CraigT82

Thanks Jeremy

Very nice, was a great event

Thanks Knobby. Thanks yeah came out ok which I was very surprised at after nearly giving up after one capture. Thanks Kon Thanks Si Thanks Geof. I don’t usually adjust the colour at all at capture I do it all in post. Must admit I spent quite a bit of time fiddling with the Hue and saturation.

KIT: SW 300p on AZ-EQ6 (in AltAz mode). ASI485mc. ZWO ADC. Baader Q barlow 2.25x (working at 3.4x). Astronomik L2 filter CAPTURE & PROCESS: 10x60sec captures in FC. Best 5% stacked in AS3. Image derotation. Sharpening in Astrosurface. Finishing in Gimp. DETAILS: Image scale 0.12"pp/5200mmF/17. Planet at 59 deg. Derotated to 22:018 UTC. Seeing seemed poor during capture, fuzzy disc difficult to focus. Transparency 10/10. Captured from Taunton, UK Thanks for looking & Clear Skies!

Yeah you might need a lot of extension to get up to f18, depends on the focal length of the barlow. You can calculate the required extension using this formula: Power=(BarlowFL+distance)/BarlowFL If the barlow focal length isn’t published you can get it by measuring the distance between the last cell and the top of the barlow, that will be the ‘distance’, you know the power is 2x so you can rearrange and get the barlow focal length.

Ignore that calculator it’s not meant for planetary imaging. With the 224 you want to be up around f18 ish really.

Post deleted - miss read the question 🙄

The sticky backed magnetic stuff could be a goer too as the pillar is steel.

For me it’s sticky backed Velcro. Decent 3M stuff as the cheaper stuff never sticks for long. https://www.screwfix.com/p/velcro-brand-black-heavy-duty-stick-on-tape-1m-x-50mm/21670?tc=GT3&ds_kid=92700048793315993&ds_rl=1249416&gclid=Cj0KCQiAg_KbBhDLARIsANx7wAxDKb94WTackzA3PhxxjEqKrM7IuheXtdsOTVGw0RNG_sl1LnTFYogaAjSZEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Tidy 👍🏼

Yes, sorry should have said

I’d probably try restacking with different alignment points. Also tick RGB align box in AS3 that might help

Put the dome straight on the ground first and leave it there for a few weeks, let the neighbours complain if they want to. If anyone measures it it’s less than 2.5m high and no one can do anything about that, then after it’s all died down surreptitiously move it onto the slab!

The colouring is correct as far as the capture goes, but because you’re using an achromat the CA is throwing the colour balance off.

The lens isn’t removable on that camera. You need a camera where you can remove the lens completely (like a DSLR) and when you attach it to the telescope, the telescope becomes the ‘lens’

Actually, no. If we take 'faster' as meaning taking less time to acheive a specific SNR in an image. Very useful calculator here by @dan_adi. Plugging in the scopes outlined above and subbing in the 533 in place of the 6200 as it's not in the app database (same pixel size) you can see the 10" RC setup is faster than the 5" frac. Have to make some assumptions about reflectivity/light throughput. http://clearskies.go.ro:8501/

Nice results, seeing been awful for me recently too, need some high pressure to pass over

Very nice images! Yeah could try to deal with the ghosted limb by using an elliptical selection tool (just inside the disk), invert and feather it and then apply a slight Gaussian blur. That’s what i do when I get that artefact and it works well.

It’s absolutely spot on Neil the processing is just perfect to me. Bravo! Was thinking of having a go on Mars tonight if the forecast holds and was debating if I should go OSC or mono and you’ve just made up my mind… going to go with OSC.

Fantastic work Neil, best I’ve seen anywhere yet this year. 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

You just need to find some EPs with 2ft of eye relief

That quote you referred to about OSC cameras is regarding the optical window in front of the sensors. It can either be AR coated only (let’s everything through) or it can be coated to reject UV and IR, which reduces star bloat especially in non-apochromatic optical systems. The sensors behind them will be broadly similar in the wavelengths they can see, there will be differences between different cameras but not major differences, though saying that there are some OSC cameras that are particularly sensitive in the IR. Mono sensors will normally be covered with an AR coated window which lets everything though. Again different mono sensors can have different sensitivities across the visible spectrum.

This is fabulous, as is the previous ones. The expertly processed subtle colour really makes them stand out for me, not to mention the fine, clean detail

I think there are a couple of reasons why you would choose to use a longer FR (but I’m not saying that these are the reasons why it is done by many) 1) Steeper light cone leads to reduced aberration due to ADC prisms (we touched on this a few weeks ago). Though I admit I don’t know how to quantify the ADC aberration at various FR in order to compare it to the loss of SNR between those FR. 2) More barlow power = larger diffraction limited field diameter = Beneficial for collimation as more tolerance to any sag/droop in imaging train? Considering the large aperture scopes (and sensitive latest cameras) that most planetary imagers use bring in a lot of signal to begin with anyway so throwing a little away to get the above benefits could be a good decision?

It’s not true lucky imaging as that requires exposures of a fraction of a second (to properly freeze the seeing) but it is kinda like a halfway technique. Mostly used by owners of big scopes whereby the mounts required for normal long exposure imaging would be hideously expensive, so instead thousands of short (~1sec) images are captured and stacked. These short exposures are too long to really freeze the seeing but the May help to reduce the seeing blur to a certain extent (depends on what the seeing is like - high frequency or low frequency blur) and also helps to avoid tacking errors, oh and guiding isn’t generally required. The downside is you need a big fast scope to get enough signal in such short exposures. Saying that though the release of the latest gen ultra low read noise cameras certainly makes it an attractive technique and certainly worth trying if you fancied having a go with the brighter targets