Peds

The 10u mount is a (big) notch above the Paramount, and if you can afford it is a much better choice. After sky modeling, you'll easily be able to go unguided with your 80mm refractor or a 130mm refractor in the future. You'll also find integration with NINA to be a lot better, as there is a dedicated plugin for 10u mounts in NINA.

2 hours ago, skybadger said:

Finally, this is normally a 'once and done 'operation, what's the argument for making it easy to repeat but expensive and heavy?

One scenario I see is when you send your gear out to a remote hosting location and wish to switch between a reducer and a flattener. This often happens during galaxy season. A tech on site can usually switch adapters for you, but adjusting tilt perfectly is slow, tedious and typically not something they will do.

I have been trying to image this target since November 2023 but weather conditions have been quite poor, as you all know.

This large supernova remnant was originally catalogued as a planetary nebula by George Abell. I had not realised how faint this target is, especially in OIII, which is mostly located on one side of the outer shell. There's some more cyan nearby, but too faint to catch with 5min exposures. I'll need to revisit this at some point with more data to see if I can reveal anything else in the area. Now that it's below my available imaging horizon, I've decided to call it quits for now.

The exposures were unguided after running a model with the Mach2GTO-L from my light polluted backyard in London, UK. 11hrs total integration (Ha and OIII) on my 130mm refractor. More info on equipment and exposures on my Astrobin here.

12 hours ago, Dark Raven said:

Have you considered SII + HIII to complement Ha + OIII?

Not really. I have a mono setup already. This will be a travel setup for dark skies, so I'll do mostly broadband imaging and only the occasional dual band.

On 17/09/2023 at 09:52, JonHigh said:

Nice!   Not too far off my setttings. Good to know. 👍🏻

The one setting I’m unsure of is the offset. Got it at 50 as well which seems to work nicely so it’s not rock bottom but I have seen others at much higher levels. The histogram doesn’t seem to clip at 50 that I’ve seen. 

I haven't played around with it much but 50 seems to work well.

I posted my first image with the Altair Ultra 4nm filter (Ha + OIII) here.

First impressions are positive, but only one night with it so far. No halos seen yet. I've not tried it on very bright stars.

On 16/09/2023 at 00:25, JonHigh said:

Very nice. Been thinking about buying this filter to replace my Altair Tri-band. Out of interest, what were your settings used?

I set the temperature to -10C, gain to 100, offset to 50 and took 300s exposures.

21 hours ago, whipdry said:

Nicely done, somehow your image processing has a relaxed feel to it... even the wizard has his feet up!

Peter

Ha! By the time I realised the camera was on sideways, the wizard was already deep asleep. 

This was a test image for a camera I just purchased mainly for travel, the ASI2600MC Duo. As much as I'd love to carry all my astro gear (filters, rotator, etc) with me on trips, luggage space is at a premium when traveling with the family. The simplicity of a OSC camera with a built-in guider was too appealing. This camera will live on my AP Stowaway.

Rather than do the usual unguided imaging run after creating a model, I wanted to see what I could get with only a rough polar alignment (a single pass with Polemaster), no model, and a 4nm dualband filter in front of the guider. I'm impressed! PHD2 was able to find stars to guide at 1s exposure (note this is with a 4nm filter and at f/7), but I chose to guide at 4s. I suspect that with a proper model and "bump" guiding, results will be even better. After I dial in tilt, I'll also need to test the Duo guider with my 0.8x reducer (f/5.3), which has a smaller image circle - at 40mm - but should be even easier to find suitable stars to guide with.

I suppose now I need to go shopping for a lightweight/portable mount. The Rainbow Astro RST-135E seems to have everything I want, except the price!

Anyway, here's the Wizard Nebula, taken from my backyard in very light polluted East London, UK. More info on Astrobin here.

I like that they are bold and are trying new things but I'd prefer having something like a powerbox built in and purchase a separate mini-pc.

Computers and software evolve rapidly and age quickly...

4 hours ago, Adreneline said:

Very cool Pedro - I'm a big fan of dusty brown and blue.

Adrian

Thanks Adrian! Definitely different, but I’m starting to like it.

We had a full clear night last night and I took advantage of it to get some OIII data for my Elephant's Trunk. In the end, I was able to get about 4hrs 45' of OIII and another 50' of Ha, which I added to the 3hrs 10' of Ha I got back in July.

