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You’re going to have a somewhat difficult time getting focus on that scope with a dslr. Out of the box prime focus is basically impossible without modifying the scope to move the mirror cell forward. You can do some shots through an eyepiece with the appropriate adapter but the next problem you’re going to run into is the focuser. It doesn’t have a locking screw so gravity will unfortunately win and it will fall out of focus easily. I’m not trying to be a debbie downer. All of those problems are somewhat overcomable but it is really a challenge. I know because I tried it with this exact scope and then I said gently caress it and bought a whole rig just to do what I wanted to do. Now, if you want to piggyback your camera on the mounting rings and do some super wide field Milky Way shots that’s a whole different ball game and I think it will work great even with just the Orion attachable motor. Another option is a one of the many affordable trackers that sky-watcher or ioptron or whomever make. I considered the star adventurer pro for a bit but never pulled the trigger. It will do what you want (assuming it’s wide field using a dslr lens).
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Jul 25, 2020 03:35
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You're asking too much of that scope, imo. It has a focal length of 750mm, so with a 4mm eyepiece and a 2x barlow you're getting 375x magnification. The maximum you could hope to get out of that scope is probably around 300x (2 times the aperture, rule of thumb), and even that is asking more than is ideal. I usually try to keep it at 80% of that number which would be about 240x. If you use just the 4mm eyepiece without the barlow and just stare for awhile things might get better, albeit smaller. A 3mm eyepiece (or 6mm w/ 2x) would likely be ideal, but a good eyepiece at that focal length with a decent FoV and eye relief is pretty expensive ($200-$300). Also maybe using some planetary filters could help as well.
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Oct 5, 2020 18:15
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Here are the 3 best images I managed to get over the summer. All of these were taken with: William Optics GT81 w/ 0.8x flattener/reducer ZWO ASI294-MC Pro (cooled to -5) 50mm guide scope with a ASI 120mm guide camera EQ6-R Pro Mount Elephants Trunk. First image I got with this setup. I kind of want to reprocess this now that I know a little bit more about PixInsight. Just need to make the time. This one was taken in Phoenix under Bortle 8/9 skies. Optolong L-enhance filter 17 600s exposures  Andromeda. I really like how this one came out. We took a trip up to Payson, AZ for a long weekend and I took my scope. This was under Bortle 2 skies which were incredible. Only had one really clear night. And even on that night a lot of thin clouds were moving through. Our cabin backed right up to the rim too, so there wasn't a ton of sky visible so I had to be selective and quick. Just a UV/IR cut filter on this one This is just 20 30s exposures. The dark skies were great.  North America Nebula/Cygnus Wall. I tried to do a false SHO palette on this one and I'm mostly pleased with the results. Bortle 8/9 Optolong L-enhance filter 65 120s exposures 
simble fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Oct 22, 2020 |
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Oct 22, 2020 22:06
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Steely Dad posted:I’ve been given the go-ahead on this from the A/T astronomy thread, but they also pointed me here, so I figured I’d ask again in case anyone has any further advice: The generally accepted advice here is to get a used 6-8” dobsonian like the Orion xt6 or xt8. Quick setup, dead simple alt/az dobsonian mount that even your 4 year olds can figure out. And a relatively small footprint for easy storage. The only downside is maybe that you’ll have to collimate it if it gets a good jostle/every few times you want to take it out.
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Nov 21, 2020 20:03
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Internet Explorer posted:What do you all think? I think the 071 isn't the best choice of camera for the scope family you have listed. It has relatively large pixels at 4.76 microns. If you want to stick in the ZWO family, the 183 is probably a better choice for these relatively short focal length scopes. The 071 with a redcat 51 gives you 3.94 arcsec/pixel while the 183 will give you 1.98 arcsec/pixel. The general rule of thumb is to try and shoot for 1-2 arcsec/pixel. If you have a good reason for choosing the 071 that I haven't thought of, I'd like to hear it. And, regarding OAG, it is a smaller footprint (assuming that the OAG fits within the backfocus requirements of your camera, it likely does, but something to watch out for), but I don't think it's simpler than using some rings and a guide scope. Getting the prism just right with the OAG can be tricky, especially with smaller aperture refractors. I think it will work for you, but something to keep in mind. If you can swing the extra cost, the 290mm might be a better choice for a guide camera, especially at shorter focal lengths, smaller apertures, and using OAG, because it is significantly higher resolution than the 120mm.
