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Salt Fish posted:I'll check out the eyepiece and diagonal later. I'm a bit ignorant right now to pick out an eyepiece among all the options, but I think I'll figure it out before too long once I get started. I’m glad, I hope you enjoy it. Eyepieces are a big part of how comfortable and enjoyable your telescope seems. If you try the cheap eyepieces that come with the scope and are frustrated or underwhelmed, don’t forget to... maybe get with a local Astro club or telescope store and see what your scope feels like looking through some nicer glass.
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Jun 2, 2020 23:07
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I took a couple of pictures this past week since I've actually had some clear nights. I don't normally spend more than one night on a target before moving on, but now that I'm working in narrow band I might start. This first one is the Pelican Nebula in SHO. I took around an hour in each channel and ran the finished product through Starnet to remove the stars  And this is the Crescent Nebula in HOO. Went a little longer here since I only had two channels to capture, 1.5 hours in Ha and 2.5 in Oiii 
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Jun 3, 2020 00:38
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Prettypanda posted:I took a couple of pictures this past week since I've actually had some clear nights. I don't normally spend more than one night on a target before moving on, but now that I'm working in narrow band I might start. Yah, that's the good stuff. The starless nebula looks cool as hell. What are you using for a rig?
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Jun 3, 2020 01:22
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Thank you! Scope is a Meade 6000 70mm APO, mount is a Celestron CGX, and the camera is an ASI1600mm-pro with Optolong filters.
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Jun 3, 2020 02:22
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Prettypanda posted:This first one is the Pelican Nebula in SHO. I took around an hour in each channel and ran the finished product through Starnet to remove the stars  Looks like a Beksinski painting. Do you have a version WITH stars?
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Jun 3, 2020 16:37
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^^edit: didn't see that totally Prettypanda posted:I took a couple of pictures this past week since I've actually had some clear nights. I don't normally spend more than one night on a target before moving on, but now that I'm working in narrow band I might start. Pictures like this make me want to paint them. That's wild
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Jun 3, 2020 16:45
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Hasselblad posted:
I didn't save the version before star removal so I put this one together this afternoon. 
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Jun 3, 2020 20:19
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Prettypanda posted:I didn't save the version before star removal so I put this one together this afternoon. Pareidolia is working overtime.
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Jun 4, 2020 14:37
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My telescope arrived yesterday! I wanted a portable, family friendly, quick setup, quick reward system so I picked up the Celestron Starsense Explorer 102mm refractor. Mostly looked at the moon, the $30 moon filter was a good buy. Clouds moved in but got some good views of a couple binary pairs and a smudge that was the Hercules cluster. The Starsense app works really well, everything we went to find was in view with the 25mm lens. The nearly full moon really hosed with it if you tried to plate solve anywhere near it though, but the app warned us about it. I can see why people are buying this thing and slapping it on big Dobs. Question, what's a good next eyepiece or two? I've got a Celestron 2X barlow on the way. Yooper fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jun 4, 2020 |
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Jun 4, 2020 14:52
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Yooper posted:Question, what's a good next eyepiece or two? I've got a Celestron 2X barlow on the way. First of all, I'd recommend a better diagonal than the one included. A GSO 2" dialectric (sold under the High Point, Agena, and OPT house brands) are only around $110 typically and they can be a MASSIVE upgrade. I'd actually emphasize that over a new eyepiece at this stage. These scopes have really good objective lenses, but really lovely diagonals which are a very weak point in the optical path and potentially bottlenecks the performance of the telescope and your existing eyepieces. As for the eyepieces themselves, I've been really impressed every time I look through the eyepieces that are rebranded and sold by Astronomics as the "Astro-tech Paradigm Dual ED" and by Agena as the "Starguider Dual ED." They're sharp, have comfortable eye relief and apparent field, don't cost an arm and a leg, and will play nicely with the relatively short focal ratio of the scope. The shorter the focal ratio, the more the performance of supercheap eyepieces suffers, but these only run $60 each. I'd also recommend getting a decent wide field eyepiece in the 32mm range for wide-field views. When choosing eyepieces, make a spreadsheet of magnifications with and without the Barlow lens so that you can plan efficiently without winding up with inadvertent duplicate/too-close focal lengths when using the Barlow. I'd also recommend eventually phasing out the included eyepieces. They're ok to start with, but eventually squinting through the tiny peephole of a short focal-length plössl becomes double-plus unfun. Congrats on the new toy. The optical tube assembly they use on that scope is a good one. Great for wide-field deep sky under dark sky.