I'm still on my quest to find an HOO colour scheme I like, but I really wanted bring up the blues this time around.

Taken with the 130GTX (13035FF) / Mach2GTO / PlayerOne Poseidon-M, unguided with a dec arc model in my backyard in very light polluted London, UK. More info and starless image on Astrobin here.

Thanks for looking!

- Pedro

That's very nice Gary, I love the colours!

- Pedro

Really nice Dave! How do you like the ASI2600mc + 135mm Samyang combination and how have you mounted it?

P

Remember that the mount is the most important piece of equipment for astro-imaging.

Consider the Samyang/Rokinon 135mm f/2 ED UMC lens, if you're sticking to that mount. This lens is very good, inexpensive, and used extensively in the astro community.

As a result, there are a number of mounting/focusing accessories available for it. If you get the EAF focuser along with it and the Asiair, it will make your life a whole lot easier!

I like the colours Adrian! Can you tell us a little more about the filters used? Is this SHO?

Another fantastic image Peter. That little Epsilon sure punches above its weight.

P

10 hours ago, Sunshine said:

So much detail, stars are beautiful pinpoints, amazing!

Thanks! Took a little bit of time to wrap my head around the spatial geometry to get the tilt out. But once I understood what I was doing it wasn’t so bad! The AP92FF corrects the IMX571 sensor really well.

41 minutes ago, peter shah said:

beautiful job

Thanks Peter!

- Pedro

With my rotator still being serviced, I figured I'd try and play around with improving tilt using my camera's built-in tilt adjustment to get a better feel for how challenging this process is. I followed Chris White's document, on using ASTAP and NINA's Hocus Focus and got pretty close to eliminating it with only a couple of turns here and there, using the Stowaway and AP92FF (field flattener). Tired of fiddling with tilt adjustments and not wanting to waste a clear night, I turned to NGC7000 and managed to get about 3hr 35' of Ha and OIII before dawn.

This is only my second time with bicolour processing and I'm still trying to find a colour balance and processing routine that pleases me. I figured since this was a night of testing, I might as well test a new colour scheme. This time, I used the ForaxxPaletteUtility. This produces a very different result to the vanilla HOO I'm used to. Going forward, I'll likely have to spend some time taking short RGB exposures for better star colours if I use this utility again.

As usual, all exposures were unguided after running a dec-arc model with the Mach2GTO-L from my very light polluted backyard in London, UK. More details on my astrobin page.

Thanks for looking!

I've also been looking into a camera with this sensor. It looks like you've rounded up all the suspects.

I suppose things to look out for include differences in backfocus between cameras (16.5mm for the hypercam, 12.5-17.5mm for the ASI2400MC, 17.5mm for the Risingcam), cooling performance, diameter of the camera housing (if you'd like to use an Octopi or ASG photon cage tilt adjustment system - these are built around the 90mm diameter camera body), and accessories. ZWO has a number of adapters, filter drawers, etc.

The risingcam price is really appealing... I do worry about support if it needs servicing. Note that it looks like the wintop version does not come with a few of the spacers and adapters that are included in the one from the risingcam shop.

Thanks for the kind words tomato and gorann!

Thanks Steve and simmo39!

24 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Great image, even in just mono! Will make an epic bicolour shot one day for sure.

Thanks! Luckily I was able to get Ha data for every panel. Hopefully Pegasus can fix the rotator, as I’m not brave enough to attempt another mosaic without it!

28 minutes ago, peter shah said:

Ooo that's a bit nice...great work

Thanks Peter!

I've always wanted to do a mosaic of the Cygnus region and figured that combining the wide field of view of the Stowaway with my rotator would be the way to go. It was working great until I broke my rotator (my own fault). I had hoped to at least add OIII data for a bicolour image, but this may need to wait until next year. Higher res and more gear details in my Astrobin: https://astrob.in/full/ss5hmk/0/

Taken on separate nights, unguided, after running a dec-arc model with the Mach2GTO-L from my backyard in London, UK.

Panel 1 - Barnard 145 area: 3h 20' Ha
Panel 2 - Tulip Nebula: 3h 10' Ha
Panel 3 - Crescent Nebula: 2h 15' Ha
Panel 4 - WR134: 3h 00' Ha

Thanks for looking!