CraigT82

Wow! Well worth a good look at full res. So much detail, and an almost 3D effect. Absolutely stunning 👍

That's great, so much going on at the limb.

Im guessing the the scope and mount may have been drop shipped direct from the importer so may arrive seperately. @FLO should be able to help you.

All are superb cameras to be honest. Ranking them by minimum read noise (i.e. max gain) you've got: 1. 462c = 0.5 e-rms 2. 224c = 0.85 e-rms 3. 178c = 1.38 e-rms None of them have excessive read noise and so all three are suitable, but for me personally the lower the read noise the better. What it means practically is that it takes fewer frames stacked to get those nice smooth images. The 178 does have the larger sensor so that's a plus for that. It also has the smallest pixels but you would be slightly oversampling at the native FL of the C8. The 224 has the largest pixels and you'd need a 1.3x barlow to get to the sweet spot. The 462c sits in the middle of the pixel sizes and you'd be spot on for sampling with the native FL of the C8... No barlow needed so that eliminates a piece of glass and some weight from the optcal train. Also finding things and tracking will be easier without a barlow. So I guess my vote goes for the 462c.... I have one (QHY version) and I think it's superb. Oh the other thing is that the 462 has excellent transparency on all pixels past ~800nm, so when using an IR pass filter the camera behaves like a mono camera.

I'd advise to ditch registax and use Autostakkert for the stacking. It is leagues ahead (Registax hasn't been updated for years) but Regi does still have some useful features, namely the RGB align function, the RGB balance function and of course the wavelets sharpening. Autostakkert will autodetect the bayer pattern and debayer the capture correctly hopefully, but if it is still pink then you should still be able to adjust the RGB balance using registax, or even in CS2. With my camera and using firecapture I can set the 'white balance' before capturing... basically you can tweak the RGB gain independently so that you get a nice natural looking colour planet on the preview screen before capturing. I'm not sure if this is possible with your camera in sharpcap but worth checking? As for the blurriness, seeing is your main culprit, but also poor focus and collimation can reduce the sharpness of the image, as well as thermal issues within the scope, though it is less likely to be thermals with a small scope like the 130pds. I think the 5x barlow is too much but the 3x should be just right. It is unrealistic to expect great results which fulfill the potential of the equipment on the very first go, keep practicing and you'll get the results you want. It is usually just a case of getting out as often as possible in order to catch that one night of great seeing where everything comes together. I would say to aim to collect a lot more frames and stack a smaller percentage of them. I'd probably aim for 10k frames and then stack best 10% maybe, depends on how good the seeing is, when it is good you can stack more frames.

We haven't got long to wait. Next year it'll be up at 38 degrees and in 2023 it will be at 52 degrees!

Outstanding engineering 😄

I think it just means that the objective forms it's image (the focal point) at a spot which is 170mm away from the end of the thread on the fully racked in focuser drawtube, or 135mm away from the 2" adaptor. This seems about right as if you stick a 2" diagonal in there for visual use that would have an optical path about 100mm maybe so you would need to rack the focuser out by 35mm to reach focus. Obviously when imaging the camera sensor would need to be placed at this point, which is easily done by using the focuser! The TSAflat2 would go in the focusers 2" adaptor and then the camera would need to be placed 123mm from the back of the flattener (with filter wheel etc in this 123mm space).... and then the whole lot racked out by about 10mm or so to get the sensor to the focus point

No I think it is 1/4" 20TPI UNC top and bottom. Though I have m6x1.25mm bolts and they do screw in too, but not quite as well, bit 'rattly'

Welcome to the southwest, hope you like cider!

Smallest you can get away with really. Depends on the size of the planet - are you wanting to get moons in shot too?- and how accurate your tracking is (or how much the planet is moving around. Wind?) I usually aim for about 500 square, but 640x480 would be good if that's one of the presets you have. Doesn't affect quality at all. Just the file size of the video, and hence the file transfer speeds. Reducing the ROI size should allow to to get faster frame rates.

I personally always focus on the planet itself. I set the ROI and the zoom in a little bit on the preview screen. Then I switch the preview debayer on as I find it easier to focus on the colour image preview. Then I use the auto align function in firecapture to hold the image steady in the preview and then finally i'll run the focuser back and forth repeatedly, going through the focus zone multiple times trying to judge the point of critical focus. I'll look at the details on the planet and try to judge when they are focused as sharply as possible. Often this isn't quite at the same point where the limb of the planet appears sharpest (no idea why this should be - maybe its my eyes playing tricks on me) but I always focus of the details on the disc, rather than the limb. Often it takes me a good 5 mins at least of running back and forth through the focus point before I'll decide on where the best focus is. I've never used a bhatinov mask or any other focus aids, including the edge/contrast /fwhm detection aids in firecapture. Always done it by eyeing up the detail visible in the screen. On Jupiter if the seeing is so bad I can barely make out the surface details on the preview, I'll move over to one of the Galillean moons instead and focus one of those until it's as small as I can make it before moving back to the planet. Anyways that's how I do it, might not work for you but maybe you could give it a try and see if it helps or not.

How are you focusing? You say focus was bang on so how do you know that? Bhatinov?

Congrats on the new scope... bargain of the year IMO! Even factoring in the cost of a recoat. I recently had a 12" mirror recoated by OOUK and it was freshly coated with hilux and back with me 6 days after sending it off. This was the mirror to beging with... full of pits in the coating. The views through the scope were actually really good with the mirror in this state.

Thanks Piero. 👍

Thanks Mark. I think 12" is a big as I'm going to go. Anything bigger would need an EQ8 at least and I don't want to spend that kind of money. I'm excited to see what kind of images can be had with Jupiter and Saturn getting up higher towards the ecliptic over the coming years in the UK.

That is pin sharp Mike. Very nice image. Might have to start looking into a 4" f/7 ED frac... lots of good things said about them om here recently.

Thanks! Yes the Venus UV filters are pricey but do produce good results ad really opens up Venus for us. Thanks Gordon 👍 Thanks!

Haha ah yes this has caught me out! Up until 22nd July he Was posting images from home and I didn't notice he switched to the 1m RC for the most recent ones... hanks for the heads up. I did think they were really rather good!

Venus imaging last year was great fun... imaging Venus up at around 50 degrees whilst Sat out in the early evening May sunshine with a good beer makes a very welcome change to the usual.

Thanks... yes probably should mention that transitioning from 127mm to 305mm does bring some benefits!

Thanks Vlaiv. At decent portion of progress was obtained by heeding your advice on sampling and exposure/gain settings.

Jave been looking into these myself for my unborn obsy plans. One issue I forsee is if you have thin soils over bedrock preventing them going in, or otherwise rocky ground that could deflect the screw off vertical. Some good videos of them being used on YouTube. This chap has other videos showing them doing pull out tests to enable loading calcs. And also building up the floor on them too. Worth a watch.

Bit of a dearth of imaging recently, due to the weather (non-stop rain so far today), so I've been trawling through old stuff and found my very first planetary captures back in 2017 with a SW 127mm Mak and an Imaging Source DFK colour camera (IIRC). Now using a 12" newt and QHY462c, though the Venus and Mars images were captured with my 8.75" Fullerscope and 290m). Thought it'd be fun to display my first alongside my latest.

That's a bargain for a 224c, great camera. Nice image but the moons are a funny shape I wonder if that's due t the coma corrector?