alan potts

Beautiful shot, some lovely detail in there, I shot this the other nigh and got the star coming out a lovely yellow but I had a few guide issues that spoilt the star shapes a little. Alan

A very nice start, you have some lovely colours coming through there, as you say nice to see. I can't see that sort of colour even with a fairly large 18 inch scope. Something to build on but there are so many things to trip you up in this hobby, I am still making mistakes and i don't think I'm on my own. Alan

Lovely Carole, I was hoping to use data from year gone by but a drive crash put pay to that. Alan

Shot a mixture of 2,3 and 4minute subs on this with normal Darks,Flats etc, and dithered every second shot. Total is 3 hours 10mins on a 183mc connected to my Borg 77ED ll at F4.3. Still finding this difficult to focus but don't see laying out the best part of 500e for a Feather-touch really worth it. I feel I have been getting better results from this scope of late and I also feel this is down to less messing with setting, now i leave things the same all the time. Any advice would be most welcome, just don't feel I am nailing the guiding like I did last year, or maybe the focus Thanks for looking. Alan

Been awful here for a few days but had 5 nights before that, good start to it though Michael. Alan

A very interesting image, not trying to steal your lime-light but you would even think it was the same area that I took 2 night ago, rained ever since Alan

Lovely image!! Alan

That's as good as any I have seen and much better than my effort a couple of years back, I always feel you do good jobs on all your targets, your M106 was really lovely. Alan

Its fine, it's the off-set, thanks a lot you've solved the problem. Alan

I think you may have hit the nail on the head, I change my off set for this run as I noticed it was set on 60 where as I normally have it on 20, this may have something to do with it, just now trying a stacking with no Cal frames. Last night was superb here and everything that I could do wrong, i did. Alan

I have had a problem with my mouse and it's been double clicking even when I only single click. I am wondering if it has done something unknown to me. Just stacked and tried a set of 13 images of Leo Triplet and that looks fine. I have to say my Flat don't look right, way too dark and it wasn't. Alan

Everything is red and I can't get out of it, the star before I recall coming out yellow. I have not stretched it at all just balanced the background and it still looks red, I've never seen anything like this before in all my efforts which generally are not bad

I am not expert, far from it but generally I do turn out a reasonable image. I use here an 071 OSC, on an APO at 800mm F/L, focus is a tad out but not miles and I have an Astronomik L2 UV/IR filter screwed toe Hutech flatener. I use DSS and no setting were altered from the last 10 images at least, Any ideas what's wrong as I see something is? This is 20x 4 minutes at Unity settings with Darks etc, all images look fine on their own. Hope someone can help, I have tried a few combinations of with and without Flats etc, same result. Alan

Feel you may get a better response in this section Alan

There is no doubt out here the air traffic is about 1/5 what it normally is, in summer months there are of often 10 planes in view at any one time. Sirius is not too bad some nights but I do have 10 degrees on the UK Alan

So it is, I could make out a bit of a monkey head sort of shape and looked no further. I have photographed the Monkey's Head before but with the C-Du-C showing only SH-2 numbers and NGC No's I got a bit mixed up. Thanks for putting me right. Alan

Something of an annoying night towards the end of session, patchy cloud diffing by that always happened in the last minute of exposure, but I still got 2 and half hours on the Flaming Star and Monkeys Head i think. Taken with the Borg 77EDll 38x4min subs with calibration frames as well as dither. Alan

I know the feeling, I have a very large area here with some beautiful old walnut trees 80-90yo, lovely for the walnuts but one of them masks the darkest part of my sky to the SW, there's nothing for miles and miles. Alan

Yes I understand that Iceman but I do not like to use credit cards on the net, or anywhere for that matter as I had mine copied once in HongKong. I am going to look at the Pixel Processor with an intent to buy this I believe has a gradient tool included. I can do gradients with PS on many images but wide field like this is very difficult, or at least I don't know of way. I personally feel $ 60 for a plug in is rather steep, no matter how good it may be. Alan

Very nice Francis, that must be fairly low for you, I must try this myself. Alan

Stunning shot, normally I don't care for starless, but this is really nice in B&W. Alan

The other day I shot 3 and half hours on Sh2-205 and 6, both in the same wide field of view at F4.3, so fairly fast. I was most disappointed with what I was able to process from the data. To finish the night I shot 11x4minuts on the Cone Nebula, I realise they are completely different targets, but was shocked by how well the Cone came out, can't wait to add to the data but weather is poor here. 50x4minutes with flats, darks and dark flats, dithered too. Borg 77mm ED ll F4.3 11x4minuts same cal frames also dithered same scope. Thanks for looking and feel free to offer advice, even if it's only buy a gradient software. Alan

I had this happen to me but can't recall what I did, ISO 200 is too slow really at 20secs, 800 or 1600 will give you more and you will get decent results. I started out with 60second subs, with decent alignment you should get away with that without guiding. Alan

I am afraid I can't I have gone over to OSC Zwo camera now and have changed things a few times. I can't remember what I used other than in the setting there is an option of median with sigma clipping, I believe I used that. I am sure someone on here will have an answer for you. I may however be more useful to post an example and start a new thread, this one is rather old. Alan

Best wishes to all of you, can I ask if you get time in the early New Year you could let us know what the situation is regarding orders from me and others abroad, if you haven't already and I've missed it. Alan