ollypenrice

Sorry, another thing came back to me on this matter just now. One day I had a 'Device not recognized' message when I tried to run my Atik cameras. Nightmare: I had guests. We ran through all the usual 'Device Manager' stuff but to no avail. I got onto Atik and they had their IT guy back to me in no time. He asked lots of questions and said he'd get back to me, which he did, very quickly. 'You haven't by any chance changed your PC to run two screens?' Bingo. I had. He told me how to find and delete one small file and I was back in business. Now this was in no way a fault of Atik products and yet they sorted it out for me in the shortest possible time. I like Atik. Olly

I think it has little importance. Darks correct most chip defects and chips collect gamma ray hits and other defects as they age. My Atik 11 meg chip was exceptionally clean when new and still is, though it now has a couple of half-column defects. The effect on the final image of the accumulated defects is, however, precisely zero to my eye. I've also used another example of the camera quite extensively, a much older one, and that does have defects which no longer calibrate out. For our purposes in astrophotography I don't think there is any advantage to a Grade 1 chip. It won't remain Grade 1 for long. The problem that is much more difficult to fix is the multiple column defect but I can tell you that an Atik 11 meg (not mine) with four adjacent dead columns has picked up very major accolades in international astrophotography competitions, including two second places to Adam Block. It can't be that big a problem! Olly

I've had very few indeed and you have to bear in mind that, in our heyday (pre-Covid and my advancing years!) the hours racked up by our cameras were prodigious. The care to which I refer also includes basic help on the IT side because, when I began, I was an IT retard. Now I'm just a dimwit. The boss of the company, Steve Chambers, spent time on the phone with me sorting me out. I'm the kind of person who regards a debt of gratitude as just that. I will stress again that my desire, if possible, to stay with Atik is a personal thing and I repeat that I've nothing against other manufacturers. There are astro companies with whom I wouldn't deal but that would be for face to face conversation or, maybe, PM. Oly

The usefulness of the SQM for me, is twofold. It allows me to give an objective answer when propsective guests ask about our sky quality and it lets me assess the sky immediately after stepping out of the observatory. It now takes me five minutes to give even a rough estimate of sky quality after staring at two PC screens in the warm room. I may suddenly see that I'm getting nothing out of a camera: is it a fault or has the sky fallen over? It ought to be easy to look outside and see but, as I approach seventy, it isn't! Olly

No, this is entirely untrue.* Olly *We have six. 👹

My SQM meter was a present from a very kind guest (and SGL member) so I don't actually know what they cost but I was certainly aware that it was a generous gift. It has been going strong for a good number of years, too. Olly

I don't know anything about these things, technically, and never use the Bortle scale in my own thinking. I have what I have and won't be moving, so I can't do anything about it! I'm happy to see 21.4 or better on the SQM and we sometimes just squeeze over 22. One of my robotic teams take the SQM automatically on all clear nights and there is certainly a seasonal factor. There, again, I can't do anything about it... At one time we had a regular guest who also visited the Tivoli facility in Namibia and he told me that there was no systematic difference between the zenith SQM reading taken there and here. The difference went increasingly in Nambia's favour as the readings were taken at lower elevations, which you'd expect. I use the SQM system simply because I can point the device at the sky, press a button and get a reading! Olly

When stretching in curves I regularly monitor the brightness of the background sky and, when it gets to 23 per channel in Photoshop, I don't stretch it any further. There's no point because all you'll do is stretch the noise in the background and, having done so, clip it back to give you a value of 23 but with way more noise in it. To continue stretching in search of faint signal just above the background value I pin the curve at 23, put a fixing point below that and then stretch just above the 23 point. For a more general bit of advice I'd say experiment with the Ps tools by all means but always try to work out what it is that they are really doing. There are some really dreadful videos out there in which the imager is thrashing about with tools they don't understand and haven't thought through. Always try to think it through and you'll build up a sound technique. Olly

I just have a lot of history with Atik, really as a happy customer. They have taken great care of me, understanding my position as a provider in need of very fast service if necessary. I've nothing against other manufacturers but feel a sense of loyalty towards Atik. Olly

Yes, it's all a bit alarming! Olly

As an Atik enthusiast of many years standing I'm more than a little excited by this forthcoming model: https://www.atik-cameras.com/product/apx60/ Until very recently the FSQ106 has been a 'scope without a camera, in that all the large format chips had a pixel size which greatly under-sampled. This new sixty meg (!!!) chip would sample at about 1.4"PP which actually exceeds the optical resolution of the instrument. And the chip is available both in OSC and mono. I've just noticed that even my best PC has turned pale at the thought of all those short CMOS subs at 60 meg a pop! Hmmm... Olly

