tomato

This is a ridiculously short 76 mins of integration of Abell 347 in Andromeda with NGC 891 up in the top RH corner. Captured with the Esprit 150/IMX571c/UVIR cut filter with a ~70-80% illuminated moon about 40 degrees away. I like the variety and number of galaxies in the FOV so will be adding to this hopefully on Friday night when the moon is not so intrusive. Just out of interest I remember imaging this region almost exactly 5 years ago with my then newly purchased mono G2-8300. This image was captured with a 102mm APO with some 4.5 hrs of LRGB data. So it's not a fair comparison I know, but the most striking thing for me is how star separation (with StarXterminator) has contributed to the processing of the OSC image. I wonder what we will have in another 5 year's time? Thanks for looking. Esprit 150/IMX571 OSC 76 mins Annotated Image Altair 102mmAPO/G2-8300 LRGB 270 mins

Just musing as the rain lashes the window, but if I have done my sums correctly with a SY135/IMX571 it would ‘only’ take around 700 frames to image the entire sky, and that’s assuming your horizon is totally un-obscured so most folks would need a lot less. So based on this year’s clear night count at my location it would take less than 5 years to complete. Now that mosaic would lean on my PC a tad…☺️ There are a lot of professional all sky surveys but has an amateur ever attempted this?

Yes, I prefer the second one, more structure is now visible in the nebulosity. That’s an interesting comment you make about changes due to file format. I must admit that despite PI’s dire warnings I don’t use their file format, just fits, tiff and jpg.

Beautifully framed, I would agree it looks slightly over stretched with the brightest parts of the nebula a bit blown out. In my opinion the dense star fields can detract from the nebula so some star reduction is beneficial, how much is down to personal preference, yours look OK to me.

The Mesu drive housings are about 25-30mm thick(I’ll measure them properly and post the figure on this thread) and that includes the cover. Given the first stage drive has dual disks I would think they would be about 5-10mm thick at most. I’m sure the data will exist to give recommended contact areas to transmit a given torque load.

I don’t know how the pin is tensioned, but I do know it is critical to the operation of the mount. A Mesu owner attempted to take his apart to have a look which resulted in the mount having to go back to Lucas to be set up again so I’m afraid it’s not something I will be investigating. Whatever the design is it is pretty robust. Mine is still fine after nearly 10 years of use, including some unintended abuse along the way, such as trying to run the mount with the locks on.

I have the QHY268c and RisingCam IMX571C versions. I connect the QHY with NINA and the latest native driver, never suffered any comms issues. No problem with moisture either and the camera spends weeks at a time in a unheated observatory. The tilt adjustment can best be described as agricultural and has given me some minor operational issues when used on an F2 RASA. The Risingcam has again been solid with NINA and the native driver, the cooling is a bit less powerful than the QHY but I run it at -10C which is no problem in the UK. VAT at 20% is quoted in the Aliexpress price, I paid around £60 duty to get it in my hands, but the asking price was £950 when I purchased mine. Yes, the thought of sending it back to China for repair is a bit scary, but mine has made it through the warranty period without the need for any attention. For me the choice was reasonably straightforward, I wanted a second IMX571c sensor camera without delay, so with my budget, it was the RC or nothing. My next planned purchase will be a mono version, and that will be the RisingCam version.

Is that just a result of the CAD package doing the math?

I thought the cable circle should all lie within the scope aperture?

Very nice, great colour in the Crescent Nebula for such a short integration time. I didn't know you had gone down the 'budget' IMX571 camera route, but presumably not purchased direct from China?

Yes, and interesting that the first stage employs a dual disk, presumably less chance of slippage and mechanically a more stable drivetrain.

Here is a schematic of the original Mesu 200 drive reduction, courtesy of @steppenwolf, 3000:1: Some precision engineering needed.

Yes, amazing to think of the energy required to harvest that hydrogen and yet gravity has done it countless times over, but it did take a while…

You have framed a really nice vista with the arching clouds, just look at all that hydrogen…

Nice star colour and I can’t see the join. Nice to see this target imaged with a big set up.

Yes, a good call to have a finder scope, Telrad or red dot finder aligned with your main scope. You can’t use Goto on your mount as it has a RA drive only, so a finder scope would be the way to go.

M31 will fill your FOV with your scope and camera, so it won’t look anything like the DSLR/lens image. I don’t think you are on target, but definitely need to sort the stars out first.

The shadows look quite intense so what’s causing it is close to the sensor. Given the humidity levels you described, I would agree it’s most likely ice on the sensor window.

Family would come first with me, it’s just a hobby at the end of the day. But it would be great to have the option of a a 100% robotic set up so I could just enter a target days before and let it all happen by itself if the sky was clear. These systems do exist I believe or else I could pay someone else to take the subs with remote imaging but that still does not appeal somehow.

I was a reasonably satisfied user of SGPro, although it wasn’t the most stable package out there. Their revised pricing model pushed me to try NINA and I wouldn’t go back to SGPro now.

Apologies if this question has been posted elsewhere, but does V2 have any enhanced astro processing features? Looking at the email promo, some enhancements to masks which could have astro imaging applications but not sure if it’s worth upgrading from V1.

I tend to image a lot of targets before they hit the meridian and invariably the star count goes up on the image as it climbs in the sky (expected) while the FWHM values usually get worse. This may be due to temperature but the kit is in a dome so it’s not due to cooling to ambient, or possibly changes in the mechanical configuration of the focuser. Either way, there is no way I could keep the focus unchanged over a 5-6 hr imaging session, let alone from night to night.

That’s a mighty fine NB image, and TBH if it is only the artefacts around the two bright stars that are a concern, I would edit them at the individual pixel scale, but then I do have plenty of time on my hands. I recently hand made a mask for a galaxy in StarTools, editing individual pixels which this software allows you to do, about 2 hrs of painstaking work. I then discovered the tool I wanted to use in StarTools wouldn’t work on an image with a mask, and I couldn’t export the masked image, oh well…

Very nice! How is the toothed ring fixed to the lens body, just a tight fit or by some other means?

I started out with a second hand Atik 314 OSC camera and moved on to a mono version of your camera. Here are a some images I managed with my OSC, but please bear in mind I was just starting out, these are short integration times, my processing skills were non existent and flat calibration frames were still a mystery to me. The images posted earlier should certainly reassure you that you a have a serious Astro camera coming your way.👍 Clear Skies!