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5 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

As with your NAN-Pelican, how about a compromise with smaller stars? In both cases I think your nebulosity is stunning.

Olly

Many thanks Olly for those kind words. Early days (2 days!) with the RASA and the 2600MC Duo so getting used to what they will give me. After reading your comment I've run some tests with the star image from the NAN-Pelican image using RC-Astro Blur-XT (taking a small croped area so I'm not here all week!) and I've ended up running both the stars only images with a 0.35 setting for sharpening and leaving the halo setting at zero as the halo is reduced anyway. So I hope these are more to your liking.

In for a few days of poor weather now so time to experiment further. Good to get comments from others about how images can be improved.

Many thanks

1 hour ago, Veloman said:

Well, this isn't reassuring. Here am I thinking of investing in suitable equipment for starting out in AP and now I'm not so certain that it's worth it....

Rob

Rob, if you look back through the moans on this forum it’s a wonder anyone is still practicing this hobby. People here (me too) will moan about the weather whichever way it swings. It’s a great hobby. You’ll get frustrated and elated all. In the same evening. USB cables will have rude words uttered on a regular basis but you’ll gaze at that image as the detail unfolds before you and all the woes will vanish…

Until the next night…

Dip in with some used kit first to get the hang of things. If you get hooked then start emptying the piggy bank.

9 minutes ago, Stuf1978 said:

I don't want to throw more money at the problem if I'm honest. 

This year has been woeful. Unfortunately I don't have the space for an observatory so setting up and dismantling is a necessity.

I have been through that type of situation with kit in the past where moving either a loaded tripod or tripod plus kit in smaller units. One thing I did after many nights of setting up getting my PA etc was to mark (the patio) in my case where the tips of the tripod legs touched the ground and next morning drill 3 holes in the patio just big enought to take the tripod leg points. Mark one legs as always in X direction (mine was nearest the kitchen wall) if you can leave the mount fixed to the tripod so much the better. Any little routine like that where bits of kit can be left assembled as units so fewer operations are needed to get going will speed up both set-up and take down time.

Still playing with the RASA 8 and IDAS NBZ filter combo. I like it as there seems very little in the way of halo's from brighter stars.

This is a 10x 240s combo from last night (22-09-2023). Processed in PI only. AC Astro's Star Exterminator used and the two parts of the image processed together. However the star/nebulosity image is from the initial integration. I didn't like the two part offering but did like the neulosity only image.

This year has been bad, worse than most. An observatory of some sort helps, even just a pier with the mount set-up so you don't need major PA's each session. Set-up and break-down are often the off putting stages because they're basically non productive so reducing them or removing them is a real bonus.

I have a RoR obsy and my set-up is usually plugging in a power lead to a wall socket and connecting my laptop to the mount/camera (oh and rolling back the roof!).

Shot last night as a test for my newly aquired (new to me) RASA 8 and IDAS NBZ filter combo. Captured with an ASI2600MC Duo unity gain, 10x 240s subs and processed in PI only.

I used RC Astro's StarExterminator to remove the starfield and processed the nebulosity separately. The stars were simply given a saturation boost before recombining.

I regreted selling my RASA 8 a few years back and I couldn't resist this when a fellow club member decided to sell his.

My Duo has red leads. An older usb 3.0 lead in the Obsy will not connect to the Duo, all other cameras are okay ? Not sure if it’s to do with the extra traffic from the inbuilt guide cam.

Grand imaging Dave as always.

9 hours ago, WolfieGlos said:

Although I intend to get into plate solving soon, I currently use NINA for captures but Stellarium to control the scope position and frame things up manually, and like carastro, compare the image (star positions mainly) from a previous session. In Stellarium, you can input your camera and scope combo, and it'll show a framing box.

Example below for my current target - note the scope/camera/flattener combo in the top right of the screen. I know I'm centred on a group of stars under the Crescent, with a double star visible on the bottom and 2 stars beyond the Revenant star on the left. 3 stars in top left corner on the nebulosity. For widefield I find this OK for cropping the edges out but I try to get as close as possible, then take a test shot and move slightly if needed.

I’m using Nina’s framing which is great, even shifting the frame outline around in an oversized  fov, and it will plate solve to that framing (with manual rotation) but what I haven’t been able to do is plate solve another image and import its details into the framing assistant to control the scope… Not using Stellarium, that’s like my small rig using ASIAIR plus foot framing/GoTo.

I have a couple of images I want to add more data to but they're not centred exactly on their NGC parent body.

Whilst I can call up the parent nebula and use a wider FoV and play with the frame rotation I can't seem to get close enough to the original framing to use the new data without having to crop the miss alignments out during processing.

I'm using the same scope/camera format for the new captures as the originals...