Like Dave, I suspect a problem beyond simple colour calibration here. I wonder why the area around the Trapezium is a totally different colour from the rest of the nebula, when they should be similar. If the OP posted a link to a linear TIFF we could run it through Pixinsight's DBE. Although my own dark-site data is never far out when R, G and B are weighted at parity, I have processed data sent from heavily light polluted sites and never seen any of them defeat DBE. My hunch (no more than that) is that DBE will not rectify this image. Olly

I have never heard them referred to as a family in this way. Most constellations are simply line-of-sight effects with no physical connection. If I have this right, though, some of the stars of the Plough asterism do have properties which suggest that they came from a once tighter open cluster. I don't think the author was doing anything more than grouping them together based upon their position in the sky. Olly

First I would find out where you stand on 8x versus 10x. At 68 I find I no longer enjoy 10x, which is a pity because I have one very good pair! The difference in image steadiness is considerable for me and so I use 8x42 for astronomy. In terms of what is revealed, there is little difference. Optical prices are usually proportional to the worked surface area of the glass so dropping from 50 to 42 might bring more in terms of quality than is lost through reduced aperture. Since you aim to move to a larger instrument after your initial tour I'd have thought that ultra-portable would beat very portable. Olly

Rather than eyeball your flat you should just measure it. Open it in a program which lets you mouse over it to see the ADU values recorded in the middle and the corners to get an idea of the illumination you're getting in those places. It's possible to obtain a perfectly good result with as much as a 25% drop-off in brightness between corner and centre. One of my rigs generally gives me a reading of about 23,000 ADU in the middle and 19,000 in the corners. The flats correct this to produce a good clean final image, however. Olly

I always argue that autoguiding is the life blood of astrophotography. It changes everything. Olly

Yes, but consider two environments with the potential for life. One is like ours, with a limited energy source and another with an abundant one. We tend to be locked into the notion of competition for limited energy. What if it were pentiful? Missionaries in the south seas were utterly exasperated to find themselves among people who had no work ethic because they didn't need one... Olly

This is an analysis of what happens here and I fully accept it. My own knowledge of these processes lags far behind yours. What I'm trying to do, though, is identify those processes which do not have to apply universally even though they happen to apply here. Terrestrial evolution has been driven in a competitive environment but it strikes me as possible that there might be non-competitive environments which would still lead to intelligence of some sort. I'm minded of Percival Lowell who was persuaded that his non-existent Martians were right wing Republicans because only that political model could organize the global construction of non-existent canals. I would want to avoid falling into such notions!! Olly

Manifest destiny... lly

One defining characteristic of terrestrial life is predation. It vastly increases (and affects the nature of) competition between species. I wonder if there might be alien ecosystems without predation? It would be nice if there were. I have this notion for a short story in which passing alien spacecraft fire off the odd missile at the predatory Earth in the way that 18th century navigators would blast off the odd disapproving cannonball in the direction of cannibal islands... Olly

The problem with anthropomorphism is that it is highly insidious. It creeps into our thinking and infects it without our noticing. Implicit throughout the thread are several entirely anthropomorphic assumptions.: All intelligence leads to technology. All intelligence produces 'civilizations.' All intelligence is composed of many individual beings with a need and a desire to communicate between themselves and with others. It's possible that our anthropomorphic assumptions are valid because of some cosmic evolutionary principle as yet not known, but it is equally possible that our version of intelligence is atypical. Olly PS

Almost anything will do as a guidescope so a quick scout around second hand might be in order. Old camera lenses will do as well. What's vital is that it have no flexure but even poor quality scopes can be screwed, and even glued, up solid to avoid this. Like malc-c, though, I wonder about the value of guiding an alt-az mount. I'm not even sure it will accept guide inputs but perhaps it will. Olly

Are you sure you need darks? Plenty of very advanced DSLR users use dithering and a master bias. The chances of your darks really being at the same temperature are not good, I don't think, and the temperature will have varied during the night anyway. Olly

Power cuts? Cable connections? PC shut-downs? Eventually, if something can go wrong it will go wrong. Some people, for instance, would robotize a roof which required the scope to 'park' first and some would not. I certainly would not. One day it will happen... Olly

I had a spell with a Canon 200L lens. A good trick is to avid the diaphragm and make your own round front aperture mask. Olly