KEJ

So last night I managed to capture about 250 x 20 sec subs/images of M60 & NGC4647, about 1hr 25mins of data with my ASI533 MC Pro.  Seeing conditions weren't A1, but nice to capture events like these.

Used Meade LX10 with a 6.3 Reducer.

On 07/12/2021 at 05:26, CCD-Freak said:

This is my latest project with my ASI-533MCP and SharpStar 150 mm F2.8 Hyper Newt and a UV-IR filter.  NGC1333 The Embryo Nebula in Perseus  300 x 2 minutes  ( 10 hours total )  captured and processed with Astro Art 8.   I am still working with the data so I am not ready to call it done yet.   The ASI-533MCP is a great camera and I am wanting to get it's big brother the ASI2600MCP. (^8

Morning

Very nice picture & impressive.

K

On 04/12/2021 at 20:57, Albut said:

I mainly use redcat 51. So went for the 183. A no brainier when you look at the match. Amp glow is not a problem with darks which are always a necessity with other calibration files if looking for top quality astro photos.

Interesting

On 03/10/2021 at 18:25, mightymonoped said:

I personally would say yes, absolutely.

Especially if you are imaging wide-field with a OSC camera, it opens up a world of narrowband possibility with little extra effort or outlay.

Although the l-eNhance is not as selective as the L-extreme filter, it's a great introduction to NB imaging and offers many more imaging opportunities to OSC imagers who are in light-polluted or more urban environments. 

Thank you

Hi

Great picture and possibly a simple question, but regarding the Optolong l-eNhance filter.

Would you say they are worth the money/using them full stop ?

Thanks

Blimey, last night I added the 3.3 reducer to my Meade 8" SCT (Old LX10) on the new mount, no guiding or cooling using my planetary camera(ASI462 MC).

I took 200 x 10 sec subs, Live stacked on the ASIAIR Pro, Sky Safari said I would get this and I certainly did, photo slightly tweaked on the ipad(30 sec jobs).

I only intended a quick test......33.5 mins of data

Well, in the end I pulled the trigger on SW EQ6-R Pro(risking divorce).

After speaking with Ron on here, he gave me some brilliant advice on de-forking the SCT from the Meade arms/mount(see attached document) and it now sits and works brilliantly on the new mount.

I think the actual time took approx 45mins when I looked at the time stamps on the photos I took.

So far now, I have only used the new mount visually for the SuperMoon(moon filter as well), but blimey, rock steady and no noise, I probably know no difference, but I am super impressed with it.

I did also then use my WO Z61 to capture a small video clip as well to produce a picture(also attached).

Thanks again for the comments and information.

Deforking a Meade LX10 8inch to SW EQ6-R Pro PDF.pdf

On 10/05/2019 at 06:03, Merlin66 said:

An 8" SCT sits and plays nicely with the HEQ5Pro. I used the wider Losmandy dovetail to mount mine.

My write up on the deforking of an LX200 attached.

No issues, no drama.

 

Lx200_defork.doc 27.5 kB · 221 downloads

Funny, I was just doing a search to see if anyone had created any documents as I had just completed one today after changing my Meade LX10 8" onto a EQ6-R Pro yesterday and your process like very similar - great minds, although  Ron pointed me in the right direction.

Deforking a Meade LX10 8inch to SW EQ6-R Pro PDF.pdf

Hi 

Could I pick your brains please and regarding the SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro mounts.

So are you(all) saying it's the case that the latest version of the mount should includes the new additional USB connector ?

OR

Possibly as stated, the latest version comes in several versions, one that happens to have the newer usb connector on the main case ?

I was just wondering is it the situation if it does not have the usb connector then its an older version of the mount?

Thanks in advance

Hi

So just to confirm, you connected from your ASIAIR Pro(using one of the usb 2 ports) <--> SW HEQ5 into the port that normally would have been used to connect the handset ?

Using a EQMod cable (usb one end and the other looks like a ST4/telephone plug)

Thanks

Rosetta is not mine, but fine - always great to try new things.  

So does it literally take off the green tinge ?

Sugar, windows only........I use a Mac!

I did have another bash at M42 after adding some more data late last week before the weather changed.

On 06/03/2021 at 06:46, Merlin66 said:

KEJ,

The 8” OTA will sit nicely on a HEQ5.

I’ve used all the Meade SCT’s , 8”, 10” and 12”

I never found a good solution to using the x3.3 reducer. It was originally designed for use with small webcams.

 

Thank you

10 hours ago, Philter said:

Very nice. I can see the dark detail the extra data has brought out. It's a lovely image.

Cheers, still learning and its a bit hard to see with a lower res screen print, I will have another go at it sometime to try a bit more post PS

15 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Like Ken, above, I don't think the 3.3 will cover anything but a tiny chip. Mine didn't, for sure.

I did once defork a 10 inch. It isn't difficult, but do it with at least one extra pair of hands. It helps to get a scissor jack between the tines just at the moment of separation. Don't force it too hard (indeed hardly at all) but use it to get a few thou of extra clearance.