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Dec 6, 2020 06:47
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Yooper posted:I'm looking at either the 294 or the 183 for, initially a 275mm FL scope. Later though I see an Orion 8" astrograph or something along that lines. The 183 is perfect for the 275mm FL, giving a 1.8"/pixel. If I pair it with the 800mm FL I get a 0.62"/pixel. With the 294 the 8" Orion is perfect and the 275mm scope is under sampled at 3.47"/pixel. That's a tough one. I'd say if you were dealing with slightly longer focal length on the shorter scope you could get away with the 294 for both. I'm using the 294 on a William Optics GT81 with a 0.8x flattener/reducer and that puts me at 2.49"/px which when I'm looking at the pictures I've gotten, I'm totally happy with. I live in a pretty light polluted area, but I almost always have excellent seeing thanks to the dry desert. I do kind of wish I would've gone with the 183 or 1600. I think when I eventually get a mono camera (a matter of time, I think) I'll have to make the decision between those 2 cameras, and given that my guiding total error is almost always under 1", I'll probably go with the 183. I think a lot depends on where you live and what kind of seeing conditions you typically have as well. I think it's also important to know if what you're doing is guided or unguided and what kind of exposure times you expect to get. If you have good seeing and good guiding then the higher resolution camera would work great. If you're doing unguided long exposures in a very humid area, then the lower resolution camera would probably actually be better. One thing you can do is go to astrobin.com and look for pictures folks have taken with whatever combination you're thinking about. I'm sure people have "mismatched" scope camera combos on there and you can probably judge for yourself if it will work for you. And, while I'm posting, I figure I'll share the last few shots I've gotten so far this fall: All captured with: WO GT81 IV (w/ 0.8x reducer/flattener) ZWO asi294mc pro Optolong L-enhance or L-pro filter depending on target Processed 99% in Pixinsight Cave Nebula - 5 hours (600s) - This is a pretty tight crop because I underestimated the size of this target. Just a quick process.  Pacman Nebula - 4.8 hours (600s)  Pleiades - I think this was 50 30 second exposures - Not sure how I feel about this one, I think I'll need to give this one another go at some differing exposures and/or gain settings. I also tried to do some HDR stuff with multiple exposure lengths, but I just couldn't get it to look very good.  Orion and Running Man Nebulas - I took a lot of images at varying exposures and the 100 30s exposure stack looked the best. I again tried to get some HDR stuff going here, but it didn't go well. But, I am very happy with the final product here.  Horsehead and Flame Nebulas - 8.3 hours (100 300s exposures) - This is probably my favorite thing in the night sky. I want to go back and go overboard with the data acquisition to see how noise free I can get this. Might shoot for 24-48 hours on it this winter.  California Nebula - 7.3 hours (88 300s exposures) - Just took this one last night and processed it tonight. This was super easy to process and I think it came out pretty good. 
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Dec 7, 2020 03:46
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Rolabi Wizenard posted:You might also consider the ASI533MC, newer than either the 294 or the 183, with a pixel size in between. Smaller overall sensor size, but at your short 275mm focal length, youd still have a nice FOV. 533 can work if you don't mind a square sensor and can make do with 9 megapixels.
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Dec 7, 2020 04:32
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Yooper posted:533 looks to fit the situation pretty well. Is there a reason I can't do with only 9 megapixels? I'm seeing some pretty impressive photos on Astrobin using the 533. No, it's just something to keep in mind. It can definitely take some great pictures. Me personally, I like to crop and/or resize my images to 4k which is 3048x2160. The 533's resolution is 3008x3008, so it doesn't quite fit. A small resize likely wouldn't affect the quality of the image at all anyway sincea most of the thing you care about will be in the middle of the sensor. Worst case, you might need to do some mosaics to get exactly what you want if you have a particular aspect ratio in mind. Quite a bit more imaging (2x or 4x, depending on how many frames you put in your mosaic), and a little more processing. An advantage to the square sensor is that it will have uniform vignetting so extracting backgrounds from your images might be easier.
