tony210

Great image - I find deconvolution difficult and often end up with 20 images which I have to go back to a few days later to choose the one that's both showing more detail and aesthetically the most pleasing(they are certainly not the same thing).- Tony.

I had a spider in my pipe! Have you checked the pipe carefully for residents - evicting the spider cured my problem which was the same as yours- Tony.

Hi - love the dense star fields but as you say you are blue to the right and red to the left so I would look at gradients in the red and blue RGB data to correct - best wishes Tony

Great images Steve! I am beginning to wonder if H alpha monochrome is the way to go as so many of my opportunities are the odd night or moon limited and for colour images with a good amount of luminance I need at least 3 good nights- always think monochrome is beautiful in its own way -great result - Tony.

Great image even without the Supernova!- I love those distant barred spirals!- Tony.

Great wide field !- I love seeing these really distant guys and there are so many here!- Often they just crop up next to your primary image target which is always so compelling in terms of impressing on us the enormity of what we image - Tony.

Hi Nigella - a windscreen motor is the right way to go with a 12v dc power supply -with the older style dome a 12v battery and motor attached via a shelf on the roof is the simplest way to go . The motor engages with a belt attached to the wall of the dome via a gear that can all be obtained from motionco an on line retailer -can pm you pictures of my setup if you want . I have gone on to use the Vellerman board and Lesvedome software to slave the dome rotation to the scope which is a great help. Best wishes - Tony

Thanks Steve -very useful - my Decon in Pixinsight has given very variable results-Tony.

Great Steve - I would be doing the same but the little galaxy I am imaging vanishes with that enormous moon! I'll just have to wait...Tony

Hi Steve - yes saw your mod - very nice - I had already opted for a mounted motor mounted on the dome roof so just changed that but I like your wooden supports for your belt. Happy to have got mine automated at last and can sit inside and just watch the subs coming in on my computer and not keep going out to shift the dome!- Tony

Hi -not that difficult once you start - if you ever consider it I can let you know the short cuts that caused me so many false starts - best wishes Tony

Hi -I thought I would share my rather "Heath Robinson" take on the old style Pulsar Dome rotation -I had been using a wind screen wiper motor with a gear engaging with a timing belt on the dome wall and a motor controller . This I had given a few second nudges by a timer board but it was never right and I had to go out at all hours to move the dome when imaging. I have had a few months of various prototype failures as I decided to use an aluminium track pick up system for power as the buggy battery I previously used ran out of power very quickly. This of course created a whole world of pain as my electrode pickups have to be orthogonal and held to the track with some force otherwise the whole thing kept stopping. In the end I had two sets of pick ups which seems to prevent much in the way of poor contact and some high capacity "tank " capacitors across the pickups that smooths things a bit too. I feed the strips with the power output from a 12v motor controller that itself is controlled by LesveDome system via a Velleman board . The controller links to ASCOM and POTH via a USB and then slaves to the telescope and mostly keeps the observatory aperture in line with my 12 inch RCT but I may still have to tinker with the geometry settings in LesveDome a little. However you can sync the dome with the telescope and realign the dome slave position which works well if things seem a bit out on the night. The encoder rotates with the roof and has its own 5v battery supply ( blue LED reduces 9v battery nicely to 5v) It is not attached to the motor drive system which is great because its gear needs only a bit of force to ensure traction with the timing belt attached to the stationary dome wall. One thing of note the Bourns encoder must have three outputs A B and ground -found this out eventually after much stress and confusion from a forum - thought it was broken.They do break if you don't treat them gently and I did destroy one so be careful with them . Anyway finally it works! I only really wanted it to track fairly well for a couple of hours while I stay in the warm which I have achieved ! The Lesvedome system works well - thanks to Pierre. I have manual control on the mounted box as well but still have one lead that trails with the encoder output. I have toyed with the idea of transmitting the output to lose this but frankly it works OK and I am not sure I will bother - seemed a little tricky in any case. Circuits for Lesvedome are not too bad once you have enough diodes! I blew a few so use the best ones otherwise smoke and a burning smell and all fails. The result looks a bit tatty but I will work on that I promise- brief video included-Tony 20180225_110718.mp4

Great image- the galaxy detail is good presumably down to the ODK-love the barred spiral- your stars are always good -I presume you do some star size reduction techniques?- I am never happy with my stars but you have far more data than I usually use for colour and I guess that may explain a lot - is there a feint background blue here? Actually - I think it is the effect of the small blue stars or my blue tinged eyes!- best wishes Tony

Well I 'm very impressed - great innovation !- some serious DIY!-I would go for this but no room in a pulsar observatory - best wishes Tony

Hi Harry - love your pier!- not sure it would fit in my observatory though as too small but a great idea - how did you source it? - best wishes Tony

I have one too - great optics but very long FL - if you clean the doulbet be careful to keep the spacers and mark the elements with chalk - early on 1980's I made all these mistakes-best wishes Tony

Your picture does not show perfect collimation as the mirror outline is not central in the view and will affect star shape - it is fiddly- I have a 12 inch RCT and use a Tak collimation scope but laser collimators out there are good- also beware focuser not being at 90 degrees to optical axis always a worry with these scopes and throws off everything - best wishes Tony

Although not cheap the Tak collimator telescope is my choice for pre star test collimation-best wishes Tony.

Hi-below axis RA might represent a mechanical hitch with the mount - I certainly had this with a cabling prob- it is always very frustrating if RA drifts down - best wishes Tony

Something for you both to be very proud of I think - excellent! - best wishes Tony

Stunning effort - best M31 I've seen! - best wishes Tony