It might be worth raising the deadly of issue of F ratio as well. 😄 This has been done to death on here but, briefly, there is no equivalence between reducing F ratio by increasing aperture (the camera lens scenario) and reducing it by reducing focal length (the issue of this thread.) The real way to counteract the slowness of F10 is to increase the effective pixel size by binning 2x2 or 3x3. What matters is the ratio between area of aperture and area of (effective) pixel.  FOV is a different matter but, here, the limiting factor will soon become the edge of field distortions which defeat the reducer. These scopes will never give a large corrected circle.

Having gone through all this myself I concluded that the fork mounted SCT is best left as it is, in alt-az mode, and used for visual observing and planetary imaging. I found the wedge a nightmare to align and the mount far too springy and erratic for DS imaging. For DS a little Newt or small refractor, with a small-pixel camera, will do a better job more easily and the SCT will still be there to enjoy for what it does well. Four years on the 14 inch at the top of the thread is still exactly as it was then.

Olly

 

Thank you for the advice

11 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

The thing is that, with these scopes, you can obtain the widest possible FOV without a reducer by using a 2 inch back, diagonal and long focal length EPs. (The baffle tube imposes the final limit so the reducer doesn't get you anywhere visually.) There was an F3.3 reducer in the old days but this was intended for the tiny webcam chips which were popular in those old days. It didn't work for visual and nobody is using that kind of tiny chip any more. I suspect the same would be true of most faster reducers.

What would be your intended use if you found a fast reducer?

Olly

Olly hi

Thank you for the prompt reply.

USA

Basically, I have a friend in the USA and he has a Meade SCT 14" LX200 GPS F10 and it would be purely in this instance for astrophotography.  I believe he has a 6.3 Reducer(waiting for him to confirm that) and because of the long focal length of his scope, I was wondering if anyone had used a 3.3 ?

My thinking, at least it will increase his field of view, speed it up and make it more forgiving for some DSO work, eventually possibly even looking to get it guiding with a guide scope etc.

UK

I have a Meade 8" SCT old LX10,  unfortunately with the clockwork RA and I would love to use that for some(or try to) DSO and I have 6.3 and 3.3 reducers, which I have used for taking pictures of the Moon etc and the results have been fine. Initially I did read that the 3.3 would not work(unless maybe that was relating to visual only).

A question on the side, out of interest do you know anyone that has de-forked a scope like mine and do you think something like a SW HEQ5 would be man enough( I seem to be having trouble finding out the exact weigh of the tube)?

The bigger mounts are more expensive and of course harder to move in and out and I was hoping something like this would work and not cost me a divorce !!!  (currently for DSO I have a WO Z61 , ASIAIR Pro and AZ-GTI which I love),

Thanks once again 

Out of interest and I am not sure what approach you chaps normally take.

And bearing in mind, this is just a screen print and my initial image on the left, I did take longer to process that in PS.

Left

Usually I throw all my 10/30/60/120 exposures in together, stack(DSS) and then PS etc.

Right

So, yesterday afternoon (taking not as much time as I normally would on the final image) I stacked the individual exposures for each duration in groups to end up with 4 stacked pictures(10/30/60/120) and then I did a HDR merge. Hard to see on these screen prints, but there was a difference and possibly something I may try in the future going forward now.

The original on the left and the HDR merge on the right( I did spend a fair amount of time doing the original to be honest).   But you can see a bit more finer detail on the right.

On 26/06/2017 at 10:18, ollypenrice said:

I've never been unreservedly keen on SCTs. They give large aperture from small volume, make great solar system imaging scopes, are very comfortable to use visually in Alt Az mode and have tended to give me eyepiece views which had the information but not, for me, the engaging thrill of being out in space. Somehow the stars weren't really pinpoint tiny and the backgrounds weren't as dark as I'd have liked. It's hard to explain but this opinion grew while I owned first an 8 inch and then a 10 inch Meade. (It wasn't down to collimation, which is easy to get right on an SCT.)  I've been very impressed by the only C11 I've tried, though. Anyway, rightly or wrongly it was was these expectations that I spent my first observng night with the 14 LX200 GPS kindly bequeathed to us by Alan Longstaff. I was in for a very big surprise...

GPS and Go To. 

With the control panel on the south side (not the north as shown in the picture!) you set the tube to horizontal and pointing north, then ask the mount to align automatically. It performs an assortment of gyrations, twists and tilts to orientate itself before heading off to a star named in the handset. The first was Arcturus, which it missed by about 15 degrees. You centre this in the EP and confirm, whereupon it coffee-grinds its way over to a second star, Dubhe this time. It was in the EP. Encouraging. And that's it, you are now supposedly aligned. There is no need to set time, date or location since all come from the GPS.

Jupiter was up so we performed a GoTo and the planet was just out of the EP (a 26mm TeleVue Nagler giving 135x.) Not bad but not ideal for a complete beginner had the target been an obscure DSO. 'Going To' Saturn produced the same 'near but not quite' result. However, when we asked it to go to M22 it ground more coffee and, bang, there it was smack in the middle of the EP. And this remarkable precision on DSOs continued throughout the night and all over the sky. All present were mightily impressed. I suppose there is some minor glitch in the planetary ephemeris but it won't be a priority to sort it out since it's easy to find and centre the planets anyway.

