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tomato

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Everything posted by tomato

  1. tomato
    That’s a great image, I can only imagine what it must be like trying to operate kit under those conditions…
  2. tomato
    Yes, I will team up with @Tomatobro at some point and dip our toes in the remote imaging pool, but I’ve allocated most of my Q1 Astro budget to upgrading my visual scope. With our climate, you could argue that doesn’t make much sense, but you can work on modifying scopes even when it’s cloudy.😉 I’ve looked into going the whole hog and relocating some of my kit to a really remote site in Chile, but you need very deep pockets for this, I just can’t bring myself to not having some kit in my own backyard. PS, I got about 2 x 80 mins last night so it wasn’t a total write off.
  3. tomato
    Well, I had a sky like that as the sun went down, set up for a 9 hour (yes, 9 hours) imaging run, got the first hour safely in then set up TeamViewer on the Ally Sky Cam so I could monitor the next few hours in the warm. First image to greet me on the iPad was this: The cloud radar still looks good? so I’ll try and restart the session but this isn’t funny anymore.
  4. tomato
    Yes, since seeing the mist patch on the sensor I have extended the cool down to -10 deg C duration to 15 minutes. There might be a good test of it tonight, as I wait for it to get dark there isn’t a cloud in the sky!🤞
  5. tomato
    Yes, the threaded plug has the silicone o ring in place. I’m assuming there are some bonded joints on the sensor housing and there may be a wiring port somewhere? Certainly some potential sources of a leak.
  6. tomato
    Thanks Vlaiv, I hadn't thought of this. In my working life I was used to glass viewing windows being made out of 2" thick borosilicate glass (on chemical reaction vessels) and hence not prone to much flexture (hopefully).
  7. tomato
    I have just noticed this morning that along with the ambient air pressure, the sensor pressure reading has risen also. I'm aware this will go up and down in a sealed system in line with temperature changes, but it does appear to be tracking the outside air pressure, more evidence that the chamber is not sealed. I know @Tomatobro has a barometer/RH station in his dome, he can maybe make a more precise observation on this when he sees then post.
  8. tomato
    And another issue, for those of us not blessed with frequent clear, dark skies, vastly different background levels across the panels. I did a 4 panel mosaic with the SY135 to capture M31 and M33 in the same image and really struggled to get a uniform star field density across the panels, due I suspect to varying sky conditions across the sessions.
  9. tomato
    The imager (John Hayes), visited his set up at the site in Chile and declared it to be the darkest site he has ever seen, and he is familiar with the remote imaging locations in the US. Based on that Olly I agree that you must be at one of the best dark locations in Europe, your images are also testament to that.
  10. tomato
    Just on the question of the Sy135’s (and the RASA8) amazing ability to capture this much signal in 2 hrs, I’m wondering just how much your dark sky contributes to this. I’ve just watched a video on the AIC about remote imaging in Chile, the sky at the site records a SQM of 22, from memory your location is not far from this?
  11. tomato
    I had a wider question in that that although we should of course operate the cameras at the optimum settings for deep sky imaging, do these changes make a visible difference to the final result, given the magnitude of the changes made to the raw data by modern processing techniques (e.g LP gradient removal, BXT, NXT etc.
  12. tomato
    Phew, relieved to see you didn’t pick up the Spaghetti Nebula in all it’s glory or else I would be selling up now.😉 A wondrous image, as always.
  13. tomato
    I read a lot reviews when the QHY268c first came out, the consensus then was to use DSO mode with gain 30. I was happy with the results so left it at that. However I dare say there have been developments since then and I will try the other settings. May I ask how much impact will these changes make to the final image, given all of the other contributing factors that make up the process? In an ideal world we would image from the top of a mountain in the Atacama desert and get dozens of hrs of integration to improve SNR, so optimum camera settings would make a measurable difference but in practice we have Light Pollution removal tools, Blur and Noise Xterminator to help us out, which I’d venture make orders of magnitude difference to the final result. I guess @vlaiv can make the science based case, and if someone cares to loan me another QHY 268 I could run a side by side trial on the dual rig. I tried a comparison with a QHY268c and an RC571c but they are not the same camera so running them with different gain and off set settings didn’t make any sense.
