Sp@ce_d

Brilliant.. I'm always amazed at the ingenuity on these threads. I love the roof "automation" 😁 .. My wife came in when I kicked off the video & thought it was going to be a jacuzzi 🤣

It’s well worth asking. We had a couple of lights they painted to stop the spill as they couldn’t get shields for them. Made a world of difference.  It just involved a sensible conversation with a guy who was replacing a blown bulb one day. They first tried to angle them away & then a telephone conversation with the lighting department as it had made it worse. They were out next day & painted the edges black. They couldn’t have been more helpful. He did warn me they would eventually be replaced with LED’s though but we now have a precedent set for the need to shield stray light spill. 

Did mine years ago, never looked back & it’s so quiet & smooth. 

We never had it so good. When you realise you can achieve results that surpasses what professional observatories were capable of not that long ago! The rising costs are with just about everything as pointed out in previous posts. The decades of using cheap labour to feed our habits of a throw away culture are probably over. 

I’ve not imaged with a newt but I’d be looking at an OAG if there’s enough space. Minimise any risk of flex if you can. You don’t mention if you’re using a mono with filter wheel or a OSC camera as to how much gear you need to fit in the train. The key with an OAG is to use a guide cam with a decent sensitivity. I use a lodestar & never had an issue apart from one target, M51. That was with a 8” RC. It needed manually selecting sometimes. Apart from that my current rig with the 150 frac runs on auto with ACP & is set for multi star guiding at over a metre & always enough stars.

I was looking at that too.. I thought long & hard when FLO brought them out, as I love my 8"RC carbon but don't love the collimation .. ended up with the 150 frac. Did you get the shroud too?.. I'd be looking at an OAG rather than a separate guide scope though?.. yeah the EQ8 should be fine.

Nice.. more targets than I've had from the obsy in last few months!!.. did you get a lottery ticket too!!.. well, a bit of cable management will help  The only thing I don't miss about my RC I "mothballed" 18 months ago is the collimation hassle.. OAG might be something you'll want to think about at this focal length but TBH your stars are better than mine were before I switched over to the 150 frac.  Our local DPD chap, called Stephen, sounds the same.. lovely guy, 5 stars on every delivery, works his socks off but always time for a cheery chat. Been delivering here for years.. 

I haven't even looked at the main subject yet.. its the corners I'm awarding the "likes" for  😮

So, hang on.. the trigger is the Cumbria Dark Skies festival & the "least" dark sky property.. actually in Cumbria!!  is a "block" of flats 🥴 .. the other 4 are not in Cumbria. Well, I can see how much effort has gone into this article. Only 5 properties in total.. not even worthy of clickbait. 

Oh... wow, that is rather nice.. lovely processing. I'm still amazed at what "just" four and a half hours of OSC can reveal these days.. love it 👍

Yeah I’ve noticed but naked eye it seems to have made the almost constant clouds appear brighter because they look white now instead of a duller orange. More annoying has been a random blue/white colour changing led /laser tight searchlight type beam that’s blinding & lights up the front bedroom when it strikes the window. I’m miles away from Edinburgh too on higher ground looking over to Fife.  It comes from direction of The High St. / Princess St.

+1 for the DryRobe. Got the Wife one for Xmas, will also come in handy in the house when we can’t afford the heating anymore 😏

Amazing capture.. just.. Wow!

So updates are handled by PI if the repo has been added. I was using AI v5 & v6 in previous PI version. V6 does less smoothing of edges. Since I updated  PI to .11 I can no longer run it with AI v6 as it stops & asks me to download the AI. The AI files are already in the PI library! I’ve also tried selecting another copy of it from the old install. Yesterday there was also an update adding AI v7 which downloads to the library. This works fine.. it’s better for galaxy cores etc. I think you need to experiment with which AI version you choose depending on the target you’re working on. I’m still scratching my head working out why AI v5 isn’t recognised on my system. It selects ok same as the others.

Not seen that but I am getting an error trying to load the AI 6 version, I've not figured out yet & can only run it with AI 5. I'm on a Mac but it looks like you're behind a version. Are you on the latest PI release that has it installed from the repo now?

2 hours ago, geeklee said:

The whole thing feels very polished, no doubt about it.  It seems the normal PI interface is locked when the script is running (like most in PI).  With that in mind, is it possible to include a zoom and pan ability @mike1485... or have I maybe missed something already?  It's easy to ask for things like this without realising the effort involved 😅

Not sure if this is what you mean, but in the image inspector / preview you can zoom & pan the preview using zoom slider at bottom & thumbnail at top right? A real time preview would be nice but I can imagine how much effort that is! One thing I've noticed so far is the preview does show a bit darker than the actual result when applied.. probably just difference in display scale & I've already subconsciously adapted for that when tweaking.

