as usual, nothing came out well 
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Don’t lose heart so soon. You have a nice conjuction coming up this week. You have at least two days to capture Jupiter and Venus within a degree of each other.
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Sorry @Thiyagarajan, just remembered that you have the 8inch dob. Am not sure if you can get them together with that scope. Unless somone else who’s got a wider FOV setup that can capture it. Or even using just your camera instead of through the Dob, you may be able to capture it and then crop it after stacking.
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Yes @Gnana, its not possible with a 8-inch dob to capture though, but I might use my phone to capture instead.
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@Stargazer123 , I remember you asking about observation logs sometime back (may be a long time now). This will be a great opportunity to log this conjunction. You should be able to get them through Binos.
@siva, @kishan, may be this is too short a notice. But, if there is decent amount of interest within the group, I guess it would be good to organise a workshop related to observation logs?
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I hope you had some luck @Thiyagarajan, here I’m sitting under a thick blanket of clouds. Forecast doesn’t look promising for tomorrow as well. Fingers crossed.
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Sry for the late reply @Gnana By the way i had opportunity to look onto the amazing conjunction !!! but i wasn’t able to photograph it properly as it was out of my FOV
Good that you were able to enjoy the view. I was lucky as well that the skies opened up for an hour on Thursday and I was able to look and sketch them out a bit. Here, I would have been able to fit them both within the FOV of the same scope, strange you weren’t able to. The worst part was, I wasn’t expecting any clear patch at all and had not kept my scope out. So, ended up looking at it with my binos. Lets see if this month end brings any luck with the Venus Uranus conjunction. That will be almost at the edges of the FOV of the 8incher. But, let’s see if Siva or someone else who’s got a proper wide angle set up able to capture that. I’ll surely be sketching it out, probably with the dob if I have clear skies.
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@Thiyagarajan Could you please share what is the Gain and exposure you use to capture Moon when you use 2X Barlow lens.
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Yea sure @parthiiban. My exposure is usually set between 2-5 ms (according to the part of the moon i capture) and the gain is set to auto.
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Thanks Thiyagarajan.
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Anyone have experience in capturing and processing images using Macbook M1/M2 processors. Could you please share tools you have used. Thanks.
I was planning to capture the conjunction but from my place (Kolathur), the western sky was fully covered with clouds (happens to me all the time 
). The next day, I was able to see that the two planets were a few degrees apart which didn’t fit within my FOV (8" 1000mm and DSLR with APS-C sensor). I took a boring photo of it with my lens though. If the previous day was clear, I might even have tried with my ASI224.
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Hey Thiyagarajan. I just came across this forum. Been into astronomy & stargazing for a few years now. Currently in Chennai, but no idea where to begin with in terms of wanting to buy my first telescope and possibly camera for some astrophotography. Any suggestion or tips as to where to begin with?
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Hello @troon !! Well for detailed information check this forum - Choosing Your First Telescope - Telescope fundamentals
Well as a summary , if your are a beginner , you can buy a good 6 or 8 inch dobsonian which are btw the most popular and recommended telescopes of all time. With it you can do visual astronomy (Stargazing) as well as do astrophotography (mostly planetary photographs as above and some extent to deep sky photography with additional equipment). If you want to do full-fledged deep sky photographs you would need refractor type telescopes (with mounts, filters, guide scopes and more). But i would not recommend to directly start with deep-sky as it is time consuming and laborious in beginning as well as it is expensive. Whereas a dobsonian with all the cameras , eyepieces and filters(if needed) are half the price of a refractor setup. Hope this is helpful, have a great time!
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Looks beautiful with the moon though!!
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The Saturn
Short Note :
Capturing stunning images of Saturn, the mesmerizing ringed planet, is a technical feat that involves several key elements. To get up close and personal with Saturn, you’ll need a good telescope with a substantial aperture to gather enough light for clear images. Pair it with a dedicated astronomical camera or webcam modified for astrophotography, allowing for precise control of exposure settings.
Technical Aspects :
Hardwares :
Orion XT-8 Dobsonian
Zwo ASI 120 mc-s
2x barlow
Softwares :
Sharp capture
PIPP
Autostacker (25%)
Registax
Data :
Output Format=AVI files (*.avi)
Binning=1
Frame Rate Limit=480 fps
Gain=50
Exposure=73.3080ms
Duration=127.412s
FrameCount=1738
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Beautiful @Thiyagarajan. Looks like you’ve swapped the hemispheres there. It’s nice to still be able to the Cassini division. Think in about two years time we’ll have the plate crossing when we’ll lose the rings with the both the hemispheres fully visible with the rings as a blade through the middle. Might be interesting capturing that.
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Thanks @Gnana ! I really couldn’t find any info on which side is what (hemisphere). And yes, I am also excited to see the rings crossing the equator! (at least from earth’s pov).
This is very easy to find @Thiyagarajan. Especially with the kind of equipment that we use (without auto tracking). Both of us are in the northern hemisphere and for us generally, the planets would traverse from East to West in the southern sky. When you face the southern sky, the actual movement will seem to be from left (East) to right (West). Now, your North is on top and South is at the bottom. You already know that telescopes unlike binos, produce an upside down, left to right inverted image. Therefore, through the eyepiece, it would look like these planets are moving from right to left so, you know the left side of your field of view would be where West is. Likewise, the top portion of the field of view is where south would be. This way, it would be easy to identify the hemispheres easily. However, if you are not looking through the eyepiece and are depending only on the image that you had taken, it would be a bit difficult to figure this out. So, I’d strongly urge you to give a rest to the camera from time to time and even though it might sound a bit boring, give the opportunity for the humble eyepiece
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