CraigT82

Here is the data sheet for the Baader filters, it gives the outside tube/lens ID that each work will work for.

It doesn't have to be 6mm over the aperture size, if the filter covers the whole aperture then great, if it doesn't then as long as the unfiltered aperture is blocked off completely then that will work too, just you'll be working with a slightly reduced aperture.

baader_solar_fi.pdf

On 09/01/2023 at 21:41, AstroRuz said:

So what are you looking forwards to this month?

Absolutely nothing due to poor weather forecast and young kids that refuse to sleep through the night…. So have consoled myself by buying another telescope 😂

9 hours ago, Rallemikken said:

Orion, without a doubt. I live at 65 degrees north, and my timewindow to image all the snacks in and around Orion is limited. I need clear skies, a new moon, and if I havn't had the weather on my side when we reach april, it's a year till next time. The arctic summer ends all AP from the first week of april to the last of september.

Wow I thought we had it bad down at 50+ In the UK. Good luck with Orion 👍🏼

3 hours ago, alex_stars said:

I guess the idea of the insulation is to slow the thermal changes inside the OTA so that no large temperature gradients form and thus no large scale thermal tube currents. The purpose of the bubble wrap insulation is not to completely insulate the OTA, that does not work as we can see in the graph.

Exactly that… the insulation is to keep the temperature of the tube wall as close as possible to the temperature of the air inside the scope. 
 

Without the insulation the air in the tube will contact the cold tube wall and this will create temperature differences inside the tube which can ruin the image. 

Fair warning.... would require a LOT of Oiii exposure in dark skies.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/acaf7e?s=08

I use my AZEQ6 pretty much exclusively in Altaz mode for planetary/lunar imaging because:

A - saddle is lower so it’s easier to get my 12” newt on there 

B - I’ve no view of Polaris and the AZ mode setup doesn’t require a view of Polaris. 

No horror stories I’m afraid. Has worked faultlessly since I bought it last year and tracks incredibly accurately after a 2 star alignment (planets barely drift even at over 5m focal length). 
 

53 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Negligible CA. I would never have given it a thought.

However, on my monitor (which is calibrated) I see no green caste but I do see that your blues tend towards magenta, suggesting too little green weighting. Look at the bright star half way down on the right. I had a play with a screen grab in Photoshop and tried to lose the magenta dominance in blue. I also tried to bring out the blue in the Iris and open up the colour in the dust. Basically this meant a lift in the lower brightness reds. I felt that, above the fainter signal, you did have a green deficit.

Olly

 

Yes I did notice the magenta too, almost like NB stars. Maybe that’s what the CN lot were shouting about.

I think there is a little CA but certainly not much, it’s a lovely image and I’d be proud of it if it were mine, nice work.

Due to a new house and new kids I only managed a sum total of 4 images this year, of which this one is my favourite…

One thing I did manage to capture- which I’m really glad I did - was the lunar occultation of Mars. I captured a load of data but haven’t manage to process it yet so that may well turn out to be my pick of the year, if I ever get around to it. Single frame below as a teaser but it would be a composure of two images once done…

38 minutes ago, rickwayne said:

This is just a theoretical observation -- I have only used lucky imaging for planets. But...what benefit is there to a 5-second image? That's enough time for a whole bunch of atmospheric turbulence cycles. I mean, yes, seeing distortions are cumulative, but they accumulate very very quickly to an asymptote.

Now, if the goal is to reduce errors from guiding that's not up to the task, or tracking problems, OK, that makes sense. Those errors occur over much longer time scales.

Ready to be educated, here.

Yes you’re right I think, you’d need ideally much shorter exposures to gain something, but I think it depends on how long the ‘moments of calm’ are during your imaging session. 

