Sp@ce_d

Bit more tweaking on the fishing Elephant 😄

Hi

Been a while since I posted an image here. Life's had a few spanners thrown in the works last few years but now I'm (hopefully) committed to this imaging season. Feels like it's been so long, trying to remember how to process. This is a quick preprocess in Pixinsight.. lights, flats.. no bias/darks, a play in Startools and a quick finish back in PI. RC8, 314L+, Astrodon 5nm Ha

9 hours ago, PadrePeace said:

And I think that’s the point AdamJ is reasonably pointing out here.
 

There is lots of ‘branding’ laid over the same fundamental supply chain TS, APM, Sharpstar the list goes on because most of the many brands out there do not make their own glass and cells so no matter what they claim it’s a lottery whether you get a good one or a poor one from the Far East.
The only thing that really counts in my experience is post sales customer care; If it’s not up to scratch what are the brands prepared to do about it? That’s all you are paying more for. 

On ‘top quality glass’ I’ve recently seen a pretty poorly ground LZOS lens optical report so even the Russians push out iffy stuff. 

Retailers will claim all sorts of things and sometimes back it up with a published optical report. The point is you cannot be sure you’ll be buying a scope with that advertised optical spec and thats because brands don’t optically bench test (interferometer) all of their glass before selling it to you. At best they rely on a specification placed with their supplier, which if that isn’t met, no one will be any the wiser cos no one can afford to check how well your glass is ground and configured in its cell, so buyer beware.
An optical report as a sales pitch is just that ... it’s also the report they decided to share with us. Don’t get sucked into the hype around premium branding alone. There are good scopes and poor scopes and price doesn’t always count. This site is full of evidence on that point. 
 

Finally, before the re-attack starts beware brand snobbery as some of the best astroshots I have ever had the pleasure of seeing have come out of AdamJ’s 130PDS. It’s  all about how you use and tune it as a photon gathering instrument and then how well the data is processed. Just saying....

Yup, customer care is the key factor. I’ll exhaust all avenues & make compromises to be able to deal with my trusted retailers. It’s a symbiotic relationship after all in these niche markets. Always pays to do a bit of research and ultimately you should be prepared for worst case scenario of writing it off if you still want to go down the unknown retailer/new kit route!

The old “Workman and his tools” saying is so true.. some who seem they could produce an APOD out of just about anything! Not me for sure... I seem to need more investment in my processing skills than my equipment.
 

So, back to the scope in question. I’ve not found many images taken with it. Only really by one person in Canada’s link on CN to Astrobin & I tracked down their flicker Account for some more. They all look good (his other photography is well worth checking) but it’s only the one scope so no chance to compare consistency. Anyway, I may have tracked down an Esprit this side of Xmas fingers crossed 🙂

1 hour ago, johninderby said:

And tilt adjustment for the focuser is now built in. 👍🏻

Aha.. you read my mind.. I added that to mine

Just when I thought I'd give my 8"RC a rest from it's 5 year tour of duty & go for an Esprit 150 they go and do this!.. That 10" looks sooo tempting! I've been very pleased (well its been on the mount on auto for 5 years!) with my 8" carbon Altair version. My only concern would be the focusser. Hard to tell from the pics, but they do have the same look. Hopefully these ones are all metal. Mine (Altair) wasn't very good at holding a FW OAG and a 314L+.. it eventually split as the bottom piece  was partly plastic. The nice folk at FLO got me a Moonlite & motor which I totally recommend.  Looks like the size needs updating for the 10" as its saying 2" at the top 3.25" at bottom.. another typo there FLO.  Any option to have these bench check'd & tested?

😱... nooo.. this brings back memories.. I practically wasted a whole season trying to use mine for imaging years ago. I could never get it in.. I tried all sorts.. bobs knobs.. even got an advanced CT laser.. CCD inspector. Anyway gave up & got the RC.. around the time you did the Vids for yours!.. night & day!. So, I left it for a year or 2 & one night spur of the moment decided to do some observing to show friends.. well I amazed my self.. must have been well under 10 mins on a star with an eyepiece! 