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Dec 7, 2020 16:51
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This thread needs new posts, and as I haven't gotten out in a little while, this is the last 2 pics I took. WO GT81 0.6x flattener, 294mc pro, l-enhance filter Rosette - 2021-02-05 - 60 300s exposures Really really pleased with the detail in this one.  Horsehead 2nd attempt - few nights in January - 260 300s exposures (really went overboard to see if I could get it as noise free as I possibly could) I think this version came out way better than my first, but it could've also been mostly in processing. 
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Apr 30, 2021 00:17
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Yooper posted:Man, those are both awesome. Really like the Rosette, both came out super clear. Thanks. I do what phd2 calls a “large” dither every 3 frames. I also have an auto focuser that I have run every hour or after a 10C temp change. The auto focuser was a huge QoL improvement and really took out a lot of the stress of a potentially wasted night due to lovely focus.
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Apr 30, 2021 01:15
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I went with the pegasus focuscube v2. Solid and accurate little unit once you have it dialed in. I think the zwo is similar in most ways. Now that you mention it, the large dither setting is an SGP setting. I assumed it translated to something in phd2 because it always waits for the guiding to settle and phd2 records a dither on the graph. I suppose that could just be an API thing to throw a mark up. I think the important thing with dithering is that it just has to be big enough. The only thing you’re sacrificing is like a 5-10px border on your final stacked image.
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Apr 30, 2021 02:01
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The focuscube really is great. Great choice. My only advice is to ignore the setup instructions and just start plugging step and backlash numbers into your acquisition software of choice until you get a deep V on the HFD/FWHM graph. When I initially followed some of the setup instructions, I could not get a V to appear on the graph in SGP. It was very frustrating until I just started upping the suggested numbers, by a lot. Like a factor of 10. Then I just tweaked it until I could get good focus with a few 8 second exposures. I think I'm currently doing 8 or 9.
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May 6, 2021 16:54
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Golden-i posted:I never do dark frames with my 294MC-Pro any more. It seems like a waste of time when I'm running a cooled camera, and doing basic image calibration can offset the hot/cold pixels just as well without much effort. Counter to that, with a cooled camera its very easy to take dark frames and just have a dark library that you use for a long period of time. I suppose it does matter how cold you're able to get your sensor. I'm in Phoenix and so -5 is about as low as I can go and there's still some pretty considerable noise that the dark frames help with. I'm also using a 294MC-pro. In other news, I did make a very questionable purchasing decision. I was able to get a 2600MM-pro that I am chomping at the bit to use. I also bought a full set of Chroma LRGB and 3nm NB filters. Holy poo poo my wallet. Or as my wife said when I proposed the purchase to her, "jesus christ!". The filters are still a few weeks out but I got the camera, so I'm in the middle of making said dark libraries for it. The behavior of the sensor at even -5 is really impressive. With this camera I think you could definitely make the argument that darks are not necessary, but maybe old habits die hard. This is a 120s dark at -5C and look ma, no glow!  Compare that with the 290MC's 120s -5C dark  These 2 images are stretched a similar amount.
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Jun 18, 2021 23:14
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 That certainly makes a big difference. However, the amp glow should still be there. I'm surprised its not detectible in your lights.  This is the top right of a single debayered, but uncalibrated light that I have taken with the 294 and you can definitely see the glow (the faint white line). It gets worse when stacked.
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Jun 19, 2021 00:32
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The newest revisions (like last 2 years) of the eq6-r have a usb-a port next to the guider port.
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Jun 19, 2021 01:24
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 No filters for the 2600 yet. Here's another taken with my 294MC. North America and Pelican Nebulas. 36x3m subs, taken through an Optolong L-enhance filter. Would've been more subs, but I guess my laptop rebooted for an unexplained reason around midnight. I was messing with my scope and I think I took my flattener out of spec so the stars are a bit stretched in the corner, but  I also tried to make the switch from SGP (which recently went to a subscription licensing model) over to NINA and I think NINA has come a loooong way. I'd say at this point it is pretty much at feature parity with SGP. It worked great.