  14. tomato
    I used the orange coloured beads that came in a sealed bottle, my understanding that is usually the colour of 'active' silica gel beads, they go blue or green when saturated with water. This offset number.. I'm sure I had it set it at around 50 previously and somebody on SGL informed me that the figure was too low, I thought the the idea is you need a little bit of null space to the left of the histogram peak. I run the OSC camera at 155, it's something to play around with while it stays cloudy.
  15. tomato
    Maybe the act of installing the tube introduced some moist air into the chamber, which the desiccant will need time to remove. In hindsight I should have run the dehumidifier in the dome and got the humidity level inside to a minimum before fitting the tube, oh well.
  16. tomato
    Well, I installed the desiccant tubes a couple of days ago, and I have just fired up the cameras for a possible brief session tonight after what was admittedly probably the wettest day in Shropshire on record, and guess what? The mono camera now shows 60% humidity at -10 deg C and there is a dark patch in the centre of the image. I think the moral of this story is if it ain't broke don't fix it. I think the camera starts to cool on start up, but I set it to -10 on start up so I'm not really sure.
  17. tomato
    Superb.👍
  18. tomato
    Sounds like I should give them a dose of desiccant, it certainly won't do any harm.
  19. tomato
    Here is my unscientific contribution, based on the number of imaging sessions recorded. For various reasons I don't always image when it is clear, and I have sessions recorded which were severely curtailed by cloud. 2022 86 sessions, Av 7.17 per month 2023 75 sessions, Av 6.25 per month. One thing I noted as I went through the books, there seemed to be far more instances of a 2 or 3 run of clear nights in 2022 compared to this year.
  20. tomato
    Are you meant to have the desiccant tube connected permanently or does it depend on your local conditions? I live in very damp Shropshire, my QHY268 cameras stay on the scopes in a Pulsar Dome and at -10 deg C I haven’t seen a dew or frost problem, so I have never used the desiccant tubes. The humidity value on the mono goes up to around 65% at ambient and drops to around 57% at -10 deg C, that moisture is presumably condensing or freezing out somewhere. On the other hand, my RC 571 misted up right out of the box, but was fixed by adding a ZWO heater to the mounting plate. I presume all of these cooled Astro cameras are meant to have a sealed sensor chamber, or else a little tube of desiccant wouldn’t be of much use if they were open to the wider atmosphere? If they are sealed 100% then in theory we shouldn’t have a problem but maybe the seal degrades over time. Didn’t Starlight Xpress or Atik claim to have an argon filled chamber as a USP?
  21. tomato
    Wow, I know this decision will no doubt come to us all, but it is a bit sobering when a fellow SGL member actually announces it. I’m glad you will continue to enjoy the hobby and I look forward to seeing your posts on here in the future.👍
  22. tomato
    I'm afraid I have had a senior moment with this one. I saw this thread but because there hasn't been an IKI competition for quite some time, I assumed it was the historic NGC6888 competition thread. So I've just sneaked this one in, although the days of spending 6+ hrs processing an image are a thing of the past for me. APP SHO Hubble 4 channel combination, no LP removal applied. BXT AI ver. 4 then SXT in PI. Histogram transformation, Curves transformation then adjustments in AP mainly with HSL and selective colour tools. Star only image stretched with Histogram transformation, and saturation in Curves transformation in PI. Recombined with Pixel Math, NXT applied at 35%. If this dataset doesn't make me trial FLO remote imaging, then nothing will.
  23. tomato
    Glad you sorted out the grid problem. I can't understand why a suitable dark would not remove the amp glow. I use ASI 178 cameras which have horrendous amp glow at 120s exposures but this calibrates out completely with an equivalent dark. The cameras have been retrofitted with an external Peltier cooler so I have to be a bit careful to ensure the darks are taken at the same sensor temperature as the lights, but this should be straightforward with the internally cooled camera. Have you tried other software to calibrate your lights? I have had issues in the past where the darks have been rejected due to some difference in the subframe parameters, but no warning has been displayed, the software just doesn't use the darks in the calibration.
  24. tomato
    I always get an Astro notebook for the coming year but this time Mrs Tomato excelled herself and got one more suited to imaging: I also got a little crystal solar system paperweight, if you look closely there are a couple of huge comets heading our way..
  25. tomato
    Sorry if you are already aware of this, but with a side by side rig you will need to balance it in all three axes. Here is the how to I used, just scroll down until you reach the section on balancing the rig. http://www.wilmslowastro.com/tips/g11gemini.htm#balancing
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