fwm891

We've all had them: a night were cables won't work, laptops have  a mind of they're own, windows updates...

That was me last night pure frustration, should have powered everything down and gone to bed. But after the second reboot just after 3.30 I tried one last time get to get something. The original aim of the night was to get a three panel mosaic across NGC7000 but I got the rotation of the camera wrong so ended up with a strange angle across what would have been the central panel but at 3.30 with the sky brightening I glad to get anything. To me the brightening blue sky has added to the image of ngc 7000.

Hope you like

1 hour ago, x6gas said:

69 Francis?  Don't believe it!

 

Afraid so. But don't tell anyone 🤫

I'll chip in my thoughts here.

First look at the prices of these items new and add them up.

An edge HD 8 OTA will set you back (FLO's pricing) £1274

Edge HD reducer f7  £349

Starizona Hyperstar $999  £825.07 ( plus postage and taxes) (just VAT 20%) £990

Total: £ 2613.00 (approx.) 

I have owned an Edge HD 8 and I have to say I liked it very much so no problem with the OTA and images were good across the FoV with APS C formats but suffered a little with FX formats. A set of Bob's knobs is an essential to ease collimation (occasional tweaks against a bright star).

It needs a good mount (I have an iOptron CEM60 Standard - not EC) when using at it's f10 configuration, at f7 you'll get away with a smaller mount at f2 you'll need a mount to take the weight of the system as tracking requirements are reduced a little.

I never bought an f7 reducer for mine so I'll leave any comments on those to other users.

My interests have always been for wider FoV's so I seriously considered a Hyperstar unit for the Edge HD 8 and the more I researched the more I was put off in favour of getting the RASA 8.

What put me off the Hyperstar was the fact that users were having to re-collimate when the Hyperstar was added  to the Edge HD and again when it was removed and returned to an f10 or f7 configuration.

I will bow to Hyperstar users here too as I have not had any personal experience with a Hyperstar.

So I ended up selling the Edge HD 8 (because I wanted the wider FoV's much more than the f10 FoV). I bought an f7 115mm APO refractor and an 8 inch RASA and I'm now a very happy old man. Both scopes have been fitted with twin Losmandy dovetail bars and my guide scope (TS 80mm) has Losmandy rings on it so when I change the scopes over I simply swap over the guide scope too. My kit is observatory mounted.

You have a lot of research to do and I've found that 'the complete package' can be a compromise. The Edge HD 8 is a very good OTA and I'm sure it's dedicated f7 reducer is good too, would be an easy configuration change from f10 to f7. The Hyperstar (to me) is probably a luxury you can do without to start with. Put the £1000 towards a better mount, a mount you can live with for a long time, what ever OTA's you put on it...

46 minutes ago, Alan White said:

Happy not 69th Birthday Francis.

Nice that you got out last night I presume.

Thanks Alan. Yes really good night.  I've saved all the sequences so I can go back at some stage to add more subs. Really would love to put a chain saw to neighbours tree.

Not telling so don't ask if I'm really 69 (oops).

I've been wanting to get early light on M20/M8 pairing but with my reduced horizon it was getting light as I started to image so the rendition here is a single 5 min sub, I had shoot more but branches masked too much of M8 to use. Subsequently saturation has been pushed beyond it' normal limits.

Sh2-1 and IC 4592 were both images whilst waiting for IC 4604/B42 to emerge from the trees but by then it was too bright and I conceded defeat for the night (03.57 final frame time anyway).

Sh2-1 is a mix of 180 and 300 second subs ( 9 subs total), IC 4592 is another mix of subs (11 total 180, 300).

Camera ASI 294MC Pro cooled (-20°C) gain 122 and offset 30.

Scope Celestron RASA 8 with Baader UV/IR cut filter

Mount iOptron CEM 60 standard.

SGPro for capture, PI & PS CS3 for processing. No calibration frames used.

Observatory mounted and run remotely via Team Viewer 15 from the conservatory.

M20 and M8

IC4604  (part of)

IC 4592

Yes remember Tasco well. I started in the mid 60's saving my paper round tips to buy a 4½ inch reflector. The tube was white then, black trim and the same eq mounting and tripod.  Bought from a shop on Totemham Court Road. I saved 50% of the price and Dad matched it. Fine on low powers but the H 4mm eyepiece was (not good!)...

