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Ohgodwherediditgo

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    Motorcycling, Olympic Weightlifting, Fishing
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    Fareham

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  1. Pinwheelfinished.tifPinwheelfinished.tifPinwheelfinished.tif I gathered the lights for this over the 20/21 May weekend. 60x240sec exposures at unity gain with lights and darks only using an Altair 294C at -10. My processing skills before starting this were and still are very limited, i owe a thank you to Ruzeen and his Youtube channel AstroFarsography for teaching me how to better use Gimp. I stacked in DSS, then moved to Siril to remove green noise, do a photometric colour calibration and background extraction. Then moved to Gimp, and finished with the free AstroSharp software. I 'm pleased with this result and hoping that when i move on to Pixinsight that scripts will do a lot of the work !
  2. I currently use an Explore Scientific MN152 which I am really pleased with. I have considered going for more apperature with the 200pds and Quattro being the two front runners. I dont have any problems with dew on the MN152, I use a heater on the corrector up front and the primary doesn't require anything. Collimating the secondary requires removing the primary mirror, which isn't great but it does give opportunity to blow off the mirror. I use a TS concentric eyepiece to centre the secondary then a Hotech laser to do the primary. I 'm not sure if this is perculiar to mak-newts but when using the laser you need to watch the reflection move across the white face as the crosshairs move into the centre hole, the cross hairs maybe centred but you would need to make sure that the reflection is also centred which may mean that the crosshairs are not dead centre in the hole of the laser. I hope that makes sense, the reflection will when you see it. I would go for the Quattro. The difference in price is almost as much as flocking but it has baffles built in, and the primary wont be getting covered in small pieces of dust from the felt. Dont't forget to add the price of a coma corrector to the newt!
  3. Then i will suggest using NINA, even without guiding you can use it with Stellarium for a rough go to, then plate solve using ASTAP. You can plan your sequence ahead of darkness then just press play when it's time. The flats wizard is really handy. You can still use the 3 point polar align feature because you can plate solve. There is a guy called Cuiv the Lazy Geek that has a Youtube channel, he has covered everything you need to get it running. It's free!, and when you're ready to start guiding NINA will start that for you as part of the sequence. I've probably oversold NINA a bit, but once you get a good handle on it it's great.
  4. It would help to know what equipment you are using, but you did preface with 'I'm new' so it's probably safe to assume that your polar alignment isn't spot on, which can be advantage for dithering. So long as you keep your exposures short, say 10 seconds, you shouldn't have star trails, and that makes guiding redundant for you. The disadvantage with that is that you will have a huge number of total exposures to store, and later stack, which will take up a lot of storage space and time when it comes to stacking. The advantage is that you will not pay a penalty for taking short exposures in terms of image quality, just so long as your total integration time is reasonable. If your polar alignment was spot on then in theory you would track your target precisely. That would imply that the dead, hot pixels and thermal noise are always aligned, requiring dark frames to remove them. That is what dithering helps with, and is effective during stacking. I do use NINA and rate it highly, but if you don't already use a computer to control your sessions then dithering is not a reason to make that change. I should probably caveat everything i have written with 'it's a bit more complicated than that' but you will learn that yourself. I recommend watching Dr Robin Glover's Youtube videos on CMOS sensors regarding exposure length. TLDR: Probably don't worry about it. HTH
  5. I remember watching a YouTube video about reusing dead led screens. There is a defusion layer over the leds which could be used over the tracing panel or as part of a DIY project. I have a Samsung TV in my shed that suffered from a big purple spot that has plagued many Samsung tvs, I intend to strip it and give that a try at some point in the future.
  6. I was just doing sensor analysis in Sharpcap and for illumination i had the tracing panel powered via the usb hub on my camera, this did produce a flicker. I then plugged the tracing pad in to my power bank and the illumination was flicker free. It was like the transfer of data was having an impact on the voltage to the panel. HTH.
  7. This is my first attempt at the Orion Nebula. There is 2.5 hours of integration, using 120 seconds subs. Processed in Gimp. This was my second attempt at processing, I was a bit over enthusiastic with stretching with the first attempt, blowing out the core.
  8. I don't notice any flicker at all. I need to turn it nearly all the way down to take flats, but for Sharpcaps' sensor analysis i had to lay a sheet of paper over the top, which was effective. It is USB powered so can be plugged into my camera which is nice and easy.
  9. There's no need to spend big on a flats panel. I use a Tracing Panel. I bought it from Amazon for £12 if i recall correct and it's dimmable.
  10. I recently purchased a used Hotech SCA-2C-Crosshair Collimator 2''. Unfortunately one of the o rings was missing when it arrived. The seller has offered a full refund but I'm keen to get some replacements as they will perish eventually. If anyone knows of anywhere that has these in stock i would be pleased to hear of them. I may have found a manufacturer that will make just 3 for myself but was wandering if there would be any interest from other owners to buy a spare set ? I have no idea what the cost is going to be at the moment but even if i can advise them of potential buyers from here then it may bring down the overall cost. Just leave a message below with how many you would like so that i can get a rough idea to them if need be. This is just for the 2'' model. Martin
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