tomato

Great post. I bought my first visual scope last year, (a 16” SW flextube Dob, on a if some is good, more is better, approach to visual) and yes, I have fallen foul of the big scope, a pain to set up, syndrome. As an imager I find I want to use it more when the lighter evenings are here as I have more time to set it up rather than rush to get the imaging rig going, and then I don’t want to start moving it and setting it up in the dark. I know that doesn’t stand up to logical scrutiny, but that’s the mindset I have got into.

With regard to dithering, I had really bad walking noise when using an Esprit 150/ASI 178 combination which dithering eliminated. However when I moved to a dual rig dithering was a bit more difficult to implement but was possible with NINA, but I still lost some imaging time so I experimented with no dithering and found that walking noise was much less of an issue. I wonder if that is because I am combining a roughly equal number of subs from two optical sources which are not perfectly aligned and have different fixed noise patterns?

Well, there were a lot binos on display and the superbly engineered Rowan mounts are aimed at visual astronomers? The well engineered scope trolleys on display are also aimed primarily at big Dob owners. Robin in his talk on PA spent some time on Drift Alignment which I know from experience is a very accurate visual method of PA, so all in all I don't think it was exclusively an imager's show. Peter Shah seemed to be receiving quite a bit of interest in a remote imaging facility, so maybe in 5 years time the imagers will all be glued to a laptop screen in the house. Having said that, another 3 nights this week predicted to be clear in my locality, with the moon getting out of the way, awesome...

It has indeed been a challenge trying to find a galaxy cluster away from the moon over this recent spell of clear nights. This is Abell 426 in Perseus centered on NGC 1272. Imaged over 3 nights before it set below the roof of my house. Captured with the Esprit 150/ASI 178 dual rig, L 147 x 2 mins, RGB 46 x 2 mins each, all binned 2x2, best 80% of the subs captured have been processed. Calibrated and stacked in APP, processed in APP, PI and AP.

Nice first light, roughly the same FOV as my ASI178 4 panel mosaic but yours has a much more even background.

Yes indeed, there have been a number of excellent images involving collaborations of this kind posted recently in the Deep Sky Imaging section. Software such as APP make this reasonably straightforward, although one difficulty combing data from more than one reflector is aligning the diffraction spikes on the stars, but I think these can be removed in software so it’s not a show stopper.

Who attempts a 4 panel mosaic of M101 at 1" per pixel when there is an 88% illuminated moon at the zenith? Guilty as charged m'lord. I wanted to get a wider FOV for this galaxy than the Esprit 150/ASI 178 can deliver in a single image so I went for 4 panels capturing 30 x 2 mins L and 10 x 2 mins each on RGB. As you might expect the quality was not great, especially the first panel which shows itself in the bottom RH quarter of the image. I boosted most of the galaxy with 10 hrs of historic Luminance captured on the same set up with the galaxy centered. Still as noisy as hell, as usual with my efforts, but at least I have some clear sky around most of the galaxy. Calibrated and stacked in APP, mosaic combined in APP, processed in APP, PI and AP. Thanks for looking.

Picking up distant galaxies on a star test, now that’s what I call a light bucket!!!

I inwardly groan when Vlaiv starts a post with “Take a look at your stars”…. But hey, he is spot on (literally) every time.☺️

Interestingly I get the same observation as Olly with my F7 refractors in that the dust bunnies seen on the flats are all on the camera sensor, and the LRGB flats are all identical, but with @Tomatobro’s RC 10 the LRGB flats all display different dust mote patterns so separate flats are required.

All other things being equal, mono will deliver a better result than OSC, but with the latest CMOS OSC sensors, first class results can be obtained, and you can always get something if your imaging session is cut short before you have obtained a full set of colour subs. I’m not a planetary imager but I would assume a colour camera makes this process more straightforward, especially on dynamic targets like Jupiter. My most recent camera purchases have been OSC sensors.

I bought a RASA8 on the back of seeing a galaxy image, but that was @gorann’s M31… My weapon of choice for all other galaxies is a SW Esprit 150 but I am interested to see what @Tomatobro’s SL RC10 with an ASI1600(binned 3x3) can do on the same targets.

Great M101, nicely processed in APP.👍

Here is Holmberg 124 in Ursa Major, made up of NGC 2805 on the upper left, and NGC 2814 and NGC 2820. I'm not sure if the knot on the LHS of NGC 2820 constitutes a separate galaxy, if not the image may not be eligible for the competition! A total of 7.1 hrs of data taken with the Esprit 150/ASI 178 dual rig, as follows: L 110 x 2 mins, R 46 x 2 mins, G 34 x 2 mins and B 24 x 2 mins, all binned 2x2. Calibrated and stacked in APP, combined in APP, further processed in StarTools, PI, AP and GIMP..

Nice NGC 3359 and a great job locating the Little Cub! I was going to have a go but you beat me to it.👍

"Venus and Mars are alright tonight...."

This is NGC 3344 in Leo, a face on spiral galaxy some 20 million LY distant, around 4.5' in diameter on the sky. This is a first time collaboration between myself using the Esprit 150/ASI 178 rig and second light on @Tomatobro's StellaLyra 10" RC/ASI 1600. Capture Details: Esprit 150: L 150 x 2 mins RGB 48 x 2 mins on each channel, all binned 2x2 RC 10: L 98 x 22 sec RGB 30 x 22 sec on each channel, all binned 3x3 Calibrated and stacked in APP, stacks combined and LRGB composition in APP, processed further in AP and GIMP. Lots of small galaxies in the image, PI's annotation only picks up the more prominent ones. I'm intrigued by the group of tiny reddish objects in the bottom left hand corner, how distant are they, I wonder?

I always start PHD before NINA and then connect to it, I’ve never seen this. I had a recent update for PHD, did this problem start after the update?

Great post, if I get a chance I’ll put the widefield cameras on my rig and have a go at capturing the “Little Cub”. May I point out a typo in the text, I presume the galaxy distance is out by a factor of 1M?

Brilliant! Who says it takes 11 days to do a ‘deep field’ image?👍

A great collage, are there a few very late night (i.e. very early morning) sessions in there?

Here are my five: The Dark Shark, RASA8/QHY268c The Spaghetti Nebula, RASA8/QHY268c,4 panel mosaic The Needle Galaxy, Esprit 150/ASI 178 dual rig Arp 84, the Heron, Esprit 150/ASI 178 NGC 3938, Esprit 150/ASI 178

Thanks for your comment, you have a great result there for 2 hrs of data, plenty of colour and detail in the core, and you have captured the faint irregular galaxy UGC 5086, to the lower left of NGC 2903. Have you loaded the EZ suite of free scripts into PI? I use the EZ denoise script a lot, it creates all of the masks automatically and does a great job 99% of the time on linear data. The soft stretch script is good also. Here is the link with the instructions on how to install the EZ processing suite, if you need them: https://remoteastrophotography.com/2020/12/easy-and-effective-noise-reduction-in-pixinsight

There is some nice detail in the core and the fainter arms are coming through well, I certainly think it is worth capturing RGB. Here is my effort from 2020, 8.7 hrs with the Esprit 150/ASI 178 rig.

Here is the very straightforward method I use for balancing a heavy side by side dual rig. In my case the scopes are in a fixed position on the plate bolted to the mount so I have to fix counter weights in the appropriate position, OK if your mount has the load capacity. http://www.wilmslowastro.com/tips/g11gemini.htm#balancing