Scooot

I like using Pixinsight and enjoyed reading how it developed too. Lovely end result.

I have the Tak FS 60CB and the 1.7 extender it’s a great little scope. I love its flexibility, a fast wide-field scope to get great high contrast views of star clusters with my 24mm panoptic or a closer view of the moon at F10 with my 9mm Delite. Although I’m using it mostly for imaging at the moment. It’s also very light and compact and ideal for leaving on a tripod ready to carry out at a moments notice. I can’t comment on the Skywatcher I’m afraid.

I can’t answer that. What happens is my mount moves a minuscule amount as if you were to nudge it. I discovered it did this when I was trying to align the camera along an axis. I’d move the star off centre a bit with the mount and then rotate the camera slightly, take another shot, to see if the star had moved nearer to the axis I was aiming at. I’d then press goto to get the star centred again and repeat if necessary.

Do you know that if you press goto again it will attempt to recenter the target. I’ve found that by doing this I can tweak it so its very close to dead centre if I want to after pressing it 2 or 3 times. That’s with my 375mm focal length.

I’m effectively using the Dark as a bias. Subtracting the Dark Flat from the Flat removes the bias and subtracting the Master Dark from the light removes the Bias and any hot pixels. A bias instead obviously just removes the bias. However as you say there’s zero amp glow and probably not many hot pixels if dithering.

I just take Darks, Dark Flats & Flats. Dark Flats are first subtracted from the Flats.

Or less of course. You could take a test shot to see what exposure is best for an area near a light, don’t suppose you can do much about the lights themselves.

No probs I was just curious. You could also try 12 one minutes instead of 4 three minutes to reduce the blown out areas.

Out of interest 4 minutes for the foreground seemed quite long, to me anyway, did you use the filter for this as well?

Lovely image, great to see the size of Orion etc in context.

From the pic on FLO’s site the motor looks the same or very similar to mine so I’d say no to an external supply, but you don’t need to. Mine takes one of the little square 9v batteries (Mn1604) and they last quite a long time so I just use these. I don’t know if they do a rechargeable version.

I meant I don’t use it to view DSO’s visually. It’s accurate enough for this but not usually for my Nexus 2, which is a WiFi digital setting circle. If I try to use the Nexus with the Platform I need to turn off the Sky on Sky Safari because the Platform is doing the tracking. In these circumstances the Platform isn’t as accurate as Sky Safari so finding targets with it isn’t as easy. From an observing viewpoint the Platform is accurate enough, it’s very simple, just point it approximately north. I might need to adjust the speed occasionally, particularly if the battery’s running out but other than that it works very well.

My Nexus without a doubt, and as it’s portable I can use it with either Dob.

I have one like John’s above. I also use it for the moon and planets with my 10” which saves a lot of nudging. The downside John mentioned of raising the eyepiece is actually a plus for me as my Dob is F4.8 so it means I don’t have to crouch so much. I tend not to bother using it for deep Sky objects because it makes it harder to use my Nexus.

After I’ve Polar Aligned I always send my mount back to the home position before I slew anywhere else and sync it there. I usually polar align again and find it’s not quite as accurate as the first go, maybe because of the time the first one took. I might do this 3/4 times tightening everything up as I tweak it. Usually get it quite close doing this and it eventually it stays close.

Thanks I wonder why, it’s not as if its an obscure make. Yes I set it up as a custom camera Edit, Ive just asked on their forum out of curiosity.

Talking of equipment, am I right that ZWO Asi cameras aren’t listed or am I missing them somehow. I originally set them up as custom and thought they just hadn’t added them yet but I notice they’re still not there for some reason?

I haven’t posted anything on the forum lately but their technicians used to respond to it quite quickly and fix any bugs. Although that was before the change of ownership. I think this is the current link. https://support.simulationcurriculum.com/hc/en-us/community/topics

Very nice Galaxy Rod. I just used @vlaiv method of replacing some over exposed pixels on a test stack of 3 minute exposures I took at 100 gain with my 2600 mc pro. The short stack were 1 second exposures but even then I had 2/3 pixels that were still clipped. Even so the stars in the overall image were much better. I’m going to image at zero gain from now on due to my light pollution which will improve things further I think.

Have you got this. https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/manuals/ASIAIR_User_Manual.pdf

Smashing image Martin, I love the wide FOV.

It’d be interesting to know what your background flux is? There’s a simple script in Pixinsight that measures it. It’s called Calculate Sky Limited Exposure.

“Here is a screenshot showing my Master Light having had Dynamic crop, DBE, PCC, EX Denoise, Arcsinstretch and histogram stretch.” I always do Photometric Colour Calibration first before DBE, which is why I suggested you try that in case DBE or any of the other processes had upset your colour balance.

Somethings not right but there’s colour in it, lots of colours around the stars, but a lot of green. I’d do PCC on the stack first and have a look at it before you do any other processing. At that stage the correct colours should show quite well. If it still looks like it does now I’d wonder whether something was amiss during calibration & integration, maybe the wrong debayer setting?

@MartinB Here, I didn't want to give you bad information so I've had another look. Here is the last image before the flip and the first after. This is why I got up for the flip on the second night. looking at these there doesn't seem to be much drift leading up to the flip after all so I put it down to my mount not being as level as it could be, but I don't know. Next time I get a chance I'll have another look and let you know the results.