jimjam11

Something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/COOWOO-Temperature-Regulator-Universal-Telescopic/dp/B07MHGW4DG/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_sspa?keywords=dew+heater&qid=1575986385&smid=A1IYYL3BAMOXNQ&sprefix=dew+&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFEQlU3OTI0VlJCRE8mZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTAxODQyNTcxUEJRWFpSUk5GWkFRJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA2MjI4MTExRkFCNTVWWEI1SUNOJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfcGhvbmVfc2VhcmNoX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU= I wrap it around the lens before focusing and turn the band to focus, it actually helps keep the focus from moving as the non-stm version of the 50mm has a very sloppy focuser...

I do the same, I dont have an lp filter and since switching to mono haven't seen a need. Adding an lp filter into the wheel will likely lead to focus shift, so no interlacing between frames without constant focus adjustments; a non trivial task with a camera lens... Have you tested your setup without an lp filter to see how it fares?

I don't know if others find similar but I cannot get on with the l-bracket/counterweight: Using just a ball head I measured the guided performance of my SA at 0.85" rms but using the l-bracket I get 4" and it seems the root cause is the way vibrations propagate through the l-bracket. With a simple ball head the weight seems closer to the mount head (despite being unbalanced) and tapping the camera shows a significantly shorter settle time. I would guess settle time with a ball head is approx 1s, compared to 4s with the l-bracket.

Me too, I never use a frac or camera lens without one

Had the ZS73 for a couple of months now and here are the first images captured with it. IC1396 - Two panel mosaic, 30m Ha per panel: M31 - 3hr RGB, 5hr Lum, 2hr Ha NGC1499 - 2 panel mosaic, 30m RGB, 150m Ha per panel NGC7000 - 6 panel mosaic, 30m RGB, 40m Ha per panel M45 - 5hr RGB, 11.5hr Lum chasing the dusty stuff

It does and the later beta releases include safety resumption rather than it aborting the sequence.

Have you ever tried much shorter guide exposures? With a small guidescope seeing effect is minimised and mounts like the star adventurer (mine at least) guide way better with exposures of 1-0.5s.

Thanks, What lens/OTA was that? What kind of guide rms are you getting from it?

I forgot to add that I am not aware of any alternatives? It might he the avx/heq5 is the entry point for reliable 4"/pix imaging but it feels like this should be achievable in 2019 with something much more portable?

Has anybody compared the performance of the star adventurer with the az gti? I have a star adventurer and it does its job very well. Mine has a drift of approx 1.5"/min and can guide down to around 0.85" on a really good night (only in ra). I can do widefield unguided or longer (say 200mm) if I guide. 200mm gets me to 4"/pix which is under sampled but still good for widefield dso. I find widefield stuff frustrating because it is heavily affected by light pollution. What I really want to be able to do is mosaic at 4"/pix but this is almost impossible with the SA because accurate positionin/tiling is difficult and automation is impossible. The alternative to this is to piggyback the 200mm on my cem60 but that is a lot of work for 4"/pix with what is essentially a camera+lens combo! I believe the az gti can be updated to work in eq mode and it can be controlled by pc. If I could hook the az gti up to sgpro I could then automate everything except focus and accurately mosaic with a very light/portable setup? Has anyone trested this combination and what kind of performance do you get?

I think there is a PI trial. If you want to upload a few subs I can easily check them using subframe selector...

Have you checked some of the individual subs, it looks like the star spikes are blurry, could there be a tiny rotation change throughout the set? Failing that, could it be collimation leading to the blurring. Not sure if you have pixinsight, you could then measure fwhm through the set to assess your focus, collimation etc?

I wonder if this could actually be a difference between DN and ADU because the ASI1600 has a 12bit ADC: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/573886-sub-exposure-tables-for-asi-1600-and-maybe-qhy163/?p=8068575 I was testing on a ha sub captured at gain 200, so 0.48 e/ADU. When I entered this I got the same result as you; no change. Decreasing this to 0.03 as measured by flatsnresttimator and I am starting to see results. I then tested the gaussian noise value. A small value (measured/10) got minimal/no change. A big value (measured * 5) got a weirdly over-smoothed result.

What numbers did you land on? There is a tutorial on the ip4ap website which explains the usage of the tool, but when I followed the instructions I got the same resul as you; namely a nice noise image but the integrated file looked identical... If you run image integration prior to loading the MureDenoise script you can then hit the 'load variance scale' which populates the values for combination count and variance scale. I think offset should be 0; your integrated stack will be fully calibrated? Conversely the dark bias noise estimator script comes up with an offset because you feed it 2x uncalibrated darks?

The related videos are also excellent: https://www.ip4ap.com/

In that case you already have a great choice in the 9.25? You just need an appropriate planetary camera to go with it?

Sounds like the best combo to me although you may struggle with the lp filter. Ideally you want a uhc or fancy duo narrowband filters for this kind of target. In the absence of the moon you might be better picking broadband targets, such as M33 , the double cluster or M45?

At F9 dust bunnies really show up. I have never seen any dust bunnies in any of my flats until I took some with the RC6 and they were everywhere. Check your collimation, I followed this guide and it made a huge difference. My average FWHM went from 4-6" down to 2.6" https://deepspaceplace.com/gso8rccollimate.php

See this lengthy thread. With cmos capture unbinned and then apply binning if appropriate as part of post... The exposure tables on cn are excellent guides...

I just got an RC6 to try from FLO and it has impressed me. This is 55min of M33: I am seeing star FWHM from 1.96" (in HA) to 2.5" for lum. This stack is 2.89" combined so I binned it x3 to get 1.69"/px. I also have a 150p and for a while I have doubted the mirror. This proved it, the stars are significantly smaller with the RC6 compared to the 150p:

I want to ditch the need to piggyback my widefield ota so it can attach directly to my mount but that presents a couple of issues: 1. It is always tail heavy and the WO dovetail is too short. I now have a 400mm losmandy bar but I think I will still need to add some counterweight to the front. 2. The FW and OAG crash into everything (OTA in piggyback or mount plate if not) which prevents free rotation, especially when combined with the cabling which exits the dec plate at the rear. Has anyone got an cunning solutions to this? I think some kind of standoff is required so that I can slide the losmandy plate further up and saddle (and mount the OTA where I want on the plate)...

Thanks, what range of fwhm do you see with the rc8? Have you ever been tempted with the ccd47 reducer?

In the UK time is your most previous resource because clear dark sky is rare and wasting it is incredibly frustrating... If your setup is temporary you need to be able to polar align and get running quickly by leveraging as much automation as possible: 1. For polar aligning the fastest option is Polemaster. It isnt cheap but you can be accurately polar aligned consistenly within 5 mins. Sharpcap worked ok for me, but it uses your guidescope with a narrower FOV and all to often it failed for me which resulted in wasted time and frustration. 2. Dont bother with any alignment routines (or the handset?), they also waste time. Once polar aligned I open SGP and 'connect all'. I then slew to a bright star (such as deneb at this time of year) and perform a solve and sync. Once this is done the mount knows where it is pointing and you are good to go. Nina is a free alternative to SGP and can do similar:

Thanks, I thought that might be the answer. How are you deciding what level of binning to go for, is that 1/3 or 1/4 of your star FWHM so you maintain well sampled stars or something cleverer?

What is the benefit of imaging at such a high resolution if the sky never supports it? I am dabbling with an RC6 which gets me to a similar image scale or 1.15" when binned 2x2 so I am wondering what benefit it has over my 150p which natively comes in at 1.15"/px?