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Jun 4, 2020 18:02
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It's probably a decent piece of glass for its price point, let down by the hardware (focuser) and accessories surrounding it. I would upgrade the diagonal and maybe get a light yellow filter to help with the fast achromat purple halos. Scopestuff sells a visual back for scopes like this that will effectively replace the sloppy set screw with a nicer compression ring. That'll keep your glass train straight and better in collimation with the objective and prevent your diagonal from spinning around and maybe falling to the ground. As far as eyepieces, the scope is a fast achromat and best suited to wider fields (and dark skies). At low focal lengths and wide fields, ES68 series eyepieces won't break the bank (as much as XW/Delos/Panoptic) and they'd provide very good well corrected fields at f/6.5. If you want to get up into planetary magnifications, you'd be talking about eyepiece focal lengths down in the 4-5mm and lower (at your 660mm focal length). ES82 4.7mm gets you about 140x which is decent for a fast achromat, but the planets would be a bit small-ish. Higher mags might result in a lot of purple halo, which is where your light yellow filter might help if that bothers you. Oh, re-reading your post it occurs to me that you're probably not inexperienced at telescopes. I'll leave the post because maybe someone else can benefit. Bottom line, I think the Explore Scientific 68 and 82 degree series are great bang for the buck, and they quickly resell for 75-80% of new if you decide you don't like them. edit: looks like AZ beat me to all the relevant points!
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Jun 4, 2020 19:20
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Awesome, thanks guys. The scopestuff website is, uh, kind of web classic. For focuser I assume something like this : http://www.scopestuff.com/ss_frc2.htm ? I'll probably upgrade that diagonal first, focuser next, and if I do the focuser do I still need a visual back? Then it'll be a few eyepieces. At what point is it advantageous to get 2" eyepiece body instead of a 1.25"? Anything over 25mm or so? The focuser feels pretty crunchy and icky, so I'd really like to see that go. My day job is in a precision machine shop so I enjoy this sort of upgrade.
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Jun 4, 2020 19:49
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I think he was referring to the scopestuff visual back that fits to your existing focuser and provides a compression collet for holding the diagonal instead of the setscrews. HOWEVER... Those GSO Crayfords are really smooth and a HUGE improvement over the stock R&P and I would highly recommend them. I have the single speed one on my 8" dob, and they're a great drop-in replacement. Ordering the same focuser from Agena Astroproducts makes it a bit easier to match the flange to your specific scope (they have spreadsheet tools for matching and everything) and they have incredible customer service. Here's the link to the one with the mounting flange that'll be a precise drop-in on your scope. https://agenaastro.com/gso-crayford-focuser-refractor-telescope-dual-speed-96mm.html That focuser already has a compression ring visual back, so getting any additional isn't necessary.
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Jun 4, 2020 20:23
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Yeah I was just talking about the very tip of the draw tube, replacing the last bit with this type of thing http://www.scopestuff.com/ss_fas2.htm or https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/astro-essentials-compression-ring-adapter-for-sky-watcher-refractors-m56.html But I agree with AZ, that the GSO crayfords at Agena are fantastic. I have a single speed on my C100ED, but you might like a dual speed at f/6.5. Don’t throw away your original focuser, your crayford can likely go with you to your next refractor when you upgrade.
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Jun 4, 2020 20:35
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Yooper posted:I can see why people are buying this thing and slapping it on big Dobs. Can you clarify this? Is there a way to use the starsense thing with the phone on different scopes?
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Jun 5, 2020 01:02
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Can you clarify this? Is there a way to use the starsense thing with the phone on different scopes? I gather that its just a matter of fabricating a bracket, but I've never tried. I don't see how the SSE would know what it's attached to, as long as its mount is firm and its view not obstructed. It might make a big dob more useful in a light polluted back yard. Oh god I don't need to spend more money.
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Jun 5, 2020 01:19
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Can you clarify this? Is there a way to use the starsense thing with the phone on different scopes? Bunch of folks on Cloudy Nights bought the cheaper scope, tossed the scope, and mounted it to a Dob. https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/689764-starsense-explorer/?hl=%20starsense%20%20explorer The Celestron developer pops in on page 2 and answers some questions. He says something about how they expected people to modify it, but didn't expect it to happen so quickly. This is a pic one dude posted that had some success and he was taking his phone on and off without re-aligning each time and it worked decently well. 
