TheThing

They're brilliant.  Good job.

Winjupo - me neither I'm afraid.  My only clear night of late was hampered by equipment problems so I not had anything to process for a long time.  If I can get half as good an image as yours, I will be over the Io!

That's a very good image.  Loads of detail.  Nicely done.  Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, to be fair, that's a stunner!  Well done.

I think you won!  Nice animation and image.  Lots of lovely details.

That's a really good image in spite of the difficulties you faced.  Nicely done.

That's really good. Thanks for sharing.

Marvellous.  Some good details coming through there.

Mind blown!  Fantastic

Got some great details in there.  Really nice images.  Thanks for sharing.

Wonderful!

Lovely crisp image.  How many panes did you stitch together?

Wow, your images are absolutely stunning.  Loads of detail and so clear.  Please keep posting them. 

Yeah, I think you're on your own here (or in a very small minority).

People are allowed to replace what they like regardless if whether you think it is essential or not!

The flip side is that everyone complains about the rubber and SW push their prices up, which would be considerably more than the couple of quid for glue or O rings.

While we're at it, why don't we complain that scope go out if collimation and send them back?!?

TheThing

Wow. Annoying; yes but one of those things. I wouldn't get all het up about it as it is not essential to using the scope (hence fit for purpose) and easily sorted.

When the rubber began to fall off my Soligor EP, I just glued it back on. Doesn't affect the EP at all and really not worth going back to the manufacturer or retailer over! Sometimes you just have to accept these little things and get on with it. Life's too short!

TheThing

More great service.

Ordered some tube rings Saturday pm and they came this morning.

Perfect fit for an Orion ST80 too!

TheThing

Not very impressive service!

Have enquired about an Orion ShortTube 80 from them. They responded very promptly to e-mails, which was all well and good.

I then discovered that SCS Astro have the same OTA for £10 cheaper. As Widescreen had been so helpful, I asked them if they'd cut me a deal. Fair enough, I thought, they could either say yes or no, their perogative.

They haven't bothered to respond to my e-mail! I've sent it twice over the last week and each time have received a read receipt, so I know they've seen it.

Even if they'd said no, I'd still have ordered from them. But as they haven't bothered to respond at all, I'll be taking my business elsewhere!

It blummin works!

Thanks Odd Dob.

Not the best as it was my first attempt at RGB imaging and I forgot to capture a L image. Seeing was awful! Although the days were sunny, the nights were moisture laden, to the effect that the sky was orange from London. Finally, in my long list of poor excuses, my scope was way out of collimation.

Odd Dob is a genius!

Here is his method for LRGB combining in Registax, from a PM he sent me: -

It does seem a very poorly documented feature, doesn't?

This is what I did:

1. Record .avi's for each of LRGB. I saved these seperate AVIs with this kind of format:

jupiter-001.avi

jupiter-002.avi

jupiter-003.avi

jupiter-004.avi

each one number corresponding to a filter.

2. I analysed each of these *separately* in registax, to produce a single .FIT file for each avi (i.e. a FIT file for each LRGB filter). These I save with different kind of file name format

jupiter_L.fit

jupiter_R.fit

jupiter_G.fit

jupiter_B.fit

by doing this separately, I mean I load up each AVI individually and complete the processing and save the result before loading the next one. I found it important to be quite conservative with the wavelet functions at this stage - any noise introduced can be problematical in the next stage.

3. Now the clever bit. Open each one of the .FIT files you created in one go. I.e. when you get the open file dialogue, select all of the in one go by holding down CTRL and clicking each one. I think it's got something to do with using the _L _R etc in the file names that enables Registrax to know which one is which. Now just do the stacking process as usual. The end result magically ends up in colour!

A word of caution. You don't seem to have a very clear way of controlling the combination of the layers. It does seem quite intelligent but noise introduced at the initial processing seems to make it worse, can you can get some very weird results . You'll also need to crop your pictures quite a lot as a lot of colour noise gets introduced at the margins.

I have no idea if this is the "best" way to do it, but it worked for me.

Good luck!

(do us a favour and cut and paste this to the thread, ta!)

I'll be giving this a go next time there is a clear night.

Thank you sir!

Only just found this, but excellent, thanks Mark.

An 8" scope is not necessarily undermounted on an EQ5!

I have a 200p on an EQ4 which is fine for visual and webcam work. Sometimes, too much emphasis is placed on gette a bigger, more expensive mount when it's not always necessary.

This month's Astronomy Now also has a feature on modding the SPC900 to LX as well.

I've had a problem in the past where webcams wouldn't work unless they were plugged into the same usb port everytime. Silly I know, but...

Thanks for the links Ian. I think these are most of the ones you mentioned in your talk at SGL5 aren't they?

Plenty of info there to keep me going!