props, I could say, okay, tell me what targets I could shoot by combining the five, eight, five with, s.v. Boni Adi and it can spit out a whole bunch of different targets for me.

00;22;19;18 - 00;22;57;26
Roo
And if I was, let's say, planning ahead for a dark sky trip that I was going to take next May, when I normally take my dark sky trips, I could say I'm going to be in this location in May. You know, it's at X longitude. In fact, you don't even have to tell it what the longitude is. You could just say I'm going to be in, you know, I don't know, San Pedro de Atacama and may please tell me what the longitude is there and then tell me what will be, you know, good targets for me to hit while I am there, during this time frame.

00;22;57;28 - 00;23;28;26
Roo
And it'll sort everything out for you, you know, it'll tell you the exact degree that you're at, you know, the moon cycle, you name it, you've got it. So it really is great. Obviously it can tell you which mounts will work best with which scopes, obviously, that stuff that you probably already know. But my point is, is you can use this as just an excellent referencing resource for everything in your kit.

00;23;28;26 - 00;23;53;05
Roo
And, you know, once you get deep enough into astronomy and astrophotography, you will undoubtedly run into times where you're like, I'm not really sure what I want to shoot tonight, because I've already kind of shot all of the, you know, big, well known targets in the area. So what's next? And when you get there, this is definitely something worth doing.

00;23;53;05 - 00;24;20;05
Roo
So now what I, what I stated earlier before we got on about, adding in the specific lenses and cameras and everything is how you can really localize this, to the specific area that you're in. Now, I do know this is a feature that is available in applications like a Nina, in any of your planetarium suite softwares.

00;24;20;07 - 00;24;52;01
Roo
But it's not truly automated, as far as I know. And I could be wrong about that because it's been a long time, since I've played with it. So if I'm dead wrong on that, by all means, shoot me an email, let me know, or drop by the Facebook and just leave a comment. Anyway, what you can do, which I think is just super cool and actually asks you to verify, you can essentially go out to your yard and take eight photos.

00;24;52;01 - 00;25;19;10
Roo
So think all cardinal directions plus diagonals north, south, east, west, north, east, southeast, south, west, northwest, etc. and then what you want to do is make note of which direction each photo is. So like take the first picture North, take the second picture northeast. Even better if you can overlay a compass on your phone screen, but it's a little bit more complicated than it needs to be.

00;25;19;10 - 00;25;51;04
Roo
You don't have to do that. But you do want to make note of the exact time that you take those eight photos, and then what you're going to do is actually email them over to yourself. Or if you've got GPT on your phone, you can just pull out your phone, open up your project folder that we created earlier, and then upload those eight photos and say, okay, this is my yard or your dark sky location or your astronomy club.

00;25;51;05 - 00;26;20;19
Roo
Wherever it is, tell it the location and tell them the city that you're in and say, I took these photos at this time and you do want to be exact with the time, because what it's going to do is it's actually going to plate solve based on the brighter, stars and constellations that are available in the shot, and then it will actually, mask your tree line and its own notes.

00;26;20;21 - 00;27;02;22
Roo
And that way it will be able to be precise and remember exactly what is and is not available in your area. And in fact, after talking with Parrish about this, you can actually, give you plan files for AC air or Nina, whatever it is that you like to use, and it will spit out a, Json file for you or gesso and file, which is essentially, you know, an astrophotography plan file for you, that can, you know, avoid anything that is in the horizon.

00;27;02;25 - 00;27;23;22
Roo
And, you know, if you take that to its natural conclusion, you could plan out, you know, a month's worth of sessions in advance and have them even automatically run if you're using Nina, you know, or ACR, depending on how far you want to go. You know, I'm not sure how you do that, natasia, but you can certainly do it in Nina.

00;27;23;24 - 00;27;51;20
Roo
But yeah, it can actually spit out the Jay song files for you. Plan, and know what your yard can and cannot see, which is super duper cool. Another thing that, he mentioned is you can actually, upload your guiding logs directly to GPT and it can analyze those and then give you recommendations on what you can do to actually improve your guiding, which is super cool.

00;27;51;22 - 00;28;14;26
Roo
So yeah, like a lot, a lot, a lot of different things that you can do. And I mean, it's it's really it starts super simple and then it can get just as deep as you want. I can tell you, the first time I entered my info in some of the most basic things that just didn't occur to me as far as like, why not use this filter on this target?