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Jun 5, 2020 01:20
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Wow, all that stuff is pretty wild. I thought the phone was looking at eyepiece output for a second until I realized it's just a mirror pointing up at the sky. If you read the Celestron dev's post on CN it's pretty amazing how they have it working with older phones - only recently have smartphone cameras had decent low light capability. It's clearly a pretty good move for Celestron - if you look at an original Starsense (I have one) I'm sure most of the cost comes from the integrated electronics doing the platesolving, and the camera/lens portion. They have managed to eliminate the camera and lens, as well as the hardware aspect of the plate solving and replaced it all with an app. Looks like a great solution for any visual pointing, it's basically perfect for Dobs. Maybe they've done this but if you could get a sync solution out of it for mounts or mount software, like the regular Starsense does for Celestron mounts, you could use it for alignment too. I thought about selling my Starsense because plate solving with Sharpcap or Astrotortilla is so good, but plugging a Starsense into my AVX is completely automated so I've kept it around.
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Jun 5, 2020 18:19
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What I find particularly interesting is that the Starsense explorer app seems to have been built for Celestron by Simulation Curriculum out of a basic version of SkySafari. You gotta wonder if plate-solving push-to is going to be incorporated into SkySafari 7 after Celestron's presumed exclusivity with the tech is over. I'm a little dismayed with how few objects are in the Starsense explorer DB. If Celestron and Simulation Curriculum are smart, they'll get a more comprehensive version of the app alongside piggyback adapters for smartphone plate solving out on the market FAST because they stand to make a Goddamn mint. If it's something that also works into the existing SkySafari 6 observing workflow, it'll be one of the greatest conveniences ever put in the hands of visual astronomers.
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Jun 5, 2020 19:16
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I'm going to design and 3d print an adapter to stick it on my Celestron Firstscope so the kiddo can go wild. Once I'm done I'll be happy to print up the adapter for whoever wants one. All I'd need is your outer diameter to mount to.
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Jun 5, 2020 19:33
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Got my 90mm mak in the mail today. Set everything up and it's pretty wild. I underestimated the power of this thing; I used it to read the label off a box of lens wipes that are on a desk, in the 8th story window of an office building... 80 meters away from my apartment balcony. The text of the product is clearly legible and I'm 100% sure I could read the bar code if I were a computer. Should be overcast tonight, but we'll see!
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Jun 5, 2020 20:06
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Salt Fish posted:Got my 90mm mak in the mail today. Set everything up and it's pretty wild. I underestimated the power of this thing; I used it to read the label off a box of lens wipes that are on a desk, in the 8th story window of an office building... 80 meters away from my apartment balcony. The text of the product is clearly legible and I'm 100% sure I could read the bar code if I were a computer. Hell yes, I’m glad you like it! What kind of mount did you get?
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Jun 5, 2020 21:52
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AstroZamboni posted:What I find particularly interesting is that the Starsense explorer app seems to have been built for Celestron by Simulation Curriculum out of a basic version of SkySafari. You gotta wonder if plate-solving push-to is going to be incorporated into SkySafari 7 after Celestron's presumed exclusivity with the tech is over. Yeah, there were comments that were like "Celestron needs to build this now because otherwise someone is going to jump on this" and I agree, especially if all it takes is a smartphone app and an adapter with a mirror. The video makes it look almost like a magic HUD next to the scope, once you align and plate solve, you move the scope and it uses the phone's gyros to detect the motion and move the view. Really slick. You make a good point about SkySafari's observing workflow, how far off the mark is this from what's already there? I haven't used it, or Celestron's wifi app, or anything else like it myself.
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Jun 5, 2020 22:05
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I'm using a tycka compact camera tripod which folds from 56" to 14", in a <2lb package which is ideal for bike-packing, but I assume has some issues compared to a proper telescope mount. Seems okay so far, the ball head mounting system is quite nice compared to what I've used in the past for photography. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IUO068S/
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Jun 5, 2020 22:09
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If Celestron advertises that Starsense Explorer can put objects in the field of the widest eyepiece of the telescope, and one of their telescopes has a thousand-millimetre focal length with a twenty-five millimetre Kellner or Plössl eyepiece, that implies a pointing accuracy within 0.625 degrees. That’s not bad. Big dobs have longer focal lengths, but they also have eyepieces with more generous field stops. Anyone who’s not standing on a ladder should be happy.
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Jun 5, 2020 22:11
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hannibal posted:You make a good point about SkySafari's observing workflow, how far off the mark is this from what's already there? I haven't used it, or Celestron's wifi app, or anything else like it myself.   Comparison between the two, all I did was move the view to the North.