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Jun 22, 2021 05:05
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Sorry if this does come off as fire hose, but there’s a lot of implied questions in your request. Phone posting so sorry if some of these numbers are inaccurate, but it gets you on your way if you’re serious about this. You did say under $3k. $3k can get you a pretty decent wide field dso’s or planetary setup but not both. 3k can get you a something like a red cat 51 $825, an eq5 mount $1500 a guide scope and camera $400. If you have a dslr you can use that or up your budget a bit and add an Astro camera from zwo or qhy. This even leaves enough room in the budget to upgrade to an eq-6 mount if you want No this isn’t simple and there really isn’t something simple that does what you want on the astrophotography front. It’s a complicated thing that requires highly precise parts. The red cat is really cool for it’s size. If what you want to do is visual, get the biggest dobsonian you can afford and transport comfortably and some nice eyepieces to go with it. Edit: and this could easily be controlled by a raspberry pi that you can stick on the mount. The software for acquisition is free (astroberry). What you want to do is complicated so expect a long learning curve. simble fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Jul 10, 2021 |
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Jul 10, 2021 07:18
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LibCrusher posted:What kind of results could I achieve with one of these: https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-evolution-925-telescope You would never take a 10s exposure of a planet. So that is fine. They are too bright. Most planetary imaging is done by taking a video and then aligning and stacking the best x% of the frames of the video. It’s called lucky imaging.
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Jul 10, 2021 07:25
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Horray my Chroma 3nm OIII filter finally shipped. I've had 2 out of 3 NB filters for the last month and I ordered the set 2 months ago. Not that it would've mattered though. Monsoons and smoke have been around for the last month solid except for maybe 2 or 3 sort of passable nights.
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Jul 28, 2021 16:17
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 First light with the new camera and filters. This is just 1 night so just 110 minutes of Ha, 90 minutes OIII and 100 minutes of SII. No LRGB data, but I will probably get some tonight and try blending the NB nebula with LRGB stars. Should be pretty easy. The new advanced sequencer in NINA is really good. If you're using NINA and aren't on the nightlies for 1.11 yet, you should be. The polar alignment plugin plus ASTAP for plate solving is also super good. The first time I plate solved with ASTAP after using platesolve2 for so long, I thought it was broken because it was so fast. A nearby solve takes less than a second and a 180 degree blind solve takes maybe 5 seconds. It rules.
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Aug 3, 2021 22:35
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Thanks everyone for the compliments on the North America shot. Last nights target was the Cygnus Loop. I processed it in SHO and HOO just for shits and gigs. SHO:  HOO:  I definitely see why this is most often processed in HOO. It looks cool as hell. I do like the SHO one too just to get an idea of where the SII lives (hint: there isn't much). I also think my processing went better on the HOO version as well. Having the APS-C sensor paired with my ~380mm focal length makes for a really cool and useful FOV and this picture takes almost all of that FOV. I don't dare breathe on my flattener as I think it's about as close to correctly spaced as I could possibly hope for (certainly good enough for me). This camera with a pixel size of 3.76 microns is just about a perfect scale for my seeing also (right at 2 arcsec/px). Overall I'm really pleased with my current setup for what I like to shoot. Next upgrade for me is going to be a lifepo4 battery that I can hook up to my power box. My father in law owns an old mine about 1.5 hours from town and it's quite a bit darker than here (bortle 4 vs my bortle 1 million) and I want to start making some field trips and doing some LRGB stuff. I put a meter that can measure watt hours on my power box and it looks like I can get away with a 50-75AH battery which is significantly cheaper than the 100AH battery I thought I was going to need.
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Aug 5, 2021 21:45
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Golden-i posted:These are so gorgeous. I'm still looking forward to getting a mono camera and getting into HOO/SHO shooting one of these years, but I still really like shooting in the visible RBG spectrum. The idea of "if it were just brighter, this is what I'd see when I look up" is still really neat to me. Thanks  Dang that cygnus star cloud is legit though. Real existential dread from that one. I really love the parts of the sky and in your shot especially where the stars almost look like noise. With the NB I lose all of that and I haven't quite worked out my LRGB+NB strategy yet.