00;28;14;26 - 00;28;39;14
Roo
Like it just like head smacking easy stuff, but it just didn't occur to me before. And if you don't, you know, frequent in Astronomy club and don't constantly have people around you to bounce ideas off, this is essentially another expert, quote unquote, that you can bounce ideas off. Now, obviously AIS are not perfect and they can make mistakes.

00;28;39;14 - 00;28;59;01
Roo
So take everything with a grain of salt. And always be aware that they can illuminate and make mistakes. And if you're going to, you know, feed it a plan that GPT gives you, make sure you check everything and make sure you know that something's not going to go below the horizon if you just leave your telescope alone all night.

00;28;59;03 - 00;29;30;25
Roo
So do your homework, obviously, but it appears to be a, extremely useful tool, for us astronomers and astrophotographers. And I'm certainly going to start using it a lot more. I'm particularly excited, about using it for dark sky trips, you know, like letting it know exactly where I'm going and when I'm going. And being able to really plan for awesome shoots well in advance before I get out there.

00;29;30;29 - 00;29;49;20
Roo
You know, knowing exactly which gear I'm going to use and which target I'm going to go to. I mean, you can't even find out, you know, what the weather patterns are like at any given time during that time of the year and the place that you're going to. So you can really go as deep as you want to with this, you know, the options are limitless.

00;29;49;22 - 00;30;10;05
Roo
They're all there. They're just waiting on you. So definitely give it a try. Let me know what you think. Drop a, comment on the Astro Cast Facebook page. I'd love to hear from you. We've had a whole lot more interaction on the, social media pages as of late, and I really, really enjoy that. It's so cool getting to, talk with other people.

00;30;10;07 - 00;30;35;12
Roo
If you want to talk with us on the regular, obviously, please feel free, to join the Astro Cast Patreon and then become a member of the Members only discord, where we're always talking every day. So jump in and, say what's up as soon as you get a chance. But yeah, definitely check out, GPT, start your astrophotography project within, and, let me know how it goes.

00;30;35;12 - 00;30;59;13
Roo
Because, man, I have been really, really impressed with it so far, and I haven't even really gotten a chance to get out and shoot, since I input all of my gear into it. So I'm super excited about the, you know, possibilities could be, you know, it's it's really fun to, like if you're just bored and it's a cloudy night, like, just open it up and start asking questions about your gear.

00;30;59;14 - 00;31;18;07
Roo
What can I do to, you know, improve this shot? You can even upload photos and say, you know what? Can I do to bring out more nebulosity in this region? And you can get, you know, some really good ideas. You know, it's going to go search the whole internet and do what you would otherwise do. Right. Search Reddit and look through all those comments.

00;31;18;07 - 00;31;43;20
Roo
But it can do it all a lot faster than you'd be able to. So I definitely like it for things like that. Again, that's the kind of things that I could do if I had unlimited time, but I don't, and it's not really something creative. I mean, I guess you could argue picking a target is somewhat creative, but, you know, every target has been shot except for those that have not been discovered.

00;31;43;22 - 00;32;10;03
Roo
And GPC has no way of, or as of yet has no way of telling you what targets have not been discovered yet. Indigo. Shoot them. So I don't look at it as, you know, and inferring upon any, human artistic tendencies or anything of that nature. So go check it out, let me know what you think. And I definitely, hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

00;32;10;06 - 00;32;30;02
Roo
Big, big, big. Thank you to Parrish. For the idea. I knew I was gonna want to talk about this as soon as he brought it up, because once he once he mentioned the Json files, I was just like, oh, man, that is genius. Why didn't I think of that? Because I did have an astrophotography, you know, project in my GPT for the longest time.

00;32;30;02 - 00;32;53;21
Roo
But I did mess with it too often. But then, like when I realized it could mask my yard form you with a group of photos and then, you know, feed out actual astrophotography plans for the night. Man, oh, man, that just opens up so many different possibilities. So I'm super excited to, see what all I can come up with.

00;32;53;24 - 00;33;29;06
Roo
So switching gears a little bit, there's a kind of hilarious situation that has happened on the astrophotography community Facebook pages in the past few weeks. You know, oftentimes you will get people who are extremely cocky on these pages. And, you know, I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread, yada, yada, yada. And, you know, God help these people because generally their work is not that great.

00;33;29;09 - 00;33;45;10
Roo
I try to be humble with my stuff. I know it's not the greatest work out there, even something that I'm genuinely really proud of. I'm not going to sit out there and hold it out like, this is the greatest artwork ever. Like, I did a, photo of the Pleiades that we'll talk about a little bit that, you know, I posted it.

