fwm891

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.

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...