xanthic

13 minutes ago, Sarek said:

Great picture, you must be pleased with that.

I'm interested to know what calibration frames you took and when. Were you guiding as well? How did you settle on 120 seconds as your exposure time?

Thanks Sarek! I used 30 dark flats and 30 flats. Same set for all 4 sessions as they were only days apart. The target is fairly faint, so 2 mins seemed reasonable. If I had the time, it'd be interesting to see if different sub lengths gave a better end result.

The subs are guided, I use ZWO AM5 mount with an ASIAir Plus.

Thanks to a run of clear nights, I gathered this data over four sessions, using my Esprit 100, ASI533MC and Optolong l-pro. This is the longest integration I've managed to date, with 515 x 120 sec. No Xtermintors used, I personally think they are detrimental. I'd rather have a noisy image than one "fixed" by AI.

My first time at imaging M45. I got this over 2 nights. I found this trickier to process than I thought it'd be.

120 x 120 sec

ASI553MC

SW Esprit 100

Third and final edit of this. I think I really need more data to get the result I'm looking for but it's been a really journey of discovery getting this far. After a long break, I've realised I've forgotten much and I've also lots of new stuff to learn.

I'm hoping I've cracked it. The OIII channel needed more processing before combining.

I aquired 8 hours of dual band data for this one (should have been 11 but I cleared down a folder on the ASIAir without checking it first 💀 ). I'm not convinced I'm processing the channels correctly, I don't seem to get the cyan to pop. Thanks for looking.

NGC1893
8 hours integration
SW Esprit 100 on ZWO AM5
ZWO ASI533MC and Optolong l-Extreme

I captured this 2 weeks ago.

Only 2.5 hours of 300 sec. ZWO ASI533MC with Optolong l-Extreme. Esprit 100. Processed in PI. I did 2 versions, one with the stars removed with StarNet2, which I think reveals the detail.

I use Affinity Photo (https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/) as well as Pixinsight. It's got built in stacking and there are a host of astrophotography macros available here - https://jamesritson.co.uk/resources.html.

They often have a sale where you can pick it up for 1/2 price.

I contacted Lakeside and they put me onto the chap who wrote the driver. I said I was interested in trying it. Lakeside have now agreed to allow it to be incorporated into the INDI build, so good news there! I've tested it and it seems to work ok. I'll be testing it fully as soon as the sky allows.

Thanks Graham, I'll do that.

Does anyone know if they plan to include a driver for the Lakeside Focuser? I'd love to switch over to Linux but I'd rather not shell out just to replace a device that works.