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Froobyone

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  1. I'm having almost exactly the same problem with a 127mm Apo triplet. I've got dew heaters on the main objective and on the reducer and yet whatever I have in the optical train, .7 reducer/2" starlight filter wheel/269C Pro or .8 reducer/ZWO 1.25" filter wheel/183C Pro, I get the same really obvious rings in my images. It's driving me mad. I'll be following this to see if someone has any ideas.
  2. Sorry for late replies. Thank you for the kind comments. @Sidecontrol Orion was two sets. 60@60sec and 30@120sec. So an hour altogether. Stacked in DSS separately the stretched before combining in Photoshop. The others were usually 3 minute subs with a L-Pro filter. @teoria_del_big_bang Lol. I know right? I've managed only two imaging sessions this year. But I live in perpetual hope.
  3. Some recent captures. The latest being an hour and a half on Orion from bortle 8 skies. Frooby
  4. Hi. I've not posted anything for a while and I have hit a couple or three targets in the meantime. I don't have lot of data on them yet, especially M33, but I like to post "the story so far" images so I can see if I've improved them over time. Without further ado, here's 5.3 hours on the Elephant's Trunk with a tri-band, 2 hours on M33 in RGB and about 30 mins on Pleiades in RGB. Lots more work do to. All shot through an 80mm Celestron Apo into a 183C TEC, through an LPF and .8 reducer with APT. Mounted on an EQ6R and guided by Altair Astro's guidecam package in PHD. Frooby
  5. Hi all After weeks and weeks of cloud it finally cleared for me on Saturday night/Sunday morning. I knew I only had a few hours of imaging available before the target disappeared over my house. I managed to get 1h 20 min of RGB and 1h hour 20 min of tri-band. I know this isn't a lot of data, but it's a start. Shot 2 min exposures at 400 gain at -15c with a 183C. 30 mins worth of darks and flats. Stacked in DSS and fiddled with in PS. I had been planning on getting an EQ6-R in a couple of weeks because I'd been having guiding issues with my ageing CG5, however last night it performed flawlessly. The smoothest PHD2 graph I've ever had. So I might end up getting an Explorer Scientific 102mm Apo instead. Frooby
  6. Hello again. I have recently had my passion for astrophotography reignited. I can't help but think it might be something to do with being locked in the house for the last three months, but whatever the reason I'm happy to have new challenges. The last time I did it was ten years ago and through the help of the good people on this forum, I managed to get a decent Orion's Nebula and Andromeda. At the time, I was doing everything wrong. No polar alignment, no guiding, using a Newt with no comma corrector and way over my mount's carrying capacity. It's a miracle I managed to shoot anything at all! On my return, I decided I'd stop doing it wrong and hoping for a result and instead, put my hand in my pocket and stop cutting corners. I left the big Newt in the cupboard and instead dusted of the C80 ED-R and added a .8 reducer/flattener, a guide scope package and an LPF. I had ordered the guidescope package last month (Altair Astro Starwave 50 and GPCAM) so I had at least messed around with PHD2. My results were not great. Mostly (completely) down to me being inexperienced. My guiding graph was all over the place. It looked like seismic readings for the San Francisco earthquake! I realised after some research that my issues were mostly down to a) my ageing CG5 mount with more backlash than an ill-thought comment on Twitter, b) the fact I didn't have the guidecam aligned with the mount's axis and c) an unbalanced OTA due to the limitations of the standard C80 tube holder, a DSLR, reducer and guidescope all pushing the CofG to somewhere near Leeds. I needed a rethink and redesign. I junked the standard OTA holder and instead went for tube rings and a dovetail bar. This made a huge difference and I could now easily balance the setup with an east bias. I stripped down my mount and tried to eliminate as much backlash as I could reasonably achieve. Aligned the guidecam. Purchased ASCOM cablesfor the mount and then waited to see if my endeavors would reward me with a result. I had to wait a while. Eventually, the sky offered me some testing time on the longest day of the year -_-. Oh well. Testing is testing. Did my work make things hugely better? Did I get 10 minute exposures with rounded stars? Nope. It was marginally better though. I shot some random star fields and and I got some random star fields. (I was actually trying to get the Veil, but don't tell anyone). I'd done everything I could reasonably do to the mount and it still wasn't performing. I made the decision. I'd replace it with the Skywatcher EQ6-R. Once I'd made that decision, I figured I might as well replace the DSLR too and once I started rolling down the hill of spending, my wallet gained momentum. After I'd added everything up, I realised it was going to cost me over £3k and I would essentially be replacing everything, including the OTA for a Explorer Scientific 102mm APO. Now I'm not super-rich. These acquisitions will have to be done in parts. I had to decide in which order to split off the main outlays. Which bits would benefit me quicker while I wait for the other bits? I opted to go for image train improvements first, then the mount then in two months I'll get the OTA. So with that being said, I purchased a Tri-band filter, iPolar polar finder and an Altair Astro 183 Pro TEC. Of course, as soon as these items were delivered last week, the storms rolled in over the UK. Sorry about that. However, fortune favours the brave and on the evening they arrived, a window of clear skies miraculously appeared over Yorkshire and I knew I had to at least have a go at setting it all up for the first time. So with all that preamble out of the way, I received and setup the bits I've got so far and realised in one epiphany type moment that all my mount troubles had been down to poor initial setup. The iPolar camera gave me a flawless polar alignment which had the immediate effect of excellent guiding. I pulled off a 9 minute exposure with round stars! As mentioned somewhere above, on my first forays into the summer sky I'd been looking for The Veil Nebula. It was my summer goal, but I have to admit, I'm not familiar with the summer sky at all. I'd always been a winter sky watcher. So I was just blind shooting really. The night I got the new gear setup however, I decided to use plate-solving in APT. I had no idea if it was even going to work, but I tried a plate-solving goto move and after a few minutes, it said it had been a success. I had to trust it. I fired off a 4 minute sub and I was almost convinced that I could see a faint outline of structure, but I wasn't sure if it was just wishful thinking. It was 12:00 am at this point and I was mindful of the fact that I had to be up early and deliver a training course to an Italian company in the morning. I decided to fire off 10x 2 mins exposures. It would suffice as a test of the gear, the guiding, the gain settings and whatever else I'd been messing with. I finally got packed up at 12:45 am and didn't even get a chance to stretch an image to see if I'd got any useful data. I had to go to bed not knowing and work through the morning without knowing. At lunch time, sandwich in hand. I stacked what I had in DSS. No darks, no flats, no bias. I just needed to see. As I did my first stretch in PS I almost cried out with joy. I realise that it it by no means a great shot, but for a moron with brand new gear, I'm pretty pleased with it for just 20 mins of data. In 2024, when the skies will be clear again, I'll add some tri-band data and some more broadband data and see if I can't fill it out a little. I also need to calm down on the gain on the 183 and I'll no doubt be asking a lot of question here again. Anyway, it's great to be back in the hobby and back on the forum and I look forward to looking at all your inspirational images over the coming months. Without further ado, my first attempt at the East Veil. Thanks for reading. Frooby
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