OK Apricot

This will be my last entry I promise 😂 M31 from my trip to Vegas. This is 90x30s IR Cut, 166x120s IR Cut and 21x240s L-Enhance. The 30s stack was used to HDR blend the core, 120s was used to push the data quite far and bring out the fainter details and the 240s solely for the red speckled clouds within the dust bands. I found it hard to isolate and blend the Ha into the RGB image but managed to get there in the end, though I'm not really sure how. I was playing with blending modes in PS, aligning using the "difference" blend, and I think it was either soft light or saturation that I managed to get the two looking something like what I wanted. Then your usual StarX, NoiseX (gradient not needed here), camera raw filter adjustments, a touch of curves and a bit of saturation added to the stars. I've learned a good bit recently while processing my latest images so look forward to being able to use these techniques for some more winter targets. Shot with the mini rig Sharpstar 61EDPH II @f/4.5, ASI533MC-Pro, mounted on the SA GTI, guided OAG with ASI120MM-Mini, controlled by ASIAIR Plus, EAF. DSS and PS for processing.

This will be a little diary of sorts that I can read back on in years to come, but mostly just to share my experiences on what was a textbook fairytale trip to Las Vegas 2023! The weeks prior to the trip I purchased a new flight case to be able to fit everything in mostly assembled so as to minimise setup time under what I'd hoped to be pristine skies. The flight case used every bit of size allowance on a BA flight, and even though we were flying economy and boarding last, managed to find space in the overhead lockers - I was very nervous that there wouldn't be room left and that it'd have to be checked into the hold last minute! We arrived at the airport, got the shuttle bus to get the car, got the car and made our way to the hotel which was NYNY. The plan for the first two days was to make the 4.5hr drive to LA, however plans changed last minute while we were stopped at a services getting some breakfast 45mins from Vegas. With that, the Mrs gave me her grace to go and shoot that night! Fast forward to that night - I loaded up the car and headed North up I15 to pick up the 93 bound for Hiko, Nevada. Having checked lightpollution maps, it looked like a borderline B1 area as far as LP is concerned, but also stood at nearly 3,500ft elevation. Driving up while the sun was out, it was clear that transparency was a bit down, but I wasn't put off. I had butterflies in my stomach as I approached the areas I'd only been seeing on satellite, the anticipation was strong! I found a great little spot up a gravel road and it was everything I'd hoped it would be. Firstly the Mazda CX-50 rental car was perfect for the terrain being AWD, but also there was a nice clearing off the road to be out of the way and phone signal! Happy days - this looked great. So anyway the sun started to go down and the stars started revealing themselves one by one. I hurriedly assembled the mini rig and polar aligned, and by 19:39 full astro darkness had descended upon me. Absolutely spoilt for targets at that latitude at the time of year, my gut said to go for something familiar, the thinking being that I could physically see the improvements that a dark sky would allow over heavily light polluted home skies. Besides, I shot a couple new targets while on the trip to Fuerteventura so I wasn't desperate to try anything new. I set up an Autorun sequence on the ASIAIR+ on Andromeda, confirmed everythign was running well, and then it was time to kick back and take it all in. I looked up and the skies were just breathtaking. That kind of breath taking where you outwardly say WOOOWWWWW like an excited young child. The milky way core was so much brighter than I'd ever seen it, even more so than Fuert. The main band stretching right overhead from horizon to horizon, you could make out dusty texture and features all the way. I bought a pair of Pentax 10x50 binoculars just for the trip, so got these out and started looking around. Absolutely blown away, but it would be nothing compared to the second night... One thing that was interesting was the size of the light dome from Vegas at a distance of 125mi away. Anyways tired from the travel and different time zone, around 1150 I dozed off in the car with the mini rig doing its thing on Andromeda. I woke up again 0230 to find that my sub frames were coming