DaveS

I've seen the triplet in my old Megrez 90 from here, and when I turned my 180 Mak-Cass on them M65 and 66 looked like a pair of headlights. couldn't get the Hamburger in as well, too small a field. And I'm nearly 100% imager, so my visual expertise is near zero. A more experienced observer would have seen more I'm sure.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity

Wow! That's just brilliant. Love the colours and the detail in the dark lanes.

Time was, the ST80 was pretty much the go-to 'scope for guiding, though now the slew of ED50mm 'scopes have taken that role. I've accumulated a few 'scopes of varying FL, aperture and sophistication. I think the count is now 6 or 7 but I'm not sure.

I think if you can stretch to it then the 294 is the way to go, I wouldn't mess around with stop-gap cameras as you will end up losing money, when you sell them.

Definitely go with cooled. AstroArt 7 will handle everything from capture through stacking and calibration to post processing, and isn't eye-wateringly expensive either. Affinity Photo is brilliant for final polishing, and the latest GIMP should also be considered.

Craig has it right, the question had nothing to do with deriving Luminance from RGB, or colour telly, or sRGB, but with focus shift between filters. Not every 'scope is perfectly corrected, even triplet apos can show focus shift, some more than others depending on choice of glasses etc. Which is why, for example, Astronomik offer three L filters of differing bandpass. The effect will be to blur the Luminance image slightly. With my TS 130 apo I measured slight focus offsets between R,G, and B. Probably not not enough to be significant but I entered them in of autofocus offsets table anyway. My ODK has no observable image shift.

If you're not breaking the imaging train down or rotating the camera then you only need do a set of flats perhaps every six months or so unless you see new dust bunnies appearing. When I set up my autofocuser I took readings for each filter and entered the offsets into the sequencing software. It autofocuses on Luminance and appies the offset without my intervention. If your 'scope is truly achromatic, and your filters parfocal, then you may not need offsets at all.

The Esprit 100 is a very nice 'scope.

This is the equivalent TS flattener. There are recommended adaptors further down the page.

You will need one of These. I have the same flattener (Under the TS label) on my 130 f/7 apo, and find the awkwardness is with that dratted M69 female camera side thread.

3nm filters are very useable under UK skies, and with the moon around can make the difference between imaging or not. A narrower bandwidth won't affect how much wanted signal you get, as the emission line is much narrower than the bandpass of the filter, but it will knock down the unwanted background signal, ie light pollution..

Sounds about right. Mind you, it's not been much better here on the sunny south coast.

With so many of us ordering new cameras, when do you think we'll get the next clear night This year? Next Year? Sometime??!! Never ???!!!

If Rupert's had a delivery then my camera should be on its way soon.

Having done my sums I've ordered some SX adaptors and a 36mm wheel from FLO, and a couple of adaptors from TS, now waiting to see how much I'll be clobbered by the exciseman (The divil awa' wi' th' exciseman).

Many thanks for that Steve, I can now go and do some sums for the actual adaptors that I need.

Wow, realised that I didn't come back to my own thread, dur... I eventually went with the Vortex Crossfire 10 x 50s, using the FLO voucher I received with my retirement to ease the cost. Very happy with them, though the large eyepiece glass did take some getting used to after the small glass of the Jenoptems

I went with the QHY due to the reputation of the company, have a look on their site, some serious professional cameras on there, and looking at the 268 the build quality, and the fact that it has multiple readout modes. I also have great respect for Rupert at Astrograph, who has repeatedly gone above and beyond.

There are youtube recordings of the SarGazine talks, this one is of SGP Other capture software will have slightly (Or even very) different ways of setting up sequences. There is also one on N.I.N.A, but as I use ASA Sequence it wasn't of interest to me, though the SGP one was.

A flip-flat is useful, but that still doesn't exhaust the Pegasus. Filter wheel plugs into the camera which plugs into the APB, leaving three spare ports for focuser, flip-flat, and rotator, though the guide camera would be more important. You could combine the focuser and rotator with one of These

I forgot about the focuser. i have remote PCs on both my imaging rigs which take the data from the camera and squirt it down an Ethernet cable to my big NAS in the office.

Yes, there is a special 4 way plug on the rear of the camera that powers the FW and sends commands.

How many USB ports do you need? I can only think of Main Camera, Guide Camera, and Filter Wheel.

Probably. Since the filter wheel plugs into the camera on the QHY that only leaves the guider to worry about, and the extra weight is probably down to the better build quality. TBH guiding isn't something I've had to worry about since getting my first ASA mount. Reply to the post two abouve this