Arwen's meanderings

Hi everyone and welcome to my dinghy cruising blog about my John Welsford designed 'navigator' named Arwen. Built over three years, Arwen was launched in August 2007. She is a standing lug yawl 14' 6" in length. This blog records our dinghy cruising voyages together around the coastal waters of SW England.
Arwen has an associated YouTube channel so visit www.YouTube.com/c/plymouthwelshboy to find our most recent cruises and click subscribe.
On this blog you will find posts about dinghy cruising locations, accounts of our voyages, maintenance tips and 'How to's' ranging from rigging standing lug sails and building galley boxes to using 'anchor buddies' and creating 'pilotage notes'. I hope you find something that inspires you to get out on the water in your boat. Drop us a comment and happy sailing.
Steve and Arwen

Sunday 19 December 2021

Whilst waiting for paint to dry........

 A progress update - after three undercoats - here is the coaming repair  - just three top coats of International Toplac gloss to go

Can barely see where I had to cut out huge chunks of wet rot and insert a new piece of ply!!
(see previous posts for that saga)



The split oars are in the same place - three undercoats and now awaiting three top coats and then a sanding of the varnished looms before three coats of new varnish




In the meantime, whilst waiting for paint to dry (not really but hey.....I need a weak excuse for posting the stuff below), I have been trying to get to grips with more astrophotography. On the one hand I am getting better at taking images with my small star tracker and a DSLR. Sadly, my two telescopes were not designed for doing astrophotography and whilst I really enjoy doing the observing bit, it is frustrating not being able to use them for any imaging other than a few grainy shots of the moon. 

Above my table top beginner's dobsonian - Skywatcher Heritage 100
and below
my 150mm/750mm GOTO newtonian telescope - a skywatcher discovery 150i WIFI 

The real steep learning curve though is in the learning how to post process the images I collect. I am trying to get to grips with specific stacking software such as Deepskystacker and then with general photography processing software - affinity photo. I am getting there and have learned heaps in the last few days but it is hard work! 

Taken on the Heritage 100
I managed to botch together my basic DSLR, the end of a x2 Barlow lens, a small moon filter and a universal 1.25" T tube 

Taken on my 150mm scope using my DSLR and a x2Barlow lens

My first effort at processing the Rosetta nebula taken on someone else's telescope.
The pink colours are wrong - it should be more reddish due to the hydrogen gas clouds. 
This is where I still have lots to learn about workflow and skills using affinity photo

Shouldn't be too hard on myself - I managed to get this on my small star tracker.
It is processed in affinity photo but since I did this one a few months ago - I have learned heaps - so I might give the original data another going over. This is M45 Pleiades  by the way 

Life long learning eh? 😀

2 comments:

Joel Bergen said...

Awesome photos of the Rosetta nebula and the Pleiades Steve. The Pleiades one is now the screen background on my laptop. Hope you don't mind! :) Well done.

steve said...

Hahahahaha
I dont mind at all - glad you like it. sorry about the slight fringing around it - still trying to work out how to get that gone but I'm starting from non photo processing background - so three steps forward and two back.

Have a lovely Christmas and new year now - best wishes to you and your family - stay safe and well
Steve