through with trailing stars! Could not believe it - I'd lost around 2hrs of data because I didn't recalibrate the guiding after a flip. Gutted. Never mind - I recalibrated and carried on for the rest of the night until around 0430 where I packed up and made the 2hr drive back to the hotel in Vegas. This was the night of the 8th October into early hours of 9th. So the next couple days we settled in and took in the sights and sounds of the strip, and soon enough on the 10th it was my birthday. Started off with a nice IHOP breakfast, had a look around some shops, more touristy stuff then hit the booze and the casinos in the evening. We got a bit merry and were playing some machines and actually winning, one machine to the next, until we sat on this particular one... We're making a complete nuisance of ourselves, loud and lairy brits abroad and the game we were playing landed a bonus. We watched and hoped that it would do something good, and BOOM $2769 major jackpot drops in! I don't know who's aware but americans pay 30% tax on gambling winnings in the States over $1200, but being Brits we don't need to pay tax due to treaties or something. It took a good 45mins to sort the paperwork but we got our payout, and got absolutely wasted for the rest of the night. Next morning was a bit sore but I'd made sure to drink water between drinks so I wasn't too bad. Fast foward to next shooting evening, the transparency and visibility looked crisp on the drive up to Hiko, so I was very excited to see any improvements in the sky... Same routine as before, added a few targets into the ASIAIR in Plan mode, and sat back and did some casual observing. What I experienced for the rest of that night was something I will remember for many years. This is how good the sky was.... The darkest sky I've ever seen. Low level clouds were only visible due to the void of stars in the sky that they left. The milky way was so much more prominent even than the night before! It extended in width from Delphinus to Lyra, and was thick with contrast, very very bright. The Lagoon and Triffid obvious within the core area, with M16 and M17, many clusters visible, and maybe the faintest hint of colour through the MW band. There was the most subtle of shadows on the ground just being cast by the light of the sky above, just from the MW and the stars. M31 was a well extended disc who's radius was going right out to the star HD3431, a mag+6.8 star itself, M33 was an easy naked eye object, almost with direct vision among many others. The Veil complex was visible through my binoculars, the Eastern side very obvious and direct vision, the Western and Pickering's Triangle there too but with averted vision. The Cygnus Wall in the NA nebula was there, M33 was a pronounced bright cloud, dust lanes visible in M31, SO MUCH TO SEE. The Helix, Dumbbell, M42, M45, Double Cluster and the list goes on and on. The icing on the cake was during the drive back. Bearing in mind I was not dark adapted, you know, with the many drivers on the roads driving with their beams on, as I looked east checking out Venus I noticed a brightening of the sky, a sort of wedge/isoceles triangle shape extended past M44 toward Gemini. It was the zodiacal light! I was seeing the faintest dust of the solar system disc, very obviously while not even dark adapted on my drive back, for the first time ever! A very strange and surreal sight to be honest - like a false dawn as they say. That felt special. That felt like going back to the barest bones of nature itself. Just unreal, utterly fascinating and welded into my memory forever. The day after, we wined and dined, did some more touristy stuff, and at the Top of the World up the Strat Tower, I proposed to my partner and she said yes! So that's the fairytale! Three jackpots in Vegas - One an actual Jackpot on my Birthday, two the most pristine skies I have ever seen, and three, my partner will soon be my wife! They say things come in threes Thanks for letting me share, and for reading if you got this far. Finally I'd like to share the three images that I produced with photons collected from Hiko... By far my best to date, and with my modest mini rig M31 is an HaRGB total of 7hrs 41mins integration - 90x30s IR Cut, 166x120s IR Cut, 21x240s L-Enhance. M42 is an HaRGB total of 5hrs 2mins. 60x10s IR Cut, 70x120s IR Cut, 38x240s L-Enhance. M45 is an RGB total of 3hrs 17mins. 197x60s IR Cut. Thanks once again for letting me share

