TiffsAndAstro

1 minute ago, PhilB61 said:

Ok, so I had a bit more time to play with this new tool. No problems opening any of my tiff files from various sources, Siril, PI etc although nothing much bigger than 300mb.

Possibly I was a little overly enthusiastic in my initial assessment, my excuse is that it was in the early hours. I still think it is a great free tool but as Frank himself says in the video, its not in the same league as BlurX. Comparing side by side versions of the same image, the BlurX versions (on default setting) are both sharper, cleaner and less noisy than the best obtained using optimised settings with Cosmic Clarity. I also noticed as mentioned in one of the posts above that using a high value for Stellar sharpening introduced a hint of false stars on the boundary of some high contrast areas but only noticeable/visible if really pixel peeping.

Frank does mention that he will be continuing to develop the AI model so I am sure it will be even better once out of beta. 

 

I think it still looks very promising for those without pi though. Surely better than having nothing?

Does it overlap or interfere with astro sharp and astro clean?

Great image Rasa really suck in a lot of photons

Wow this is amazing. Not sure how intentional the framing is, but it's very cool. Like a stairway to heaven or hell. 

Or a fairground rotating tunnel ride that makes you lose your balance. But in a very impressive way.

Staggering

On 13/09/2024 at 16:49, seven_legs said:

Lol, 

I only use the Daily Mail when I've no toilet roll left

I only read daily mail when I have no toilet paper left to read

5 minutes ago, imakebeer said:

@alacant many thanks for the tips (from what I read around here I think the word for the matt black lining in the tube is "flocking" 😉). Not the first time I've heard about or seen these mods mentioned for a PDS 👍If I have to take things to pieces I'm very nervous about the idea about having to (I assume) re-collimate afterwards mind you, but I'm sure I could learn.....

More generally, thanks for the processing attempts everyone, very generous of you all @Elp & @TiffsAndAstro No idea what that ring is around the target - that stack comes from 2 nights worth of imaging and the ring present in both. Could it be light from the target bouncing off the various lenses in the imaging train (primary & secondary mirrors, coma corrector???). I've never had this issue with any other targets so it's very odd.

Still, fingers crossed for clear skies tomorrow night and I can give the L-eNhance filter a test drive 🔭🙏🤞👍

im really not experienced enough to make a judgement, i just wanted to point out the shape looks similar to crescent nebula so maybe a reflection from something?

good look with it, it seems a minor thing a tweak will fix

2 minutes ago, Elp said:

Agree on the dark patch, is it a light leak? it's restricting what you can do with the data:

i had a go with free tools and couldn't get it reduced as much as you have.

i assumed it was some kind of colimation error, but the halo does seem to match the shape of the crescent nebula itself....rather than circles or similar....

17 minutes ago, Mr Green said:

No one does the 70's colour pallete as well as you! Give Pixinsight a go, as Chris mentioned, you just need to establish a workflow and once you've got that nailed down, you can start adding a bit more complexity.

New mount first

4 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

@TiffsAndAstro I guess you have but have you let Mr Seti astro know? Sorry but he doesn’t appear to have a name. 

its only beta and it seems impressive but with a few foibles. might try and post on his yt video. 

also its very possibly its a problem with my images/data. i still get sn++ via siril causing a blue screen of death (stop_clock) occasionally but only with my data - never anyone else's 

Tried this tool a few mins after his video.

Doesnt work with some PNG or 32bit tiff of same image. Also anything above 0.3 for stars results in pacman shapes.

At least for my so so images/data

Overall I think it has potential but I find it hard to know for sure right now

Very glad of his efforts though 

This one looks ok, few odd newvstar like artifacts along edge of my wall?

51 minutes ago, CheshireChris said:

Images shot 12-13/09/2024

100x60s lights + flats/bias/dark. Not sure the darks were really needed for my ASI533MC, Gain=100, Temp=-10degC

Processed in Pixinsight - took many attempts; all part of the fun 🙂

Not without issues, some stars look a bit bloated but overall I'm pleased with it.

 

 

 

Great image pretty much exactly what I'd like achieve

hi all

so below is a HOO non drizzled of Cygnus Wall. I've smoothed/cleaned/denoised via the free tools i have and i think this is the best i can produce.