00;33;45;10 - 00;34;08;03
Roo
And then the next day I realized how much I hated it. So go figure. But in any case, he's become a little bit of a meme, on some of these pages to the point where people are, kind of like repeating a couple of the things that he said. And let me just let me just read his post to you first, and then we can talk about it a little bit.

00;34;08;05 - 00;34;33;01
Roo
So he posted this in the public forum. I'm just going to use his first name because I don't want to dox the guy, but we'll just call him. You know, I won't even use his first name because yeah, we'll call the guy Raj. How about that? Like Roger, but we'll call him Raj. Not learning any longer. But I'm here to help those that are.

00;34;33;03 - 00;35;04;24
Roo
Please don't PM me questions ask here so others can learn from the Q and A as well. I'm a world known portrait photographer, retired and I was burnt out on photography. Always loved Astro and wanted to try it. I drove in hard for seven years, shot everything in my skies and nothing left. So I started selling things off last year.

00;35;04;26 - 00;35;31;10
Roo
Now I'm into wildlife but still enjoy helping those who are interested. I do not in quotes for some reason do the norm, whatever that means. I learned from the groups, but two years in, I learned that most of what is being taught is wrong. So I made my own path, which allowed me to get far more done and very little time.

00;35;31;13 - 00;36;04;08
Roo
Alas, and all caps, but making me lose interest, for there was nothing else to achieve. There's nothing else for him to achieve in astrophotography. How about that? Best things I learned one. Do not buy or use picks in sight. It's garbage. Two I stopped using darks, bias and flats. They're a waste of time. Three I moved from an F8 stop to an f 2.2 scope.

00;36;04;10 - 00;36;41;01
Roo
More targets per night. Very clever for full frame camera. Hides a lot of sins. I tried all the software out there and ended up with Nina, but ACA is great. Two Astro pixel processor, Photoshop. I have an old video of my workflow and that's kind of the end of the post. So in his post he infers twice that he has quote unquote finished astrophotography.

00;36;41;03 - 00;37;10;13
Roo
I don't know. It's kind of like those people who say they finish Netflix, whatever that means. I don't think anyone, could ever finish astrophotography. I mean, even if you did somehow shoot every major target that was out there, you couldn't possibly believe that all of your shots are so great that you don't ever need to revisit one of them ever again, right?

00;37;10;16 - 00;37;36;00
Roo
Nobody could do that for themselves, could they? I think this guy might just be so. Yeah, he keeps getting memed. So people will post like these clearly garbage photos of, their pictures where I think they're, like, messing them up on purpose. Or maybe they're going out and getting their very first photo that they've ever taken, and they're like, I just finished astrophotography.

00;37;36;00 - 00;38;11;03
Roo
Don't PM me asking how to do it. And pics inside is garbage. It's it cracked me up. I think it's hilarious, but it's it's hard to believe that people like this are actually out there, that are so, so full of themselves and just, you know, have never, ever had a slice of humble pie in their life, apparently, to refer to yourself as a world renowned portrait photographer, like, you know, my goodness, I've never heard of the guy.

00;38;11;04 - 00;38;40;19
Roo
You know, I don't know, I when I think, like, world renowned portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz comes to mind, you know. But Raj sure doesn't. He wouldn't for you either, believe me. His his, suggestion not to buy pix insight because it's quote unquote garbage is just patently absurd. It's not garbage. It's actually a fantastic tool. It is difficult to learn.

00;38;40;19 - 00;39;08;13
Roo
Yeah, absolutely. But again, this guy says in his own post that he, quote, does not do the norm. And usually one normal practices are established in any field of study or hobby. It's because it is found that they work. You know, we we do the same thing with the scientific method. When something works consistently and gets the same results over and over again, we use that until something better comes along.

00;39;08;15 - 00;39;29;09
Roo
So this guy saying, you know, don't bother with calibration frames because they're a waste of time is just silly because they're not a waste of time. If you have dust on your lens and then you go to stretch your image and that dust plot shows up, then it seems like it was, very much, a great use of time.

00;39;29;12 - 00;39;55;10
Roo
And then, full frame camera high hides a lot of sense. I don't even know what to make of that. Because there are full frame cameras that are 15 megapixels, and then there are full frame cameras that are 60 megapixels, and then I think it would also depend on the effective focal length of the lens or telescope that you are connecting it to.