My first real session with an Askar Ha / OIII 6nm filter I purchased recently. With the moon having recently gone 'super' it was only going to be a short session before it raised it's head above the horizon.

However. I shot 10x 300s subs through my Orion Optics (UK) VX10 with a TS 1x coma corrector and ASI 2600MC Duo. gain 101.

Capture and scope control via NINA.

Processing used PI with RC StarXterminator so I could process stars and nebulosity separately.

I used red and blue masks for the nebulosity after splitting the background image and discarding it's green channel. Enhancing the red and blue channels and applying them separately to the background image and applying saturation and curves transformation through the red and blue masks.

The stas only image was given a small boost with saturation and stars and background images reunited with pixelmath.

Hope you like.

I reverted back to 1.8.9-1 which cured everything. PI have now issed a new release of 1.8.9-2 which I’ve installed and NXT, BXT Etc are all fine. I think they got some egg on face for the previous update.

Result of 10x 300s subs. Unity gain (101) ASI2600MC DUO, Orion Optics (UK) VX10. No filters. Processed in PI. I think I've hit the saturation button a little too hard...

For me it was the 2nd all nighter I've had this month and really enjoyed being outside with the kit under the stars. Almost a non starter as I thought clouds had set in early on. Fifteen minutes later after an early coffee break and a biscuit and gaps had begun to apear so thoughts of breaking down evaporated and the night progressed from there.

I'm trying to get to grips with N.I.N.A. at present and just manually connecting the kit I need: camera, mount, focuser and PHD2. I have set-up a profile for the kit but whether it's me not used to NINA yet but I can start PHD2 from NINA but I have to open PHD2 to make changes to exposures with all it's other complexities it seems strange that I can't make simple changes from within NINA as I can with the main camera? (gripe over).

Anyway the images I've processed ths morning:

Sh2-112. 10x 300s sub frames

IC1396. 4x 300s sub frames

The kit was the same for both: Camera - ASI2600MC DUO Gain 101 for main sensor, gain 75 for guide sensor. Filter, Askar 6nm Ha/OIII. Mount, iOptron CEM60 (non EC) and Focuser (an Italian job? senso2?). Scope, Orion Optics (UK) VX10.

Processing for both was similar using PixInsight 1.8.9-1 (I updated to 1.8.9-2 but it removed all the RC-Astro stuff and other routines so I reverted back to 1.8.9-1 which retrieved them all!).

I haven't shot any flat or bias frames with the new camera yet so no calibration was done to the above sub frames. Simply: Debayer (RGGB/VNG/combined colour), Star Alignment and Image Integration to get an image stack. Then Histogram Transformation, ABE and SCNR to clean up the image stacks.

IC1396. At this point I used RC Astro's StarEXterminator to give me a Star and the background nebulosity as separate images. The Star only image was saved and I then split the channels for the background image and used the red channel as a mask and 'played' with Curve Transformation and Saturation while flicking between highlight and background areas of the image until I felt happy with the image. The Star only image was then given a small increase in Saturation before being recombined with the background image with PixelMath.

Sh2-112 Followed the same process path as IC1396 with the exception that before recombining the two parts I run BlurEXterminator on the Star only image as I felt the stars were too dominant when I first tried combining them.

Both Sh2-112 and IC1396 were then saved and resized as needed.

Hope you like.

Managed to get this from the 3x 300s Askar image. Took way longer to process than capture...

1 hour ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

I'm sorely tempted, & envy you....

I was toying with getting the asi2600MC Pro but thought the internal guider 'might' be a bonus. It's helped already with removing cables from the set-up. As yet the guide scope remains attached but I think that will be removed at some stage allowing a smaller counterweight to be removed too.

What I was surprised at last night was the small differences between the three filter sets. Without the captions I think it would be difficult to tell the difference. I haven't split the channels yet to see what differences there are in those. Will look at that later...

Last night I tried my ASI 2600MC DUO with no filters, an Askar 6nm (Ha/OIII) and an IDAS NBZ filter to see what changes I would need to make to the guide settings when swapping between filters.

Scope used: Orion Optics (UK) VX10 with a TS 1x coma corrector fitted, ZWO filter drawer. Scope is f4.8, 1200mm focal length.

Captures were also made on NGC6888 (3x300s for each instance), the guide camera gain remained the same throughout (as did the main sensor gain). Captures made via NINA with guiding via PHD2. No settings were changed in PHD2 apart from exposure length as required. My usual unfiltered guide exposure is 2 seconds.

No filter:  2 seconds, guide stars easily visible 8+ stars selected for guiding.

Askar 6nm: 2 seconds, guide stars visible but fainter, 8+ stars selected for guiding.

IDAS NBZ: 2.5 seconds, guide stars faint, 8+ guide stars selected for guiding.

