DaveS

For us imagers hookups ar pretty much esential.

Clear night here, but blowing a hoolie.Too much to open the obsy.

QHY268C?

USB is cantankerous enough even with top-notch cables, I'd never skimp and buy cheapo.

My current WIP, NGC 2903 and M106 now need the best data I can get to progress at all, which means no full moon, which has, of course, been steadily marching through NGC 2903 and is heading towards M106. I also have NGC 3718 as WIP and I want to have another go at M101. All of which are in the moon's path.

For software I'm going to shout out for AstroArt 8. It's your one-stop-shop for capture with guiding, sequencing, autofocus and plate-solve. Then it's a blindingly fast stacker (Though I do occasionally use DSS when AA8 doesn't like the subs), and an underratedly powerful image processor, overlooked in favour of the latest "flavour of the month".

It even has options for comet and spectrum stacking.

Pixinsight may be more powerful, but the trial did my head in. Very (Almost consciously) counter-intuitive and determined to be unlike anything else. Written by mathematicians, for mathematicians.

AstroArt

Says currently unavailable on Amazon UK.

14 minutes ago, Adam J said:

Just bin the ASI6200MM Pro 2x2 in software, the read noise is so low that its going to make very little difference over having a dedicated 6um pixel. 

Adam

My original point was in regarding to a camera with the sensor size and format of the 16200. I much prefer the squarer shape of the 16200, while finding the 3:2 shape of the current crop of repurposed photographic sensors too long and thin. Unfortunately square sensors are limited to either the 533 which is too small for my purposes or the various 4040 based cameras which are crazy expensive, even worse than the 16803 which appears to be defunct.

There won't be a March episode, I think they're all in Aus doing a Stargazing Live which we don't get to see .

13 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

I have a couple of these that I no longer use although I bought mine from the .co.uk site. PM me your address and I'll stick one in the post.....

12 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

UK Amazon

Steve

Thanks Scotty

Thanks Steve, added to basket.

On 10/03/2022 at 16:44, Padraic M said:

I use this adapter https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07XZ7Q2N7?ref_=pe_27091401_487187591_302_E_DDE_dt_1&th=1 

Gah! that's Amazon.de, don't want to go through the hoopla of importing from Germany. 

15 hours ago, Stuart1971 said:

The mele quieter 2 are very popular ATM, lots of good reviews on them, and very compact….

https://www.amazon.co.uk/MeLE-Quieter2-Computer-Supports-Dual-Screen/dp/B08ZXXJL6N

I have 3 of them, one for the mobile wide-field rig with a 500 gig M2 SSD, the other two for remote connection to my obsy and platform computers. However one of them has a borked ethernet port so can only connect via WiFi. they only have 4 USB ports though, which are enough for my usage, but might not be for yours.

This is inspiring me to have another look at M101, a target I've shamefully ignored since a first abortive attempt back in '16 when I was living in the light-polluted hell that is London.

Feels like I've been working on this forever.

Last year I captured a load of LRGB data in Bin 1 which had a light leak in a lot of the subs. In the end I discarded all the duff subs and combined the rest into a Synthetic Luminance which got a DDP stretch as well as Richardson-Lucy deconvolution, Unsharp Mask, Denoise and slight Histogram Stretch.

This year I got 9 subs RGB in Bin 2 with G2v calibration, of which DSS stacked the best 8. these were combined into a RGB and layered with the Synthetic Luminance. I also got 5 hours H-alpha but in the end didn't use it as it caused some intractable alignment issues (No, I don't know why).

This is the result, saved as a JPEG.

C&C welcome, as well as suggestions as to how to proceed from here. I think I will try to get another 9 subs RGB, and *maybe* another 5 hours H-alpha.

Edit: It's worth having a look at the full size image, There are a lot of faint fuzzies that are worth tracking down.

Unbelievable. Why do we need strawberries in winter?  .

That is a lovely image. Mel15 is a favourite target of mine.

This is 6 hours Bin 1 Luminance plus 2 hours 30 mins Bin 2 Red and Green (15 subs) and 227.5 mins (13 x 17.5 min) Blue subs with the ODK rig in my sig.

Stacking in DSS, post in AstroArt 8. Reduces to 1/2 size and saved as PNG. It doesn't take much effort to see some dodgy colour alignment issues, but I really cannot be asked to fix them. At least for the moment.

May try and get some more data including H-alpha. If the weather ever cooperates.

You mean you actually managed to image something over the winter?

Yeah, I have a full set of their 2" filters and was shocked by the poor packaging, especially when much cheaper filters come in better packaging.

Thanks, your version is definitely quite a high bar to aim for.

Posted an LRGB version but it needs work.

I mounted a short solid dovetail bar on an ADM Vixen saddle and mounted a Baader dovetail counterweight in it so I would have fine adjustment in two axes. ASA mounts are *very* sensitive to balance around three axes.

If it ever stops raining I'll go out to the obsy and get a photo.

Current best guess is that I captured a slow moving asteroid.

I've had a look at the individual stacks and can see that scruff on all the R, G, and B stacks moving down from top to bottom as the sequence ran, Red, then Green, then Blue the random nature is partly due to dithering. This suggests some kind of light ingress, the sharpness also suggests that it's distant enough to be nearly in focus. It cannot be stationary on earth as the line would be much longer.

It isn't on the Luminance stack, but the L stack had 36 subs giving AstroArt a better chance of eliminating rogue data points with Sigma Stacking.

Top to bottom on the sensor in this orientation is along the RA axis.

I might suspect something bright in near geostationary orbit, but what?

Any suggestions would be gratefully received!

But getting there slowly.

This is 8 subs RGB Bin 2 in G2v calibration from last night combined with 6 hours Bin 1 Luminance from last year. Sigma-Sum stacked in AA8 with Darks, Flats and Dark Flats. Calibration frames given Sigma stacking as well. Last year's data given a new stacking with the same treatment. Each stack upscaled before co-registering with the Luminance. Then Trichromy, LRGB synthesis cropping and final gradient removal before denoising.

Saved as a PNG

Needs a lot more data, mainly RGB so sigma stacking can get rid of Stinking Musk's garbage. Plus there is some odd Red and Green "scruff" within the galaxy that I don't know the origin of.

Any other C&C welcome.