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Aug 14, 2021 21:02
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Yooper posted:Here's the first pass through Pixinsight. Just curious, why so short on the exposure times? What filter were you using (if any)? What kind of seeing and light pollution are you dealing with?
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Aug 26, 2021 17:24
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Speaking of M31, I finally got back out last night and took some subs and then tried to get an LRGB process that works. Had a huge scare during setup when my mount head fell off the tripod and smashed on the concrete (I put the counterweight on before tightening the center support bolt. Real dumb.) Luckily, everything seemed to work after this and I don't even see a scratch on it. The EQ6 is definitely a tank. I did some Ha data (about 45 minutes) and it definitely has some interesting bits, but I'm not really sure the best way to combine it yet. Like, I'm not sure if I should add it to the R channel, or the luminance channel, or both and in what proportions. Some experimenting to do there for sure. Something is certainly wrong with my process as I got some weird square artifacts on a bunch of stars. I'll have to figure that out. This really isn't much data. I do think considering this is from Bortle 8, it's not too bad. L - 90s x 28 (42 minutes) RGB- 45s x 28 (21 minutes each) 1.75 hours total I think part of my star artifact problem has something to do with the fact that I binned the RGB data at 2x2 and I didn't bin the luminance data. Then, I think I upsampled the RGB data too late in the process, but its kind of a pain to go back and reprocess at this point. I think I need more data before I try to reprocess. 
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Sep 5, 2021 07:08
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T1g4h posted:
This rules! I don't want to share some of my earliest attempts at anything so good for you. I am curious what your setup is. Meanwhile, I shot the heart nebula last night and I'm pretty pleased with the results. I'm trying to take better notes about what I'm doing and starting to better organize my quickly growing collection of files and masters and everything. Now that I've been doing this for about 18 months, I have a pretty good idea what my workflow looks like from acquisition all the way through processing. So, I think I'm going to try to write some asset management software to help keep things organized. I really want something to wrangle masters and automate some PixInsight repetitive preprocessing tasks that basically never change. My current setup of a couple of powershell scripts that move files around is not scaling very well and I'm worried about accidentally deleting something I didn't mean to. We'll see though.  Click for big pre:Target: Heart Nebula - IC 1805 - Sh2 190 Dates: 2021-09-09 Coordinates: RA: 2h 32m 33.893s Dec: 61d 24m 21.09s Rot: 100d Scope: WO GT81 Mount: Skywatcher EQ6R Pro Lens: WO Flat 6AIII 0.8x reducer Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro Filters: Ha 3nm SII 3nm OIII 3nm Subs: Ha - 15x600s OIII - 14x600s SII - 14x600s Total - 7.1 hours
simble fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 20:33
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Crescent Nebula - NGC 6888 - Sh2-105 - C27 Embiggen I took this one last month, but just got around to processing it tonight. This is admittedly not one of my favorite targets and I didn't have high hopes for this one, but it came out better than I expected pre:Dates: 2021-08-05 2021-08-07 Coordinates: RA: 20h12m7s Dec: 38d21m21s Rot: 0 Location: Desc: Phoenix, AZ Bortle: 8/9 Scope: WO GT81 Mount: Skywatcher EQ6R Pro Lens: WO Flat 6AIII 0.8x reducer Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Filters: Ha 3nm SII 3nm OIII 3nm Integration: Ha - 15 x 10min (2.5hr) OIII - 14 x 10min (2.3hr) SII - 15 x 10min (2.5hr) Total - 44 x 10min (7.3hr) Processing: PixInsight
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Sep 20, 2021 07:14
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Ineptitude posted:Been looking for a used EQ6-R for well over a year and one finally popped p. The seller bought it in 2016 but has not used it much. From photos it looks brand new. The tell here is if it has a USB-A port on the side. If it does, you'll definitely be fine. If it doesn't you'll have to run the USB through the hand controller and when I tried that with mine, things got a little wonky, but I guess it worked ok. It was wonky enough that I probably won't try it again.
