Xplode

In my opinion it's a pretty big engineering fail to make such a sturdy concrete pier and have long extensions of threaded rod, it can create unwanted vibrations when guiding and during windy conditions. The pier is nice thou and smart with the through pier cabling, also the "camouflage" is a good idea

Thanks for the comments! I know Straton is supposed to be used on a linear image, but like you Olly i have not much luck...so i used in on the stretched image, works much better and remove just the stars, not the nebula.

iOptron themselves have a pier plate available.

The EQ8 is not an upgrade over the NEQ6 except for the payload. It might have less periodic error, but it has a lot of backlash, it's so bad that of all the people i know buying mounts in in the first couple of years after release has sold their EQ8 or just stopped using it for imaging. I've had 2 EQ8's myself, sent the first one back because of backlash and the new one was just as bad. I ended up selling it. A friend sold his EQ8 because of the same reason.

I'm working on a version of IC1396 with HaRGB, but before that's finished i made this version with just Ha and with the stars removed by the software Straton. This is 177x600s Total 29,5 hours Gear 10 Micron GM2000 UP Takahashi FSQ130ED with 645 0.7x Focal Reducer (f/3.5, 455mm) Moravian G3-16200 FOV has been cropped a little to remove the halo from a big star

A dither that small is not very effective on DSLR images, i would suggest 15-30 pixels. A larger dither will also help a lot in fixing small defects that flats doesn't fix 100% because of dust moving around a little and the small difference in size of dustmotes that comes with changing focus that is caused by temperature differences. I tried PI's dark scaling feature before and found that many well dithered images beat using scaled darks

It's nice that you've taken the leap of trying without darks The problem with darks when using a DSLR is that the temperature just isn't stable enough for them to be good enough quality, dark noise doubles with a temperature difference of 5-8C depending on the sensor. If you stack with +5C lights and +10C darks you're likely to remove too more than just the noise darks so you're introducing noise. Might be a better idea to use darks from a colder temperature so you will remove some of the noise, but not all. I can see by stretching your images extremely that there is a "walking noise circle" so i guess you don't dither your images? Dithering will greatly help removing the walking noise and also also the dark noise in general. For dithered images sigma clipping will have to be used when stacking.

Your guiding must be great since you can make so long subs! I do question the long subs thou, i'd suggest you do 5-10min subs instead of 15-30min. With dithering enable and taking shorter subs you will remove a lot of noise during stacking, no darks needed (and they are in my opinion pointless for not tempcontrolled cameras) If you get trails from planes and satellites and the sub is otherwise good there is really no need to throw them away, by using some form of sigma clipping during stacking they will be removed automatically. Do you image without a flattener/focal reducer since the stars are elongated in the corners?

If the choice is between filters or a coma corrector go for the coma corrector, buy a Baader MPCC III, not the Skywatcher coma corrector as it has bad problems with reflections. If you were to buy and use 1.25" filters on a DSLR it would create a LOT of vignetting because of the long distance between the sensor and the filter. You might even get problems with reflections. 1.25" filters free aperture is around 27mm

I used one of these and made my own cable from the power hub to the plug on the battery dummy. Cameras using LP-E6 batteries will usually throw an error message after turning on when running with non original batteries and battery dummies, there is a decoded battery dummy available on eBay The error message keeps one from using the camera from a PC untill clicking OK on the camera, definitely a show stopper for remote operation.

Like Alan wrote The Battery grip on these cameras make it possible to use 6xAA batteries @ 9v so it's totally safe to run at 9v. I used 9v on my 6D and your 60D should work ok too since it uses the same battery. I did actually run it accidentaly on 12v for months too, i had several battery dummies and thought i used one with a voltage regulator on it...but nope!

I got a 120MC-S, would the Fujinon lens work with that if i used a 5mm extension or would i need a homemade adapter like you have?

Nice project Gina! I also want to make an all sky cam with a ZWO cam. Where did you buy the dome? Are you willing to share the files for your 3D printed parts? Which kind of filament do you use?

This seems to me like a trying to make a problem where there isn't one, if it calibrates out it's certainly not a problem so why waste time on it? You should take a look at calibration frames from CCD cameras, they look horrible compared to this and they still calibrate perfectly

Not really sure about the loss because i don't have data from the same target for both cameras. I didn't do any testing with the camera really...it was busy being stuck to my scope There's one thing about microlenses i'd like to mention...they give more and more benefit the smaller pixels are so with larger pixels like on the 6D the loss is probably less than on a camera with smaller pixels.

