tooth_dr

See photo below - Ha filter Is a diffraction spike like a spectrum/rainbow, and only parts of it pass through the filter, giving the dashed line appearance?

30 mins on the HH also last night in the moon light, plus seeing was awful. I just ran a few subs off as it was clear.

I got an hour of luminance on M45 last night, following my (successful I think) attempt at collimating the scope. The second image is pre-collimation. Comments welcome. 1) collimated 2) pre-collimated

It’s in all the images roger. It’s definitely not a dust bunny/pair of dust bunnies.

The mosaic wizard and the autofocusing routine are my main reason for moving to APT to SGP. Otherwise APT seems to cover the bases pretty well.

Funny I checked that EQMOD pointing data last week and it was at zero. I'll have a look at that again next night it's clear. It's a shame as APT gets me, like you with SGP, often to within 1 px after 3 attempts.

I found it a bit convoluted to get a seqeunce set up, APT seemed simpler to begin with. I will try it again. How accurate is the platesolving?? It worked ok for the first two panels, after initially it failed to get within 20px on 4 attempts, so I had to set it to 50px. It then failed to platesolve the third panel, then became unresponsive. I use the same catalogues with APT, and it gets within 10 or less px, in 2 goes. Sorry for the rant!

Ah! so last night was my first night using SGP for real and this didn’t work for me either. It did bring up an image of HH I had the previously tested out last week. I set up a trial mosaic run and half way through the night it crashed. Not impressed with SGP to be honest.

Thats as good an image of the Moon as I've seen, well done

I’m not an expert Carole! but the cameras are aligned relative to each other, so where one points the other must also point irrespective of whether it’s on one side of the meridian or the other or anywhere on the sky. This isn’t cone error as I understand it. This is movement between scopes

There is no doubt it’s possible to make images without flats. Without a comparison here you won’t know the difference/gradient won’t be easier to see/obscured by nebulosity. It’s just so much easier to process gradients and vignetting with flats.

I took a screen shot of the dos window as I would never remember it tomorrow never mind next week or month! I’ll post my screenshot later, I’m not on my pc atm.

I would say like @carastro as a minimum flats are essential. I don’t even bother to process my data without good calibration frames. I use flats bias and darks and a BPM. With a DSLR I don’t use darks but dithered. I still dither now with a ccd.

I’m still not sure this is cone error playing a role here. If scope 1 is adjusted to be pointing to the same place after the flip then scope 2 must be still pointing to the same place it was before. Unless it’s moving separately from scope 1. My flips never point to the same place with scope 1 but once centred again, scope 2 is always in the right place. I didn’t adjust my dual rig once in the couple of years I used it.

I don’t believe it - this is my forecast for later and my meteor camera points SE so a good chance of picking up a few.

I prefer the slightly wider fov in the sho one, but perhaps just slightly less green. The hso is fantastic too though.

Reggie, one of the best images of the Transit I've seen. Awesome. CS Adam

@kirkster501 Wow Starnet++ is a lot better than Straton. Here is the original image, straton image and starnet image as a gif.

Thanks again Steve for encouraging me to give it another go with Starnet++. I dont have PI, but managed to get it working via the CMD prompt menu and some fiddling around. I'll update this post when I get the data processed.

I downloaded Starnet but couldn’t work out how to use it/load it. But if reading to do now. Cheers.

Thanks Steve. I think it looks a bit of mess now I see it again. I used straton to remove the stars and added them back in at the end. The background started to go awry and it never recovered! The Sii was surprisingly clear. I think the almost full moon might explain the excess background noise.

This is an image I took over the past two evenings. I took Ha the first night as the Moon was out, and the last night I took some Si and Oiii before the Moon was too high, and finished off with Ha until it got cloudy. Equipment: EQ6, Takahashi Epsilon 180ed, Atik 383L+, 2" Optolong Ha.Oiii.Sii filters, finderguider with ASI120MM Ha = 39 x300s / Oiii = 9 x 300s / Sii = 8 x 300s with a total integration time of 4 hours and 40 minutes As I've progressed through the processing, things have a got a little out of control as usual. Here it is anyway: CS Adam EDITED to add revised version, using Starnet++ (BOTTOM IMAGE)

I have to say I found a dual rig quite simple to run once set up and aligned - APT easily does multicamera dithering, and exposures etc. You need two of everything, so that is double the weight and cost. @carastro Carole I'm curious about your issues with cone error and meridian flips. I would have taken images before and after a flip and never moved anything, and never came across an issues. What did you notice that needed adjusting? I have to say that must have been very frustrating indeed. Edit - if not a permanent set up I wouldnt even consider it!

With the amount of trouble you’ve had I’m surprised you want double the headache?! With regards to the pc, there is absolutely no need for anything fancy. My dual rig run perfectly fine on a 2008 dual core 4GB pc that I bought for £28 on eBay

Thanks Mick. Keep yours coming too, I always enjoy looking at them.