tooth_dr

10 hours ago, Fegato said:

It's hard to manage a very bright star like that, and Alnitak is a favourite bugbear! Even starless processing generally leaves stuff behind which only grows with the stretches. I must admit with mine, I just decided it was part of the glory of the image and let it shine forth! I much prefer a big bright star than any obvious artifacts.

 

Absolutely incredible @Fegato I’m sitting on hours of data I took over the last couple of weeks.  Need to find time to process it!

9 hours ago, TerryMcK said:

Try shooting shorter subs. That way the sensor will not become oversaturated. It will still pick up the wispy stuff and when stacked the image will be great and you will see Alnitak’s companion star. If I remember correctly I shot 120 second subs in Ha and S2 on this one below. There were a lot of subs and it takes some time to stack but I ended up with a good image not dominated by the star.

Most bright objects can be done this way and modern CMOS sensors work well with this method.

There is a terrible background grid pattern in this image?  Any idea what caused it?

5 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

We had the London Blue cobble pattern…

 

That looks really good Stuart. 

Also you could give the guys who placed the concrete a call and ask what strength they used.

I installed two piers inside a shed - one is installed on a large cube on concrete, the other on the floor itself, similar to your situation, about 5” deep.  Both feel solid.  I haven’t tested the one bolted to the 5” floor yet for Imaging, but it definitely isn’t going to fall over.  I used M12 x 100mm thunderbolts.  If you have the facility to place these yourself, drill a test hole, place a bolt and try to pull it out. 

Wouldn’t have seen it either without this thread. Cheers @dweller25

Just missed it at 20:16 as there was a 10 minute window of cloud!

Captured it on my deep sky rig though at 20:28.  No prizes but at least recognisable as Jupiter.

If you want new equipment, and I think you are correct in doing so, I wouldnt be pushing for any specialist report.  The fact that the assessor wont be a specialist in this field will most likely be at your advantage.;  This claim will small to them, they will look at the equipment, not know how it works, and accept that it doesnt work and pay you.  If they dont play ball then push for a specialist report.  Having recently completed an insurance claim that took a few months (5 figure sum), the best advice I can give is not to going excessive detail, just keep the details to a minimum - doesnt work etc.  You start saying too much it will just complicate things!  Thats my personal view   Good luck!

That’s a bit of a nightmare Bryan.  Hopefully you get sorted.  Looking at the video, that couldn’t have been a worse hit, right on the button! ☹️

For me personally, if it was one item I wouldn’t bother, but given your entire imaging rig has been damaged I think I’d be inclined to do a tally of the cost of replacing it and see what it’s looking like, with a view to putting in a claim.  If it’s one of the better companies you’ll be ok. 

2 minutes ago, Trippelforge said:

Are you saying that the amount of frames really doesn't make that big of a difference?

In my experience, you’re unlikely to see any difference in your image between 30 frames and 300 frames.  Very easy to check this theory though…..

7 minutes ago, Trippelforge said:

One question, how long of an exposure should each dark and flat be?

Darks are the same length as your lights. Flats are literally whatever exposure is required to get the histogram in the right place.  Could be 0.5s for example. 

4 minutes ago, Trippelforge said:

Aren't dark flats most important with dedicated / cooled astro camera's

Yes, but you hadn’t mentioned your camera in your post!

5 minutes ago, Trippelforge said:

I am shooting with a DSLR (Nikon D5300)

This changes your calibration pattern.  It’s been a while since I used my DSLR but I’d drop darks, make sure you dither and use bias and flats.

You could be building your calibration library now 

17 minutes ago, skybadger said:

Fair enough but my experience so far is that those slo Mo's slip quite easily due to the small end diameter of the stalk and so it's easier and just as effective to drive off the main dial. 

You are still getting more than 200 steps per output rev of the dial.

I haven’t had any bother using this motor on the micro knob on my lunt focuser and my SW focuser, so I don’t anticipate anything different here.  But this hobby always has a habit of throwing a curveball. 

11 minutes ago, Trippelforge said:

I am just getting so many different opinions and wanted to ask here. 

You are only going to get more opinions here too though.

You have also missed out dark flats. These are used to calibrate you flats, similar to a dark but same time as your flats.

I’m not able to see what equipment you are using but if your camera has set point cooling then just keep the lights the same temp all the time and take your calibration data as the same temp (same gain, same offset, etc).

I use 30 of each type for my calibration data.  That works for me but I suspect I wouldn’t see any difference with 25 or 100 frames.

Flats imo are the most important calibration frame, they make processing a lot easier if applied correctly.

17 minutes ago, Trippelforge said:

All I want is a simple metric to start with.

Take 30-50 of each.  Process your data and look at it.  Speaking from personal experience, the number of calibration frames won’t make any tangible difference, it’s what happens to the stacks afterwards where it all goes wrong (and occasionally right!)

2 minutes ago, skybadger said:

Ki did much the same except I took off the pinion cover and used those four screws to hold the focuser motor bracket. I think you may get bending of the relatively thin bracket under load. 

I'm driving a qhy9 and 7x2" filter wheel though.

I normally use those screws but didnt want to with this focuser due their small diameter size and function.  I've done similiar to yours for my SW scopes but went for a completely different design here.

I'm going to be using this with a QHY268M and 7x2" EFW too when I go switch over to this scope in March for deep sky, I think that setup will be simliar to yours in terms of weight.  There isnt that much torque needed to turn the 1:12 knob, and I'd hazard a guess the motor will stall long before that bracket bends.