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Sep 23, 2021 19:29
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 Embiggen pre:Target: Triangulum Galaxy / M33 / NGC598 Dates: 2021-10-10 Coordinates: RA: 1h33m39.6s Dec: +30d 36" 58.64' Rot: 96d Location: Desc: Phoenix, AZ Bortle: 8/9 Scope: WO GT81 Camera: ASI 2600MM-Pro Mount: Skywatcher EQ6R Pro Lens: WO Flat 6AIII 0.8x reducer Filters: Chroma 36mm LRGB Subs: L - 101 x 90s (2.5 hrs) R - 50 x 45 (0.6 hrs) G - 50 x 45 (0.6 hrs) B - 50 x 45 (0.6 hrs) The luminance data was collected at 1x1 binning and the RGB data was all collected at 2x2 binning (hence why its a much lower % of the overall time). It was cool processing it. After I aligned all of the channels, I combined the RGB data and I was a little underwhelmed. Then I finished processing the luminance data and when I stretched both and applied the luminance to the RGB image everything just popped. It was really satisfying. I also changed some things up and used sky flats rather than my normal tracing pad and a t-shirt. The flats came out well. And the sky flats were much faster to shoot. Every filter, even Ha was around or much less than 1 second of exposure time to get a good flat. I can then just use an already existing 1s flat dark that I took forever ago to calibrate them. I think this will just be my normal process going forward. I can wake up just before sunrise, remote into my laptop from my phone and run the flat wizard in NINA in sky flat mode. Here's the rough Ha stack, if you're curious: 
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Oct 13, 2021 16:42
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pumped up for school posted:This is on my drive home tomorrow for $80 (bad photo, Celestron Astromaster 130EQ). For very amateur backyard scope (me). Assuming it doesn't come with anything else not in the photo, any tips for things to pick up? New eyepieces, some way to collimate, t-ring for Nikon and T-ring adapter, etc. For visual, if you can find them, grab a couple of the GSO eyepieces from Agena Astro. They are amazing for the price. The GSO superview 20mm and 15mm paired with a 2x barlow gives you basically all you'd need for some casual observing of planets and some DSO. And, I think you could get all 3 for ~$100-$150. They are miles better than the 2 included eyepieces. You're unlikely to get good pictures with this scope using prime focus. The reason being that without moving the mirror, you will not be able to achieve proper backfocus. You're going to have more luck doing eyepiece projection photography. An adapter like this works well enough (in combination with the t-ring: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0140U9URO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1. Keep in mind that the focuser that comes with this scope will not support the weight of a dslr very well. It will slip. I've said in this thread before that taking pictures with this scope is a real pain in the rear end (I tried a lot).
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Oct 19, 2021 23:44
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I was using Sharpcap for polar alignment, but I switched to the NINA nightlies with the alignment plugin. The 3 point polar alignment plugin does a really great job. The only caveat is that you pretty much have to use ASTAP for plate solving. It's the only supported solver that's fast enough to make it useful. I shoot 1s subs through my luminance filter and I can pretty much align in real time. The way the 3 point polar alignment plugin works is that it just takes and solves 3 pictures and calculates a circle. Then you adjust to make that calculated circle be concentric with the celestial pole. This means that you can use it even if you don't have a view of the celestial pole. The closer you are to the celestial pole, the more accurate things will be as the error on the calculated circle can be larger the farther you are from the pole. Also, it expects your mount to be tracking, so if you're way off on your initial alignment, the tracking error will manifest in the adjustments. Usually this doesn't matter as the error introduced is relatively small as long as you're somewhat quick in getting aligned. Worst case, just run it again if it'll make you feel better. Also, if you're guiding at wide to modest focal lengths, then perfect alignment is definitely not required (like a couple arc minutes would definitely be fine).
