Notty

Very interesting information Rusted, thank you for sharing it. All food for thought.

Oh dear, I'd heard all about that when they came out but had hoped that all these years later they might have improved QC in their manufacturing. If they're still a big gamble I might have to have a rethink until I can afford said Lunt Thanks for the info Dave

Hello Dave, that looks like a really nice bit of glass. Are you using the Baader 135mm ERF with it? That's £££ cough territory!!

Hello sun worshipers! Apologies if this should be in the scope discussions section, but after a long hiatus I am considering splurging out again for some solar imaging kit. I had a modded PST/Tal which I sold a while back through disuse but now have a bit more time, and I think I will have more opportunity to image from the obsy in the day than at night. Anyway, I was wondering what the best imaging setup I could get for around £2k would be. Camera is a ASI 1600mm mono, and I want the highest resolution imaging I can get so am thinking large aperture refractor + Quark might be the best value for money, given the prohibitive (for me) price of the big Lunts. Can anyone maybe with a similar setup care to share what they have, or recommend any suitable scopes? I understand will have to factor in a big ERF at anything over 80mm so that will obviously restrict scope cost. I already have a ED80-DS as my night scope, with the addition of a stepper focuser which is obviously a big plus for solar imaging. At f7.5 though I understand the quarks are optimised for f30 though is that right? Any help and advice appreciated, thanks!

I think we followed more or less the same workflow but obviously you've made much more intelligent use of the mask! Thank you again.

Wow was that all in PI? It certainly looks more defined now, but my takeaway from this is I really need a more sensitive (mono less noisy) camera and some Ha data for these nebs. Oh and some more in-depth homework on Startools. Thank you for taking the time to help me out on this.

Thanks Kat I really need to get to grips with masks. What is this unofficial pdf you mention please?

Thank you all for the tips and help everyone. Kat, yes you've done a great job isolating the very little amount of nebula signal my dumb camera captured. So is the mainly red hue surrounding my entire image (the one I posted) basically LP do we think? I think I need to dig in my pockets and get a mono camera again with an Ha filter... if I'm home and the skies are clear but there's nothing high up enough or the moon's out I can't waste the session.

Thanks for that, I really like it especially the way you've isolated the red from the actual nebula from the surrounding space, which was what I have been trying (and failing) to do. I don't think I'll be taking on PI anytime soon though unfortunately, I guess I'm always going to be a casual hobbyist much as I'd like to become an expert! Like you say lack of signal... I guess I genuinely expected more after that much integration but maybe it is a function of the unmodded DSLR. Emissions targets are a real issue for me due to surrounding obstacles; galaxies are in view but through an ED80 I'm only going to get tiny ones compared to my old reflector... which I sold!

This was kindly written by Ivo (author of Star Tools) a few years ago when I was struggling getting to grips with ST. I've followed the exact same processing steps but varied the settings in each one slightly where I thought it had a positive effect but without really understanding what i was doing! It was a very noisy stack of not very much data without decent calibration. I think my data set is better here so I used Autodev but that's the main deviation from below.

Thanks guys, Olly I will see if I can achieve the above in Affinity Pro... Startools is great in so far as I am following someone's workflow without a detailed understanding of the settings for each function.

I assume you're using stellarium scope? You may need to manually (via the slew controls) fine tune to the object you're trying to view, in this case Polaris, then ctrl-3 will sync stellarium to the new mount position. I used to do this on a couple of bright stars before using stellarium to goto, but now I use APT's plate solving instead it's great.

That is lovely! I love diffraction spikes too... I miss them since I got shot of my reflector

Thanks Knight. Interesting what you say as someone else told me their 6D unmodded was more sensitive than their old 1100d modded! I actually used to have a modded 1100d as well, shoulda kept it never mind! I was also wondering about one of those 2" Ha filters as I'm loathe to mod my 6D as I use it all the time for terrestrial. Maybe I'd be better off just getting another modded DSLR! Well in case anyone fancies a challenge here's a link to the stack https://www.dropbox.com/s/pxsqkcrf559xllu/Soul Stack.TIF?dl=0

I am back to attempting AP after many years hiatus due to work, having gone quickly (too quickly) from a DSLR to a mono CCD with wheel, NB filters etc, realising I was out of my depth, selling said equipment and doing nothing for years. Work has changed and now I have a bit more time, and I've gone back to a DSLR (my EOS 6D, unmoved). Like everyone else I had a good couple of nights this week, but I'm disappointed in my results and I'd like your opinions. There are lots of extremely good pics around of this object shot through a DSLR without the aid of Ha etc. I live in what I assume to be a very LP suburban area. I shot about 3 hours of data (50 x 240 secs, stacked the top 85%) through my ED80DS+Baader Neodymium filter, and for the first time since starting AP I was a good boy and also shot a full set of calibration frames; flats, darks, flat-darks and bias. All stacked in DSS and processed in Startools. So is 3hrs not enough time to capture the nebulosity through an unmoved DSLR? On initial stretch in ST the image is hugely red... I understand red means LP. My working theory is that the cleaning routine in ST removes some nebulosity along with the LP, but I'd be grateful for anyone's opinions. Thank you.