tomato

Thanks, the orientation is presented just how the subs downloaded from the camera. There were all sorts of fun and games calibrating PHD out in the field, it was too close to the pole to calibrate on target, and the sky further South was cloudy, so had to meridian flip to calibrate then return to Cepheus.

Well, I'm sure there are darker locations in Wales, but this was from Cwmdu near the Brecon Beacons, at the Autumn Astrocamp. Captured with the RASA8/RC571c on an EQR-6, 26 x 3 mins. Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in APP, PI, StarTools and AP. It looks like another of my quick grab efforts, but I was planning on getting 8-10 hrs on it over the weekend, but of course the weather didn't co-operate. Thanks for looking

Here is LDN 1235, the Dark Shark in Cepheus. Captured at the Autumn AstroCamp, at Cwmdu, Wales on the 25th September. 26 x 3 mins with RASA8/RC571c/Baader UV/IR filter. Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in APP, PI, Background Neutralisation, colour calibration, StarXterminator, Histogram and Curves Transformation, the extracted stars image was taken into StarTools and the corner stars modified with the Warp tool. Back into PI to recombine with PixelMath then NoiseXterminator applied. Finished in AP (colour balancing mainly).

We were clouded out at the Autumn Astrocamp last night and @Tomatobrofound a live feed of the impact from a terrestrial telescope in South Africa but… you’ve guessed it, they were clouded out too. Mankind seems to have an inherent desire to stage large scale destructive tests, early Hollywood crashed two steam locomotives head on, the British crashed a diesel train into a rail car designed to carry nuclear waste, and I’ve seen numerous videos of staged plane crashes, and what about all those atomic bomb tests in the 50’s? We just like smashing and blowing things up. It does look like the target was a loose agglomeration of rubble so it might not have nudged the orbit by as much as they expected?

Excellent M31 Dave, nice background, perfectly framed and really crisp.👍

Really impressive, thanks for posting. Tried to get a live earthbound telescope feed from South Africa last night, but yes, you’ve guessed it, they were clouded out.

It would make a nice animation project but it’s too far South from the UK.

I too was worried about the scope retaining collimation and how the camera would align when reassembling in the field, so we took all the kit to address this. But as luck would have it, the stars looked as good in the field as when it was in the observatory back home. Not as convenient as a small refractor for sure, but I was keen to see if I could replicate the results posted on SGL taken at premium sky locations. Got about 90 mins imaging on night one, but alas looks like the next two will be clouded out. There were concerns about hanging big cameras off the corrector plate, there is a video of a C14 being tested to destruction, it failed with 84 lb on there. It’s not for the faint hearted!

It’s in the constellation of Fornax so no chance for me but a big refractor or reflector could see it.

Olly, compared to two Esprit 150s a RASA8 is definitely in my portable territory. Setting it on the mount here in the Brecon Beacons Autumn AstroCamp was a breeze, the EQ-6 was a different story.😊 Folks, there is a RASA8 on ABS for £1800, I would have gone for it if the COL crisis hadn’t kicked in…

I run a big dual refractor rig or a RASA8/SY135 wide field set up under middling skies. I like ‘em both, the RASA/OSC rig especially for it’s ability to deliver decent results in a single night, both with IR/UV or dual band filters. However, my favourite objects to image are galaxies which tend to be small targets, so if I could only keep one, it would be the refractor rig. And I will image with the venerable KAF8300 CCDs at some point this season.

Myself and Tomatobro are still here (the guys with the 70's fold up chairs), we are down in the bottom field so the imaging paraphernalia doesn't mess up your night vision. Here is 80 mins on the Dark Shark from last night, hastily processed in the field. Thanks to the AstroCamp team for the loan of a USB stick to get the subs onto a laptop that had the processing software installed.👏

We are indeed fortunate to live at a time when such a wonderful resource is made freely available. I had an enjoyable time recently processing some M51 data from the HST, making an image I could only dream of with my earth bound kit.

And another vote from me for NINA, I suffered lock ups and hardware connection issues in SGP, their change in pricing policy was the final straw for me. NINA’s advanced sequencer is really good.

One final(!) rendition, NoiseXterminator settings: Denoise 0.2 Detail 0.15 Olly, Looking forward to your and Paul's RASA M31👍

Yes, just packed the RASA ready for astro camp this weekend and dare I say it, there might be at least one clear night🤞 I’m planning to image the Dark Shark, a good test of a dark site and an interesting comparison with my Bortle 5/6 home location.

Thanks for the feedback, I did turn NoiseXterminator down from my usual settings as surprisingly the combined data image was not excessively noisy. I’ve seen the ‘star chain’ effect before, so I’ll adjust the settings down further.

Reminds me of days long ago school chemistry making iron (III) hydroxide. It’s not boring and it’s certainly quite a technical feat to capture it in such depth and detail, but I can’t help labelling it IGC, or Inter Galactic Crud.😉

Well guys, I have had another try, this was using 78% of the RASA subs after discarding really bad star shape subs and some frames which APP assigned a high scoring quality rating based on star shape and FWHM values but were badly affected by passing cloud so not much signal in them. This was used along with the Esprit and RC data to generate a galaxy 'layer'. Another stack where only 33% of the RASA subs were retained was used to create the stars 'layer'. These were combined in PI with PixelMath. Better than my reduced data image higher up the thread?

The combined data image of the Tarantula region is indeed very impressive but the pixel peeper in me finds it a little strange to see the mix of star diffraction patterns around the bright stars, some have six spikes, some four and some none, no doubt due to the three separate data sources. Is there any smart software out there that could even these out?

Just to summarise, the smart algorithm to stack data based on @vlaiv's criteria doesn't currently exist in any of the available processing packages, DSS, PI, APP, AP, Siril etc? I use the default settings in APP for the sub selection and weighted stacking, but there might be some better ones more suited to what needs to be achieved with the dataset. Certainly using @ollypenrice's approach, there is scope to combine the data to achieve a better balance between star shape and colour and the nebulosity surrounding the galaxy, I'll have another go.

All valid points, and you are correct the processing is very different, but I still don’t believe a better image could be achieved with the original full set of data. Garbage in, garbage out.

Yes, the heat guns I have experience of using were very powerful, I wouldn’t direct that onto cold optics. A hair dryer on the lowest (cool) setting is sufficient to remove the condensation especially if, as Stu recommends, you don’t wait for it to get too excessive.

I recently posted an image of M31 which had a lot of subs from my RASA8 with poor star shapes. Despite my best processing efforts the stars detracted from the image and the intensive processing introduced other artefacts. After receiving feedback I discarded two thirds of the RASA data and although the image was not as deep, it was IMHO, an improvement. What do you think? All Data Two thirds of RASA data removed

I guess you could screw it all together then see just how much of the sensor FOV is unusable (if any).