OK Apricot

I've read somewhere (CN I think) to aim around the one dither every 5-6 minutes of exposure. So if I'm doing 5min exoposures I'll dither every frame. It costs some time on the mount settling but is what it is. If 2 mins I dither every 3.

The Mrs recently had a job offer in a private hospital in Brisbane and I've been looking at the whole southern hemisphere gig. Darkness never too far away, great weather and a MW core at Zenith! Unfortunately due to a rapidly developing health condition she has had to turn the job down, and my astro hopes and dreams have had to follow

Wow wow wow! New to the Newt Club, I set up last night in the hopes of just a few hours as the forecast was a bit hit and miss for my area, but really wanted to try and make a good first image, not just a test image. Ended up setting the big rig off for 5hrs worth of imaging and went to bed. Woke up with the scope parked and the entire imaging run complete including flip. Happy days. Checked the data when I got back from work and only had to toss 2 subs out of 150, looks like it was due to not settling after a dither. Guiding averaged 0.81" over the whole run, moderately balanced and there is some backlash developing in the mount, so happy days again I took flats this time as well in the hopes of it calibrating out that nasty halo, and job done Cropped in the edges where it didn't quite flip and frame itself properly, and here is my result. Bearing in mind I'm yet to fit the EAF, properly collimate the scope, and properly seal it against light leaks, I'm very pleased with this indeed. Criticism welcome!

It's 130x120s sub frames for 4hrs 20mins of exposure. Shot with the ASI533MC-Pro, UV/IR Cut, SW 250P Quattro @F/4, mounted on the EQ6-R Pro, guided OAG by ASI290MM-Mini, manual focus and sequenced by ASIAIR Plus. Stacked in DSS and processed with PS.

44 minutes ago, M40 said:

How about something like this.....

This was on my mind since one of the neighbours got a dog and a pir floodlight. All the best

 

 

That honestly looks absolutely spot on! Reasonably priced enough to give it a go, and not a tragedy if it doesn't quite work as intended. Easy to install and then put away, maybe a bit of an eyesore but we will get it past the Mrs one way or another lol. A couple of those would do nicely. Thanks for the suggestion! 

Despite the time and effort I put into making The Astro Podium, The number of opportunities to do some imaging that I miss is growing. With work and real life, not to mention the appalling weather the past year, I am finding that I just haven't got the super powers needed to pull a 12+hr shift, cook for the Mrs, do housework then set up in the garden knowing I have to stay awake to tear down again before getting some morsel of sleep, only to feel dead on my feet the next day. Unless I'm lucky enough to get a clear night on a Friday or Saturday, a lot of the time I have to pass. But I was thinking, if I could leave the scope outside safe enough to put my mind at ease, I'd surely be able to increase my imaging time. 

I feel like I live in a rougher area. I had a van broken into within 4 months of moving here after all! Our garden backs onto the public footpath in what could be considered a high footfall area (there's a streetlight above my garden - it must be, right....😒) Last year I decided to use some savings to get a fence installed. A bit of neighbourly tension helped to justify another reason for a fence, which was to raise the height needed for anyone to be able to look over as they walk by. This has helped somewhat, but it's not enough peace of mind for me to leave my kit out overnight. 

With limited space and certainly limited funds until the wedding and H-moon are done, I was thinking of something along the lines of a "portable" observatory. Think of a windbreaker at the beach, then four of them...? It would help hide my scope from the people that I don't want to see it, and with a 250PQ I need to try to shield even gentle breezes. Has anyone made something out of say PVC piping and black tarpaulin? If so, is it as easy as I envisage? Is it practical? Am I wasting my time building a cube lined with dark material within which to place my rig? 

Naturally I'm going to struggle to bring my whole rig inside to point it at the telly, it's got to be in the region of 60kg, don't fancy that with a bulging disc. Could I use the t-shirt and the street light? It's a bright light source albeit more "orangey" than white? 

A3 tracing panel it is - eye-watering prices for flat field generators at FLO! I'm wondering if this is reflection of stray light, well when doing flats the panel will then block that light and that light won't be there to correct, and instead will have the opposite effect in stacking... If that makes sense? How best to do flats in the mean time with this? White t-shirt over the aperture and pointed at a white light? 

