ultranova

Wall hanger for sure.

Nicely processed, with loads of detail coming through,

well done 

Paul

Love the first image,

smooth with and lots of detail and not over processed.

well done 

Paul

HI Jannis, thanks for the compliment. 

It was stacked in deep sky stacker...

The majority of the processing was done in Pix insight,  and a little in photo shop elements

Paul

Hi Every one,

I managed to grab3 hours on the Heart Nebula several night ago,

Its a bit noisy, needed another  2 hours worth of subs

zwo294mc pro -15

5 minute exposure's guided with zwo 120mini

optolong Extreme filter

focused with a zwo eaf

mount was the SW az eq6 gt

scope: WO star 71

All controlled by Asi air pro

21 darks

21 flats

thanks for looking

Clear sky's

Paul 

That's come out nice,

I take it your Nikon has been modified,

You should have a little more data in there for just over 4 hours of subs, 

I would have thought.

What  iso did you take the subs at.

well done 

Paul

Love the top one Carole,

very rich and contrasty, 

Well done 

Paul

Wow didn't know that was  there,

And 6.6 hours at F2.,  faint stuff for sure, 

Nicely captured and processed , a wall hanger for sure.

Congratulations with the image and well deserved,

Well done 

Paul  

Oh yes that's nice,

The starless image looks surreal, almost like waves

And where the Horse head is just above it,

It looks like there's a void where everything is  falling into it 

 and Orion has been pushed up out the way by a wave

I know ...........I have a active imagination lol

very impressive.

Well done 

Paul

Hi Michael,

Looking good, I don't know how much further you can go before

you hit the point of diminishing returns.

Looks nice as a HA image but some color would be the icing on the cake.

I am not sure what your camera would come up as being on DSS,

I think somewhere in the processing algorithm this is is a part you can tick

to say it is a narrow band image.

I could be wrong, I seem to remember seeing it once , unless I'm getting confused.

Paul

1 hour ago, Craney said:

I first picked the issue up when scanning through the Astrobin forums

https://www.astrobin.com/forum/c/astrophotography/other/flat-frames-l-extreme-asi294mc/

..... and this connected to a few lengthy discussions on CloudyNights.  ( there is much longer one somewhere than the one I quoted originally).

I have the 294mc on a wish list, so I was a bit surprised and concerned  to hear a few serious astrophotographers talking about potentially a physical reason within the camera that might be causing the chip to display this mottled coloured effect. ie.  the sensor is not set perfectly square against the fixing surface.  Although,  a few people commented that theirs were behaving perfectly OK.  (  shades of the DayStar Quark product ???).

As with most things on CN, the discussion then mutated into a verbal tennis match about how to take correct flats etc....  and you end up not knowing what the original problem was !!

I hope you find a solution that is exterior to the camera and which is easy to remedy.

It would be reassuring to know that the 294mc is as good as the specs say it should be.

Rgds,

Sean.

 

 

 

Hi Sean,,

 If you push the Extreme filter to one side, the camera is good, On the rare occasion , the moon is not up and the clouds

are not about,  its a good all round camera for the price point.

there are other offerings not far off the price point, that don't show any artifacts in the dark frames, the 294 has quite a big

artifact in the top right in all of my subs, but easily calibrated out .,

The only thing that blows me away, is how sensitive it is in the green  channel, due more than likely to havin two green to every one red and blue 

matrix over every pixel,.

and almost looks like you have nothing in your picture to see when streched before back ground calibration,

But again it calibrates out.

Personally I would call this camera a middle of the road camera , a good all round work horse.

Paul

3 hours ago, Craney said:

There is quite a bit of discussion regarding this phenomena.
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/653346-flats-not-working-as-expected-asi294mc-osc/

Not sure what the resolution was /is  ??.... whether it is a chip thing or a chip / filter thing.

Looks a nice camera as well.    I would be interested to see how it works out.

Hi Craney,

Thanks for the info, I did chase up the links you sent me, very interesting,

I dont seem to be getting some of the matrix patterns some of those guy's are talking about,

I think Peter  might be on to something , when he said about the filter not being in parallax with the chip,

I have a pretty good even flat field across the the picture, stars a pretty good across the frame,

I shall keep experimenting and see what occurs.

if clear outside is correct on Friday i shall be  out having another round with the filter.

Thanks 

Paul 

3 hours ago, peter shah said:

its really good result. your flats look almost like the filter wheel is off centre. Do you calibrate your flats?

Hi Peter,

I have spent quite a few hours now going through what might be the cause of the strange flats,

what I have adopted to do is reduce the amount of time in the flat taking process by around 30%

In other words if I get a reading saying I need to take flats at 22000 adu I have  now been taking them at 16000/17000   

If I go to the recommended /  calibrated flat the red side becomes over powering to the point its almost black.