** I had made a dark frame library for the guide camera to minimise background noise.

I could have changed the gain for the different filters but left alone for this test.

Hopefully the images will upload with the no filter in the middle so easier to compare up/down against the others.

All filters were auto focused through NINA.

Cheers

39 minutes ago, tomato said:

Nice job.👍

What do the stars look like on the peripheral guide sensor at f2? I had lovely sausage shaped stars using an OAG with an Esprit 150 focal reducer, but PHD guided on them OK.

Not had any weather breaks to try it yet…

I'm trying to help a friend out with a problem in getting filters between his new ZWO ASI-2600MC DUO camera with it's 17.5mm back focal distance and his RASA 8 corrector lens assembly. The total working distance here is 28.73mm (according to Celestron) so with the 17.5mm back focus taken off gives 11.23mm. Fortunately a 2mm filter thickness is required when using the RASA 8 so no additional spacings are needed (just need to remove the factory fitted one).

Originally I was going to machine an adapter from a solid aluminium disc but the RASA 8 comes with a 'C-mount' which just happens to be the correct depth once the 'c-mount' is removed, meaning I don't have to machine the radial slots for the RASA collimation adjusters.

The ASI2600MC DUO has an M54 female front thread to accept any attachments. So I needed to put a 55mm minimum central hole in the RASA's C-mount plate to give a clearance to the new insert's 54mm thread.

A piece of ali rod was then turned to match the internal dimension of the C-mount and it's centre bored out to 45mm in prep for cutting the 48mm filter thread later. The outside was the turned down to 55mm over an 8mm distance to be a snug fit for the hole in the C-mount plate.

The outward 5mm was then threaded to 54mm x 0.75mm pitch to match the threaded face of the camera. This would take the threaded section below the approx 4mm thickness of the C-mount RASA adapter plate to prevent any thread fouling.

The ali rod was then parted off with a small excess. The 45mm threaded section was inserted through the C-mount adapter plate and a 54mm extension tube used to lock the insert in place inside the C-mount plate.

The extension tube could then be placed in the lathe and the inner face of the insert cleaned up to size and the 48mm x0.75mm internal thread for the filters cut. The 5th image has a schematic inserted giving a cross section (not to scale) of the insert.

Internal view - Filter in place

Internal view - Filter removed

External view showing the 54mm male thread to fit the camera and the filter thread

Internal parts view

External parts view - Cross section (not to scale) to give an idea of the insert shape.

The adapter mounted on an ASI 2600MC DUO to show clearance to guide sensor

Keith,

Been looking at the RASA white paper and the Duo my thoughts are you would need an adapter plate with this type of profile having a 50mm central aperture, with a 54mm male thread to fit the Duo with a thickness to give the required 28.73mm from the back face of the adapter plate to the sensor plane. Should be able to do that but don't have the ali at the mo. Might  build quite a thrist doing this!

If you can mount your camera onto the standard RASA adapter (42mm) with a step up ring 42/54mm then mark where the guide camera focuser knob is on the RASA mount and drill a suitable sized hole in the RASA mounting plate to allow light through to the guide camera... May need some back focus adjustment for the main camera to meet the 25mm RASA spec's.

just a thought...

1 hour ago, Elp said:

Looks good. No issues with finding suitable guidestars? I'm curious how this would work at 1000mm+ FL using something like an lextreme.

I'll be trying it with an IDAS NBZ and Askar 6nm duo band (Ha/OIII) in the near future but I want to get the final tweaks in PHD2 and iOptron's Commander sorted out, especially PHD2 which was a real PITA last night before I switched to NINA. Even then some subs were not guided as it kept timing out and not settling after a dither. Yet it's graph had spiked with the dither and resettled and was chugging away skimming the centre line?

Like most things new there were a few trials before things smoothed out slightly and I got a couple of images to show for what felt like .....   Well most of my problem were a cable (USB 3) which needed swapping but I think settings in PHD2 was my biggest headache.

Finally I got two sets of subs: 15x 60s on the Wall in NGC7000  and 14x 60s of NGC6995 these were captured through my Orion Optic (UK) VX10 with a TS GPU 1x super flat coma corrector (55mm back focus) The two extn tubes and the 17.5mm backfocus of the Duo were 55mm. No filters were used for these images.

Processing was via PI without the use of the RC-Astro routines as I wanted to see what the camera, corrector and telescope produced without the intervention of AI.

With RC-Astro:

If you can carry your kit in still assembled then I've found that I've marked my patio where the three tripod legs sit before moving stuff indoors. Then next day I drilled three holes at the marked positions and now I can place the tripod legs in the holes each time and very little adjustment is needed. I do extend tripod sections but to their stops so constant each time. Mark one leg and its hole so you put the same leg in the same hole each time...

Brilliant execution Peter, just jealous of all that exposure data…