tomato

I should have pasted in at full size, it’s a 12 panel mosaic...

Keep on imaging. The results will be inferior but you can still practice the craft. This was captured a couple of nights ago, and what with the twilight and full moon, you could easily read a newspaper outside.

I have a feeling this could run and run, that’s the bad Gnus...

It's about time the media picked up on the fact that M31 is approaching us at 396000 km per hr. This is what it will look like next month folks! PS, the cityscape is Brisbane which is not in Gnu South Wales😉

Cable management is one of the improvements listed for the mount so I think that is right.

I would have thought the left hand bolt ringed in your photo and the hidden third bolt are used for azimuth adjustment, while the right hand bolt ringed in the photo is used for altitude adjustment. I am presuming the unused bolt(s) for alt/az adjustments will need to be loosened slightly to allow movement when making the adjustments, but hopefully a 200e can confirm this.

Agreed, I posted the final image In the Deep Sky imaging section, APP dealt with the Starlinked subs, no problem.

Not dissimilar to the Vaonis Stellina, which S&T did quite a generous review of IMHO. The reviewer basically saying some well heeled folk using it while sipping cocktails is better than them not looking up at the sky at all.

No you shouldn't image DSOs when there is a full moon up, but I can't let a clear night go to waste. This is just 135 mins of LRGB taken with the dual Esprit 150/ASI 178 'Close In' rig. Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in StarTools and AP. One set of subs was hit by Starlink, my first encounter with EM's project, but APP sorted them out, no problem. L 24 x 3 mins RGB 7 x 3 mins each Imaging at 0.94 arcsec per pixel, guiding at 0.5-0.6 arcsec total RMS, guiding was improving as the object climbed higher in the sky. Thanks for looking

Lovely widefield image👍

But you have to admit the SpaceX adventure is great to watch. And what is it with my posts and HB cartoons? I have a nebulous Scooby Doo as an avatar, and now references to Deputy Dawg et al?

LOL, no I wasn't imaging from a dark site in a field full of deer, but it does indeed sort of feel like you have been sprayed with something...

It is only a 3 minute sub so that's one benefit of CMOS cameras, just as long as you get a bit of a clear run in between. For sure, with the numbers planned, it is going to get worse.

I'm sure they will calibrate out but it is a depressing prospect that a sub without starlink trails will become the novelty.

It had to happen sooner or later. At least there is no mistaking the culprit.

It is starting to look like the compound eye of some giant robotic insect. That Paramount will be earning it's keep.

Funnily enough In the early days I used to enjoy capturing 3 or 4 targets in a single night (I still do with the RASA). OK, they weren’t great but I learnt about Goto and the accuracy of 3 star pointing models/meridian flips etc and the buzz of capturing my own image of all of those iconic targets kept me going through the frustrating times. Also your second attempt on the target is almost guaranteed to be better than your first one, which helps. My piece of advice, at the earliest opportunity, make your set up permanent, even if it’s only a fixed pier in the garden. Trying to decide when to set up under iffy conditions and then tearing down and putting the kit away at 2 in the morning with work next day wasn’t good.

Anybody who knows me via SGL will know I am an imaging nut, but dare I say it when it all runs smoothly I can get a bit bored of staring at multiple laptop screens for hours on end and hence can't see a darn thing when I go outside and look up. I enjoyed a great visual session a few years back albeit from a Bortle 3 location with a 20" Dob, so I am looking for a light weight easy to set up Dobsonian to keep in my warm room shed and use when the imaging rig is running smoothly (I know, it won't get much use then). With my budget I have narrowed it down to an Explore Scientific UL 12" Dob, or possibly a used 14" truss tube if the right one comes up. My home location is Bortle 5 so I think a 12" is the sweet spot between aperture and ease of use, but I could still put it in the car for travel to a darker location. I know the early version of the ES scope had issues but they seemed to have been addressed with the Gen 2, does this look like a sensible way to go? I don't want a Goto scope, I want a change from all of that which comes with the imaging rig. Thanks Steve

I tried a triple rig with 2 x Esprit 150s and the RASA8 on the Mesu, but even that mount has it’s limits. On the subject of telescope arrays, @Tomatobro now has his dome operational with a SW MN190, which happens to have a very similar imaging FOV to the Esprit 150, so look out for some images from the SNSLA, the Shropshire Not So Large Array.🙂

As a machining job it would require some decent sized billets and then there is the set up time and all those hours making all that swarf. It can be done though, see @Davey-T’s post further up this thread. The top end bracing plate was a whole lot simpler to fabricate, just more hassle to adjust.

I must have the JTD version then, the ADM saddle does look more substantial.

It is an ADM adjustable saddle which I will say right away is NOT capable of holding the scope steady, with an Esprit 150 on there, it is right on the limit of what the adjusters can cope with, let alone holding it stable. @Tomatobro beefed up the standard lateral adjusters which helps, especially having both screws on the outside of the saddle. What gives me a fighting chance of keeping them steady is the top bracing plate, again fabricated in the shop. The method is the plate is tightened down onto the tube rings on the RH scope, the holes are drilled oversize on the LH scope and this allows the plate to move as adjustments are made on the saddle. When aligned the nuts are tightened together evenly and very carefully on the LH scope until the assembly is secure. Needless to say, this inevitably causes the scopes to move so it’s an iterative process where you learn how the scopes move as you tighten the plate down, anticipating where the scopes will move. It’s best to set an evening aside for this operation but once tight I can go quite a while before adjustment is required. What usually happens is I will knock a scope in the confines of the dome and then another adjustment session is required.

When setting up a dual rig one challenge is aligning both cameras accurately on the the same point on the sky. The initial alignment is not too bad on a wide field rig as the reference star should at least be in the FOV in both scopes. However on my small galaxy/PN set up with one scope centred the star was nowhere to be seen in the other and after about 90 mins of adjusting the saddle on the other scope there wasn’t even a sign of a flare to help me locate it. Then I had a bit of a Jim Lovell/Apollo 13 moment and thought all I need is a large bright fixed point in space and the moon was still visible above the house. After slewing and centering the master scope on a couple of small craters in the middle of the terminator, sure enough the moon wasn’t even in the FOV on the other, but there was sufficient glare visible to allow me to move it in the right direction. Once the slave scope was pointing at the same two craters, I slewed to a bright star and finished the job. I usually grumble when the moon is up, but it got me out of a hole last night.

I suppose if I kept the same set up and resolved never to change it, I would get it running like a Swiss watch. The trouble is manufacturers and retailers keep dangling new kit in front of me...

Olly, I agree with you 100% on your observations regarding the open ended nature of learning process imaging, and your scientific approach is indeed the way to go, but it does require a degree of discipline. The software GUIs don’t help, with sliders to tweak and an instant visual response on screen. However, I would not agree that the image capture is a closed, finite process, with no room for continuous improvement. Leaving aside the tremendous advances in the equipment, e.g. dual rigs, more accurate mounts, fast astrographs, camera sensitivity there are new techniques, eg dithering, ‘lucky imaging’ auto flats generation, new integrated control packages, that weren’t available until relatively recently. These techniques need to be understood and applied, and problems old and new need to be understood and solutions worked out and put into practice. Even robotic set ups need a tweak every now and then. Contrary to your view, I also think there is a sort of plateau on image processing skills. For sure, there are many imagers, myself included, who aren’t there yet, and indeed may never get there, but for those at that level, they regularly and deservedly get comments like perfect, superb, sublime, the best I have seen, etc, so by definition any improvement from there must be marginal?