00;39;55;12 - 00;40;19;26
Roo
It would depend very much on the mount that you're using. And when you say, since what are you talking about? Like blurry stars? Like he doesn't really elaborate on these things. And then when he says he moved from an effort to an f 2.2 scope, yeah. You know, moving to a faster scope will indeed allow you to gather data much faster.

00;40;19;28 - 00;40;57;23
Roo
But he says more targets, plural. Poor night. You know, I think when most people get, you know, really into astrophotography and they're, you know, trying to make great images, they're not going to hit multiple targets in one night. So I'm not even sure what he's inferring with that. So yeah, I don't know. It's it's really funny if you if you want to find the post yourself and see him get absolutely dragged in the comments, you can go to the learning astrophotography page.

00;40;57;26 - 00;41;22;07
Roo
Like I say, I'm not going to give the guy's name out just because I don't want to dox him. I'm not that kind of person. But old Raj, man, he is just, a really, really humble guy. And, he's finished astrophotography. Apparently. So good for him. All right, so other thing I wanted to talk about with you guys was my n45 project that I worked on.

00;41;22;07 - 00;41;56;18
Roo
So I talked about it last week and I believe the week before on the show as well. I put quite a bit of time into a project recently. It was honestly the biggest project that I've undertaken yet, and I have 45 hours in total into M45. And the goal was to get all of the, IFN dust in the region around the Pleiades to really come out strong, you know, with a super long exposure being the way that it was.

00;41;56;21 - 00;42;20;14
Roo
And unfortunately, I don't think I succeeded at that. Now, I will say, I think, the image itself is pretty good. The first time I processed it, I overdid it a bit. Kind of rookie mistake. I was sitting here, it was late at night, and I was really tired, and I was just kind of playing around, and I went a little bit hard.

00;42;20;14 - 00;42;48;23
Roo
And, Lightroom, after I had finished in Pix Insight, you know, messing with sliders. I went back the next day and, you know, redid it from scratch and pix insight. And I was a lot happier with the result. But I still didn't have the the event that I was kind of expecting to get at 45 hours, and I'm not too surprised by it.

00;42;48;26 - 00;43;20;00
Roo
And I wanted to, I wanted to talk about this specifically, because it's, it's part of how do I put this? I have been working with, James from Leviathan Optical. He was kind enough to send over his Spectral Pro filter, from his new company, Great Filter. By the way, has done a phenomenal job with every target that I pointed, pointed it at.

00;43;20;03 - 00;43;50;10
Roo
And early on when I started this project, he messaged me and he said, hey, Chris, FYI, you might not want to use the Spectral Pro for all of your integration time because it can have a difficult time and, you know, highly light polluted areas with picking up event. My bad. I didn't hear him. I completely I'll I'll own up to it.

00;43;50;10 - 00;44;19;19
Roo
I kind of just ignored it and kept imaging because I think at that point I was already a good 15 hours in and I was like, yeah, let's see what happens at the end of the world. I mean, you know, not a big deal. But as it turns out, he wasn't lying. So it does indeed have a little bit of a difficult time picking up that really fine, very faint dust, that I often, you know, sets behind the Pleiades and lots of other targets.

00;44;19;21 - 00;44;43;19
Roo
And there is a reason for that. And we talked about it, a good bit via email. So I sent him the finished photos. Both. The ugly one that I did the first time, and then the slightly better one that I did the second time, and he responded, and I, I really agreed with what he had to say.

00;44;43;21 - 00;45;11;27
Roo
And I think it's, it's a fine balance with a light pollution filter because obviously you only want to let in certain bands of light, and you got to be very careful about making those bands too wide or too narrow. And it's a balancing act, right? Because if you make them too narrow, then you might start losing things like iPhone.

00;45;11;29 - 00;46;01;24
Roo
But if you widen them out too much to bring things like I found in, then you also can bring in light pollution. So at the end of the day, this was really a trade off that had to be made. It was a decision that had to be made. Do we want to cut it to where the majority of, you know, nebula emission targets, you know, your heart, Nebula, soul Nebula, Orion, you know, all of your big popular nebula, if you will, are going to work really, really well with this, filter, with the understanding that some of the really faint dust from things like, you know, Ifan in the Pleiades might not come through

00;46;01;24 - 00;46;32;24
Roo
as well. And ultimately, I think he made the right call on that. I can't say what I would have done in that situation. But I think the results kind of speak for themselves on my heart. Nebula photo, if you've seen that one. That is by far the best Heart Nebula photo that I've ever done. And I did that in one night with the, the Spectral Pro.