There is 'stippling' and i think this must be in my initial small stretches of the Ha and Oiii. I have not linear matched either Ha or Oiii to the other, as i think that's only needed for mono cameras? There is borderline posterising, also not certain where this appears

The RGB channels were created in siril via pixel math by my WonderStuff HOO expressions, as the result was GoldenGreen in colour. Its a little more blue now This might also introduce stipling/posterising if i've pushed them too much maybe?

also this is not drizzled - i can't seem to drizzle Ha/Oiii extraction in siril, with my slightly manual stacking process. 

any tips/insights how i get get rid or reduce the stipling/posterising would be great. Anything else too

49 minutes ago, AstroSamuel said:

Do you have any other recommendations for nebula to start in? I'm in the southern hemisphere 

I'm in northern hem where it's low so tricky.

Can't really offer any advice for southern hem images except hold on tight

I'm sure knowledgeable people will give suggestions. If not, go on telescopius.com and see what's popular/brightest.

Greater magellanic cloud maybe? Really dunno, sorry

3 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

I agree. When I was choosing to buy a mount, the HEQ5 seemed to be the best bang for the buck. Its on the heavier side for carrying around as a travel mount but for the purpose of lugging from home to the end of the garden, its perfectly dooable (atm 🙂 )

Yeah it's not as light as an am5n but it's half the price. And I take scope off to move my current gear in/out anyhoo

I'm not a weakling or anything, can pick my current mount and tripod up with one hand and carry 20 yards. 

And my scope too though that feels risky lol

13 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

If you definitely don't need AZ mode then you'd be better going for a HEQ5 as they are less expensive. Worth bearing in mind though that a HEQ5 with the Rowan belt mod is about the same price as the AZ-EQ5 which comes as standard with a belt drive.

I've seen the term rowan belt mod on forums and videos, but not looked any closer.

I'm really not keen on dissembling a brand new mount inorder to fix it

Also sw QA seems lacking,  so not keen to buy from them again, but maybe no choice

Also, for £300 more, could get their new 100i strain wave mounts. Fairly sure it has strain wave on both axis unlike am3?

8 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

I deliberated for well over a year before upgrading to the Sky-Watcher AZ-EQ5 mount, but now that I have it, I'm very pleased with it and I can't see me changing mounts again. What I like about it is:

• It's not spectacularly expensive (actually one of the least expensive 5kg plus AZ GOTO mounts).
• It's light enough to pick up and carry outside, even with my 72mm refractor fitted (though not with the 6" Newtonian).
• I can mount two scopes in AZ mode, each up to 15kg, although I don't use the full capacity.
• It's rock solid and shows no sign of keeling over.
• If I ever feel the need, it can be converted to EQ mode.

 

atm i think my choice is something like this (though ill never use an az mode) or a juwei-17. very few reviews of either, but i'd trust your skywatcher a lot more

10 minutes ago, Elp said:

From a charity/pawn shop? Yes, an absolute bargain, though they took photos of everything but the most important thing, the optics.

I've seen some charity eBay's with close ups of the front of the scope. Dust cap is still on mind you.

I tend to think, charity? Doesn't know any better....but I'm wary in case it's actually deliberate

2 minutes ago, Elp said:

I suspect the difference is down to the camera pixel size, you need larger pixels with larger aperture I believe. Keeping the camera the same in this instance shows the difference.

My pixels are 3.76 microns or the Goldilocks size as I like to ignorantly think of them. Should be ok whatever I stick in front of them, maybe even past 2000mm. Again, maybe ;(

Bigger camera sensor is way, way down the list

On 02/05/2024 at 16:19, Elp said:

Probably not done completely accurately but I scaled the linear C6 reduced image down to the same (or similar) as the Z61 before stretching both, it looks closer but the Z61 data still looks slightly better to me, could be sky transparency or something (C6 also doesn't look well collimated, actually I think it was the guiding):

 

This isn't helping lol

Z61 looks a lot nicer on my rubbish budget phone screen.

2 minutes ago, Lee_P said:

Thanks! I made the most of the full clear nights we had!

 

Thanks, I found your image on your website and think it's very good. Quite dreamy and ethereal. Our kit is similar but I think yours is a little higher-end than mine -- slightly bigger and faster telescope, and full mono. How dark are your skies?

 

Thanks!

 

Ah interesting, because you're not that far from Bristol, right? I just added up all the exposure time I've put into images so far this year: 188 hours. And that's just the good quality data that made the cut. Oh, and my camera's been having technical issues, so was out of action for a while. 

 

Thanks, I'm happy with this one -- especially as I had to edit it a few times to get a decent result!

 

Thanks, it was a tough one.

 

Who needs dark skies and mono 😂 Not that I'm jealous of those folks...

