tomato

Ian King Imaging used to offer ROR observatories but he is now with FLO and they don’t appear to offer them. It might be worth sending Ian an email to see if he has any contacts.

@Laurin Dave suggested trying the Photometric Mosaic script to stitch together a 12 panel mosaic of M31, after I had failed miserably to produce a decent result with APP. The panels were captured over many weeks and had widely varying background qualities, but by using the script’s method of employing a widefield reference image, he was able to produce a result far in excess of my expectations, based on the data.

The problem is that with an OAG, during the auto focus routine the guide star goes out of focus sufficient to cause the guiding to stop, so the other scope’s images are no good during this period. It’s difficult to refocus both scopes at the same time unless it can be triggered by the computer’s clock?

You are quite right, I could avoid the emails. I suppose I tolerate them because I’m afraid I might miss a demon printing deal.

True, but the PI Photometric Mosaic script has a darn good go at it.

That’s a great M81/82 for a first go, much better than I achieved with more high end kit. I dare say your image was quite noisy if the moon was up and there was high cloud. Your application of a de-noise algorithm has smoothed the background but I think it’s blurred some of your galaxy detail. The coma corrector will help in giving you sharper stars and detail in the galaxy, I think it is a sensible next step.👍

Yes, it is crowded forum, sometimes it’s hard to see the wood for the trees. The Astrobiscuit Discord forum is quite similar, is it Discord or the nature of the subject matter I wonder?

Yes, thanks for putting the query on there, I posted a question on a separate issue, and got a reply from the man himself, unfortunately to just confirm that what I was trying to do in NINA is not currently possible. No replies on the text display issue so far, but I’ll post any responses on here.

Just had my latest promo email, you can now get your images printed on a towel!🙄

As the closing date for entries is fast approaching, this will probably be my final effort. Abell 2151, the Hercules Galaxy cluster, just under 4 hrs of data captured in Civil(!) and Nautical Darkness with 120 second subs using the Esprit 150/IMX571OSC dual rig. Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in APP and PI, APP's LP removal tool and the PI NoiseXTerminator plugin again making a big difference to the background. Annotated

Yes, it is A4, they were doing a deal on a 26 page hardback album at Christmas, I can't remember the price but it wasn't expensive. I had a couple of "Panavision" format mosaics which they printed across two pages, came out OK. One word of caution, after placing my first order with them over 18 months ago I get a promo email from them nearly every day...

I have used https://www.my-picture.co.uk/ for wall prints on canvas and aluminium, as well as a photo album. I just uploaded my finished jpeg images (viewed on a calibrated monitor) and they came out pretty reasonable. They are not absolute top quality reproduction but their prices don’t break the bank either.

I've posted this query on the Discord NINA forum but maybe the folks on SGL can help me out. I run a dual rig with an OAG on the master scope, and I operate the slave camera and focuser on a second instance of NINA. When the master scope runs an autofocus routine the guiding is disabled, so any subs captured on the slave scope are lost during this period. I know you can synchronise the dithering operation on two instances of NINA, but is there a way using the tools in the advanced sequencer that would enable a flag to be set which can be monitored by the other instance of NINA so that both scopes will run the autofocus routines at roughly the same time? I know I could just try and rely on process timings but I have different cameras on each scope which mean the sub download durations are different, and this time discrepancy can get quite big over say 30 subs. Also if I introduce another trigger parameter for autofocusing, such as HFR or temperature change, then planned timings cannot be used. There is a switch function in the sequencer tools, but I think this relates to an equipment ASCOM driver? Thanks

Same here, my QHY268c won’t work if there is no 12V supply connected.

I have an AllSkyCamera running for the first time this summer, but so far it has just detected Plain Ordinary cloud. If I can’t do DSO Astrophotography I would like to try and capture some examples of this phenomenon.

Great, not often that an image contains both dust and galaxies, but I suppose that a lot of dust will generally obscure the background detail. I’m looking forward to seeing all those undiscovered distant galaxies that the JWST will reveal.

Don’t be too concerned about the streetlights. I image LRGB from a Bortle 5/6 location with some prominent LED streetlights to my Southern horizon, but thanks to modern cameras and Light Pollution removal software, I can still get reasonable results.

Atik, a company that make dedicated Astrophotography cameras, have hosted live imaging sessions in the past on YouTube. If you Google Atik cameras videos there are a few archive broadcasts available to view or maybe email them to see if and when they are planning any new sessions.

Yeah, really enjoyed it, lots of professional images on display as well as some nice computer simulations and analogies. Much better than BC on top of a mountain.

I’ll leave the expert observers to give you the most informed replies, but I’m afraid in my limited experience a full moon at a dark site will kill any broad band observing of faint objects. A moonless dark sky with a big aperture scope, is an unforgettable experience, however.

This dark shark image is 3 hrs integration with a RASA8/IMX571OSC from a Bortle 5/6 site and I would venture that you can still get the benefit of the fast optics and don’t need pristine skies to get reasonable results.

It’s definitely worth contacting Lucas as the Mk 2 Mesu doesn’t have the same encoders as the Mk 1 and uses the Sitech 1 unit. It might be possible to ‘dumb down’ your Mesu to run with the Sitech 1. I have seen a used Mesu 200 for sale with one encoder disconnected from the Sitech 2, presumably because the encoder had stopped working. With modern quick and reliable plate solving, absolute encoders are not essential.

Great image, love all that tortured gas and dust! +1 for the RASA8, despite being an F2 reflector, it has been on and off my mount half a dozen times but has required no collimation, it holds it’s focus very well also. For going deep in the minimum of exposure time, I don’t think there is a better scope out there for the money.

Here is another "widefield" view of the Virgo region, about 1.3 x 2.5 degrees, with M100 in the bottom LH corner and M99 in the top RH quadrant. A 4 panel mosaic of 30 x 2 mins on each panel captured with the Esprit 150/IMX 571 OSC dual rig. All the data was captured in Nautical darkness, but with the moon absent. Calibrated, stacked and the mosaic assembled in APP, (1st LNC, 7 iterations, 20% MBB), processed in APP (LP removal tool really helping), PI (background neutralisation and photometric colour calibration on the stretched image) and NoiseXTerminator set at 0.25 denoise and 0.3 detail. Image capture scale 0.713 arcsec per pixel, but I have down sampled it in PI by a factor of x2, as the full file size (127MB) would not upload to the server. Annotated

And here is the Leo Triplet (plus a number of much smaller background galaxies which I guess make it eligible for the challenge) captured in April with the Esprit 150/IMX 571 dual rig. This is the best 180 x 2 min subs from 7 hours of data captured, about 40% of the data was captured in Nautical rather than astro darkness. Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in APP,PI and AP. Presented at the original sampling of 0.714 arcsec per pixel.