tooth_dr

Davey - what is your protocol for polishing the aluminium? What grade of paper do you start with, work through, and then finish with. Do you use a sander?

Amazing! Signature is cool

Thats pretty amazing! I always enjoy seeing these objects that are beyond the grasp of my short FL scopes.

Again let down by the sky not actually clearing at all. A whole evening spent watching SGPro whilst it lost guidestar after guidestar. I was able to 'salvage' 5 subs, each 600s long, in Ha - to yield this... On the plus side - my new CWs arrived from @NigeB thank-you Nigel - they are in much better condition than my own.! I now have four matching weights, and my kit looks pretty decent overall. CS Adam.

Here is a 2 panel mosaic, left panel 12 x 300s, and right panel 8 x 300s. Taken in H-alpha, using a 1.25" Baader 7nm filter, between a QHY9 CCD and Nikon 180mm F2.8 lens. Stepped down to F4.0. I've attached original and reduce size. Clouds stopped play after 20 subs. SGPro worked well again, will no problems platesolving and creating the mosaic. Thanks for looking Adam

Photos definitely needed 🤣

Steve EXACTLY the same thing going on in my head! I bought my EQ6 over 10 years ago new, and I'm quite close to pulling the trigger on a new mount, making the EQ6 redundant. I find myself saying I should keep it and use it for x,y,z, outreach, travels, on the patio etc. I know in my heart it wont get used, but I'm thinking - just in case - why sell it. IMHO you are better selling it, and I hope to do the same, cos stuff that sits around just deteriorates quickly.

In all honesty it can be/is waste of time. Doesn’t stop us from trying though. Pick something as far away from the moon as possible, and usually shoot only in Ha. It’s possible with a OSC but the moon basically acts as light pollution reducing your SNR. Good for practice or setting up new kit.

I can’t help you directly with what to buy but I did start with this exact scope and successfully imaged through it with a Canon 300d. As far as I can remember I just used a t adapter screwed directly onto the focuser tube. Obviously this what you are trying to do! I don’t recall buying anything though additionally apart from a t adapter.

I have a 400d which I bought in 2006. I still use it everyday at work, but I wouldn't recommend it for AP, it is old, noisy, and doesn't have LiveView makes it hard to focus.

I would take binned flats also, I think APP can do it, but it flags up some warning.

Still doesn't resolve the issue as I still need several sheets of paper even to do unbinned flats.

I was worried about the effect of a colour on the light for the flats but maybe that isn't relevant? Maybe grey acrylic would even do?

2019 would be my favourite, stars seems roundest and trapezium is nicely defined

Nice images Reggie. Have you assigned a new name to your observatory? Adam

Just in case anyone else reads this thread, the problem was not solved by entering the focal length but by changing the EQMOD settings to dialogue based.

Steve - I've attached Ollys reply when I asked the same Q earlier in the thread.

Although this isn't really applicable to this thread, I'll just add my view. Carole is right about the temp - I assumed you had a set point cooled camera. Doing your DSLR flats at any temperature close to your lights will be ok - they will be so short that there will be no thermal current building up anyway, and the same with the bias frames. With darks it really does matter. I wouldn't bother with darks with a DSLR, because no matter when you take them they wont be temp matched, and you wont get an accurate representation of the thermal noise. Instead try dithering between frames. If you do a search on this, it's be covered quite a bit.

Darks last a whole season so no issues there, do it once and it’s done 👍🏼. Flats - if you are setting up each night I’m not sure how much benefit it would be to setup just to taken them. My scope and camera does not move between sessions so flats last me several sessions or longer.

Both with the luminance filter. I normally take dark flats too so I dont think it really matters too much on exposure time. I take my flats at night when it's cloudy in the obsy with the roof close, to avoid light leakage in the rear of the scope. I set it to run over night. Thanks Carole. Adam.

Last night it was 3.8s for 2x2 and 15.3s for 1x1 for luminance filter at same brightness on the panel.

I think it would help, a piece of card might do the trick too.

Thanks Carole. I was just hoping for a more elegant solution, but paper seems to work so I’ll shall have to stick with it!

That’s a great image of Orion! Tricky in the full moon too. Nice greys and pinks coming through in m42 👍🏼

I’m looking some practical advice - I bought a light box like the one linked on page 1. I also bought a sheet of 3mm opaque acrylic to diffuse the light. It passes 42% of light. On taking my subs tonight I had the light box on the lowest setting and I still had to use 15 sheets of paper to get just above 3.5 seconds for my 2x2 subs. This is on top of the acrylic sheet! 1x1 flats also require several sheets of paper. Any suggest another thickness or material rather than having to use this much paper. Also I bought A4 thinking it would be ok for my 180mm scope. I didn’t think to measure the actual aperture and on the epsilon it’s 250mm. I had then light bleed from the edge of the panel so i had to cover with cardboard. Temp job done see below. Any suggestions to reduce light output evenly?