Mono is better but osc is definitely closing that gap as your images demonstrate 

2 minutes ago, Elp said:

That 200mm difference isn't that large, the aperture as you say should make a difference, but when I tested my 370mm refractor against my 1000mm reduced C6, the signal was better in my Z61 (as I would expect having used a number of reducers and optics, the signal is compressed onto a smaller pixel area so will generate a higher pixel response in that small area, kind of how the Hyperstar works), pretty much the same duration, same location, same camera and filters. Even rescaled the images to same pixel size, the Z61 was brighter. But, the C6 if given more time would resolve more detail, but is it enough to justify the higher additional cost of equipment, I'm not so sure. That's my take anyway.

That's really not what I'd expect and would be disappointed I think. So I really appreciate the info.

As you might be able to tell, I'm far from certain what to do, except a beefier mount will be required almost whatever I decide.

I really want to try and avoid replacing whatever mount I get next whatever scope I then get subsequently. 

3 minutes ago, Elp said:

From my experience, pretty much every second scope I've acquired has been sold on. I don't particularly like long FL imaging, the equipment is much larger, heavier and harder to store (takes up more space). So also think about that.

Apart from galaxies (except m31 M33) I think my current scope/fov is too much lol .

Going from my current 400mm to maybe 600mm isn't a deal breaker if my aperture (almost) doubles.

I really just like edge hd (in theory) because it does say 2000mm F10,  1200mm f6 and 400mm f2. Having said that I think I'd only change it's configuration twice a year summer galaxies/winter nebula. And like £3500 for all the bits to do that

18 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Speaking of mounts and newtonians, i made the mistake of attempting to make an EQM-35 work with an 8'' newtonian. While it technically does have the load capacity to handle the scope, in practice it was borderline unworkable. Dont make the same mistake, you will not enjoy using a newtonian with a flimsy mount. Its actually just a miserable experience and chances are you will end up hating newtonians if you do so.

So i do agree with @900SL , figure out what mount fits your budget in the near future and match the scope based on that. I would recommend not exceeding 50% of the stated imaging load capacity of any typical mass produced mount with newtonians, which means you'd probably want a mount in the EQ5 class at minimum, HEQ5 probably a better idea still (with a 6'' newt). The problem with a newtonian is not only that of weight, its also the length and bulk of the scope which places the weight further from the center of mass, which taxes the mount a lot more than just the weight would suggest.

I've been looking at mounts and eqm35 seemed a possibility, but like you say, under mounting is a term (phrase?) I see a lot and I'm sure it's for a reason. 

On a side note, I saw a video last night of someone with an obsie and a 10 micron £10k mount. GPS adon thing, more wires than a rats nest in a sphegetti factory. Image at the end of video was worse than mine. So I felt sorted of happy

Then I saw chucks video of his copy of MY  blue/yellow Cygnus wall nasa apod winner and almost cried, lol.

Also, seems strain wave mounts aren't particularly better than worm drive, except in weight and payload ratio. And lack of balance needed.

SW mounts lightness is really really appealing though.

6" newt about 6kgs, sundries say another 2kg max. That's barely under am3 payload. Anything beyond an am3 hybrid is very expensive

Juwei-17 might be my only hope, Oni-wan , but I'm rather dubious

2 hours ago, 900SL said:

Get a better mount and stop Jonesing for a newt. You've clearly figured this out already

Also I'm not 100% sold on newts. Was looking at Flo's recent post on Stella RC delivery etc. if a decent flattener reducer is available they might be less hard work than a newt. Maybe. 

I'd ideally like an edge hd with 0.63 reducer flattener and a hyper star, it seems a very very flexible system. But also has issues. And ludicrous costs.

Big refractor, then? Well they're mahoosive and can also have issues and cost like an edge hd or even worse.

At least with cars I can be a pita with dealers/ sales people and kick the tyres. Not so much with astro, and prices aren't too disimilar

I think that's the main reason for all my questions. No other option I can see except ask here and stand on others' shoulders. Sorry

1 hour ago, 900SL said:

Get a better mount and stop Jonesing for a newt. You've clearly figured this out already

I need to plan ahead. Don't want to buy my next mount only to find out it's not ideal for a subsequent scope I get.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-quattro-f4/sky-watcher-quattro-150p-f4-newtonian-modified-aplanatic-super-coma-corrector.html

F3.45 6" some sort of improved roller bearing focuser? 

Seems a lot of light gathering for £500 + some stuff like a fan etc ?