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Jun 5, 2020 22:17
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Double post, welp.  M106. One hour of 90 second exposures. Astrospherics said my seeing was "poor", but not sure how that impacts what I see above. I'm getting some banding, not quite sure what to make of it. I'm using an older Canon T3 and shooting 20 darks/flats/bias to go with everything. Banding still seems to hang on. I used plate solving paired with Stellarium to make sure I was on target and man, that poo poo is awesome. I'm going to try for some clusters next, not sure I have enough focal length to make the current galaxies shine. Also took out the Celestron with the Starsense and had a lot of fun with the kiddo. He really enjoys steering it around and actually being on what he wants to look at. It'll be nice once some of the planets rise earlier.
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Jun 7, 2020 14:59
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Tonight was first light with the giant binoculars and WOWEE WOW WOWZA. I'll be writing up my full thoughts for Cloudy Nights in the AM, but these fuckers are like a whole new world.
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Jun 8, 2020 08:16
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AstroZamboni posted:Tonight was first light with the giant binoculars and WOWEE WOW WOWZA. I'll be writing up my full thoughts for Cloudy Nights in the AM, but these fuckers are like a whole new world. How would you compare using big binoculars with using binoviewers on an equivalent aperture? I’ve found that binoviewers definitely increase viewing comfort and perceived detail, but I’ve never tried binoculars at night.
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Jun 8, 2020 15:08
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Rolabi Wizenard posted:How would you compare using big binoculars with using binoviewers on an equivalent aperture? I’ve found that binoviewers definitely increase viewing comfort and perceived detail, but I’ve never tried binoculars at night. Apples and oranges. For one thing, you lose brightness with binoviewers because of how it splits the image. Second, binoviewers tend to be constrained to high magnification because of the Barlow typically required for reaching focus with them. That makes them kinda lovely for deep sky, whereas the binos have a 2.6° field. Third, having a correct-image, straight-through view gives a very different "feeling" that's kinda hard to describe. The equipment kinda disappears and the sensation is more akin to looking out the window of a spaceship. It's a hell of a thing.
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Jun 8, 2020 17:44
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AstroZamboni posted:Apples and oranges. For one thing, you lose brightness with binoviewers because of how it splits the image. Second, binoviewers tend to be constrained to high magnification because of the Barlow typically required for reaching focus with them. That makes them kinda lovely for deep sky, whereas the binos have a 2.6° field. Third, having a correct-image, straight-through view gives a very different "feeling" that's kinda hard to describe. The equipment kinda disappears and the sensation is more akin to looking out the window of a spaceship. It's a hell of a thing. Awesome, that all makes total sense.
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Jun 8, 2020 18:11
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Here's the first light report I posted on CN: Last night I was finally able to conduct first light with the binoculars. Bear in mind that I'm in a Bortle 6 area, and it'll be a bit before I can get out under dark skies but HOLY MOLY WOWIE WOW WOWZA. I wasn't prepared for just how different the experience is from looking through a telescope. Once you're comfortable, the world around you slips away and the equipment vanishes and it's like you're just peering through a window into space. Also, long enough eye relief to play nice with my glasses, but I'll have to put something on the end of the eyepiece filter attachments to keep them from scratching my eyeglass lenses. First object was M51. Bright, compact, but unmistakeable. Panned through the Virgo cluster and lost count of the galaxies I saw. The sunflower and the needle were striking. M13 and M3 were stunning. M57 was such a sharp, tiny donut hole that it looked like it was marked by a fine-point pencil. Saw the faintest hint of the veil against the skyglow. Wrapped up with the moon, Jupiter and Saturn. Also, boy howdy the optics in these are SHARP. Definitely some CA on the moon and planets, but I'm not planning on using these as a planetary instrument. I've got my DSE for killer planet views. The P-mount worked beautifully with the exception of the altitude axis was very stiff. I'm going to be modifying the bearing. Don't know how yet, but I'll figure something out. I can already tell this is a whole new world of observing. What's interesting is before this stuff was given to me, I was seriously considering trying to get a basic short 80-102mm achromat to use as an RFT. I'm not anymore. I can tell this is going to be the best 4" RFT imaginable for my observing style and will augment the rest of my equipment better than a cheap 4" achromat ever could.
