tooth_dr

Nicely done Mick, the DSLR and Ha filter is working a treat.

My focuser arrived back today. I went with a violet body colour. It didn't attract any extra custom charges - so it was £205 total for the repair/upgrade (that includes postage both ways). I havent seen the 2.5" CRL for sale in the UK, but I suspect it would be around £500. This has been setup by Ron so I'm hoping the Takahashi will like it. Here is a video of the upgrade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWMQh6OvpJc&t=6s

Indeed hence the ' ' lol Again what an incredible image for just two hours.

Cheers Goran, I fortunately dont live in the city/town either, hence my uncertainty about sticking with mono, or taking the 'backward' step to OSC.

And this is why I have the dilemma over OSC or mono. Obviously it helps being in a dark location, but these results are just incredible, and I wonder if the hassle of mono and EFW is worth it.

If 1.25” fits then there is no benefit from a 2”, but 1.25” is tight with a DSLR. You won’t go wrong with this range. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/uv-ir-filters/baader-uvir-cut-filter.html

Very nice Gary, a real cracker. This may have been picked up by some of the meteor guys too.

That looks neat. Mine was just a circle, based on a cardboard template, and you can see the filter was threaded from the back, and still just cleared the mirror.

It is possible to fit a 1.25” filter inside the camera, between the T adapter and the mirror, I’ve tried it myself and it works ok. I used a small 3D printed holder.

It's not a bad idea, but the problem is that its too small an opening for a 2" filter, and too large for a 1.25" filter. You could make an adapter to hold the 1.25" filter housing into that space, but it would cause severe vignetting with the DSLR crop sensor. An EOS clip filter as suggested above is a good idea. It's not as versatile as you have pointed out, but it does the job it's intended to do very well. I've learnt myself in astronomy that sometimes you can kill two birds with one stone, but more often than not it involves a significant compromise.

Simply stunning

Thanks Pete 👍🏼

I've never used PI (well actually I did download it and tried it for a few minutes and it seemed terrible!). APP isnt really a complete image processing tool. It's for stacking etc, and some preprocessing, before them opening it up in eg photoshop and completing the processing. You wouldnt process an image from start to finish in APP. I couldnt do without APP, it is a very powerful tool that does what it supposed to do very very well. It can handle data of different imaging scales, and integrate them seamlessly, as well as produce mosaics with dynamic distortion correction from pretty much whatever you chuck at it. It has a superb light pollution/gradient removal tool, which is a very tactile process, where you have a lot of control of the data processing.

This new QHY268 that I'm after has an extra 6mm adapter needed to actually attach anything to the front of it. It is replacing a QHY9, but doesnt fit, so even within brands you can encounter problems.

Interesting thread. Recently I've been looking at the ZWO2600 and the QHY268. Same sensor, but the body of the QHY is designed in such a way that it consumes an extra 6mm of backfocus. With my current setup of MPCC, OAG and EFW, the QHY camera wont allow the correct backfocus to be maintained. Unless of course I buy the full QHY EFW and OAG.

Well that proves it, my 290MM and my Baader filters must both be from a faulty batch 😂 Stunning intricate detail there Rob, a delight to look at.

Very good images Mariusz. From the C8?

That’s a good point though as the 120 is probably heavy, I hadn’t considered that 👍🏼

These arrived today - losmandy dovetail abs saddle. The JDT adjustable saddle is pretty awesome when you see it and feel it in the flesh. Pictured with a QHY9 for scale.

A bigger camera?

Thank you Dave. I’ve emailed Bern too with a few questions too. I was planning on using my existing Atik EFW3, it’s 7 x 2”, but if QHYs screw fitment is bespoke to QHY, this means I need a new EFW and a new OAG. However the OAG says it’s only compatible with the M filter wheels not the L, and the M one doesn’t come in 7 x 2”. 👎🏻

I see there is a thin 10mm OAG from QHY, but this needs to be used with the 3mm spacer 020079 as it appears to be a connecting adapter adding an M42 thread or M54. So this still leaves me at 21mm

Thanks Dave It does seem like a better FOV match, at the expense of resolution. I do have my solar scope mounted on my ED80, the Esprit 80 seems to lack space to do this, and comes with a foot rather than rings. I did some measurements today with my other setup. It uses an OAG mounted directly to an MPCC and replaces the epsilon during galaxy season, so it would be using the IMX571 camera for a few months: OAG=16.6mm + EFW=22mm + allowing 1.0mm for filters means I've used up 39.6mm Total backfocus requirements of MPCC from M48 ring = 57.5mm This leaves me 17.9mm for the camera backfocus. The QHY268M has something funny going on with the diagrams. It looks like 17.5mm, but then there is another diagram with 23.5mm. If that was the case then this camera wont work for me. It looks like you need some additional adapter added onto it, seems odd saying it's 17.5mm backfocus if that the case.

Thanks for the info, I suspected as much but good for confirmation 👍🏻 I captured 4 hours of OSC data with my Nikon FF DSLR on the epsilon and (apart from the collimation issues) I found it better/equal to 4 hours from my KAF8300 in luminance. Better is subjective, but after processing the lum and thinking of adding it to the colour, it added nothing of improvement to the image, the detail was already there. Perhaps it’s pixel size or lack of QE or bad conditions or ineptitude at processing or the scope... So as a total curveball I was thinking of 1) buying an Esprit 120 with field flattener and using my Nikon D800E - it offers a 44mm imaging circle and also 2) buying the Mono IMX571 camera and using it with the Epsilon and existing 2” EFW setup. It will be tight for the shutter width on the dome, being an extra 2cm wider, but I still have room, just. Downside - lack of versatility on the RGB size, unmodified DSLR, lack of Ha. Seems a decent match up in terms of field of view:

Great amount of detail in there David, along with nice blues and golds.