Yes the HEQ5 is a nice mount.. had one for years. I find my NEQ6 too heavy now to cart about. Of course it does depend what you are putting on the mount that will need to be considered with load capacity. The HEQ5 is recommended max 11kg for imaging. 

11 minutes ago, Coco said:

I had the 107 under the APM brand, its was superb, bought it of Harrison Telescopes and it was reviewed in the BBC Sky at Night magazine , i wouldnt hessitate in buying the 140

https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/reviews/telescopes/apm-107mm-triplet-apo-refractor/

 

365 Astronomy show it also with 10% off.

https://www.365astronomy.com/sharpstar-140ph-140mm-f-6.5-dual-ed-triplet-apo-apochromatic-refractor-telescope.html

 

 

 

Thanks.. it's consistency of quality I'm fussy about.. (had a few WO scopes some were great, some fell to bits!) I want a frac that I can just put on the mount that works and stays that way. The dual ED intrigued me but I don't want to mess about with something that turns up needing adjustment. Otherwise I wouldn't be thinking of taking the RC of the mount after it's 5 year tour of duty!  Cooling, ie. air spaced or oil spaced I don't think bothers me as it will live in the obsy. There doesn't seem to be many images about & as far as I can tell this was announced in 2018. The Esprit 150 is proven.. my 2 80's I love..  guess it's why there's none in the shops 🤣 But this sounds quite tempting with the lure of f4.8 with reducer & a decent image circle if I sell a kidney for a full frame 😆

Hi

Just wondering if there's any experience here of these scopes?

I had my eye on an Esprit 150 but looking at everyones stocks it seems I've (literally) missed the boat on probably getting hold of one this year. So far I've seen one thread on here when they were announced & a few threads on Cloudy Nights.

https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/language/en/info/p11814_TS-Optics-Photoline-140-mm-f-6-5-Super-Triplet-Apo-with-2-ED-elements.html 

Oh Brilliant.. didn't know about this.. thanks for the heads up. I'm just getting back into processing again having been fighting with life's "distraction techniques" for the last couple of years or so.. . I updated to the latest Pixinsight the other day and stared blankly at it trying to remember the name of the STF tool 🙄... so you can see how much I've forgotten!! Last physical book I got was Lessons from the Masters and while I do love the smell & feel of a good book I simply have no more room to pile them up.. as my Wife reminds me every time she knocks into one of the piles as she navigates her way into my study.. so digital version ordered & multiple large screens it has to be.  

Registar is really good at what it does but for me once I’d got into Pixinsight I found I didn’t need to use it. That’s some 7 or 8 years ago since I last used it but I’ve not been mixing scopes for a while. I used it when I had a dual & triple shooter going between 60 & 80mm so not too wild and Pixinsight handled it fine. I hear Astro Pixel Processor is also good at this. I guess it depends on how much difference you’ll have between scopes & if mosaics are involved. Registar does one thing and very well whereas Pixinsight is a pretty big toolbox that will do everything start to finish. After 7/8 years I’ve only scratched the surface really. They are all different in workflow & interface & I’ve been evaluating APP recently (But not for mixed registration) but it’s actually sent me back digging deeper into Pixinsight.. which I wasn’t expecting .. maybe I’m just getting too old to learn yet another workflow interface 🧐 Most of these have trials I think so worth seeing how they suit you.

Is it registar? https://aurigaimaging.com   I haven’t used it for ages as pixinsight works for me On the Mac but it does a great job

23 hours ago, Northernlight said:

Sorry buddy, but i have to completely disagree. I have a 102mm Frac already and i know how slow it can be.  There are some arguments that for a "like for like" aperture, then you wont see much of a difference between F4 & F7,  but when we are talking Faster F4 optics and double the aperture size then there is a huge difference no matter what any frac lover might tell you, it's basic Physics that you just can't argue with.

