DaveS

I do wish they would do a remix as the music is far too loud, difficult to hear what the prof is saying.. Guess the producer thought "We paid good money for this music, make sure it stands out" forgetting that it's Prof Cox who's the important bit.

Sure amp glow will calibrate out if done correctly, but isn't it better not to have it there in the first place?

I consider it to be an inherent "fault" or perhaps a weakness of certain CMOS sensors.

I have a clear sky but enough wind for the Cloudwatcher monitor to flick between "Safe" and "Not Safe" which would result in a shutdown of the imaging and close the roof. I could turn off the safety monitor but would then have no warning if it clouded over or rained.

Another frustrating night.

1 hour ago, MartinB said:

Even my chroma filters aren't parfocal across the board.  This is OK if you can automate focusing but otherwise adds an additional layer of complexity.

My Chroma filters in the ODK are as closely parfocal as I can measure. Checked with the autofocus routine, and the variation between filters was less than the variation between runs. Checked with a Bahtinov mask, and the central spike was dead centre in all filters without refocusing.

I went back to the original stacks at reprocessed as well as cropping. Not helped by a degree of camera rotation to sort out.

I can't do anything about that central dark area, but Silk Purse and Sow's Ear comes to mind. I only have 2 1/2 hours useable [SII] and that was captured during pretty much full moon.

Damnandblast, I can see some unaligned green in the lower right corner. Will have to redo the cropping.

If you want to do true triband NB imaging then you need a mono camera since H-alpha, [NII] (If you can afford 3nm filters), and [SII] all fall close together in the red. A OSC camera can't separate the three wavelengths.

Yes, I've seen pseudo-HST images, but they're just that, Pseudo with no extra information.

44 minutes ago, Laurieast said:

We are spoilt by being kept relatively warm with the gulf stream. Anything less than -5C and everything stops!

Never mind, when the melting Greenland ice turns off the Gulf stream we'll have nice Scandi weather, not just Scandi noir .

In any case, I have my obsy locked down until after the weekend.

This is a very rough SHO with only 2 1/2 hours good [SII] to go with the 7 1/2 hours each H-alpha and [OIII], all in 900 sec subs through the 3nm Chroma filters on the ODK12. Took a lot of bashing with the heavy hammer to get it looking halfway decent. And yes, I have pulled the background down a fair bit as it was noisy and somewhat uneven.

C&C welcome as usual. In the unlikely event of my being able to capture more good [SII] I will post an update.

Be aware that if it is a mk1 Pulsar (Possibly 2.1 metre rather than the current 2.2 metre) that you will have problems with the Pulsar automation. From what I've read on other threads people have had no end of trouble.

I did look into a dome using a Pulsar short-wall dome on a fabricated base, but in the end decided that the costs were multiplying out of control. Went for a RoR in the end despite the shelter from the wind that a dome provides.

On my ODK12 the camera I currently use fits my purposes well, while I have a 268M to go on the130 apo, once it's been repaired. It might be of use on the 180mm f/3.4 Leitz apo I have but don't use it often enough to swap out the ASI 183 I currently have.

These days storage is cheap. All my remote PCs have 500GB SSDs for local storage, plus 16 TB of NAS for main store.

In any case, I'm not spending any more serious money on astro for the foreseeable.

Yeah, something we've been waiting for. My problem (And it's only muy problem) is that the 533 sensor is now too small for my needs. Pity, as it looks a good sensor.

Before anyone asks, my ideal would be something like 6000 x 6000 4 micron pixels for a 24 mm square sensor. This would allow even binning 2x2 or 3x3 for 8 or 12 micron pixels. Pity nobody's likely to make it.

Really. Some people make two short planks look like Einstein.

Thanks for the very clear explanation Vlaiv.

To the OP, I use Affinity for my final "polishing" but since 2014 have done my main processing in AstroArt, now at V8. I too have looked at PI but found it . I know it's supposed to be the bee's knees for astro imaging but I found it totally counterintuitive. Possibly because I'm not a mathematician.

Realistically NB only with the moon nearly full, and very high in the sky, almost as high as it gets. And then only H-alpha unless you have a target with strong [SII]. Don't even think about [OIII]. even 3nm isn't moon-proof.

The elements of the Cygnus Veil complex are still available for about 4 hours from astro-dark and are roughly opposite the moon. Try H-alpha.

With a nearly full moon very close to Orion I would hesitate to do *any* imaging. About the only option that *might* work would be H-alpha, but for preference 3nm.

After much huff-and-puff I got the camera off and had a look through the focuser and can report that the secondary is clearly visible through the corrector, which appears to be of zero optical power. But there is no centre spot on the secondary.

29 minutes ago, Craney said:

Do not how suitable this is,  but it looks interesting, you can apparently collimate several type of optics configurations ( Newt, SCT, Mak-cass)...   and you do not need a clear night or artificial star.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/other-collimation-tools/ocal-electronic-collimator-pro.html

Pricey though

That TS device looks interesting but says that the secondary must have a centre spot which the ODK doesn't

Moving on from my ODK collimation thread

Does anyone have experience of using the Catseye system with this type of 'scope? My 'scope is in a fairly tight obsy with walls that are a bit too high preventing me from setting up targets at a distance.

Well, I've not had experience of putting loads, heavy or otherwise, on pack animals.

But it doesn't need a heavy load to put a back out, I was a bit incautious putting groceries on the checkout belt yesterday, not even something heavy, and couldn't move for a couple of minutes, thought I was going to have to call an assistant. Still going into mild spasms today.

"Gone" in the sense of having put his back out.

TBH I'm pretty happy with the 16200, and the DDM 85 has no trouble with 10-20 min subs, just an itchy hankering after something "better", for a given value of "better".