gaz81

Thanks all!

Yeah, did have a quick look at that yesterday. Will have to take a proper look, challenge (or maybe it isn’t) is that I connect the laptop to the mounts Wi-fi. So the imaging laptop isn’t connected to the internet.

After another not so successful night... well, apart from getting quicker at polar alignment etc.. Had some issues with star alignment... think that was more due to using a UHC filer that made the stars harder to spot? Got focused up with the old mask.... Then slewed to my target, the North American Nebula. Did a test exposure.. couldn't see much, but thought it was probably due to needing more stacked exposures (still learning 🙂 ) So, set APT off... came back later and did a quick stack to see... and nothing 😞 Anyway, was a work night so packed up for the night. Then remembered people on here talking about sites you can upload the image and it will tell you where it is in the sky, so gave it a go. The rectangle was where my scope was pointed... and the nebula was above... oh well. Least it was cool to see these amazing sites and what they can do!

Oh well... all nice and clean again. Upgraded the finder shoe at the same time... as gave the screw right next to the focus wheel as just annoying.

The other odd thing I need to play with... with I pressed the ‘zoom’ button in APT (the one above the live view) it didn’t zoom Think I might just reinstall everything from scratch.

So last night... thought excellent, weather kind of clears up later on and it’s weekend.. nice. I recently got a Baader modified 100D and a cheap Skywatcher filter to try out. Also had remounted my guide scope in some little rings so it wasn’t sticking right out on the skywatcher finder one (the 9x50). First off found out my filter had a scratch... had it couple of weeks already, maybe I did it somehow.. Duno, but bit late now to send it back. So thought let’s just see how it goes. So got set up outside... seem to be getting faster at Shapcap polar alignment with my AZ GTI, so that is always cool, try not to stop until I get excellent (garden is not flat, so always differnt when I set up). So after polar alignment was done... time for a little dark rum... Plugged in my little dew heater and all that jazz and turned it on Now scope alignment time, tend to only need 1 star alignment. What a pain though, not sure if it’s a difference between the 50D and 100D but Vega seemed much dimmer in APT live view, so took ages. As I had the camera and bits off and remounted the guide scope the focus was out of whack (as was aligning them in a terrestrial object in the afternoon), so took some time to get that sorted so I could see the stars in the first place. Doh. After all the messing though I got it aligned, flipped between Mars and Vega and Goto was all good. So... next fire PHD up. Here is where the next set of frustrations came. PHD just would not talk to the mount despite connecting (had it working on my only other 2 proper imaging sessions). Kept getting an error saying that pulse failed. So thought let’s try connect the mount in APT and see if that moans (I just use the SynScan app in windows for slew and Goto ). So APt connected to the mount... but failed to move it as it said it was ‘Parked’. The unpark button just gave an error. In the end I had to uninstall the windows SynScan app and reinstall... then it started working. I think I broke it when messing with NINA, I pressed the park button and it didn’t work from there... but forgot I did that and didn’t think it would mess it up for other apps. So thought ok... let’s go. My target was NGC7000. Started up PHD again... forced a proper calibration and guiding started. All good. Did a 200 second test... and it just didn’t look right. It seemed the focus was way out... which was odd as I used a Bhat mask to focus earlier. Looked at the scope... realised with all the time messing around with the software, the dew heater had turned itself off (was running off a USB battery... so next lesson it will run off the mains). So looking at the lens there was a whole load of dew gunk mess on it 😞 Maybe this was also giving me my dim stars also Then some bigger clouds started to drift over At this point... I thought I’m done for the night, was about 12:30am. Didn’t want to start cleaning it at that time Put all the kit in the garage and went for another rum Checked the scope this morning, and the lens is a mess, so need to clean that So lessons learned 1. Double check all the software is talking during the day... and while messing with ‘new software’ take extra care 2. Maybe make a mark on the draw tube for focus 3. Pay attention to dew... in the past I must have been lucky with very dry nights 4. Trying to get to peeved off when it all goes ‘tits up’ The set up was a SW 72ED, AZ GTI, Canon 100D, SW 9x50 finder with QHY5 guide camera (ye old one). Oh well.... will have to wait for the next clear night.

Oh yeah, huge contrast! 🙂

The tilt shift thing is an idea I spotted, think it was sky at night award winner or something... so I can't take the credit at all there. I feel it works well on M31 as its so huge!