I used my 533MCPto gather a couple hours of data on M31 in Ha/OIII to compliment the broadband data, but having spent a few hours on it tonight I'm struggling to find a way to blend the nice red clouds into the RGB image. I use DSS and PS CC. I have processed the broadband stack to a point where it's nearly finished, and the dualband stack as far as it will reasonably go without making things messy. I've tried simply blending the two images, copying the red channel of RGB into the red channel of the dualband image, then copying that back to red channel RGB, but seems to be no good. Does anyone here have any tips? Any work flows that I could borrow? Cheers 🙏

I got back from a trip to Vegas last week for my birthday. I drove 125mi north of Vegas to escape the light pollution and found Class 2 conditions at the other end 😁. I had to toss several sub frames due to gusty winds, but otherwise the data was gorgeous - very excited about this one! This is a first concerted attempt at a HDR blend of M42, The Orion Nebula. I used three separate stacks of data in the hopes of taming the bright core but adding some punch to the fainter dust. I stretched the 10s stack in a way as to highlight the details in the core region, so a couple gentle arcsinh stretches along with gentle sharpening. I separated the stars with StarXTerminator in hopes of using these in the final image but I wasn't quite happy enough with them, so opted to use the 120s stack's stars instead. The 120s and 240s stacks were stretched with arcsinh curves with some aggression to make the dust pop, but I paid attention to not blow anything out of the nebula itself. I found blending the three quite tricky as each stack didn't quite have the same frame centre, and I'd already separated the stars so had to align it in the end on the more wispy details available! Finally I added some luminance and saturation to the stars to try to bring out their natural colour and reintroduced them into the final image. A touch of Camera Raw Filter sharpening, a subtle Gradientxterminator and NoiseXterminator, selective colour adjustments and a weak application of HLVG. 60x10s IR cut, 70x120s IR cut, 38x240s L-Enhance. Shot with the Sharpstar 61EDPH II @f/4.5, ASI533MC-Pro, mounted on the SA GTI, guided OAG with ASI120MM-Mini, controlled by ASIAIR Plus, EAF.

Will be the last day in Vegas for the Mrs and I, not sure I wanted to be up early on the day of travelling back home but needs must! I'm going to try to source some solar film, possibly stop at one of the LA astro shops, so I can get a view through my new binos 😊

I have this battery to power my larger rig - EQ6-R, ASI533MC-Pro, AA+, 120MM, EAF, two dew straps. Depending on ambient temperature and humidity the current draw when tracking and shooting can be as high as 30W, as low as 20W. Assuming 100% efficiencies, the 521 at 256Wh with a 30W draw will last 256/30= 8.5hrs. Calculate your approx total current draw from your equipment in W, and divide the battery's capacity in Wh by it. Maybe subtract 20-25% for a more realistic run time accounting for some inefficiencies.

As in my first post I started out and got my first DSO image in September 2022. 03/09/23 - 05/09/23. Just settling down to sift through the 18hrs of data, organise my folders etc, opened DSS to stack the data to be greeted with a warning that some data set gain doesn't match light frame gain. I was very confused as I hadn't knowingly changed anything, but sure enough my light frames have all been shot at Gain 0 😔. New territory for me as I usually shoot at Gain 101 so wasn't sure what the outcome would be here. Stacked the three separate nights of light, dark, flat and dark flat frames anyway and here was the result... Skywatcher 80ED @F/6.3, EQ6-R Pro, ASI533MC-Pro, Optolong L-Enhance, SVBony 30mm f/4, ASI120MM-Mini, ASIAIR Plus, EAF. 216x300s, stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop. Fairly straightforward on the processing with some arcsinh curves, G+B curves to make the bubble pop a bit more, selective colour adjustments. StarXTerminator to separate and desaturate the nasty dual band star colour, slight reduction and blueish hue, screen blend and final crop to get rid of stacking/dithering artefacts.

18hrs of exposure on the Bubble Nebula over the last 3 nights. It's been a great run and feels great to be properly back out there! I need to pay more attention to setting up a sequence as this was shot at Gain-0 by mistake, where usually I use Gain-101. Stars show I'm just a smidge too far from the reducer but I'm not going to argue with it. I'm not sure how representative of this is from 18hrs of data with this kit, but I'm actually really pleased with how this has turned out! Skywatcher 80ED @ F/6.3, ASI533MC-Pro, L-Enhance, EQ6-R Pro, SVBony guidescope/ASI120MM-Mini, ASIAIR Plus, EAF, DSS and Photoshop.

Well I must say chaps, thank you for the impromptu optical theory lessons 😅. I've tried to have a good read through to understand what you're debating but sadly it is above my intelligence level! Could you summarise what you're saying here in layman's terms? @ollypenrice I didn't know guiding RMS has to be <half your sampling rate. I was under the impression that as long as the RMS was under your sampling rate, you wouldn't notice any tracking errors. Please could you explain why that is? Cheers chaps 😊

Thanks both for your explanations, it makes a lot more sense.

I'm trying to wrap my head around this oversampling thing. I really want to get an ASI2600MCP for that lovely large FOV and pair it with my 61EDPH. I'm undersampled here but I kind of get that - my images are a bit soft. At the same time I'd love to get an 8" EdgeHD for galaxy season to really start to get in closer. I believe this is going to end up oversampled at 0.55"/px, but what's the deal here? Guiding on my EQ6-R is rarely above that on the worst nights, so tracking errors shouldn't be an issue. Seeing? What about my sub frames - what will they look like? What's inherently bad about oversampling?