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Nov 5, 2021 05:09
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Leaf Lock posted:Even in the summer my finders would fog up after ~1 hour. Telrad is practically unusable most nights. I was thinking what would be an effective way of defogging in the field. A hair dryer? It's really the finder that's the problem and eyepieces, but those can be preserved by rotating them and keeping them in your pocket. A quick google shows that AstroZap makes a dew heater for Telrads. https://www.highpointscientific.com/astrozap-dew-heater-band-for-telrad-az-721
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Nov 9, 2021 17:08
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California Nebula (NGC 1499) 4k California nebula is in a prime spot for me to image right now so I got 4 nights in a row. Based off of some other users of the Sony IMX571 sensor, I decided to forego using darks on these images and I think it really paid off. I've been using the sky flat mode of NINAs flat wizard and it rules. I usually wake up right around dawn anyways thanks to nature's alarm clock, the 3 year old. So I just wake up, push a button and I'm done. The lights and flats were only calibrated with a bias as the read noise level at -5C (even at 10 minute exposures) is statistically similar to the bias frames anyways. In other words, the IMX571 rules. pre:Target: California Nebula (NGC 1499)
Dates: 2021-11-29 - 2021-12-02
Coordinates:
RA: 04h 02m 40.190s
Dec: +36° 13' 10.908"
Rot: 150
Location:
Desc: Phoenix, AZ
Bortle: 8/9
Scope:
WO GT81
Mount:
Skywatcher EQ6R Pro
Lens:
WO Flat 6AIII 0.8x reducer
Camera:
ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
Subs:
Ha - 49 x 10m (8.2 hrs)
OIII - 79 x 10m (13.2 hrs)
SII - 46 x 10m (7.6 hrs)
Total - 29 hours
Processing
PixInsight
Photoshop
Notes:
Built luminance from Ha and a hyper stretched, starless version of O3.
Emphasized the main nebula on the O3 luminance with the PixelMath formula "iswitch(lvar( $T, 591, krn_gauss()) < 5.5e-4, 0, $T )".
Then applied a bit of convolution to it and added it with the Ha
simble fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Dec 7, 2021 |
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Dec 3, 2021 20:53
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You're all far too kind. Thank you.Captain von Trapp posted:Are you sure you're not reading the scale backwards? I've seen space telescope images that aren't that pretty. The wonders of narrowband imaging. Especially somewhere with pretty good seeing and transparency.
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Dec 4, 2021 00:18
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Well I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that almost all of the inner/visible planets will be in near conjunction in late March. The bad news is that they’ll also be in near conjunction with the sun. You’re also going to be there in a near full moon. Not a great setup for stargazing. Honestly any binoculars will make for some cool views just in terms of seeing more stars than you could imagine. Id say for this particular setup a lower focal length/magnification would be better.
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Dec 31, 2021 20:50
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Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) 4k Orion is never in a good spot for me due to some unfortunate trees in my backyard. Luckily, I can back my scope right up against the house on one of the patios to get a couple extra hours on it. This is mostly thanks to NINA's three point polar alignment process. Orion is in the southern sky, so when the scope is backed up against the house, I don't have a view of Polaris. I did the three point polar alignment basically at the celestial equator and it worked great. Tracking was easily sub pixel. In the middle of this acquisition, I decided to clean everything in my optical train. Everything was so dusty. My before and after flats are definitely a sight to behold. I think I'll take a crack at M42 next before the new/waxing moon ends. I have a pretty decent M42 already, but not with this camera and filter set. pre:Target:
Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33)
Dates:
2022-01-01 - 2022-01-05
Coordinates:
RA: 05h 40m 59s
Dec: -02d 27m 30s
Rot: 90
Location:
Desc: Phoenix, AZ
Bortle: 8/9
Scope:
WO GT81
Mount:
Skywatcher EQ6R Pro
Lens:
WO Flat 6AIII 0.8x reducer
Filters:
Chroma 36mm LRGB
Chroma 36mm Ha 3nm
Chroma 36mm SII 3nm
Chroma 36mm OIII 3nm
Camera:
ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
Subs:
L - 35x30s (17m30s)
R - 35x30s (17m30s)
G - 34x30s (17m)
B - 33x30s (16m30s)
Ha - 56x300s (4h40m)
OIII - 52x300s (4h20m)
SII - 55x300s (4h35m)
Total - 14h43m
Processing Notes:
NB and LRGB start combination
NB combination
R: SII*0.6+Ha*0.4
G: Ha*0.5+OIII*0.5
B: OIII*0.8+SII*0.2
Ha used for NB luminance
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Jan 5, 2022 23:35
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The ASI2600 rules. It's a really good piece of kit. The IMX571 sensor is amazingly good. It has basically no dark noise. I stopped using darks completely and have no regrets. The dark histograms even at 10 minutes look statistically indistinguishable from my bias frame's histograms and there's no amp glow. A lot of folks have been buying IMX571 cameras from ali express instead of from ZWO/QHY. This obviously comes with some risk, but the price is almost half that of the name brands. Other things that it has going for it:
The only disadvantage I've had with it over the 294MC PRO that I had before, is that its bigger so the TEC has to work a little harder. I'm in Phoenix, so summer nights are hot and the cooler has to run at 80-90% in the summer to get me down to -5C. It won't go any lower. The smaller camera's cooler was at 40-50% for the same results. I think it's really the best sensor on the market right now for amateur astrophotography.