The views.

I was knocked out. Tiny, tiny stars against the darkest of backgrounds. (We were SQM21.6 last night.) The Nagler allows, nay requires, you to move your head to find the field stop. The superb stellar quality was maintained edge to edge. The views were not just informative, they were beautiful. A favourite was M24, the Sagittarius Star Cloud. This was too big for the FOV, naturally, but cruising within it we found clusters within clusters and, notably, some lovely powdery patches of minute stars which I don't recall seeing before. This is the kind of view I love.

M51 wasn't perfectly placed but showed spiral structure, 'the bridge of light' and a satisfying scale and brightness at 135x. In fact we just left the 26 Nagler in all night, after quitting the planets.

M27 was very dumb-bell shaped, the central star was just visble in averted vision for me and, again, the scale and brightness were very rewarding. There was nothing of the 'fuzzy blob' about it!

The FOV is limiting with a 3.5 metre focal length but the sky is not short of targets at this magnification if you have the aperture to support it.

This and that.

Because we couldn't get the electronic focuser to work we were obliged to use the moving mirror focuser. It was OK, but has the well known backlash. Best to make your final focus a push of the mirror against gravity. Image shift was very slight and there's a mirror lock available.

We have the electronic focuser which seems to be a motorized Crayford, but its cable collides with the fork mount! (I've been seeking advice on this on another thread.) An alternative focusing socket on the fork higher up, and not mentioned in the manual, doesn't work.

 

One way or another we'll sort this out.

Grinding coffee. The scope is loud when on the move. We don't have neighbours nearby and Alan was two miles from the next house in Shropshire, but if you observe from an overlooked suburban garden the noise might very easily be an issue.

Stability. The tube is held stiffly in altitude but has quite a lot of elasticity in azimuth. This seems to have diminshed since we began running the scope a few nights ago and is not an issue for observing. I wouldn't want to try DS imaging without much more stiffness in the RA drive, but we have no DS imaging plans for this instrument. We want to let it do what it's good at.

Conclusion.

Because this scope was Alan's and was a gift from him I really wanted to like it. Happily, I do like it. In fact love it and can't wait to get out there with a long shopping list of targets. The views are just what I want telescope views to be and the excellent GoTo makes for an enjoyable evening's observing. A beginner can sit down at the scope with a list of objects and set off with no need of help from anyone else. OK, the FL is long and somewhat restricive but the aperture compensates for that by supporting high magnification. With a Telrad on top (not seen in the picture) a beginner can see where the scope is pointing and pick up a pair of binoculars to take a different kind of look at the same part of the sky.

That scruffy roll off in the background has now been re-clad in respectable marine ply and is awaiting a brass plaque identifying the scope simply as The Alan Longstaff Telescope.

Olly

PS The Wild Duck Cluster was Alan's favourite and it really was lovely in his scope. Its improbably geometric shape was shown to advantage by the smallness and brightness of its stars. I always think it looks like a distant space station. Wonderful. Roll on the coming of night.

 

 

 

Hi 

I appreciate this is an old post, but does anyone happen to know what Focal Reducers this scope is compatible with please ?

I assume a 6.3, but anything smaller/faster ?

Thanks

Bortle 2, nice!

Lovely detail - Nice!

This is ongoing, I managed to grab another 30-60 mins of data last night(Bortle 6 and pretty much a full moon last night), I will update these later.

Only using a UV/IR filter.

Interesting,  just looking back and comparing June last year(DSLR) to February this year(ASI533 MC Pro), now hopefully I am a little better processing with PS and the DSLR pics only had about 1 hr of data, compared to the astro-camera with over 2 hrs of data.

On 25/02/2021 at 14:09, astroenthusiast said:

Really fantastic shots!! What processing software are you using? I have the ASI533 MC Pro and ASI2600 MC Pro color camera's, but a few things. One, the ASI533 dews up quite a bit, even with the external dew heater, the ASI2600 when capturing images look green! I'm using Explorer Scientific ED102 and ED165mm APO refractors and a TPO Ritchey Chretien 304.8 mm telescopes. My images are not coming out nearly as fantastic as yours! Any tips, please?

Morning

I'm probably not the best person to ask and thank you.

I have a dew shield, connected to the ASIAIR Pro and now, I have started to just collect more data, ie: previously I may have grabbed 30mins to 1hr of data for an object. But, now building on 2 hrs plus, plus  I find shorter exposures don't seem to blow my stars out so much, so I do a mixture.

I also downloaded ASI Studio with a FITS file viewer, in the old days(few months ago) I stacked everything, but now I quickly go through them and delete any with star trails or satellites etc.

I use DSS, then PS, just taking my time, routine in PS initially curves and levels a few times to tease the colours out.

Camera settings pretty much unity gain 101, cooled to -10 degrees or -15 degrees.

Tell me what are you currently doing to process your pictures ?

Cheers

Bit more data on Orion added(M42).

I have started spending a bit more time on subjects and even using the FITS viewer to delete the ropey frames first before stacking.