Vallantho

Oh no, preparing for an eclipse would probably induce a heart attack with worry. I feel for the scientists of old who’d sail half way round the world on scurvy inducing voyages only to be met with clouds and dysentery.

I feel that.

I don’t own my property at the moment so building anything is not an option. But I am looking to buy in the not too distant future. Then I’ll be able to make a more permanent arrangement either an obsy or at the very least a permanent pier. That would definitely take the edge off. Although maybe I’d worry about how long\ it takes to roll the roof off?

Is it just me? Does anyone else find the whole process of getting setup for imaging rather anxiety inducing? I think my perception of time is the problem. In my mind the time needed to complete a task is vastly disproportionate to the time actually required. I give myself half an hour to drag the telescope out and get everything plugged in. It actually takes me about two minutes because the way I’ve set things up I only need to plug one cable in. Polar alignment is the worst part. I can feel my heart racing, the adrenaline pumping. It’s a five minute job. It’s not difficult. But it feels like so many hours and so much wasted precious darkness. I’ve taken to leaving my setup outside covered over for long periods if the weather is fair and that helps a lot. Then there’s other complications. There are a lot of responsibilities in my life. So all the while I’m getting setup, polar aligning, getting on target, getting the guiding up and running and sorting my imaging session out there are other things that require my one hundred percent attention. Frankly more important things. You know, actual life. Once the work is done and everything is running smoothly I can relax and enjoy things And I do really enjoy it. But that whole process before, I don’t look forward to that. Anyone else have similar experiences? Or some tips to make life a little easier?

Clear skies near Southampton. I was already setup from a few nights ago so just pulled off the cover and got imaging. Left everything running and came inside. Not sure if it’s still clear because the cat’s sat on my lap and I would hate to disturb him. Hopefully got a good couple of hours in.

I’m feeling your pain. Got an Evolux 62 on my mount and I picked up the dedicated field flattner as a Christmas treat. Still hasn’t seen action. And then just as the weather seems to be on the change my EQDIR cable is not working. I ordered another one which dpd seems to have lost. They’ve been telling me it will be here in 24 hours for the last week. Checked the weather this morning and almost had a panic attack when there was a chance of clear skies. Ordered another one off Amazon which should be here tomorrow. Unfortunately it’s cheap Amazon cables that’s left me in this situation so I was a bit aggrieved at having to hand them more money. But fear of missing out is a powerful motivator.

Hey that’s great. Definitely better. Thanks for the8 help. I’ll go through it and try things like you say and see how I get on 👍👍

I've uploaded a sub and the raw stacked file for you. In Siril i did a background extraction, photometric colour calibration, green noise removal and then used starnet. I used a generalised hyperbolic stretch on both the starless and on the stars. What form of stretching would you recommend for the stars? I didn't do any deconvolution. result_10320s.fit Cygnus_Wall_2023-06-13_Light_nofilter_050.fits

Just realised this was a thread from 2011. Duh

In photoshop and maybe affinity, haven’t checked, you can switch to the L a b colourspace which gives you a luminance channel separated from the a and b channels which contain the colour information. So you could open a new copy of the document in L a b mode, make edits to the luminance channel, which is basically just adjusting contrast, noise reduction also works well on the luminance channel, then copy that into a layer on your original image and pick your blend mode to taste

I’m using an L-Enhance filter and after processing in Siri my stars are looking a bit on the fake side they’re just white dots. No colour, no falloff I’m wondering what is the best way to get a more natural look. Im thinking the best thing to do is shoot a bunch of subs without the filter and stack them Then when I use starnet to recombine with the stars from the broadband image instead of the ones from using the filter, if that makes sense? What is a problem I think is that I have to remove the camera to remove the filter I don’t have a filter draw at the moment. So realigning the camera is gonna be a bit hit or miss what other ways are there I could preserve some star colour? Maybe do a photometric colour calibration and layer the images up in affinity and do it that way?

Thank you👍

I just got my flattner inserted in the visual back. You can take the nose piece off it and it has a female m48 thread. The focus tube has I think an M63x1.0 thread on the end. I’ve only found one M63 to M48 adapter https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/ts-m63-to-m48-adaptor.html it’s £40 i haven’t bought it because the advantage of using the 2 inch nose piece in the visual back is you can put a 2 inch filter on the end and you can also rotate the camera easily. I’m no expert at all but seems to me to be a decent enough scope at a reasonable price point. If I had any complaints about it I’d say the bottom thumb screw for tightening up the focus tube is in a bad place. It protrudes too far and makes it impossible to move the dovetail back to help with balance. I got round this by replacing it with a shorter thumbscrew with a bit of nylon rod glued on the end. The rack and pinion looks like brass so a bare stainless steel thumbscrews will probably mangle it up over time. You could alternatively make a riser block as in this thread I probably will spring for the official reducer in time. But using an apsc camera I wanted to retain its full 400mm focal length. I’ve also got an Altair Hypercam 183C pro which has a small field of view and the reducer will give me some more options with that camera . so yeah not a bad little scope all in all

Well not so much ashamed. Just setting standards for myself. I used to do a lot of landscape photography with my old 8x10 field camera. Over the years I’ve developed, pardon the pun, a certain expectation of what I’m able to achieve. Unfortunately I can’t get out as much as I’d like. Responsibilities at home that demand constant attention. But there’s a world of landscapes up there to explore. one day I’ll probably play around with shooting with film. I got a couple of medium format cameras that would be fun to try out some Astrophotography with

Well it was 140x60sec lights. 50 each of dark, flat and bias. One thing I didn’t do actually was look through them and toss out any bad subs. I use SIRIL for processing and affinity photo for touch ups. On the gear side of things I’m using a Sky-Watcher Evolux 62ED with a StellaMira field flatter. Camera is a Fuji X-T2 and an L-Enhance filter. For guiding I got a Svbony SV165 30mm scope and an SV905c guide camera. That’s all sat on top of an Iexos-100 and everything is controlled through Astro Imager D1 talking to an Indigo Sky server running on a raspberry pi.

So after about a year of figuring things out and a whole lot of learning by failing I’ve finally produced something I’m not entirely ashamed to share. Taken last night under a full moon and towards the dark destroying glare from Southampton docks. A year ago I didn’t think this would be possible. There’s still a few bugs to iron out. Stars aren’t very star shaped in the corners. I’ll probably need to shim between the camera and flattener a bit more. Guiding might need a little tightening up. But when all’s said and done I feel like I’m heading in the right direction at last.

I like that. There’s something more landscape and less Astro about them. Kind of surreal. Cool stuff 👍👍

Yeah I’m just gonna order one and see how it goes and there’s more than enough sockets for dew straps, raspberry pi and anything else. Should help keep the spaghetti under control. Thanks for the heads up 👍👍