Paul_T

It's like a family reunion, or the like. Lovely! And happy new year!

You've had some clear skies? Blimey! Lol

That's cool. But why do you need to specify if it's a leap year or not?

It won't help if there's tilt in the focuser. Although it would help to identify if that were the problem.

Wow. Even at £23, that's a bargain! How are JLCPCB at labelling the parcel so it comes through customs with the minimum of effort?

I have a number of accessories on my OTA that require their own 12V DC power supply: electronic focuser, imaging camera, dew heater, and powered USB hub. My options were to run each 12V power line separately to the scope, or to buy one of the (vastly overpriced) power distribution units from an astro shop. In the end, being the cheapskate DIYer that I am, I used an old mini-project case, some Wago connectors, hot glue, some leads cannibalised from the drawer full of old AC power adapters that I was hoarding, and an old 135W (!) 12V PSU from a broken industrial PC, to build my own. There's no reason to have to have a set of connectors at the distribution point, as the power to all the accessories is essentially permanent and nothing really moves in relation to each other. This also meant that I didn't bother with strain relief for the onward supply cables. The PSU is on the pier with the single 12V running up to the OTA. I did retain the plug and socket for this so It could easily be disconnected. The cost was a few quid for the Wago connectors, plus sundries like colour-coded heat-shrink tubing. It works just fine

Even more useful stuff. I've been wanting some of the zoom synchronisation features for a while. Now it seems we have them:

It looks like Pixinsight have released the first version of MARS gradient correction. I've yet to try it out. Definitely should be of interest to the more urban imagers.

The shadow transit was great. I'm no expert at seeing, but this seems good from my sea-level air laden atmosphere at the top of Portsmouth harbour. On occasion, the shadow was pin sharp at about 225X*. At the same times the contrast between the dark belts and the associated lighter bands (apologies for the lack of proper terminology), was extraordinary. Io's disc was very apparent well before ending transit. It was a bright white disc in front of the limb. I watched the end of the shadow carefully to see if the contrast would get reduced, but it was clear until my brain couldn't tell if there was a notch in the Jovian disc or not...lol Interestingly though, was that I perceived Jupiter as having a gibbous phase, with the partially unilluminated side being that closest to Io as it pulled away from the planet. Definitely a contrast effect, but very real nethertheless. *13mm Type 6 Nagler with the Baader 2.25 barlow. Easily the best combination I have for the Tak.

Io shadow transit in full view!

There's not much "wrong" with the processing on this one. You've got some lovely detail in the arms, which also fade into the background just like they should. A delicate target with some delicate processing that rewards closer inspection

Did you post this in the wrong place?

I bought a second-hand SBIG STF8300 about 8 years ago. It's been on daily duty at a remote observatory for five years. The fan for the peltier got old and needed to be replaced, once. Here's a 15 minute master dark Master dark 900 s -10 C.tif

Great to see you back on here!

I have found a few occasions recently where some of the PI tool seems to get "stuck" and don't function as expected. Usually resetting them to the default state makes this issue go away. A couple of times, I've needed to completely restart PI. Personally, I think these issues have more to do with the god-awful windows 11 than the PI code.

Those streaks remind me of the "paintings" we did at school where we'd blow watercolours across the sheet with a straw 😃 There's a fan pattern to my eyes. Does it continue off frame?

Of course you realise that giving you a free sample is a staple of those who want to get you addicted... 🤣

https://welcome.astrobin.com/sponsors-and-partners/roboscopes is at the same place I just posted the all sky camera picture from.

There's nothing to stop anyone having a remote and a home kit, apart from money, that is. But I'll bet that most of you probably have enough kit to do both, so It's just about taking the plunge. I've seen hosting sites that only need a month's notice to leave too, which makes it very flexible. I'm not sponsored, by the way.

Yes you have. It's the processing, usually the stretching and or curve transformations, that gets the data away from the left, and that's when you need to be aware of the clipping issue.

Everyone has different preferences on user interfaces and processing workflows, so my initial advice is to try as many different processing tools that will work on you Mac while you still have no preference. Having said that, I agree with @Paul2019 that Pixinsight is the way to go. It's a one-off cost (plus StarXterminator/BlurXterminator). It has a ton of excellent online discussions and processing tutorials. It also has a swathe of user-written scripts that will help you get to a very good level in not much time. Other astrophotographers have their own favourites, you will surely find yours

The short answer is no. You cannot clip the data in the subs as you are capturing. Keep the sub lengths to something your mount can handle reliably. Clipping (black or white) refers to irrecoverably removing information from an image by discarding any pixels below or a above the clipping level. These pixels are then all set to the same level (pure black or pure white), making it impossible to differentiate between them. When the histogram on your camera looks like it's smashed over to the left, it's because the vast majority of the pixels in the image have very low values. This is normal in AP. Unless your camera is doing something really odd, you cannot clip an individual sub at the capture stage. Clipping is something that can be done at the processing stage while you are trying to stretch the data out to make it into a picture that our eyes and brain can interpret. Are you maybe getting a bit confused between the histograms for light frames and flat frames? Flats should have a raw histogram with a peak somewhere around the 30-50% mark. Here is the histogram of a typical sub, before any calibration or processing: And here is the histogram of a typical flat:

I'm not sure of the exact economic drivers, but remote hosting seems to be getting much more affordable at the moment. There's at least one hosting site in Spain that boasts 150+clear nights a year for about £150 a month. As long as you have reliable kit (and it does get more reliable if it's permanently set up!), this is an option worth considering. I'm currently sharing a rig at E-Eye and my biggest gripe is when conditions are not "perfect". I've had 20+ hours of data from there just over the last three nights. So, compared to the UK, I'm just spoilt. 🤣

Fiery! 😃

I had a car without power steering once. It worked. But it was a lot harder to steer than my subsequent vehicles that had it 🤣