Sp@ce_d

Well this is it for this season.. the sum result of my clear nights since xmas. 8 hours 30 mins in total resulting in a 2 pane mosaic of the Heart and Soul nebulas. 8 Hours OSC through an NBZ filter and 30 mins of RGB for the stars. 2 versions processed in Pixinsight. This setup I put together with the aim of using from darker skies when travelling in the motorhome that we finally got around to getting a few months back... Redcat51, ZWO2600MC, AM3, ASIair plus .. IDAS NBZ filter. I hope next season has better weather!

Wow.. this is quite striking .. seeing as you mentioned torture.. it conjures up visions of demons & hell as depicted in historical art paintings somewhere in the back of my mind!!.. That blood red Ha is quite something against all that dust. Nice processing Olly 👍

Doesn't tradition dictate it can only be visible until 12 noon ? 🤣

Yeah for minimum fuss a frac every time for me. I spent a few years with the SCT & RC but my goal was an fully automated Obsy and unless you enjoy constantly tinkering .. which I did at first but it soon wore off.. stick with a frac. Once I had the Esprit 150 I wondered why I had wasted so much imaging time. Of course a frac will come with the weight and length requirements.. (oh and cost!) but it’s pretty much set and forget.

Has no one seen the obvious, it’s the old N+1 justification “issue”.. of course you need another scope it’s galaxy season !🤣 … I’ve had this issue with many a guitar when that G string just wouldn’t stay tuned properly 😂👍 it’s amazing how these things tend to fix themselves once you introduce some “sibling” rivalry from another scope added to the collection 😁

Weren’t there a batch of baader OIII’s that were bad some years back? I seem to remember people getting them exchanged? Mine have varied depending on what scope/camera combination but more bloat than halo but there are some. Having been going through my archive recently to reprocess I’ve had brilliant results with BXT! I got a set of Antlia LRGB & 3nm NB after the ridiculous Astrodon & Chroma price increases and I’m very happy with them. Certainly the NB’s seem to perform as well as my smaller Astrodons & not seen any issues with LRGB so far. I don’t have any blue/OIII in 2” otherwise I’d offer you a loan of them too.

Or rename your files to include a unique name in them so you can use the group settings in WBPP. I.e. select all files and do a bulk find & rename/replace.. eg. Ha with Ha_3nm with one set & Ha with Ha_65nm for the other. One nice thing with WBPP is it can remember your previous session so you don’t have to reload all files. You can pick just calibration or just integration or any combination so I find it quicker than the old way with the individual scripts especially if you arrange your files in directory’s in a way you can just point it to load everything from a directory to load up for each step. I’ve been revisiting data I shot on different rigs over many years. For some I’ve had better results by integrating each separate stack but you’ll need minimum of 3 and others were better with renaming the files and throwing them all in using the groupings for calibration sets. Even stacking different exposure times together like I had some Ha at 1200s and some at 900s. If you change the exposure tolerances in WBPP these can be integrated to one Ha stack. I had one recently amounting to over 60hrs worked fine.. took a while though 🤣

Great to see you back in action. That definitely looks like a worthwhile target to pursue.. earthquakes aside!

Yes it can. However by combining subs with different rotation angles you will have to crop a lot of the frame to get rid of the bad overlapping edges. So you loose a lot of the surrounding area. I would start by setting your cameras to the landscape orientation.. most targets fit into this on the IMX571 sensor. This is a good way to start off to get you going. One step at a time! Do you have the 2 identical 90mm scopes with the OSC and Mono IMX571 working seamlessly together now? If not you should focus on getting those working first. If they are, what do you find lacking in the results? eg. Not enough RGB data or Mono (NB) data? OSC is good for getting quick RGB data. I still think a OSC with NB filters isn't quite the same as a Mono with dedicated filters. Mono is still more flexible so in my opinion my third choice would be another Mono and fourth choice depends on the target. OSC for galaxy or reflection nebula, Mono for emission nebulas. That is if I were imaging the same target with all 4 scopes! If I wanted to image multiple targets at the same time then, building imaging rigs in pairs of a OSC & Mono for each target to be captured at same time... maybe.. again depending on the target. So, this all depends on what targets you are imaging. Some, like galaxies, require LRGB & maybe some Ha. Reflection nebula.. mostly LRGB. Emission nebula.. mostly narrowband with maybe some RGB for stars. Most people go for OSC because it's more satisfying to get all the data in one go so as not to have to wait days, weeks, months or even years to complete a target. However with OSC there is a compromise of less flexibility, less so these days but still with narrowband and the bayer matrix. What you are suggesting with multiple rigs doesn't have the same restrictions as I see it. If you are aiming for 4 rigs you can shoot Mono LRGB at the same time and have much more flexibility when it comes to narrowband. There is a lot more to think about how you go about this when spending money. If you just want to hoover up the sky then maybe a RASA setup with OSC is the way to go! We haven't even started looking at where you'll find the time to process all this data 🤣 One step at a time! 🙂

