CraigT82

Are you sure the guidescope is moving and not the primary mirror? That’s the issue I had with my 8” f/6. Solved with an OAG.

Well I guess it depends on what you’ll be using it for. If planetary/lunar/solar the higher read noise of the ASI compared to the P1 won’t matter much as with the strong signals from those targets the shot noise far outweighs the read noise (except perhaps on Uranus or Neptune). Personally I’m looking at doing DSO lucky imaging - stacking thousands of 0.5s to 1s subs - and so the read noise is critical. I would choose the P1 camera for that over the ASI. Not sure as to the why. They must have a reason for changing the HGC point but I don’t know what it is.

Sorry only just saw your posts, not sure how I missed them must be getting senile in my old age. Thats an interesting thread, it seems that the early 585 cameras ZWO produced had the HGC kicking in earlier but then the changed it to 252 so that would explain the charts on FLOs listing. Also interesting is the post about US dealers getting pressure from a certain camera manufacture not to carry player one cameras, could explain why no one carries them here but starfield. I know business is business but this isn’t a good look for this other camera manufacturer.

So it does… In that case are the ASI585mc charts on the @FLO website for the wrong camera??? That now raises the question (for me at least) of how Player One are getting much better read noise performance from the same sensor than ZWO? Also ZWO claims 47k full well and player one claims 39k but are getting better DR.

I’ve just had a look at a couple of other M31s and they look the same, so it’s probably just my phone display, apologies! Looking forward to seeing the result (on my monitor!) with the RC10 data added

Wow…some nice detail in the dust lanes around the core. Is the background sky black clipped? Might just be my phone screen.

With the 300p last year I was using an APM coma correcting barlow operating at about 2.8x (with my QHY462c) and this year I’ve got a Tevelue 2x barlow and with the ADC between it and the camera (ASI485mc) it will operate at about 3x. Like Neil I tend to oversample, but I’m not too fussed about the sampling really as long as it’s in the ballpark. On the list of ‘things that will ruin your images’ the exact sampling is way down the list in my opinion. Actually whilst we’re on the subject, one benefit of using greater barlow power than is strictly necessary is that you get a larger diffraction limited field size and so a bit more tolerance to collimation error. With a long imaging train and a newt with thin flexible tube wall that is not to be sniffed at. Edit: just thought I’d add this link to a tweet with a Jupiter image, captured with a C14 at F/25 with 2.9um pixels. It’s massively over sampled but has that ruined the image? Could the image have been better if sampled more sensibly? Possibly. But my point is that oversampling won’t ruin your images, but bad seeing will, thermal issues will and focus error will.

Really nice! Europa and it’s shadow are pin sharp, love that.

Yeah I wasn’t sure, it just looks like Martian clouds to be honest you’ve done a good job on that. Yeah I still have the 300p it was stripped down last year but it’s been put back together now and just waiting for Jup to be in a decent position around 11-12pm to get going with it as early mornings are a no go with the kids at the minute

Maybe they ought to consider curved supports… I have heard professional astronomers complain that Sod’s law dictates the object they’re intending to study will lie under a big fat diff spike!

Nice shots, the wind can be a real pig with big newts. Doing well to track manually on a dob at 3000m fl

Some really fine detail on Mars there considering the small disk, this the 10”? Did you have to deal with edge rind on that? I had a lot of fun with Mars in 2020 I’m really looking forward to opposition this year.

All good advice above, I’d just reiterate the importance of not aiming for a pretty preview image. During the capture the image you will see on the laptop screen will look awful ( dim, b&w, noisy, jittery) but it doesn’t really matter what it looks like, as long as you’re in focus.

The 01:42 is lovely… just goes to show it’s always worth staying out to see if the seeing improves.

The player one results are almost exactly the same as their published results which is great. ZWO claim in their published graphs that their version switches to HGC at 150 gain setting too, but according to the the analysis posted by Dark Raven above it is actually more like 260. That would have me sending the camera back for a refund if it were mine. Interestingly the published read noise of the Player one version is significantly lower than the ZWO version right across the gain range.

Interestingly the sensor analysis for the ASI585 gives some different values to those published by ZWO, which in turn are very different to those published by player one for the same sensor. Would be good to see a sensor analysis from a player one camera too.

Thank you 😊

Lol

Is this something that has just started happening or has been happening the whole time? It’s a fairly simple test to check if it is differential cooling. Collimate the scope and then leave where it is without moving it and come back to check later. If it is cooling the collimation might shift without having moved the scope. More likely to be the primary mirror shifting. Any moving mirror scope is going to have issues with mirror flop to a certain extent. Not sure how you can remedy that though, sorry.

Very very nice 👍🏼 You’ve got me checking out the 10” truss CC but at £3k a bit rich for my tastes… I’m skint after buying an AZeq 6 anyway! I think you should send that Jupiter image to FLO/GSO they should put it in their listings for the scope to show what it can do. I’ve just been looking around at Astrobin etc. for Mewlon 210 Jupiter images and haven’t seen anything that beats yours from the smaller CC at 1/3 the price.

Wow Neil that is a special result from such a small scope. I would have bet money on that being from your newt. I haven’t really been checking in on the imaging section but just saw this and am stunned. The second one for me I think, the video derotation has really worked wonders, tbh I was sceptical of the video derotation but I’m definitely going to give it a try.

Their advice was sound…Although the 224 has larger pixels and thus takes extra focal length, the image of the planet will occupy the same number of pixels on the chip as the smaller sensor (if both are sampled correctly) and so when that image is viewed at 100% on a screen the image will be the same size as the image from the smaller pixel sensor shot with less focal length.

The 150pl is a great visual scope but not great for imaging as it’s quite long and hence tough on mounts. Also the eq3-2 is a pretty basic mount and not up to the task of mounting the 150pl. Think about the 150pds instead as it’s a decent visual scope and good for imaging too. As for a mount I wouldn’t be looking at any smaller then an EQ5 with at least an RA motor to get you started.

Thread over on BAA here where someone mentions there were told by celestron not to use them as mirror locking screws… https://britastro.org/forums/topic/c14-mirror-flop

You said it!