I had an AF3 motor I wanted to use with my new VC200L scope. Deepskydad didn’t list an adapter for the focuser so I drew up and printed my own.

2 hours ago, bomberbaz said:

What is the benefit of an oag over a standard guide scope other than a little less weight?

The main mirror in a reflector can move a bit. Using an oag means you are also guiding through the same mirror, and therefore follow all the same movements. A guidescope doesn’t and you can end up with issues when even though your tracking is good, you still have poorly shaped stars.

1 hour ago, John said:

But no extension tube ?

It is beginning to seem as if there is something amiss with the objective lens of the telescope. Maybe it has been taken apart for cleaning and one of the lens elements put back in the wrong way around ?

 

I posted earlier on in this thread. This scratch might give a clue to the issue.  Dropped or taken apart  

I bought a new sharpstar 94 a couple of years ago. Several QC faults so sent it back. Optically wasn’t even that good either. 

7 minutes ago, Kon said:

Nice capture despite what you say. IThe weather has just been awful the last few weeks. I have near nothing like this for a long time. My only advice, drop the mask and focus on the planet until you tease some fine details.

Regarding the exposure come down to 7-10ms. 20ms will not freeze the atmosphere and it will increase your fps a bit too. The 20s capture is rather short; for Jupiter 1-2 min should be ok without smearing so you can have more images to stack and reduce the noise.

I took your ser in as!3, 50% frames and then in astrosurface. For this weather that's a nice capture.

Thats really impressive, thanks for doing that, and thanks for the recommendations.

I read that gain 48 was best for the 120MM, so I set that and then adjusted exposure.   Would it be ok to set the exposure and adjust the gain instead?  Should the histogram be quite low too?  I'm using SC, and the histogram is sitting at about 1/4-1/3 the way across.

I'm really struggling to get anything remotely decent from Jupiter, and I'm wondering whether it's me or the equipment or the atmosphere?  I've tried a couple of 8" scopes and nothing really much difference.  (VC200L FL=1800mm F9 is brand new and should be well collimated and I've collimated my SW 200P FL=1000mm F5 pretty accurately using OCAL collimator).  I have an EFW with LRGB and 685nm IR, and am using a 120MM mini.  I've tried without barlow and with 2x and 3x barlow.  I am using the Celestron XL range of barlows.  I focused on a nearby star using a Bhatinov mask, and rechecked the focus on one of the moons using the mask also.  I appreciate the camera is very basic, it's a guidecam I replaced for a 290MM.

I've been out three nights over the past ten days, including a few hours last night, and not getting anywhere.  I've attached a video (red filter) for anyone to have a look at and advise what I might be able to do to improve.  I have tried MONO16 and it didnt seem to yield any improvement.

Cheers!

Stats:

[ZWO ASI120MM Mini]
FrameType=Light
Pan=0
Tilt=266
Output Format=SER file (*.ser)
Binning=1
Capture Area=496x512
Colour Space=MONO8
Temperature=8.7
Discard Split Frames=Off
High Speed Mode=Off
Overclock=0
Turbo USB=86(Auto)
Flip=None
Frame Rate Limit=Maximum
Gain=48
Exposure=20.6560ms
Timestamp Frames=Off
Brightness=0
Auto Exp Max Gain=50
Auto Exp Max Exp M S=30000
Auto Exp Target Brightness=100
Trail Width=3
Minimum Trail Length=100
Trail Detection Sensitivity=9
Remove Satellite Trails=Off
Background Subtraction=Off
Planet/Disk Stabilization=Off
Banding Threshold=35
Banding Suppression=0
Apply Flat=None
Hot Pixel Sensitivity=5
Subtract Dark=None
NegativeDisplay=0
Display Black Point=0
Display MidTone Point=0.5
Display White Point=1
Notes=
ZWO FilterWheel (1)=Red
TimeStamp=2023-11-08T21:32:15.3699137Z
SharpCapVersion=4.0.9538.0
StartCapture=2023-11-08T21:32:15.3584930Z
MidCapture=2023-11-08T21:32:25.6994930Z
EndCapture=2023-11-08T21:32:36.0397134Z
Duration=20.681s
FrameCount=1000
ActualFrameRate=48.3530fps
TimeZone=+0.00
 

21_32_15_Red.ser

Ok, so found it, was trying to download the latest release but couldnt find how to load the program.  I was able to download an older version ok.

Link below:

Releases · cgarry/ser-player (github.com)

25 minutes ago, Laurin Dave said:

Its moved Adam..  is this what you want?

Dave

 

PIPP 2.3 Download (Free) - PIPP.exe (informer.com)

 

Cheers Dave

No I have PIPP, it's a program called SER Player, it just plays SERs and shows thumbnails in folders.  I cant seem to find an exe program.

That is really very very nice, looks great on full resolution, background galaxies are so detailed.  Well done!

Would anyone have a copy of SER player, i think the PIPP site is no longer working?  

Thanks

Adam.

@900SL I cant see the inside of the pipe as it's coated in a thick cement motor lining, but i was going to fill the pipe with cement once in place, to provide a final level of protection.

1 hour ago, 900SL said:

That's pretty good welding for a novice!

Stick or MIG? 

Cheers! I used a mig welder, gasless with flux cored wire.   Should have bevelled the edges of each pipe but lack of experience.