That’s a good first light

I think it’s easier to stick with the same sensor geometry. I use the 2600MC & 2600MM now. I’m currently putting together subs from 3 different cameras and scopes shot over several years and whilst it seems to be doable.. it’s a bit of work and I’m still to find out how good the resolution will be. You’ll want to keep things as simple as possible to make it as easy for yourself as you can or you’ll get so frustrated it will stop being enjoyable…. Let alone expensive 😆 but that’s a given in astrophotography!

Motorised camera rotators will get you repeatable matched framing. It may be a challenge to fit into the available backspace of the image train though and of course adds to the cost quite a bit. This would speed things up once set properly. To be honest, you’d want to automate as much as possible. Plate solving, auto focusing, auto rotation. Your imaging software should be able to handle interruptions (like weather events) stop/start & resumption. Then there’s flats.. I set my obsy up to run sky flats at dusk before the evening session. I didn’t rotate during the session, it was all manually set for the selection of targets before hand. Most fit into the landscape angle, anything else mostly would be portrait angle. You need separate flats for every different rotation. If you are constantly setting up and breaking down there’s more chance of changes and dust motes etc. moving around. You would need to run flats at every angle you are shooting at before/after each session to be sure of clean subs. This is another thing you should consider for automation with flat panels. I don’t know how long you get at dusk/dawn to shoot sky flats where you are but here in Scotland I managed to run 12 each for a 7 filter setup at dusk. Any more and I risked not completing with the sky getting too dark.

Gosh you remind me of my younger self.. boundless enthusiasm and energy 😃.. I miss that. My experience of trying to run dual and triple shooters didn’t take me down the expected path. After a frustrating season or two of running around trying to make it all work, suffering from sleep deprivation made it worse, I ended up investing in my obsy and automation. I never looked back. A single scope setup run under ACP got me more data than I had time to process. Less was more! This must’ve been 10 or more years ago. I eventually took a break and mothballed the Obsy yet I’m still going through it finding stuff to process. If you can even setup your mount / mounts so you can leave ready covered outside that will help but if you are setting up from scratch every night it will eventually burn you out. Voyager might be worth looking into if you have multiple scopes on a single mount for dither sync. It didn’t exist back when I was doing it. Be very wary of throwing time and money at this without making sure every step you take is working properly and kept as simple as possible. I sometimes forgot this was supposed to be a hobby I was supposed to enjoy!!

I've still got a fair amount of data, from my ACP driven Obsy, of unfinished projects since I mothballed it. I was looking through data on my NAS last night for something else and realised I'd never completed this one. Now I have more time for processing here's my first attempt on what I have. 8hr integration time Ha, 4h 30min / 18x900s OIII, 1h 45min / 7x900s SII, 1h 45min / 7x900s Data collected Dec 2020, Jan 2021, threw away the subs from March 2022 after which the Obsy was mothballed (now the rats have taken over!) Esprit150, QSI683wsg. Processed in Pixinsight with the add ons of the Xterminators. I've gone a bit bold with the colour on this one but (hopefully) tried to restrain my addiction to the sharpening tools I seem to get carried away with 🤣 As usual open for comments, critique, advice etc..

Love these.. been around that way when staying with friends down there