RichLD

Excellent write up Steve, many thanks!

Could be pinched optics, it might be worth checking the tightness of the primary mirror clips. The mirror should be able to move slightly - when tightening the screws, a lot of people put a little bit of thin card inbetween the clip and the mirror, then remove it to leave a very small gap.

It may be that the camera picked up the problem but the mk1 eyeball missed it. Always worth checking anyhow.

Just picked up on this thread Neil - fantastic job, well done sir! ?

On 19/10/2017 at 20:17, MartinB said:

I have a Geoptic and couldn't fit a 2" filter with my Canon lens

This could be due to the lens being an EF-S variant (for crop sensor only). They protrude further past the flange than EF lenses. You can't use the EF-S lenses on a FF camera because they foul the mirror. I have two of the Geoptik Canon adapters and have no issues using 2" filters with EF lenses.

HTH

Rich

For me the pros for OSC are (in no particular order) size and weight, price, convenience and, in the field, ease of use (there's one less thing to go wrong as there's no filter wheel). As Olly has said before,  the speed of capture is technically faster with mono and filters and the processing for OSC can be a real pig IMHO.

I have 2 monos and 1 OSC. The OSC can take great shots in a very neat and tidy package (great for when I haul everything to a dark site, which is when the OSC comes into its own) but for every other situation the mono wins hands down.

Just my 2 cents 

HTH

Rich

Mainly WIP, but that's a given, weather in the UK and life getting in the way! 

HEQ5 used for all capture.

Orion's sword HaRGB, first taken with dual rig - QHY9M + Nikkor ed180 + Baader 7nm for HA, QHY8L + SMC Takumar 200 for RGB. M42 and B33 detail added from QHY8L and SW ED80 (approx 1 hour each plus lum on B33 from DSW) Base image around 2 hours so far...

M31 captured with QHY8L + SW ED80

Cygnus HA 9 panel mosaic WIP captured with QHY9 + Nikkor ed180, Tamron SP90 and Pentax 135, Baader 7nm

Elephant Trunk and Flying Bat HA captured with QHY9M, Nikkor ed180 and Baader 7nm

Watching with much interest!

Getting better all the time Gina!

Glad you got the icing problem sorted Gina 

Oh dear, hope you've found the issue and that everything goes well tonight! 

Gina, please excuse me if I sound really thick here, but is that ice on your sensor?

Bet you could get a cracking bi-colour of the Flying Bat and OU4 with that rig 

Incredible result Gina, my gut says longer and less if that makes sense. Given what you have with a single 120s sub, I would love to see what 20 x 200s looks like - deep and wispy I would imagine 

Truly fabulous and dare I say groundbreaking stuff - thanks so much for sharing your cmos journey so far!

9 hours ago, Gina said:

As I got nearer and nearer I got to a point where the green circle started dancing all over the place.

Forgot to mention that I find that the "dancing circles" phenomenon is a good gauge of the seeing. If there significant atmospheric turbulence it can become nearly impossible to get the blighters lined up.

Nice one Gina - I love my Polemaster. It's the best bit of add on kit I've ever bought, well worth the money if only for saving my poor knees! 

Pity about the clouds and mist though - I'm sure they'll be plenty of clear nights coming up. Oh dear, I hope I haven't jinxed the weather by saying that...

Rich

13 minutes ago, Gina said:

This one looks a beauty but I'm rather reluctant to buy from the USA. 

Ooooh, that looks lush! Fast enough and a really nice focal length. I love old (or is that vintage?) MF lenses - I had a proper purchase binge on glass about 4 years ago and realised that I had become a hopeless collectaholic. Most of them got used a couple of times then sat in a drawer until I eventually caved in and put them back on fleabay, although I have to say I more or less broke even.

One of my favourites at the moment is an old Tamron 90 macro, lovely piece of engineering and sharp as a tack. 

Hi Gina, I can see from your signature that you already have lots of camera glass but how about looking for some cheap(ish) s/h medium format lenses, such as the Pentax 67's. They have a healthy 84.95mm register distance and are apparently really good for NB. Apologies in advance if you had already considered this and would rather not swell your lens collection any further 

All the best

Rich

10 hours ago, Gina said:

Now I find the focus has gone out and the focuser USB is not connecting

Weird isn't it? Last night I was getting quite excited about grabbing some OIII for a Cygnus mosaic I'm working on. Everything has been tickety-boo for months now, no problems whatsoever. I set up last night and:

CDC crashed 3 times when attempting to connect to Ascom

Astrotortilla wouldn't solve and then crashed forcing yet another reboot

My focuser wouldn't connect despite multiple reboots

Then, you've guessed it, the clouds rolled in 

Feeling very disgruntled I tore the rig down and went to bed. My main imaging machine is a Dell netbook running XP (which is normally rock solid)  that I RDP into. I have upgraded to an SSD to cut down on power consumption when on battery in the field, however one caveat of running XP with a SSD is that there is no TRIM support, so I run the Intel SSD Toolbox app every so often to keep the drive healthy. I have done this for months without issue until last night.

I reckon that running the ISSDT app somehow messed up some system files  or drivers - this morning I ran a system restore and Bob's yer uncle, everything is sweet again .

I have no explanation as to why this hasn't happened before - another great example of the logical world of computing exhibiting moody, almost human like characteristics!

The machines are taking over, I tell you - Skynet ahoy! 

Now where's my tin-foil helmet...

Hi and welcome back - how are the skies where you are?

Amazing stuff for the length of the subs through such a narrow filter! Lovely tight stars as well given that you are running the lens at a wide aperture. I would imagine pushing the exposure length to around 300s per sub would catch most of the faint stuff - I have to go to a minimum of 1200s with my QHY9 and that's with a 7nm filter!

Can't believe how sensitive that chip is!

37 minutes ago, Gina said:

Now running 112 subs like the above into DSS for stacking.

Following with interest and very much looking forward to seeing the results 

I also have the 105mm f2.8 variant and it really is a super lens for both astrophotography and daytime photography. I love using camera lenses for astro (mainly NB) and find I have a lot more fun with this format. The ZWO camera looks lovely too, I reckon you'll get some awesome fields with that setup and no doubt make some amazing mosaics, nice one!