I meant the 6D mono mod price from Hypercams that you wrote is $320...Where did you get that price? The JTW site has the same price for both mono and color cooled 700D? Weird...either it's the wrong price or it's a really really good price so if you want a mono camera i suggest you get one from there...Remember it's a kit thou since they won't sell finished cameras anymore.

Not sure where you got your price from, but it has to be way off... From the Hypercams price list i got 6D mono mod is $895 + filter That's also what i payed to have the mod done in 2015.

Not sure if this is what you always do with Ha taken with a RGB camera, but it's not the right way to do it. The best way is to split the CFA 's R, G and B channels into separate images, that way you're left with half resolution mono images and there's no way the B and G noise can pollute the R channel.

I haven't tried it with really fast lenses so i can't say if it has had any affect on vignetting. Unfortunately i don't have anything to compare, it's all taken with different filters or scopes and i don't actually have both cameras anymore so i can't make any comparisons either The 6Da was sold a few weeks ago and the 6Dm was just sold the other day. Wanting to use a filter wheel on the newtonian i could not use the 6Dm so it had to go to allow me to buy a CCD with filter wheel. What i can do at a later point is compare data from the CCD camera with the 6Dm data with the same filters and exposure time. Nice test Adam It agrees with what i've been saying earlier that the biggest gain isn't in narrowband imaging, but when used for luminance. Which F value was the comparison done at? You should do a test like with with different F values and with both the Ha og OIII filter. Also making an image where the 2x2 is used as a superpixel would be great.

White balance has no effect on RAW unkless it's used when converting the image the RAW image. Pixinsight has the option to disable or enable white balance , so does some of the other software used for converting RAW files. Here is 8x600s with the 12" of the elephants trunk nebula. Single 300s Ha image of the wizard nebula, unprocessed except it's been stretched a little. It has not been calibrated either. Here's my settings in PI. It comes out as a greyscale image so it's treated just like a mono image from a CCD camera.

5D II? Why that camera? It's performance for AP is way below the 6D, 5D III or newer cameras like the 7D II and 5D IV.

Just natural cooling. I unfortunately don't have Ha data taken with the same scope with both cameras WB should not matter since it's not used for RAW if converted through something like Pixsinsight unless it's actually enabled. Testing should definitely be done full manual and also with max a few minutes apart so 2 cameras are needed or a sensor which is partly debayered. A mono APS-C DSLR will come close to the 8300 even uncooled if the ambient temp isn't too high. Newer DSLR's have very low noise at below 10C and doesn't have that hugh difference from cooling that ancient technology like CCD does. Remember the 8300 sensor is over 10 years old technology. The only real hugh improvement in CCD technology the last years have been done by Sony. (also by other manufacturers but they make sensors we can't afford)

It's taken with a 12" newtonian, the 100mm have not been in much use since i bought the newtonian. The 100mm is back on the mount now thou...but the mount is down due to something wrong with the electronics Sounds about right except it would be 2:1 meidan filtering, not 4:1 (4 would mean an area of 4x4, 2 = 2x2)

It is not weird behavior at all because when you take Ha with a mono DSLR you gain resolution, not neccesarily signal as most people think. Where you will gain signal is in the stacked image because what many people do wrong with DSLR Ha data is they don't remove the green and blue channels before stacking the images meaning they interpolate 1 pixel with signal with 3x pixels with just noise, that's not gonna make the result have a good signal... What i do find weird is that there is a big loss in Ha sensitivity, but a small gain in OIII sensitivity. Like Adam J wrote the real gain is in being able to capture real luminance and it's something i have done with great success with my 6Dm. I have also done true LRGB imaging with color filters for all channels and just like for a CCD camera there isn't much RGB needed for the image to be pretty good when it's combined with luminance. Here's M33 HaLRGB with no noise reduction at all, it's almost 15 hours total with 1 hour of R, G and B, 4 hours Ha and 8 hours luminance.

It moves all the time, but when the flex is small enough seeing(fuzzy stars) will mask the movement in a single frame