I've used it for just shy of 6 months now, bought second hand though. With the Sharpstar 61EDPH II and all the zwo gear, it's knocking on the door of 5kg. I've only ever run it through the ASIAIR so can't comment on use through WiFi/app. First few runs showed the guiding to be a bit poor at 1.2-1.6" if I remember correctly, though at my image scale of nearly 3" it didn't affect things too much. I tuned out the backlash in the gearboxes and worm/crown gears on both axis, a general tidy up of grease which made a good improvement, guiding regularly below 1" now. On the best nights it's been as low as 0.6". It's easily portable having taken it to the canaries by plane - takes minimal room in your hand luggage though you do notice the extra weight. Draws absolutely peanuts for power running for a solid 6hrs. A little noisy but just an observation rather than complaint. Overall very decent for the money especially when you tune it up a little.

Sooooo this build kind of died a bit since last year. A lot has happened in the mean time. I picked up a decent back injury from work in December '22 which has affected my fitness and mobility somewhat, money has been a little tighter than I was comfortable with, and the deaths of a loved one, 60, and a close work colleague, 37, bless their hearts. Had a harder time this year so far than I've let on, and the non existent summer we've had hasn't really helped either. Changes since in the garden as a whole since my last post... we've put some stones down on the wall, got rid of those nasty council 3x2s and are going to just throw stones down there as well, had the steps "re-finished" by someone which I won't even pass comment on, and we're having a fence installed along the chain link line for some much needed privacy. I'm pleased enough that it's survived a cold winter and wet summer and appears to be standing as straight as the day it was done. I'm not pleased with the backfill or paving - it's slowly subsided by the edge of the wall so the small row of slabs has begun to sink and separate from the rest of them. I thought I'd compacted it well, obviously not! We gave it a few coats of Curpinol in silver copse. It's ok overall I guess, but not the result I'd have liked after the effort of the project. We managed to get the council to dim and shade the street light, but it's still not really any better for imaging. I may buy a painters telescopic extension pole, put on a black flap of sorts and mount it to the gate post to physically block the rest of the light. In hindsight, I would chop the wall down the middle of the length, excavate and build a roll-off roof, but that won't now be for a few years. The rest of it will be garden related so off topic, so I'll call this project finished, until it falls and or rots, and appreciate everyones encouragement along the way - it really helped push me through 🙂

That is an encouraging set of data to be honest, a carrot at the very least. Where I live the LP isn't too bad, it's a good B5 or so which is respectable for a medium sized town. There's only so much you can do though when a street light towers over your garden. They've dimmed this and fitted a shield and yet... ... It's still too damn bright. More needs to be done but until then, the idea of a 9m painters' extension pole and a flap of cardboard might have to do to block it completely 😰

So this time I cropped in 60ish pixels maintaining original format and ticked Large Tile Overlap. I couldn't see any artefacts to start with, so waaayyy over-stretched it to try to force out anything like the squares before... Seems to have worked a treat! I can't see any artefacts in there now - Thank you very much for the help my friend

Thanks Fegato - I will give that a try and post back the result. Yep, it did need cropping at this point but I like to do that more toward the end of my processing - I posted the completed image into the novice challenge last night 🙂👍

My first proper astro image came about in Sept 2022 so I think I qualify 🤞. With July being a complete no show, having only got 4 hours of imaging time, I was keen to get back out 6th August. Being a work night I had to consider set up and tear down time, and with a new adaptor for it, the mini rig was the weapon of choice. It would be the first time I could test out this adaptor which is essentially bypassing the rotator that my reducer comes with. Having done some investigation I believe the poorly shaped stars I was getting was a few months ago was something to do with the rotator. I know it's bad practice to change two things at once as you can't pin down where any improvements or detriments may have come from, but I went with my gut anyway and got an OAG again and fitted it at the same time as my adaptor. Both fitted, sensor appropriately spaced, image train nice and snug, the frames coming through showed a huge improvement! To my inexperienced eyes the sky was a good B5 and seeing was actually quite decent, maybe a 7/10. I captured 42x300s frames, tossing one through trailing, then ignoring another few selecting best 90% from DSS, drizzled 2x. Total time for this image is 3hrs 5mins. Shot with the mini rig - Sharpstar 61EDPH II @ F/4.5, ASI533MC-Pro, L-Enhance, Star Adventurer GTI, ASIAIR Plus, EAF, 120MM-Mini/OAG. Not completely satisfied with the processing - It seemed hard to bring out the OIII this time for some reason. I'm keen on at least doubling this exposure time, so bring on the clear skies....