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Jan 6, 2022 05:40
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Beccara posted:I'm sure it's just cos i'm being thick but I can't see jack all on the screen and barely anything thru the viewfinder. APT and BYEOS give me noise on the lives. I'm finding I have to do 5s exposure's and twist the focus ring a bit, it wont be helping that it's full moon with a scattering of cloud cover and it's using the kit lense thats 18-55mm f/5.?, I may delay the mount for a month or two and get a f/1.4/2/2.8 lense in the 75-135mm range The moon actually makes focusing easier. It just makes everything else harder. Use the moon to focus. Worst case, you know where near focus is on your lens and can use a mask to get finer focus later when there isn't a moon. But just remember that with a bahtinov mask, the brighter the star, the better.
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Mar 17, 2022 22:16
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T1g4h posted:Out of curiosity, do any of y'all have any experience with the PoleMaster? I'm thinking about picking one up around tax return time since the polar scope + adapter combo for my iEXOS-100 is out of stock / backordered everywhere I look. There's no official adapter for my mount, but from the poking around i've done it looks like I can either have one 3D printed or I can buy an adapter to mount it to my dovetail that my DSLR is mounted to. I figure this is a cheaper and easier way of polar aligning than going with a full on dedicated guide camera / guide scope for the time being and it's way better than my current method of "Use my phone along with StarWalk / Stellarium to get everything pointed in vaguely the right area" because the factory boresight on this mount is absolute rear end I'm going to assume that you're talking astrophotography here. What are you using for acquisition? Both NINA ($Free) and Sharpcap ($10 or $15/year, I think) have pretty good polar alignment features. They'll use whatever camera you have. It doesn't have to be a guide camera, and in fact, you could definitely make the argument that using your main imaging camera is more accurate. Both will work with a manual mount and a go to mount.
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Mar 18, 2022 00:15
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T1g4h posted:Astrophotography, yeah. I'm using a Canon T2i with a 70-300mm Sigma for most of my shots. I haven't actually tried NINA / Sharpcap to be totally honest, I've been playing with the stock Explore Scientific app and doing 2 / 3 star alignments that way without ever hooking my camera to my laptop. I genuinely never thought about trying to hook it up if I'm being honest, Explore Scientific's app communicates over WiFi by default so I've been using that. I know it has drivers for ASCOM but I know nothing about that and have never delved into learning it. Can the polemaster be used without a computer? I genuinely don't know and glancing at the docs it looks like no. If it can, then that would be good enough. If you need a computer anyway, then try one of the apps first. I think you'll find them needs suiting. For Canon stuff with ASCOM, you'll want this ASCOM driver: https://github.com/FearL0rd/ASCOM.DSLR Which mount are you using? It sounds like its a goto if you're aligning it with a 2/3 star alignment. With NINA and ASTAP (plate solver) you could ditch your alignment completely by doing a blind plate solve and syncing your mount after a polar alignment. If at that point you wanted to just unplug the computer and use the wifi with a shutter control, you could do that at that point as everything will be aligned and pointing correctly. Or, if you want you can delve into using NINA to do your captures for you. If you do use NINA, use the latest beta version.
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Mar 18, 2022 00:36
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 05:05 |
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Generally in the AP world, that’s called walking noise. It’s almost impossible to get rid of after the fact. The way to avoid it is with dithering, if you’re guiding.
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Mar 24, 2022 04:40
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