Yeah I agree.... I will start again with this at some point during the week. I went to far with the core, so want to dial that back. Photoshop isn't as scary as I used to think it was... i used to never leave Light Room... now I don't really use LR at all,.

Hi All, Had a clear night on Sat night... so captured some more images of M31. Taken with a stock Canon 50D, Skywatcher 72ED with a StellaMira field flattener. The mount was the AZ GTI in EQ mode. One of the things I keep doing though is not knowing when to stop with it comes to editing the images. I need to learn a bit more self control! .... how does everyone else manage that? ....kind of played with the tilt shift style also... I think for me, its the excitement of pushing the levels... then the curves.... then seeing there is more to get from the levels again etc... etc etc etc.... then the astro action set etc. The image contains 40 x 400 second lights (with darks, bias, flats etc). I seem to be having some good luck with my GTI. I was tracking also with PHD2... I believe the graph looked pretty bad, but it was tracking... so, will not chase that just yet! Autosave003.tif

I recommend this guy for processing guides https://www.youtube.com/c/AstroBackyard

Cheers. Waited until SharpCap gave me ‘Excellent’ in polar alignment before I started.

Ahhh... thanks for the feedback. Thought they were ment to that saturated, can if hard when looking at examples of other peoples edits online 🙂 Will gave it a tinker. was pretty good doing an edit while watching an Astrobackyard vid. Like editing individual colour channels for noise etc.

Had a go at Pleiades... still leaning 🙂 With Skywatcher 72ED, Sony A7II on a skywatcher AZ GTI in EQ mode. 15 x 4 min subs. I did have a generic Sky watcher light pollution filter on, but have a feeling I lost data due to that... only my second real attempt at long exposures like this though. I feel I have over processed, but seems a difficult subject due to the bright stars in the middle and still getting my head around PS. Autosave.tif

Never mind... the clouds went clear v v briefly and managed to point it at Jupiter... and looked fine (in the 9x50 guide scope) must just have been over exposing the pants off it during the day.

I have been playing with a QHY5-M (first version) camera mounted in a SkyWatcher finder scope I think the USB cable is faulty.... is the pic below a symptom of this? All the type B ones I have are old.... and maybe these cameras are sensitive to the type of cable? It does not show the lines all the time, sometimes frames have non or little...then lots.... i grabbed a screenshot that had the most 🙂

Hi, I did have a load of dark frame in there also. Had some bias also (I think) lens cap on at the fastest shutter speed

Nice! I was trying to do an edit while watching Astrobackyard and trying to follow along.

So finally last night... it was clear, for the first time in ages. So went outside with my SkyWatcher 102T, AZ GTI/EQ Wedge and Canon 50D The thing I was most happy with.... I did the polar alignment with SharpCap... first time ever, so was really happy with that. As the GTI has no polar scope etc etc. Lots of trying to understand how each small adjustment moved the little line! In the end I got it at Excellent. So after lot of messing around I released that M31 should be visible from my garden.. even better 🙂 I've only really done one 'proper' stacked image before I was outside till about 4am... with a crappy camera battery that needed charging a lot. That aside, I had APT up and running and SynScan Pro running on the laptop In the end I got this from 85 x 70 second exposures at ISO 800 on the 50D. On the top of that... been trying to learn PhotoShop today (I know lightroom.... but not PS... so was interesting) I'm sure a lot more could be done with the stacked image than I did... but been enjoying learning! I've attached the output from DeepSkyStacker also. Overall... I got a huge buzz from this 🙂 Autosave.tif

Well was thinking the above to get it in the right direction then shapcap to finish off... kind of thing.

Course it would need some thumb screws as the M6 couplers won’t get in the way but the big metal plate would!

Hi All, I recently got the Skywatcher Wedge for my GTI. I read many comments on on using SharpCap etc to do this... but I struggling to getting it pointing in the right direction in the first place. I’m new to all this 🙂 so looking at the wedge, I could see two M6 bolt holes that seem to be parallel to the saddle. So my thought was attach something that allows the use of the polar align app you can get on your phone. So I got hold of some long M6 bolts, some M6 coupler bolts, a bracket from B&Q and a bit of wood 🙂 So did a bit of prototyping... Maybe it’s a rubbish idea, but seemed worth a shot

Recent go at Neowise