At this scale, you can already see what Milky Way is made of. It is made of many, many, many stars. M11 (Wild Duck) open cluster in the corner is only somewhat denser than "background" it finds itself in.

It is one thing to take a hand-held camera or a smart telescope and have a Milky Way shot. It is a whole other experience to have a purpose-built widefield rig and do the Milky Way mosaics! Plate solvers find 300K stars in it! Full: app.astrobin.com/i/z13vp6

Current astro mounts are designed to carry and slew 10+ kgs of gear with precision and the speed of several degrees per second. This means so much torque, that they take no prisoners and WILL rip out the USB ports if a cable snags. (This one is pretty cheap to fix, phew.)

Made it from the first try with one of the most photogenic summer target: Cygnus Loop, a fairly young supernova remnant. Very bright in Hα and OIII bands, can be done in full Moon, very large so a smaller scope frames it well. Full + specs: app.astrobin.com/i/1lzdiy

Bode's Galaxy in 1400mm and Tri-Band filters. Pulls significantly more Hα signal, so more of in-galaxy nebulosity is visible, at the expense of broadband fidelity at periphery. Questionable seeing, target is below 30°, scope needs collimation. Full: app.astrobin.com/i/6f2sk0

Having fun with ad-hoc cross-JDK progress comparisons. A lot of work went into baseline JDK. A lot of work went into Shenandoah improvements as well. Not shown here are latency numbers that also go down. This is a common story: JDK updates make numbers go up, I mean down.

Hotpatch GC state checks in Shenandoah, yeah! Something that I had in mind for a year or so, and now we have enough scaffolding to actually implement it. This is one satisfying <1 KLOC patch. -- What kind of black magic trickery this is? -- Ha-ha, managed runtimes go brrr.

Bode's Galaxy again, this time with EdgeHD 8" at 1400mm FL, in unfavorable seeing. Imaging at that scale is hard, but something can be pulled from the fairly questionable data. Full "res" and specs: app.astrobin.com/i/on00u9

Yay, a spiritual successor for Waveform Bufferbloat tests appeared: test.libreqos.com. Fairly sensitive to my router QoS settings, as one can see the latencies are near the floor when QoS is on, and, well... not otherwise.

Collecting more data every night, so Bode's and Cigar galaxies reveal more details. It is always fun with larger galaxies that you can pull out the *nebulae* in them. The only higher excitement is catching supernova. Full ongoing project, specs, etc: app.astrobin.com/i/29etw1

Only few products hit their brand name perfectly. WO Cat Eyes widefield binoculars is definitely one of those. They effectively increase the light gathering (effective pupil!), allowing one to see many more stars.

Better framing of Bode's Galaxy and its neighbors. There are 5 clearly visible galaxies in this shot, but if you look closer and cross-reference with galaxies catalogs, there are 50+ fainter galaxies in the shot. Full + specs: app.astrobin.com/i/xcb4ld

Oh no, Bode's and Cigar galaxies are getting closer and closer as I switch to scopes with larger focal length! Full + specs: app.astrobin.com/i/aa58a9

Askar SQA55 is just really good; quite a bit better than FRA500. I can see how that is a gateway drug into the rest of SQA series. When >130mm SQAs become reasonably priced (a man can dream), it would be absolute fire. Here is Bode's Galaxy again: app.astrobin.com/i/vioe5g

Oh, how I love terrestrial shots through well-corrected telescopes. Seeing perfect water drops on the leaves 25 meters away, nice. (Snatched a second-hand SQA55 + a few accessories for nearly half the price of new.)

Oh, yes. Little Bode's Galaxy, we call him. app.astrobin.com?i=38wqki

"Living, Breathing, European Heatwave Searing Sun: 1 Hour Hα Timelapse". Higher resolution attempt, now that I have a larger 676MM sensor and better match to Lunt 60. Full size and specs: app.astrobin.com/i/f5to2n

YOU GUYS, I think I found what is responsible for this freaking heatwave! It was the Sun all along! There would have been no problems if Sun was not shining, at very least no one would ever complain again. The camera sensor is now at +55°C, I am sure it is fine.

Oh look, here are Bode's and Cigar galaxies even. You can find them in the original shot, if you know where to peep.

It never ceases to amaze me how many stars are visible from a bright city center, with a very modest terrestrial equipment, and a very light post-processing. Single 300s shot, 45°x30° FOV, unguided tracking, background cancellation, auto-stretches.

Love it when long-exposure shots come with embedded visualization. Here, we can see 8 flashes for aircraft anti-collision lights. Almost 9, if they were sampled at the edges of the line. With 10s exposure, this computes to 54 per minute, within [40; 100] per minute mandated by EASA/FAA.

You know what, I would start calling this THE TRILLIONARE'S CURSE now. As far as I can see, the majority of 10s frames have multiple satellite streaks present. Normally those would be rejection-stacked out, but no chance for widefield timelapses. More at: app.astrobin.com/i/rpt8am

I kid you not, we are at the software quality point where you can go to Google front page with a simple query, expand the AI assistant dialog, and observe Firefox eating 3 CPUs doing nothing but repaints. (Does not reproduce on Chromium, AFAICS).

Practicing more ultra-widefield timelapses. The sky rotates at 360°/day = 15°/hour around the North Celestial Pole. Polaris sits visually near the NCP, but not quite there, so you can see it moving as well. The midnight sky is bright. Full size and specs: app.astrobin.com/i/x7xbgd

Hα Sun time-lapse, the first of hopefully many. 1 hour of data acquisition (modest 30K frames, 130 GB raw), 8+ hours of processing (includes a few false starts). Full-size video, workflow details, etc: app.astrobin.com/i/59uc7v

Yeah, well, I do have reasonably good drill bits, drilling oil, all that jazz. But you are asking me to drill out a full 30+ mm length of 6mm hard steel bolt, it would take A WHILE. Surely I gave up an hour in, and just sawed off the seat instead. Took me a while, but I won.

I kid you not, but the *official* replacement guide says "Use 6mm drill to remove the bolt". Avi: Look in the dog. Tony: What do you mean "look in the dog?" Avi: I mean open him up. Tony: It's not as if it's a tin of baked beans! What do you mean "open him up"?

Sundays are for new experiences. Today was the first time I replaced the mesh on my Aeron Remastered chair, which involved changing the whole seat assembly, which involved sawing off the old seat.

Ship it! (I have no words.)

I mean, look at this: there is hardly a sub-workload where scores do not improve. The improvements like these are as rare as unicorns. It is likely to be once in a lifetime thing.