Yeah sure if i won the lottery - there would be no doubt, i would have a huge mount and a 10" APO any day of the week over a newt, Unfortunately being a mere mortal i dont have £60,000+ spare sitting in the bank for that kind of setup, so i'm stuck with the next best option which is a fast newt.

This is true... however there’s two things to consider, aperture and time. Ideally we want both, but if we can only have one, which one ? Not quite the same as a light bucket but I tried going dual and even triple frac shooting, even with a permanent setup that required too much messing about and no sleep. So l started looking at it from the other  end... time. l automated the obsy and was quite surprised how many gaps in the clouds there can be while I’m actually getting some sleep and it adds up. Certainly in my case to a situation where finding  time to process the stuff is more of an issue 🤣

5 hours ago, Davey-T said:

Did they fix it then after years spent denying it was a problem ? I use Maxim for capture but gave up because of guide star lost issues when I could see it quite clearly, changed to PHD and never tried Maxim guiding again.

Dave

Well.. that's the thing.. I got to a "stable" config at v6.11 & never updated "if it ain't broke". So, the guiding on a bad pixel thing I never had issues with.. did some darks & fed it them. I did see guide star lost on a few occasions.. very few & ACP just worked through it.. resetting/restarting as ACP controls the guiding. If if did give up it just moved on to another target, so I never lost out but that's ACP dealing with it. I use an OAG so multi star guiding didn't really cut it anyway.. hard enough finding one sometimes! I never had the repetitive issues others reported but I never really used Maxim on its own so maybe ACP masked a lot of that. They say its all in the past anyway. I'm looking at having to upgrade it if I want to upgrade ACP as the latest version doesn't work with mine... so it better work! There seems to be talk of it finally supporting multi imagers/scopes (master/slave) in the pipeline too which I believe could be supported with ACP. As an aside, I'm intrigued with Voyager but as far as I can make out it doesn't have a Scheduler which is the real strength of running ACP.

1 hour ago, fireballxl5 said:

MaxImDL v6 for my main fixed rig and ASIair (with the Pro HW) for my travel setup. Both are great pieces of software. 

Yes.. Maxim (v5 & 6) has worked fine for me even with the guiding issues they went through a while back, ACP was robust enough to recover most of the time.. surprisingly. For those not aware.. ACP uses MaximDL for capture. So if you go ACP route you also need MaximDL 💰

I must have tried nearly all. I went with SGP for a while because of the promise of dual scope support but it never materialised. Trying to maximise the rare UK clear skies I got very frustrated trying to use a dual rig & then a triple at one point with different software. I'm lucky enough to have built my own obsy and it was the much missed Per who in the end persuaded me that ACP was the way to go.. eye watering yes, but then so are Astrodons & Chromas!! I had discounted it before because it only supports one scope at a time but the thing is once I got the hang of it.. & yes it may be "just a bunch of scripts" .. it made such a difference.. far out performing managing a triple shooter all night with no sleep for sky time!. So I fully automated the Obsy. I can go to bed with a cloud filled sky.. wake up to a cloud filled sky .. but checking the catch in the morning it's been opening up grabbing subs, closing with bad weather & then opening.. etc. For the UK's weather its ideal to grab those rare gaps. The scheduler will keep it going for months.. years even. I've literally not had the need to go into the obsy for months at a time. In fact, I still have data going back a few years now that I just haven't got around to processing! So yeah, I'd have probably given up through lack of sleep alone if I hadn't gone down the automation route with ACP.

I think it was Kirkster ?..  did some videos a few years back..