My understanding is planetary imaging relies on very short (<10ms) subs to ‘freeze’ the seeing, i.e., exposing for a shorter period than the coherence time.  For DSO lucky imaging you’re using much longer exposures of around 0.5-1.0s which aren’t short enough to freeze the seeing, but the hope is to catch the periodic moments of steady calm air when the seeing improves momentarily (visual observers will be familiar with the brief spells of clarity), and grab a few frames during those periods (the ‘lucky’ bit). By including only the best frames from the session you can improve on the resolution that is normally attained in long exposure imaging and so you’d be resolving at the magnitude of the seeing blur in those steady moments which could well be under 1”.   On the flip side the total exposure time would be low and hence the image not very deep/smooth and only really suitable for brighter targets or targets where you already have some long XP data to combine. 
 

Only one I watch regularly is Jean Luc Dauvergne, a French planetary imaging maestro.

Occasionally I’ll search and watch videos on something specific that I’m trying to do, like how to do something in gimp or affinity or APP or whatever but I don’t generally watch or subscribe to any of the  Astro channels

If you can post up your capture text logs form your various sessions it might give us a clue if there something wrong somewhere 

36 minutes ago, imakebeer said:

The AVI files are 320 x 240 as expected - that's what I had set in Sharpcap.

The stacked images output from AS3!, and also the sharpened ones from Registax are 144 x 144 - again, expected as that's how I cropped them in AS3!.

But the actual disc of Jupiter is only about 83px in diameter.

@PeterC65 - I can input the gear into my Stellarium mobile app, and as you say it simulates the FOV (I guess I could also use the similar tool linked on the FLO website!). I wasn't clear if I should input the maximum sensor size (1280 x 960) or what I actually captured (320 x 240). Also I assume your estimated Jupiter being about 200px diameter is just based on eyeballing the size relative to the frame size - at least the app doesn't tell me "Jupiter is x-pixels big".

You don’t have binning enabled in sharpcap do you? That would produce a much smaller image in terms of how many pixels Jupiter occupies.

To put it bluntly, if you’re looking for big planetary images you need to use a big scope. The bigger the scope the bigger the resulting image. 
 

The 150p and 5x barlow with 224c will give you a Jupiter image which should be about 190 pixels across the equator, is that roughly what you’re getting? 

Excellent calculator here by @dan_adi

Nice one…. Counterweights are so expensive it’s good to see some innovative alternatives 👍🏼

Very nice 👍🏼 

Thanks, all sounds like good advice 

Nice work, would be amazing to spot Olympus visually

20 minutes ago, JokubasJar said:

What programs should I use for processing? I’ve seen people use AutoStakkert for stacking because of it’s ability to reject distorted frames.

Yes AS3 would be best I think, as there would be thousands of subs and so manually rejecting bad ones would be tedious. Not sure how you would place alignment points, on stars probably unless there was some good nebula/galaxy with structure in the subs and you could put points on those too. I would definitely take darks as it wouldn’t take that long with the short exposures. Probably wouldn’t bother with flats with the small sensor of the 462.  For the same reason I wouldn’t bother with a coma corrector either. 

1 hour ago, Shed9 said:

Make sure the molex connectors and any DIP switches are masked off properly. Do it in a well ventilated area, wear a mask and read the hazard sheet before using it. 

Edit: obviously make sure it's clean and free of dust before application, maybe use a stiff art brush and isopropyl alcohol before application making sure that evaporates before application and stay away from the board connectors and and DIP switches. One other thing to note, make sure there isn't already any varnish on the board else the isopropyl will affect that and the Ambersil will also react. 

Thanks I think I’ll wear eye protection too and be sure to mask connectors and switches. 

I have ordered a can of Ambersil acrylic conformal coating and I plan on using it to seal the motherboard inside my AZEQ6.

Does anyone have any hints, tips or tricks for doing this? 

Cheers

Are you able to upload the raw capture video somewhere so we can download and have a play? The image of the raw frame looks ok to me

That is excellent, not only the detail but the blending of the panels too, really nice work well done 👍🏼 

Not sure about anyone else but I can’t see the images in your post?