tomato

My dome is not heated so the camera is at ambient temperature when I switch on the cooler. I set the cool down time to 10 minutes, which so far has not caused any icing problems.

I have the colour version and have run this at -20 degrees C on a number of sessions to date, no icing issues so far. No desiccant tube attached, camera is in a dome.

Yet another clear sky last night (4 in a row, what's happening?) but with the moon up still forced to do NB imaging, so had a look at the Rosette Nebula as this will soon be too low for imaging from my location. 5 hours on the dual rig, 2.5 hrs 7nm Ha with Esprit 150/0.77 focal reducer/G2-8300 and 2.5 hrs Esprit 150, NBZ filter and QHY268c. I must have a dozen versions of processed data, I'm afraid I just can't get my head around false colour palettes, what makes one better then another? At least with LRGB there is a general consensus of what is 'correct'. Anyway, here are 3 versions, as defined by Startools the first is H(H+O) duoband 100R, 50R+25G+25B+50G+50B, the second is HOO 100R, 50G+50B, 50G+50B and the third is a creation I confess I lost track of. I prefer the nebulosity colour on the third, but the stars are the wrong colour. Thanks for looking

Much as I would like an IMX 571 mono camera to go with my OSC version on the dual Esprit rig, I have gone for a budget alternative and purchased a SW 0.77 Focal reducer to go on one scope and put the trusty G2-8300 on it and the OSC camera on the other, giving a reasonably similar FOV. So this is just over 12 hrs on B33, taken over the last 3 moonlit nights, with the CCD taking Ha with a 7nm Baader filter, and the OSC capturing through the IDAS NBZ dual band filter. Its a bit of a mash up on the channels, using Startools I assigned the Ha to the Lum channel, channel extracted the dual band data and used the red and green channels. Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in Startools and Affinity Photo. Thanks for looking.

Thanks for the pointers on processing dual NB data. The format worked well I thought, numbers were down maybe, but it did coincide with a clear night. I have participated in similar open discussions and they can sometimes stray off for long periods into general chit-chat but tonight’s stayed on topic. And a LRGB galaxy image coming from the IKI Observatory, good stuff!👍

I think the inverse law generally applies, the more cloudy nights, the more people look at new/better kit and then make purchases. I know I have spent more on Astro kit in the last 12 months than the previous 2 years put together. Of course, if the hopeless weather persists with no respite, then the law will break down at some point, and then the S/H market will be flooded with stuff. But for me it only takes a few clear nights such as we are experiencing now (albeit with a full moon) to keep me going through the next few cloudy periods.

Who says you can’t image under a full moon? These are both excellent results IMHO, undoubtedly your perseverance and dedication have helped enormously in collecting that much data. To put it into some sort of perspective, your M51 is better than one I captured a while ago from a moonless Bortle 3 sky while on holiday, but my total integration time was only 30 mins.

I suppose that if your globular cluster filled your FOV, some databases might not contain the data on the individual cluster stars and would fail to solve, but if you have a surrounding star field in the image I see no reason why it wouldn’t solve just like a galaxy or planetary nebula image.

Thanks Dave, will give your method a try. The Horsehead is about to dip below the lip of my dome aperture for the second night in row, strange times...

The imaging camera is a good old G2-8300, my QHY268c is on the other standard Esprit. The star shapes don't look too bad in the corners on the CCD but a bit of fine tuning on the spacing is still needed. I cobbled it all together in a bit of a hurry with the promise of a few clear (moonlit) nights, so I should try adjusting the prism.

I've recently fitted the SW 0.77 Focal reducer/Flattener to an Esprit 150 and the star shapes on my OAG camera now resemble baked beans, they were much better with just the SW F/F installed. Given that I cannot easily relocate the OAG in the optical train I guess all I can do is move the prism in as far as I can, but this wont be much given that I am taking advantage of the increased FOV. PHD seems to guide OK on a Bean Star so I can live with it, but it just looks terrible on the screen.