I also added one of these to mine.. https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/language/en/info/p4272_TS-Optics-M90-Tilting-Adapter-Flange-for-astrophotography.html

+1 for the RC8.. I pretty much wasted a whole season messing about with a SCT. My RC is the same as the carbon one you linked to. Got mine from Altair before they stopped doing them. I use it with an Astro Physics CCDT67 0.67 reducer. The stock focuser split and fell to bits early on as partly plastic & not really up to the job of hanging much off it. I replaced with a Moonlite & motor. It will have been on the mount (EQ8) for 5 years next month! I keep thinking of replacing with a large frac just to simplify life even more as I'd like to improve on stars & contrast but having said that.. glad to have anything under UK skies!.. it's mostly operated unattended via ACP

On paper these have looked enticing but even with a permanent setup as you have, I was put off with the sheer size and flex worries with fast optics. Even in a ROR I’d be worried about gusts catching it. I guess if you have the time to invest in it & enough clear nights it can be rewarding. In the UK you know how that one goes 😏 For me I wasted enough time trying to image with the C9.25 to learn that lesson. I’m even thinking of going from the RC to a similar FL frac to simplify. So I guess the answer is probably that.. it needs patience & high maintenance. Considering my hard won subs are mostly grabbed while I sleep by ACP opening & closing the obsy several times a night, it is probably considered  too high maintenance for most automated imagers at least.

Hi and welcome to the forum.

 The mount is the foundation of an AP setup. More important than the scope! You never want to push it to it’s weight limit really either. As a general rule with AP the majority of your budget should go towards the mount. Personally I wouldn’t be considering anything less restrictive than an Heq5 Pro really. Yes there are lighter travel setups but you may find it frustrating working at tighter tolerances if you are starting out with little experience. You haven’t indicated the type of targets and I’m assuming DSO rather than lunar/planetary. The other thing you mentioned is guiding. You will very quickly realise that at over 400 focal length without guiding you are very very limited to exposure length & that will quickly frustrate you too. So, let’s work on the type of targets you want to go for and an idea of the budget so we can get you off in the right direction.

Are you going to use it for imaging? I've had my EQ8 Pro in the Obsy since 2014.. never use the freedom find encoders.. ok not comparable to the Renishaw. The point is, if imaging with it then once the balance is sorted for the offset motors & encoders are disabled, then it guides fine. The new ones have re positioned motors so I'd hope they're easier to balance. Personally if I were looking to change it & I was looking at the load capacity & a 6 grand budget... for Obsy based.. I'd be looking at the Mesu. I can't see what the extra 2 plus grand would do for me. Probably why there's been very little discussion!

2 hours ago, don4l said:

You're not wrong.

I have started, and I like what I've managed so far,   but for the life of me, I cannot remember how I processed it.

If we get enough clear nights with no Moon, then I'll collect more OIII, but I don't think that I'll ever get beyond 4 panels.

😮 Oh my!!  That is really starting to look very very nice indeed. I love this.. I do like a good Ha monochrome but this is starting to leap out! I didn't expect you to come back straight away with such a teaser.. no way you can stop now!.. Is that with all Chroma 3nm filters?

Wow.. that's nice to see.. puts things into perspective.. well done for sticking at it.... You'll be looking forward to adding the colour then.. 🤣

Yeah it is possible.. I guess it depends if you are wanting to automate the imaging process or just checking each time you change filter.. temp fluctuations etc.. bahtinov mask would do you for manual perhaps?

There's some interesting stuff going on here...  Just for Canon lenses so far. https://astromechanics.org/

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/astromechanics-ascom-aps-c-m42-to-canon-lens-controller-mark-ii.html

and the Samyang 135 F2 thread is a great read

If you've already got some nice lenses why not try them first anyway. You could rig up a motor & belt drive fairly cheaply.. less than investing in a scope.. to see if it suits you.

https://www.motionco.co.uk/pulleys-belts-c-25.html

There's a rather expensive pre cooked one for the Redcat here..(bearing in mind you also need the controller) but you get the idea.. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/focuser-controllers/starlight-instruments-redcat-electronic-focusing-system-si-rcef.html 

NIce one!.. This is the classic target that got me into AP in the first place.. sadly I can't get to see it from my obsy