Wow, that’s a pretty good catch you’ve got there.. amazing results.

I’ve been trying this out the last few days, admittedly I haven’t dug into the documentation yet but it’s become my first port of call for the stretch. I like this, it’s certainly working for me on the narrowband images I’ve been working on & so far just “playing around” with setting’s to see how things look is giving me decent results. I’m going to dig in deeper with the docs & further info in this thread now I’ve got the feel of it. I really appreciate the effort that’s gone into this. 👍

Nice one. I’ve had these on my todo but decided last night to try & finish off deep sky targets before the moon wrecks it for the rest of the year. That is moving quick!

I wish.. this is the worst start to the season I've known.. yes I know I'm interloping amongst the proper "observers" but I do actually look up with my own eyes now and again too.. mostly with the Bino's out of the windae  when doing my 2 or 3 nightly trips from bedroom to bathroom 

The only Stars I've seen recently are the ones induced by my Wife when she found my folder of receipts at the back of the filing cabinet from FLO going back the last decade or so 😵

Is this your 2nd scope choice for AP? I suspect it is..

... don't worry, it gets easier once the collection is under way.. learn the mantra of "N+1"  .. The sooner you get past this hurdle the easier it is to understand the angst of making the right decision is soothed by looking ahead at the next one to fill in the "gap" left by the current decision 🤣. 

With regard focus motors.. out of all the ones I have (quite a few & aside from combined Moonlite focuser/motors.. superb!) the ones I've fitted to Esprits.. the Sesto Senso (not sure why FLO stopped doing them) is the easiest & neatest .. I have that on the 150 & it has manual override BTW.. but hey why would I need that! 😆

(I couldn't decide on the best place to post this, so Mods..  feel free to move )

I've been asked how I'm getting on with these filters a few times now so I thought I'd post this up, if it's of help to anyone.

In light of the increasing prices with the "top end" boys Astrodon & Chroma I decided to try out the Antlia filters with the larger size I needed for the ASI 2600MM & got the 36mm ones (I already have 1.25 Astrodons on the QSI in Obsy). Unfortunately since I set this up on another "under covers" rig outside the obsy the weather has been abysmal and all I have to show in the past 3 months are 3 single 300s subs from September!  This was first light with the setup & the obvious spacing, tilt & focus (to sort out) issues aside.. here are the subs to compare. I did a manual focus & didn't refocus between filters as it was literally grab it in between clouds. I've since ordered the LRGB set to try but still waiting for them.. no rush.. the clouds are still here  

Esprit80, ASI2600MM. Single 300s subs, no calibration.. only process is a screen transfer stretch in PI.

300s Antlia 3nm Ha

300s Antlia 3nm SII

300s Antlia 3nm OIII

yeah I remember that thread..  it's down to you what you do with your money & time! Unless there's some competition or rules bound requirement where/when you present your data?

I thought about remote for a while but prices put me off, I do/did have a telescope live account but never got around to using it after all. I actually realised after a while, I get the biggest buzz out of putting the gear together & making it all work.. right up to capturing all the subs. When it comes to processing I seem to faff about so much & overdo it or it doesn't come out as I want & loose interest.. get frustrated. So I end up not posting many "finished" if you can call anything ever finished.. images.   

Years ago now, when I built my obsy in the back garden, my intention was to build & test a fully remote setup before shipping it off to somewhere for remote hosting. It turned out pretty successful, so much that I got more data than I had time to process, I still have some I've not yet looked through.. even under good old Scottish skies!  So I delayed finding a host for it.. life got in the way etc. & here I am once again thinking about it as this years weather has been terrible for even my automated Obsy. It's hardly been open & even then most of the data is rubbish.

You do what you want to do, for most of us it's a hobby, enjoy it how you see fit. There's certainly a lot more options now than the last time I looked... but I don't see any rental time for us mortals on space telescopes yet.. now there's something.. maybe the whole ploy of Mr Musk's current endeavours is monopolise that niche market with higher orbit rental scopes.. 🤔

Thats good.. like it👍 You've had more usable data than my automated Obsy in last 2 months!

This is great.. nice processing.. love the palette. Looks great at full res on AB! I take it this is with the APM? Don't see it mentioned on the Tech Card.