00;46;32;24 - 00;46;56;02
Roo
So, you know, I'm just letting everybody know because I have, been using this, filter for a couple of months now, and I have talked with James a lot. No money has been exchanged, to be clear. No products, no money, no nothing. We're just sharing data, you know what I mean? He's asking me for feedback, and I'm giving him my honest feedback as best I can.

00;46;56;04 - 00;47;15;19
Roo
And, James, if you're listening to this, I owe you an email response. You sent me a really long, great email, and I am planning on responding to it, but I'll get to it this weekend. I promise. Real busy. But anyway, I wanted to share that with you guys just in case. I still very, very, very much recommend the Spectral Pro.

00;47;15;19 - 00;47;38;13
Roo
I think, for the vast majority of targets that you're going to be going after from light polluted skies, you are going to be more than happy with it. I think I might be just a little bit greedy trying to go after Ifan with a, light pollution filter on from mortal seven skies. Like, you know, filters can work wonders.

00;47;38;16 - 00;48;30;18
Roo
Don't get me wrong. Particularly something like a Leviathan, spectral Pro. It's incredible what it can do. From my terribly lit skies here in Charlotte. But the those really faint details of that really faint dust in the Milky Way. There's no substitute for dark skies for stuff like that. And I'm telling you that because if if you are trying to go for, you know, if and, dark Nebula, etc., you would be doing yourself a huge favor by taking a little bit of time and driving somewhere dark enough to actually capture it, because I think if you if you factored in all of the time that you spent on the project,

00;48;30;18 - 00;49;05;26
Roo
even adding in a few hours of drive, I know for sure that if I were in a truly dark sky location like, you know, Bordeaux three or better, that I probably could have gotten all of that if and in two nights instead of, you know, 45 hours worth of data that I was looking for. And I want to be clear, I did get some of the if and I it's not that I didn't get any of it, it's just that I didn't, get what I would have expected to have gotten after, you know, a week's worth of, imaging nights.

00;49;05;29 - 00;49;26;02
Roo
But anyway, I just wanted to share that with you guys because we had talked about the Leviathan quite a bit over the last few weeks, and I wanted to give you an update on it again. Still definitely recommended. I still think it is by far the best, light pollution filter that there is for one shot color cameras.

00;49;26;05 - 00;49;47;13
Roo
But if you're, you know, looking to shoot in specifically, you're probably still want to do a dark sky site. There's, never going to be any substitute for dark skies when it comes to those really faint and fine details in astronomy. And honestly, that's probably how it should be. It makes it makes those trips so much more special, right?

00;49;47;13 - 00;50;12;18
Roo
Like, I remember the first time I made a trip with a very, very good friend of mine, to our favorite dark Sky location, and I was able to see the dark nebulosity inside of a row for the first time. You know, that part? Really? I don't know, it almost looks like a squid. That's what I always think of.

00;50;12;18 - 00;50;38;18
Roo
That's leading into the the for colored area. From the side of the Milky Way. The first time that I actually saw that come through on a sub with my own eyes, it just it really blew my mind. And I was like, man, oh, man, now these are dark skies, and I think there's something to be said for, not being able to do that from anywhere in the world.

00;50;38;20 - 00;51;09;16
Roo
And don't get me wrong, I would love for us to be able to do that from anywhere in the world, but I would want it to be because it's portal three or less everywhere, not because we're able to use technology to cut through all of that garbage in our atmosphere. So for long, rambling way of saying, make sure that you make a trip to your dark sky site if you haven't this year, I have definitely got the edge as of late, I haven't been.

00;51;09;16 - 00;51;32;16
Roo
I will just scratch it. I thought I was going to be able to a couple of weeks ago, but it didn't pan out with the weather. Planning on, you know, getting somewhere dark in the very near future, hopefully to shoot Orion. But, time will tell and we shall see. So, a recommendation for this week. Oh, buddy, I've got one for you.

00;51;32;18 - 00;52;04;17
Roo
This is a show that I have heard about for a long time, and I was extremely skeptical going in, as I usually am. For most shows that are in this genre. But man oh man. After watching the first episode, I was really blown away. I gotta say, the, the quality is definitely there, and I cannot wait for the second episode to come out.

00;52;04;19 - 00;52;25;06
Roo
It's available on HBO Max. Hopefully you have access to that. If you don't, maybe get a free trial. But you might want to wait a little while because the show I'm referring to, they're doing the thing where they only drop one episode every week, and I'm not sure how many episodes in total it's going to be.