Strangely enough, I did think that my filter might be on the wonk a little, which might cause  the problem in hand

and it doesn't matter if its in the EAF or in the manual  draw, it always comes out the same.

regardless of filter of where the filter is on its axis, 

As long as I can over come the majority of the problem by the method I am now adopting with this filter

ill be ok with it but not ideal.

Thanks 

Paul

Sorry guys not sure what happened , i went to put up another topic and some how 

it put this back on at the top of the page, apologies for that.

Admin if you are about could you move this post down the list or move it to the next page ,

as people have already seen this post.

Many Thanks 

Paul

Hi Every one,

Managed to get out for 4 hours on Saturday,

which gave me the opportunity to try out the ZWO EAF.

which was a first for me, the last 40 years I have been focusing manually and was 

very hesitant at letting something else do it.

worry unjustified as it worked a charm.

It was also a first using the optolong L-extreme filter for a longer session with the ZWO294mc pro

Anyway here's my take on it and the Flats that I can not use when staking,

As it makes processing  of the image near on impossible.

Would be interesting to here from any one else with a similar problem using 

that camera filter combination.

here is the master flat, never had a problem like this before with flats 

thanks for looking, 

clear sky's

Paul

18 minutes ago, Luke Newbould said:

Hi,

I had a very similar issue calibrating l-enhance data from a 294mc Pro, I found flats were only usable when the light source was significantly dimmed and the flat exposures were around 2+ seconds each.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/661685-word-of-warning-asi294mc-pro-and-opt-triad-and-nb/

 

A related thread here, if you scroll around half way down the page you'll see cuivenior's posts with images highlighting the almost exact same issue, it seems its a pattern only visible in the deep reds, and the origin is the sensor itself.

 

Hope that helps, don't be discouraged as I found that once I knew what was going on I could work well with the camera!

Thanks for that, as i say it has only been with that filter, 

I didnt have any issues with optolong  l -enhance,, which is similar, in its design,, but obviously 

this filter is a lot tighter on it spectral bandwidth and pre dominantly only supposed to let in two channels 

unlike the L-enhance.

Thanks for the links and help, i will re visit my flats  and see what occurs.

Paul

Hi Valaiv,

I only debayed and and auto streched the image  in pix insight to show the strange colors coming through the filter,

not my normal routine for sure.

I don't have clipping, i thought that might be the case,  

and there does appear to be green data coming through, actually to much,

Here is a auto streched image of the master light frames debayered .

I don't have problem with flats normally,  but you could be onto something about the  flat generation,

I normally do my flat around the 19000, to 24000 range , I needed around 26000 for this image according to the figures

i was using,  which at the time of processing did seen very high.

I think i will have another look, as you say something could be causing the flat range to be way off,

The strange one for me is the colour shift over the flat..

Hi Every one,

Managed to get out for 4 hours on Saturday,

which gave me the opportunity to try out the ZWO EAF.

which was a first for me, the last 40 years I have been focusing manually and was 

very hesitant at letting something else do it.

worry unjustified as it worked a charm.

It was also a first using the optolong L-extreme filter for a longer session with the ZWO294mc pro

Anyway here's my take on it and the Flats that I can not use when staking,

As it makes processing  of the image near on impossible.

Would be interesting to here from any one else with a similar problem using 

that camera filter combination.

here is the master flat, never had a problem like this before with flats 

thanks for looking, 

clear sky's

Paul

Nice to see this cluster, not that often taken.

nice star colors .

well done 

Paul

Great result with the lens /  camera combo.

Its quite a big nebula and you managed to get it all in the frame which is nice.

well done 

Paul

Up close and personal, I love it

Good control of the bright stars in that area, and nicely processed.

well done Peter.

Paul

A cracker for sure, and nicely processed.

well done 

Paul

Looks Great,  at least with that focal length you 

can see other little galaxies in the one shot.

Nicely processed to .

Well done 

Paul

Considering it was done with a un modified slr camera, it has come out good.

Nicely done with the star adventurer.

well done 

Paul 

They have come out very nice indeed,

Nice colors and detail, the only thing I would say is to back off a little on the noise reduction.

other wise nicely captured and processed.

Well done 

Paul

That came out nice, good detail and processing.

Must have been fun trying to focus with the extreme filter on,

Can be a bit of a job even with a dedicated astro camera.

Well done 

Paul

Hi Every one,

                   Well forecast is clear until 2 am in Essex tonight,

so far so good, clear at the moment, just dont want to get my hopes up to high,

I think we have all been there on that one, then as soon as you set up get polar alligned, 

you look on the Horizon only to see pending doom to ruin your night.

Good luck tonight everybody, hope we all catch some Photons.

Paul