tomato

Great colour, very dramatic, I like the vertical orientation as denoted by the cosmic arrow on the right!

Well deserved.👍

The detail in the full size image is stunning, it is so crisp and clean. I have the same equipment but when I study this image the estate agent mantra “location, location, location” keeps ringing in my ears… Anyway, although my RASA8 is currently packed away, I do have access to an EQ6 so if I get a proper clear night I would like to see how close I can get to this image, 3 hours is doable even from the UK.

The arcs look like they came from the SN but I agree the cloud formations at lower left could just be regular Ha nebulosity. You have done a great job to find this amongst the “background stuff”.

Thanks, l do like to try and image galaxies off the beaten track, unlike SNRs they are not particularly faint, but they are small. I need a bigger scope, and better seeing, and better weather etc etc…

This is a small barred spiral galaxy in Triangulum, some 28 million light years distant. It is part of a galaxy group which also contains NGC 1023 and NGC 891. Captured with the ASI 178/Esprit 150 dual rig, 10.6 hrs of integration made up of: L 170 x 2 mins R 55 x 2 mins G 52 x 2 mins B 42 x 2 mins (the poor relation once again) Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in PI with the XT tool set. Thanks for looking

Great capture! It has some similarities to the Spaghetti Nebula, and it looks just as faint! Was it a similar class of SN that produced Simeis 147 I wonder?

Thanks for all of the feedback and suggestions. So last night I set both laptops to Flight Mode, no external access, sat with them until 23:00 then left them on their own to hopefully finish around 02:00. This morning the Slave scope laptop (connected to the scope that does not see the mount or the guider) was still running NINA, but the Master laptop had restarted. My dome is automated but is not ASCOM compliant so doesn't talk to NINA. The rain sensor had activated and closed the shutter at around 00:20, but some cloud had clearly killed the guiding before then as although I had some further nice subs up to 00:20, the object was no longer in the centre of the FOV. TBH, it is about time I made proper use of NINA's advanced sequencer, but why did the master scope laptop restart? That is the question. I think a late, late night is on the cards...

Just image whenever the conditions allow and oh, use my Dobsonian a bit more this winter now it has a StarSense fitted to it.

Going direct to the PC would be my suggestion. I have an Atik EFW2 which sometimes fails to connect from the scope via the hub. My fix is to bring it into the warm room, connect it direct to the laptop, which always works, then progressively move it back out to the scope, lead by lead, until it is back on the hub once more. It will then work fine until I get another weather lay off, whereupon it might fail to connect again. I could change the leads and hub, but all the other kit works fine, I guess I will have to find the root cause when my fix ceases to work.

It would have been a lot of work that’s for sure, with no guarantee of success. But, to paraphrase JFK, “we choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Based on my experience of mounting two 6” 1050 mm FL refractors side by side you will definitely need one of them on an adjustable saddle to achieve getting both scopes centered on the same target. These saddles are commercially available but are usually designed for 80-100mm refractors. This saddle will need to be of substantial design to take the weight of the OTA and not introduce flex into the system. I have to use a bracing plate across the top of the tube rings to prevent flexture occurring over the course of an extended imaging session. This has to stay loose while the scopes are aligned and then tightened down very carefully to prevent distortion and re-introducing misalignment. You might get away without the bracing plate on the shorter, lighter scopes you propose to use. Good luck with your project!

I left an unattended imaging session running last night but this morning found both laptops on the start up screen. Both laptops captured their last sub at 00:40, with 90 minutes still to run. It looks like a Windows update occurred although I thought I had disabled these previously. However, if you execute an update manually (which is how I usually allow them to happen) does Windows then sneakily remove any overrides that may have been put in place? Not best pleased as it was a decent sky last night, first one in quite a while.

Yes, Olly, I recall being up at 06:00 on our departure day and seeing Orion dominating the sky over Les Granges like I’ve never seen it before or since. Plenty of nebulosity here in Shropshire, but not of the inspiring kind.

The Planewave mount (circa £20k) uses a similar bolt system for fine adjustment. I have to say the Mk 1 Mesu with knurled knobs is great for a lightly loaded mount, but when I have upwards of 130 kg all up weight on there I think I would prefer something that used a 19 mm spanner.

I can’t offer much in the way of suggestions, I don’t use SiriL but I assume the stars resynthesis tool attempts to fix poor star shapes? If so, you could try running this on the individual panels first and then combine them. I have used the star repair tool in StarTools for this in the past. The other option would be to crop the individual panels to take out the poor star shapes, but this would depend on how much overlap you have on the panels. Option 3 will work if you have software that will combine images from different optical set ups, most packages can do this I think.

I use an OAG on my Esprit 150 rig (1050mm FL) and a 60mm guide scope with the RASA8/SY135, so I take a horses for courses approach. I use an ASI 120 mini with both, never have a problem with finding guide stars with either method. I guess this reply doesn’t really help you choose.

Yeah, if you want a consistently very optimistic forecast, look no further than BBC Weather.

Wow, maybe a whole hour on Friday 13th. Perhaps best not to start my 6 panel mosaic…

There was another small fee that I thought I had to pay but when I tried to pay it to UPS they said it was below their processing threshold, and who was I to argue? I can’t comment on ordering direct from ZWO except to say if it was such a good deal why doesn’t everybody do it?

Same here, the ASI 120 mounted between the scopes gives an excellent view of the inside of the dome and through the aperture. Constellations are easily recognised on a 2 second exposure. Prior to that, @Tomatobro loaned me a TV camera from a drone, but the 120 blew it away on low light picture quality.

I purchased a RisingCam IMX 571 via Aliexpress, I had to pay import duty on it when it got to the UK, about 5% of the purchase price.

A thread on Cloudy Nights indicates that Celestron fixed the problem and replacement RASA8s were being shipped from April/May of this year but I would definitely check with your supplier. FLO have due in 30-40 working days on their website, but this read “Contact us” previously.

I agree with Olly re the RASA not being prone to dew on the corrector plate, the mandatory warm air fan by virtue of the camera location does the trick. In fact I have experienced another problem, on a warm night the dewshield can cause the warm exhaust air to recirculate through the camera and reduce the efficiency of the cooler, so low set pt temperatures (below -10 deg C) cannot be achieved. Fortunately I haven’t found this to be an issue with modern CMOS cameras.

I image with a RASA8 when the mood takes me, I went the IMX 571 OSC camera route and use the IDAS NBZ filter for NB targets so I don’t need to bother with a filter draw set up. The 8” version holds focus very well, which I think is consistent with experience of other owners of this scope. Tilt can be an issue, but it is relatively easy to fix but I confess I am not as particular about this as some imagers are. Be warned Celestron appear to have had an issue with mirror quality on a recent run of 8” scopes, it is documented on SGL. This may be fixed now, best to consult with your supplier if you decide to go with this scope.