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Jun 8, 2020 18:57
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Yooper posted:Double post, welp. Banding is definitely a thing with older Canons, I think your T3 is probably the cause. I have not seen it so much with mine but I have a 7D Mk II. I'm sure if you search CN you'll see discussion, it's enough of a problem that Pixinsight comes with a script just to remove it. Seeing in general will cause less signal (lower SNR) and will reduce quality. It'll also do things like blow out stars more than normal, diffusion, and produce more background noise/light pollution. It may not be visible to the naked eye as seeing is a combo of humidity/cloud cover/temperature/high level winds and whatever other atmospheric effects there might be.
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Jun 9, 2020 22:28
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hannibal posted:Banding is definitely a thing with older Canons, I think your T3 is probably the cause. I have not seen it so much with mine but I have a 7D Mk II. I'm sure if you search CN you'll see discussion, it's enough of a problem that Pixinsight comes with a script just to remove it. I checked in with CN about it and they said it is walking noise. An accumulation of sensor errors constantly layered right next to each other. I made sure my alignment was spot on and still had it. They said dithering is about the only solution but I'm a ways out from getting a mount capable of that. My StarAdventurer can guide in one axis, but I'm not sure if that will resolve the issue. Once I get more time in and decide I'm ready for the next step I'll get a proper mount.  Ordered up the focuser, diagonal, and a wide field lens too. The routine has been Celestron with the kiddo till 11:30 ish then he goes to bed and I get out the astro kit. I'm spending a lot of time just focusing, finding the location, and tuning it all in. I need to streamline my workflow to get more imaging time and less gently caress off time.
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Jun 9, 2020 22:53
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Not being in the financial bind I was in when I asked 7 years ago, I took a look at my dad's old telescope and the tube and mirrors are still in great shape. It's a Meade 628 (got the diameter wrong last time). Sadly, 40 year old mounts aren't just sitting around like they used to be, and I'm having trouble finding one. I'm going to give the old RA drive a cleaning and see if I could do anything, but let's assume I need to get a whole new mount. I want something that will work for visual and photography, both film and digital, so I'd like something that can track for a couple of hours if possible. I'd like to keep it on the cheaper side, but not so cheap that I end up with junk. Anywhere I should start looking?
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Jun 10, 2020 02:44
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 We're getting there! Learned a lot on my first attempt at this. Getting my cellphone lined up was a HUGE pain in the rear end even with a plastic mount. The tripod is okayish, portable definitely, but at the end of an hour I was using dollar bills to shim the legs rather than try to adjust the aim of the scope. I understand now exactly why you'd want an equatorial mount because while my tripod moves smoothly in 1 axis, that axis isn't aligned to the rotation of earth, and you can tell when everything is sliding out of frame at a diagonal. Moving the view along the vertical axis is extremely painful because the mechanism has lash-back where you have to aim too low deliberately and then let the weight of the scope pull it back into the correct angle. Planets are super bright, so I had to keep reducing the exposure time until I got down to about 1/40th of a second, and realistically I need less light still. I'm starting to understand how I could use a filter, because ideally I'd want a longer exposure that can capture the moons or any background stars. That would make it possible to get better alignment on stacking multiple images instead of just guessing, which is causing some blurriness. I noticed as well that multiple clear days have very different viewing conditions compared to each other. Today was fairly mediocre with a lot of shimmer from the atmosphere. I'm going to take another crack at it tomorrow and see what I can come up with.
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Jun 13, 2020 08:22
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Nice! I'm no pro but I don't think that a filter + longer exposures will help with background stars (unless it only lets through specific spectra?) Since it would dim the stars as well E: I have a cheapo celestron tripod and it isn't the "good" type but it does have these knobs connected by cables you can twist to make small adjustments which helps a lot
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Jun 13, 2020 19:46
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I have very little experience w/ AP but IIRC getting Jupiter and it's moons together in one image is a dynamic range problem. A filter isn't going to help, you'd need to do a composite image.
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Jun 13, 2020 20:27
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Thanks, that does seem obvious to me in retrospect, but I suppose that sketchy posting at 3:30am is a normal part of posting in the astronomy thread. I have a few ideas for what to try tonight. I I'm observing from my bedroom window in DC, and being able to observe mars, saturn, jupiter, and the moon without leaving the house is pretty incredible and a lot more than I would have guessed I'd be able to do before I started.
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Jun 13, 2020 20:45
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Salt Fish posted:Thanks, that does seem obvious to me in retrospect, but I suppose that sketchy posting at 3:30am is a normal part of posting in the astronomy thread. I tend to do deep sky more than planetary, but a couple brief thoughts:
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Jun 13, 2020 22:10
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