No flat frames taken for this, nope. If I understand the cause of the ring I can understand how to remedy it, but at the moment I'm not sure. This cam has been used many times on my smaller rig from the garden and I've always managed to produce something decent even without flats. I guess the only thing to do is try things and see what happens. 

4 hours ago, AstroMuni said:

Thats a great image. Several of the issues you mention above should get sorted if you run a background extraction in Siril or use GraXpert.

I did try a few different combinations of Gradientxterminator and reverse vignette in camera raw filter but no real joy. 

Managed to get out tonight to get a proper test image - just over an hour's worth of 60s subs. Ignoring image aberrations, I'm loving the reach! Having only shot with 274mm and 514mm focal lengths, it's great to get up closer on galaxies! Anyways, I've not yet sealed the scope against light leaks, flocked the tube, or collimated properly. Here is a very quick process in DSS and Photoshop:

Most obvious is the diffuse rainbow like ring, almost perfectly centred in the image. Firstly, as you can see from one of my pictures a few posts up, I unfortunately have a bright street lamp high above my garden. Even though I've shielded it myself as best I practically and legally can, I'm thinking that maybe stray light from that is falling on the front corrector lens and the camera is picking it up. Shooting M51, the scope is pointed loosely in the vicinity of the lamp. My primary isn't yet shielded so there could be spilled light coming in here too. Second, I see vignetting, or is this a trick on the mind due to the rainbow circle? I use an IMX533 sensor so doubt that it's actually inadequate field illumination? Third, it's a bit out of focus - Not fitted my EAF yet and haven't got a bahtinov so it was just a best guess. There was trailing all in one direction so I'm going to say this is down to the slight breeze catching the tube and making the mount struggle. Guiding was only around 0.95" for the short session. Otherwise the shape of the stars is consistent so I'd like to think that I'm pretty much spot on with backspacing. Does this look about right considering the handicaps?

It's a while since I had my 200P dob and after a few attempts felt like I was getting somewhere with it, but not sure I understood properly.  I might need some more simpleton tuition 😏

Make outer edge of secondary concentric with inside edge of focus tube. Make full primary mirror visible in secondary. Align primary centre dot with Cheshire crosshair. 

Something like that? I am reading and watching about it again and feel like those are condensed steps to get there. 

Thanks chaps, makes sense.

It doesn't look like the draw tube is protruding into the light path. I've also had a more concerted look through the bare draw tube and a Cheshire and I'm fairly confident the secondary is not concentric with the draw tube so there are adjustments to be made there. 

A mirror mask is in my cart along with a few other things. I feel like I'd like to learn to collimate properly with a Cheshire so will hold off on the OCAL for now I think. 

Not sure if this is the correct sub forum so mods feel free to place it somewhere more suitable if need be.

Recently bought a 250P Quattro and have been dying to get it outside to see what's what. I just wondered what exactly I'm seeing here, normal or not? I took a few 10s shots of Alkaid. In focus (or close to it - I was rushing as thicker cloud was coming in) looks OK. Out of focus I see it needs collimating - Fair enough. In past focus there are 6 "imprints" within the halo of the star. Pinching from the mirror clamps? Is it normal? Is it something else? Also managed a quick 120s shot of M51, which, while guide stars were visible, surprised me. It was breezy and this thing definitely has some surface area to pick it up, I had 10kg of counterweight on the EQ6R extension so not ideal, and the guide "star" did not resemble one in the slightest. This is fine - A counterweight is on the way and I'm fairly confident in sorting the OAG. Pleased enough from the first test. Under strenuous conditions, it can produce round stars and a decent sub frame.

What can you experienced guys/girls tell me about this?

Cheers!

Mine was the same when I had one. Never an issue for me as much as a little build quality/design niggle. 

An entire half of the season gone with about 2 usable clear nights. Dire. When I was in Vegas in October those reds were greens. I hate this country's climate. 

I've actually found the guide logs from the night, attached here so if anyone can make sense of them I'd be most grateful. 

Autorun_Log_2023-11-24_183033.txt

Can anyone help? 

Making the most of a crisp clear night last night, I left an autorun on the ASIAIR. 14 sub frames in, the guiding started to play up. It seemed to be in RA only, but would wildly swing from one side of the graph to the other, and looking at it, it resembles a response to an instruction to dither? I cancelled the autorun and guiding and checked everything over - The balance on both axes (slightly east heavy on RA), for any cable snags, stiction on the axes, cable connections, that the mount was locked down after PA, anything loose, but couldn't find anything obvious. I recalibrated the guiding and resumed autorun. After 3 subs, it did it again. I cancelled and restarted. After 3 subs, again. After a meridian flip it seemed to run just fine. 

