tooth_dr

Thanks again Steve. I have tried everything and it’s looking like the DC-201 supply. When plugged in to 12v the leds are a lot dimmer on that DC-201 and the fan led doesn’t illuminate. Using the same 12V power supply with other DC-201 all working fine. I had a look inside it, nothing obvious so I’m just wondering is it worth spending a couple of hours diagnosing it or to just buy a new one at £73.

An image from the same night using a QHY9 and Nikon 180mm lens. The stars are really huge, and overall it makes for uncomfortable viewing. Back to the drawing board I think.

What a beautiful image Goran, that is a really ideal FOV for M31. On a small note, there is some smudging on the left hand side of the image, just a registration error/stacking artefact?

Really really nice. Every time I see you post incredible images, I begin to wonder should I be using my D800E on my 180ed too instead of the CCD.

I cool to -20 degrees, thats the temp I use with the other QHY9 I have. I did use the hairdryer, but didnt seal the threads. I will open and seal again this evening to see if that works better. QHY customer service got back to me and agreed that it is 100% moisture in the chamber causing the pins to short out. I'm about to order a new DC-201 as the one I have isnt turning the fan on now.

Very nice Tom. I knew I’d seen this before - Michael O’Connell sent us a WhatsApp message to check if anyone else recorded it. Unfortunately it was just outside the field of view of my SW meteor camera. Did he get any more progress on it? Adam.

It turned out the RGB camera wasnt rotated properly, even though I checked, and focus wasnt great either in green or blue. I will take Ha and RGB the next night it is clear. I have tried to process it anyway even with the extra crop and dodgy RGB.

After camera cooled I now have ice inside the sealed chamber so I couldn’t take flats.

Made up from a series of 15 second exposures at ISO3200, using my Nikon D800E with a Nikon 28-80mm lens at 28mm F3.3. It does highlight how bright the green and red LEDs are on my USB hubs and other astro kit, time to get the black paint out. timelapse-150820.mp4

Bit of an update. After reassembling and testing, I did a whole night with no banding. However I did notice some slight occasional horizontal dark interference type lines. I am out now taking flats and have just realised that the fan isnt working on the camera. The DC-201 power supply is not showing a red light beside fan, and overall the leds appear dimmer than my other DC-201. I have swopped things around and confirm the fans are working on both QHY9s. I didnt hear it not working the other night because the Epsilon has a fan which is loud and drowns out the QHY9. Im beginning to wonder was this the problem and not the camera? And when I swopped power supplies the other night the camera was already malfunctioning and needed to cool down. This would tie in with it being fine for 20 minutes

: and D

The 20 minute exposures were taken with narrowband filters, so light pollution isnt really an issue, nowhere near the effect it has on broadband imaging. Plus the ED80 is not a particularly fast scope at F6.37. Very impressive, the SW ED80 really is a great value instrument. Look forward to your images with the new 1600.

Thanks Rodd. I was noting that my minimum brightness ADUs were around 2500, which was pretty high, but I havent shot much luminance so still trying to find my way. I'm using a noisy old KAF-8300 sensor, so at the back of my mind, I'm always conscious of going too short due to the high 10 e- read noise. I have started shooting 20mins ha subs with the epsilon and getting really nice results.

12 panels wow. That will certainly look good.

Thanks Rodd. It never fails to impress me how much signal the Tak Epsilon 180 gathers in a short time. It’s F2.8 500mm. I haven’t really had a chance to work out the ideal sub length for luminance yet, so tried 120s. Any suggestions on ideal sub length would be appreciated.

I did also take a few 20s subs to add to each panel for the core, just haven’t processed them yet.

I decided to try M31 again, but always feeling like it was squashed in at 500mm, I am trying a 2 panel mosaic. Luminance data so far - 2 hours per panel in 120s subs. APP done a decent job of combining the panels. Any feedback welcome. TIA Adam.

Looking good Ciarán and nice to see another KAF8300 getting used for widefield imaging. The 135mm gives a fair bit more FOV than the comparable shot I took with the 180mm lens.

Thanks Andrew, I never heard of it so just read up on it. Indeed it would make a good case for that paradox.

Centred on the MW, this is 392 x 15s exposures ISO3200, stacked in StarStax, Nikon D800E, Nikon 28-80mm lens at F3.3, on a static mini tripod

Thanks again Steve. I seen that on the QHY9 manual about the hairdryer, I had printed out a copy of it. I didnt think about the vaseline though, so I might open it up again and do that.

Opened it up there. Removed dust, cleaned with alcohol, rebuilt so will test again later and keep you posted 🤞🏻

Cheers Steve, I've just opened a ticket. I came across this link on their forum, but I cant get the photos to work to see if its the same issue as mine. https://www.qhyccd.com/bbs/index.php?topic=3802.0

Thanks for the reply Steve. I have tried QHY EZCAP and SGPro both, and the same banding persists. Last night I also tried a different PC, and different USB cables, and even a different DC-201 power supply. I have two QHY9 cameras so I swopped over the cameras last night and the banding wasnt there, so it looks very much like a camera issue. Thanks also tomato! Yes the artefacts are present in normal images as well as frame and focus mode. I've tried fast normal and slow downloads also no difference. I've attached an image of the fault below. The strange thing is last night was that it worked 100% for 10-20 minutes, then the banding just appeared. And even with the banding, I could still see the brighter stars in the image. So it's still recording data but something else is happening. My plan this evening is to remove the CCD chamber and check for moisture inside it. This is the only thing left to do before binning it. The sensor was at 13.2 degrees as I had shut off the cooler and was packing up, but it is the same no matter what temp.

Quite fabulous! What camera are you using?