I seem to be having trouble, especially recently, with this square pattern emerging. It becomes more and more obvious the more I stretch the image. I'm not sure if it's just me asking too much of the data or if it's an artefact of sorts from DSS? I use DSS for stacking and when shooting with the EDPHII I like to drizzle, so I dither every frame by 5px - I've read that "well dithered" is a requirement if you intend on drizzling. I've attached a PNG - It is from the point in my workflow where I've just about settled on stretching and removed the stars. What do you think? I'd really appreciate some help/advice here as I'm starting to worry my camera may be on the way out? I've dedicated all of this evening to start getting to the bottom of it, and the fridge is full of Kopparberg so I have all night 🙂 Cheers!

FWIW I've seen a few DeepSkyDude videos on YouTube where he covers the Texas star party, Okie Tex etc and a few guys there had essentially PVC pipe as a frame, and some kind of fabric for the "walls". It would mean more planning and fettling on your part but you could make any shape or size you wanted and without tapping into that precious astro money!

Thanks for your input chaps, plenty to think about 👍

Due to a for sale thread on here, I noticed that this flattener has an M63x1 thread which is the same as the focuser on my 61EDPH II. I'm curious as to whether this element would work with this scope, considering it's designed for F6 and the EDPH is natively F/5.5. It's a nice thought that I could shoot at its native focal length opening up some different framing options as compared to the usual 0.8x reducer/flattener. Cheers.

Thank you 🙂 Yes the wind can get quite old quite fast, but was fortunate enough this time that it was a lot more gentle than last year - laying on the beach then was like actually being sand blasted!

Well that's all of friday night and the best part of today processing the data from Fuerteventura! A little about the trip - I shot looking south to SSE from a small "cliff" at the shoreline just up from Las Plajitas which was about as good as I could find on the island taking into account access, local low cloud habits and light pollution info from the 2015 survey. To my inexperienced eyes and with an educated guess, I'd say it was a solid B3. I'd love to get an SQM meter to be able to more accurately determine the conditions above! Having said that, being on the SSE side of the rocky and mountainous island with a NNWly breeze, seeing was garbage. That didn't take away from the breathtaking Milky Way core on show! It was amazingly big and bright, easy to spot dusty features against the glowing star clouds, almost 3D looking. Many familiar objects could be seen naked eye, even down to 12-13 degrees above the horizon. Omega Centauri was slap-in-the-face obvious, M8 and M20 a fairly easy spot, M24 and the Sagittarius star clouds, M31 prominently rising above the mountains, M13 a fuzzy star in the Keystone, and many other Messier objects. It was an almost spiritual experience and can't wait to hunt down the potential B1 skies of rural Nevada in October! I chose to shoot targets that I otherwise couldn't really do from 52 degrees north. I really wanted to go after the Lagoon and Triffid and the Eagle, managing to capture 2.5 and 2.75hrs of exposure respectively. In between, I did an hour each on Omega, Centaurus A and the Small Sagittarius star cloud. In between clouds, sleep deprivation, dithering times and tossed out subs, that's about all I managed in the end. Chuffed to bits with how things have turned out! The stars have improved in the corners and I didn't have to chuck out as many subs as I thought I might with the SA GTI fighting the stiff canary breeze at full capacity! All shot with the mini rig - Sharpstar 61EDPH II @f4.5, ASI533MC-Pro, ASIAIR Plus, EAF, SVBony guide scope and ASI120MM-Mini, mounted on the SA GTI. Processed with DSS and PS.

We have a short trip to Fuerteventura next week and I'll be taking my mini rig travelling for the first time. I remember the skies on a good night there, and it gives me butterflies thinking I could soon be shooting under it! I have a couple of targets on my list - M8/M20, M16, Omega Centauri - but looking for a little inspiration so I make the most of my time there. I could just shoot targets I've shot before but under good quality sky. I could use the opportunity to shoot targets I can't see from home. Would you bother using NB filters? My setup is a Sharpstar 61EDPH II with reducer and an ASI533MC-Pro giving roughly a 2.4° fov. What are you shooting?

This is the camera I bought to first get into astrophotography, and for a beginner it's definitely a good investment! It's a bit more forgiving when it comes to calibration frames - no amp glow and no strange behaviour with flats as with the 294 (from what I've read). I use gain 101, offset 70 which is set by the ASIAIR, cooling at -10°C, and anywhere from 30s exposures for bright broadband targets, to 300s exposures for Ha/OIII targets depending on conditions, altitude, LP etc. Never had any issues with sensor dew/frost, vibrations, it's been an absolute pleasure to use so far.