00;52;25;09 - 00;52;52;15
Roo
It is a horror. Are you starting to get it big? Stephen King fan, HBO, etc., etc. it's, Welcome to Derry is the show so this is a prequel, to it, which obviously is had a couple of movies in the last decade and has had a big moment in pop culture. HBO kind of seized on that and decided to do a prequel.

00;52;52;17 - 00;53;16;11
Roo
And I gotta say, man, they have done a really, really good job with it. I'm a sucker for, like, period pieces. Anytime you have something like, you know, set in the 50s or 60s or even older than that in the 1800s, like, I love costumes and, you know, all these types of things. And yes, I am a, straight cis male who's happily married.

00;53;16;14 - 00;53;36;00
Roo
Don't make fun of me. I just I really dig it when you can recreate an environment like the 1960s and make it look so authentic, I just, I don't know, the production must be crazy difficult on a show like that. And I just have a lot of, admiration for the, teams that are able to pull these things off.

00;53;36;00 - 00;54;03;15
Roo
So highly, highly, highly recommend it. Not only, are the costumes and everything is super cool, but the actual story is really good. So they they completely had me hooked. There was a, a huge twist, like, right in the very first episode that I was not expecting at all. Great acting, even from the kids on the show, obviously played a very, very large role.

00;54;03;17 - 00;54;27;11
Roo
So I can't recommend it enough. I think the next episodes are going to come out on Friday. So if you're listening to this on Wednesday, you can watch the, first episode tonight or tomorrow and then tune in Friday, for the next episode. So very much. Am enjoying that. I'm hoping there will be a lot more episodes, but, I guess we'll we'll find out soon enough.

00;54;27;13 - 00;54;47;03
Roo
I'm going to, throw in a bonus one for you, while we're at it, since we're on the, HBO Max app, you probably heard of this one. It's been very much in the popular culture lexicon, but, weapons is another one that's really, really good. I don't know if I would necessarily call it a horror movie.

00;54;47;03 - 00;55;11;00
Roo
It certainly has its, very spooky moments. It's very tense at certain points. I would call it maybe more of, like, a, thriller slash horror film, perhaps, but it's very unique. I will give it that, a very unique premise with a very original story, which is always super refreshing to see. And it definitely will give you the creeps.

00;55;11;00 - 00;55;41;01
Roo
Like, it gave me the creeps big time watching that. So I definitely can recommend that one to you as well. So if you get a chance, definitely check that one out. You only got what a few more days of spooky season left before we turn our eyes to, to Thanksgiving. A season which will be here before you know it, we're all preparing to make our turkeys and North America, so definitely, enjoy the rest of this Halloween season while you can.

00;55;41;03 - 00;56;07;23
Roo
And, if you've got kids, I certainly hope that they get nice, clear weather on Friday for trick or treating. It's supposed to clear up here in Charlotte for Friday. That's what we're hoping anyway. So the kids can go out and all have a good time. So, guys, that is going to do it. For this week's episode, I, greatly appreciate you sitting down for an hour with me.

00;56;07;25 - 00;56;32;15
Roo
If you haven't already, definitely check out the Facebook page, drop by and leave a comment. Give us a follow over there. We're getting those numbers up. I want to continue growing the social media page, because that's a great way for us to, spread the word of the astro cast to the masses. And, like, I said, if you'd like to, say hello to me on a regular basis, please feel free to drop us a line, by joining the members only discord.

00;56;32;15 - 00;56;56;20
Roo
Or you can go to Patreon.com forward, slash the Astro cast, and you can always reach me by email if you have a question, comment, concern, anything like that. Just email me or ru at the Astro cast.com. I know we got a lot of new listeners. I know I've gotten some emails from some of you guys, and I just want to say hello to all of our new listeners that have come on board in recent months.

00;56;56;22 - 00;57;27;09
Roo
Greatly appreciate having you guys here. The show continues to grow, and I couldn't do it without you. It stays ad free because of your support, and that will continue into the future. So thank you. So much for tuning in to the Astro cast this week. I am your host, Roo. And as always, it's clear skies.

00;57;27;12 - 00;57;42;13
Roo
Are.

00;57;42;15 - 00;59;19;13
Roo
From.

00;59;19;15 - 00;59;24;23
Roo
All of.

00;59;24;26 - 00;59;33;16
Roo
Oh, my.

00;59;33;19 - 00;59;41;24
Roo
Oh!

00;59;41;27 - 00;59;51;15
Roo
000.

00;59;51;18 - 00;59;52;01
Roo
Come on.