I received a very prompt response on the NINA forum, it looks like a bug in the ASCOM driver which I will report to MI. The comment was made that they might not bother to fix it now we are in the CMOS era which made me feel kind of sad and nostalgic for CCDs. Getting mournful over semi-conductors, dear oh dear...

Thanks, I’ve found the option to turn off debayering in NINA, but as you say, it might cause problems down the road if the FITS header says it is a colour image. I will post the finding on Discord.

I guess I should be posting this on NINA's (Discord?) forum but thought I would ask the SGL community first. I connected my Moravian Instruments G2-8300 mono CCD to NINA for the first time today using the 64 bit ASCOM driver, it connected OK except NINA says it is a colour camera and subsequently tries to debayer the downloaded image and as you would expect, returns an error. Is there any way I can override the sensor designation, or just tell it not to attempt to debayer the image? I have the latest MI drivers installed, I connected it to SGP and that is still seeing it as a mono camera, so I know it hasn't morphed while sitting in it's case. Thanks in advance

Congratulations on your published image, as you already know, your first light image of M31 was enough to persuade me to purchase a RASA8 and QHY268c. I’ve yet to attain your standard of images, (I must have a session with it at a dark site) but I have seen enough to reassure me it was a sound investment.

I’m guessing you have seen this? https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/automate-your-observatory/

Alas, sidereal rate wont work very well as the dome moves in azimuth and presumably you have an equatorial mount of some sort. But as @pmlogg has posted, there are lots of ingenious DIY solutions to be found under this forum title. My Pulsar dome has a rack and pinion drive to move the dome, its 12V and runs on a self contained battery that rides with dome. The 7Ah capacity means it will comfortably run an all night session between charges. The drive can be run manually or for unattended operation, two low power lasers are mounted at the edges of the shutter aperture, and the dome nudges left or right if the dewshield on the scope breaks the beam(s). If you take out the automation aspect, it's a lot simpler, just a control box with two buttons to drive the motor in the two directions. The rack was located and purchased off the internet in straight lengths and carefully bent to match the radius of curvature of the dome. I have to say it helped an awful lot to have access to machine tools and the technical expertise of @Tomatobro on this forum who put the whole thing together.

Sorry to hear and hope its not too costly in time or money. +1 for some kind of poster reminder, here is mine after I tried to open the powered dome shutter with padlock on...

Here are my five from 2020, also late to the party: NGC 2903 with the dual Esprit 150/ASI 178 set up M81 with the same rig M31 with my new widefield rig RASA8/QHY268C Surprise, a nebula image again using the widefield setup And my never ending 12 panel M31 project, to be continued...

Could be mistaken for a HST HH, superb.

That’s a lovely image of a region a bit off the beaten track. I’m a massive fan of galaxy imaging, up close or wide field, they fuel my enthusiasm for AP much more than ‘local’ nebulae.

Nice shot, lots of objects visible in the FOV.

I regularly look through “The Cambridge Photographic Atlas of Galaxies” to short list targets, but the size is not always listed, so I always check the object on a FOV calculator. There are no shortage of targets to image, alas the same cannot be said for clear, moonless nights.

This is 3.75 hrs on M106 with the dual Esprit 150 and ASI178 cameras. It clearly needs more data to reduced the noise and hopefully provide more signal to the outer arms, which appear to me to be disproportionately fainter than the inner core compared to other similar galaxies. L 38 x 3 min RGB 13 x 3 min each Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in APP and AP. Thanks for looking.

+1 for ensuring adequate airflow. I have a QHY268c (presumably the same cooler spec as the mono) and on a mild night (+6 deg C) installed on a RASA 8 with a dew shield fitted, it could not maintain -20 set point. When I removed the dewshield, -20 maintained with around 60% cooling. The RASA is a worst case scenario as the the dewshield is acting as an enclosure and the warm air exhausted by the fan is pulled back in at the inlet.