TiffsAndAstro

Sorry for asking, but why a UV/ir cut filter ? Why not just a light pollution filter? Thinking of getting a osc and unsure which filter I should get

Ty, it's good to have someone to blame

Im hopping i can just slew and center m87 in nina over multiple nights. dslr dark frames might not be an issue for too much longer. i think its telescope and astro cam time. after what i can only assume is a decent 3ppa, it slews and is usually about 4000 pixels out. then it adjusts and is about 40 pixels out, then one last and its a couple of pixels out.

confession time: i only took 5 dark frames. also i used 'library flats' because i am lazier than cuiv and it was just another test. wasn't really expecting to actually see any galaxies and i gave up counting at twenty. i think i've managed to clean the finger print off the front element that i think caused the black hole. its good to know the cause and likely solution. im rushing a bit into more complexity, but so far its been ok. most problems are with niggly usb things. and focus. and clouds. i need time to fail more then fail bit less the next time

hope this is the right sub forum to ask this? half decent camera lenses are stupid expensive, so im thinking of getting a sky watcher 71 ed (i think it is), flattener, filter drawer, rotator and a zwo 585 uncooled colour camera for not a whole lot more but new. i saw cuiv and at least one other used a planetary (i think) camera for dso with pretty nice results. is that something i should even be considering? will also get a budget guide scope and mono camera. this is all going into a dodgyish 4way usb hub into a laptop running nina. sky watcher gti mount. back focus with a filter drawer (i assume i need one on a colour camera for light polution but not sure of a second filter needed for osc camera) and flattener and rotator i saw in a video might be an issue too

that's brilliant ty. from youtube i thought it was walking noise and tried to post process it out and im working on a guidescope and camera. i have a sw gti via nina which seems good. ty so much for this.

one other thing if you zoom in there is a sort of streaky noisy pattern. any ideas what this is? is it an artifact from too little total integration time or something else? same effect is in these two also over processing by me?

Hmm that's not terrible sounding. Hopefully combining multiple nights isn't too horrible to learn. Ty both for your advice.

Well m87 is up most of the time for me, but I'll need to Google how to combine multiple nights. Maybe I can do 5 hours at a time. No way of rotating my camera until I get a better lens with a collar ;(

Probably another stupid question by me, so apologies, but how long is a 'good amount' of time centering on m87 to get markarian's chain? took the attached last night for 45mins dodging cloud and expected nothing, but got quite a few very very small galaxies with my 200mm f5.6 canon 600d 120sec subs. would i be likely to get more definition on those tiny galaxies with a lot more total integration time, with my set up? Or is that pretty much always obviously so, irrespective of gear?

this might be a great help ty and will give it a go as soon as clouds go away. in a few months

It was some sort of medium format but not the plate glass stuff. It was a long time ago, it's possible it was 300 not 3000

i can focus back and forth through infinity as the stars get smaller and bigger if i rotate focus back and forth? so i wouldn't need to moving the stop?

also, chrome remote desktop seems to work pretty well. also just put the app on my phone lol. works great there too

how did you change the infinity stop? mine seems to stop past the infinity marker. still don't like dropping it to 5.6 but there is no stop between wide open 3.5 and 5.6. might try 3.5 again now its focus is locked. lol. i bet there are people choking back vomit but i find getting 'perfect' focus on lenses diffcult and this seems ok for me for now

Bit late to the party but I remember making a cost list for a 1st year project 35 years ago at uni and the film and processing cost alone were more than £3k. Was shocked when I was told no chance, lol I am politely paraphrasing my tutor's response

i pre focused it on the moon last week and taped it down. its probably the best focus i've managed so far. infinity seems before the marker on the barrel, but its probably a 50 year old lens. m42 might look better if i can grab 90 minutes on it tonight. ******* faffed about for too long with 3ppa. 30 sec test shot on orion looked great, 180 sec even better, so i've set it going after using nina framing assistant to get most of m42, all of hh and some of flame nebula. might get an hour before it drops too low. high hopes for this one then its time to break out the sct and get m51 for like 5 hours maybe?

i cropped it a little different and it worked fine. i think it didn't like having 703 sub parts to process i quite like it without stars. if im really stupid i might try it again with my 500mm mirror lens, er i mean my schmidt-cassegrain telescope tonight once m42 or andromea have fled the scene.

and m51.... 200mm crop sensor is not idea for this. or my $10 lens. but at least (i think) it shows i have everything working, ready for m42 or andromeda tonight. need to choose soon ish

blue screen of death trying to remove stars for iris nebula. siril probably just can't handle so many and such high quality stars.... also phot0metric colour calibration failed but i can actually see the iris nebula. if i squint. seems my set up is working pretty good, except my lens is a bit crap.

Finally have some test results. Will convert to jpg and post soon ish for feedback. 200mm f3.5 but stopped down one to 5.6. 30 180 and 300 sec subs all looked trail free and I never took caps off polar scope. Stars have more red than Donald trump's bank account though. Also 60x120sec on m51 and 30x120 on iris nebula. I have chance of fixing Chromatic aberration in siril than bird shape stars though hopefully. I'm still a tad suspicious that my Blue Peter style focus (here's one I made earlier) is unfocused enough to hide any trails though. Orion or m31 tonight hopefully for science.

what's a good test subject for focus/tracking that's up? everything seems very small in stellarium on a 200mm crop sensor. ngc7000 NA nebular if its high enough?# cheers for any suggestions. not keen on globular clusters

Think I'm gonna find an in depth look at Nina find out more how the magic works

ty for this. i don't use Ekos but ill try and have a google around nina and mount models, because i just don't think nina works this way as it has plate solving to find targets.

So does the GTi mounts model get updated or a model in Nina, or both or? Genuinely no idea, sorry : I can't even guess why Nina might have a model because plate solving exists. Do these models get reset on turning off/on? Should I be using my synscan app to reset alignment even though I only use it as a middle man for Nina? Apologies, this hobby seems to generate more questions than answers