I've struggled processing this image. It's still need work but to get it here I've split the OSC original into it's RGB channels and balanced them as best I could before opening in PS CS3 to apply levels to each channel...

A processing job in progress.

Subs: 14x 300s plus 5x 180s. Darks and bias frames used in APP, Channel work in PI and finals in PS.

Forget the comet, I just went back to a couple of favourites. I really must try pulling together some of the other subs on these I taken over the years... One day perhaps...

Another night on the comet with an after attempt to see the core...

Love this galaxy.

115 EDT and asi 294MC Pro OSC cooled to -20° C 1 hr 40 mins of data

@Knight of Clear SkiesNoisy - yes. Probably me not taking enough subs and not applying any noise reduction to the subs during processing: Below I've taken the image through TGV-Denoise and a couple of other tweaks in PI.

Still has noise but I can live with it until  I have a longer session through less hazy skies.

Understand it's now breaking up 3-parts last night...

I used Regulus as a sync star last night and decided to try and get Leo-1 a dwarf galaxy hidden in it's glare.

Mix of 180 and 300 second subs (12 total 7 and 5 respectively).

Processed in PI

Scope 115 EDT-APO camera asi294MC pro

While capturing the comet on the 10th April I watched each (well most!) images on screen zoomed well in and I noticed that the shape of the coma seemed to change even between the two minute subs and pretty well forgot about it until today so I randomly selected four subs from the 40 subs taken and zoomed in again.

I inverted the images as that always seems to show more shape to a comet (or galaxy arms) and used the trace contour tool in Photoshop to outline the coma in each.

All four have had exactly the same levels stretch before being combined on a single image.

Nothing scientific about this - just my curiosity. The comet was imaged at 805mm focal length, longer would have given a better initial scale.

Didn't see any detail in the tail.

I wish this one was around more. I have a small slot to the south and this one passes through far too quickly.

Capture of 12x 300s, processed in PI and PS.

Keep safe all

Captured last night (11-04-2020 and centred around 22:20 hrs) 37x 120 seconds, from 40 sub frames. Processed in PI and PS-CS3. Comet stacking and star stack registered in PI, opened in PS and combined. Taken back into PI for background gradient work.

Captured with Altair 115 EDT-APO refractor, ASI294MC Pro cooled to -20°C mounted on an iOptron CEM60 standard mount.

Hope you like

@bob-c Have you stacked many subs for this image?

Looks more like comet movement against the starry backdrop. Should get a better idea if you do a comet alignment and let the stars drift.

Just a thought

One of those nights where gremlins ruled...
Only managed 3x 120 second exposures to combine
Comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas circa 22:15 10-04-2020

Altair 115 EDT APO + ASI294MCP + Baader UV/IR cut filter. Processed in PI No calibration subs.

10 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Lovely green colour.

What telescope/lens did you use please?

Hi @happy-kat - I used a Celestron RASA 8 for this image. With a UV/IR filter fitted to an ASI 294MC-=Pro cooled camera @ -20°C.

Don't know the lens but is there a macro setting?

Stack of 9x 60 second subs guiding on the stars during the captures.

Processed in PI for star registration and comet registration and the two images combined with a star mask (thanks Harry!).

Single 10 min sub guided on the comet. RGB original but the colour was bad so converted to greyscale.

M-Machine have a huge range of tubing they will cut to length as required: http://preview.m-machine.co.uk/CATALOGUES/metals catalogue.pdf

Just managed to get M45 and Venus last night before it dropped below the roof line. Great in a pair of bines.

Needless to say that Venus swamped M45 so I've tried to merge some older M45 subs with the Venus m45 images from last night too.

Venus M45 from last night is a stack of 4x 5 sec subs, WO 73ZS with Nikon 800E - image cropped.

I've replaced the combined image with 4x 5sec stack with a 6x 1 sec stack, shows Venus better and obscures less of M45

7 hours ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

Ah cool, so imaging at 480mm isn't too short then. I'll give that comet a go if it clears. Not taken my 294 down to -20, do you think its worth pushing it a bit lower than my usual -15? 

Probably not much difference but I use -20°C as a standard. Easily reached in winter and in range for summer nights.