I've loaded the SD card into my laptop to have a look at the guiding log but there is no log there. I wonder if the firmware or whatever itself that controls guiding has thrown a bug and needs updating? Really not sure. Sorry about the bad pictures, but just to help illustrate. Any ideas?

Light_Flaming Star_300.0s_Bin1_gain101_20231124-215407_-5.0C_0027.fit

Light_Flaming Star_300.0s_Bin1_gain101_20231124-201302_-5.0C_0014.fit

Wow! Thank you so much 😊. Must've been a tough vote as the submissions here were excellent. Congrats to the other winners and well done to everyone for the really good images 🙏

I've been watching a few tutorials the last couple days in the hopes of learning my way round Pixinsight. As far as producing an image goes, I'm happy enough. However, I'm fairly decent with Photoshop and if this was the result I'd be kicking myself! Strange background, blown stars, but otherwise it seems I've managed to keep hold of the dust and colours. I couldn't really tell you what the workflow was here, if you could even call it that, but I used DBE, SXT/NXT and played around with the curves a little.

First is Pixinsight, second is Photoshop, and a side by side screenshot from my laptop (speaking of which - am I being silly to expect Pixinsight to run efficiently on a laptop? It's an ASUS Vivobook, Core i7, Nvidia Geforce RTX, OLED screen etc?)

On 08/11/2023 at 09:53, Elp said:

Thinking about it, haven't done solar in a while as the sun is usually too low or obstructed.

Not much of a better time to do some solar and can make a holiday out of it as well 🙂

On 08/11/2023 at 10:14, callisto said:

Might be planning a holiday to Dallas soon,  not for the eclipse though,

My wife is a huge fan of Dallas (TV show) and wants to see southfork ranch and all that shenanigans...has even bought some cowboy boots 🤠

Yeah, Dallas was my first option but couldn't stretch in the end. Virgin (to Austin) and tesco clubcard came good by using all of my points to pay for the majority of the flight and car 😁

Booked my fly-drive to Austin for the US Eclipse in April. No real plans, hotel or the usual touristy stuff, but my mini rig will be accompanying me so hopefully can drive out to dark skies as well as get set up for the big show, and just bed down at a cheap motel for the nights wherever I end up. 

Priority 1) Eclipse and weather forecast. I will be watching the forecast from 5th April when I arrive to be able to hopefully place myself under some clear blue skies. Mileage not a consideration - what needs to be done will be done. 

Priority 2) Darkness. Might have a drive around Texas and have a peek at some of the larger US star party venues like Prude Ranch, Okie-Tex etc. See if I can find some quiet secluded spots to shoot from. 

Priority 3) Severe weather. I love nothing more than a good storm so will be chasing the fun weather depending on distance. I'd love to see a tornado, lifetime bucket list thing. 

Just wondered if anyone else had any plans, was excited to share my own 😊

I went to Fuerteventura in June with easyjet so I can at least speak for travel. 

Get a robust flight case and get as much of your gear in there as you can allowing for good padding. I paid for upfront seats 1) because I love flying and like to look out of a window and 2) those give you a large cabin bag as well. Speedy boarding can help make sure you get on first with loads of room in the overhead lockers so no chance of crew telling you your gear has to go in the hold if there was no room in the cabin. 

As for power check the airline regs, but usually they will let you bring on one lithium battery up to 100Wh and a spare but these have to go in your cabin bag. 

A couple other things -  blunt objects could be considered dangerous in the cabin (like counterweight and bar) so best to pack those in your hold luggage. Also, I didn't need dew straps when I went but took them just in case - Gatwick security had a wonderful time trying to figure out what it was that their x-ray machines couldn't see through, and it was the straps. I'd packed everything a specific way to fit it in my small cabin bag and they gutted the thing finding them. I suggest leaving those somewhere easy to get to! 

26 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

Thanks! It's been great having clear skies every night. We're at Caleta de Fuste.

Ah excellent - there's a great spot about half an hour away by car near Las Plajitas. I shot from a little trail off the road there in June 👍

Very nice shots and fun to see the evolution of its phases 👌. Which part of the island are you staying?