tomato

It’s good they have a freeze point on these projects, otherwise they will just keep waiting for cheap kit to come out of China.☺️

Great images, I think star clusters are quite tolerant of moonlight, as your results demonstrate. I think clear nights, even when the moon is up, are too precious not to try and image something.

Great you have got it fixed, SGL doing it’s thing.👍

Here is what one 2 min sub looks like, calibrated and streched but no LP removal applied. The first image I posted is only 16 mins of integration taken under very adverse conditions, so I'd be interested to see what can be achieved with longer integration times and maybe a less severe LP contribution from the moon. For sure, a cooled dedicated astro camera will be a lot more sensitive than a DSLR, but I know some folks won't set up if there is a first quarter moon or bigger in the sky, even with dedicated equipment. I think there is some worthwhile DSO imaging time to be had under those conditions.

I happened to be imaging against a brighter background and noticed a square shaped shadow near the centre of the FOV. I removed the camera and inspected the sensor window and there was a tiny patch of condensation present, a quick blow with a hair dryer removed it straight away. Since then, the 4 watts of heating being applied from the ZWO tape is enough to keep it it at bay. A dry but cold location would be nice, but not likely to occur for me either.

I was out last night doing housekeeping on the rig and imaging as I steadfastly refuse to waste a clear night, moon up or not. Just as an exercise I imaged the Horsehead Nebula, 8 x 2 min exposures with a IMX 571 OSC camera and an Esprit 150 refractor. The moon was 85% illuminated and about 30 degrees away from the target, I had an LED street light directly below Orion. This was imagined in RGB, no NB filters. OK, it wasn't taken with entry level kit and it won't get an APOD, but all I'm saying is if we get a clear night and the moon is up, still have a go, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Interestingly if you put the same cooling profile into NINA for both cameras, the application of the cooler power is quite different, this is presumably down to the respective native drivers or the specs of the coolers? Its no big deal as both cameras get to the set point in the required time and they both use about the same amount of cooler capacity to maintain the temperature once reached.

And if you take out the guide camera and put in an eye piece the stars come to focus Ok?

So is this an OAG on the Tak or are you using this as a guidescope? Looks like something intruding into the light path, if the scope was fine for visual it must be something to do with the guide camera or it’s associated installation?

Don’t throw away the de-materialisation circuit, put that in your box of spare bits and pieces.😉

Just a postscript on the camera, I have noticed some moisture forming on the sensor window on recent sessions on cold, dewy nights, but the installation of a ZWO sensor heater has fixed this. This has never been an issue on the QHY 268 running under the same conditions, so you do get something for the extra spend.☺️

Agreed, I have bars with more holes in them than a Swiss cheese, but not enough to compromise it’s mechanical strength for the duty, and that’s all that matters.

I’ll second that, you have gone really deep and there is OIII signal there too. The background is noisy but this is with an uncooled DSLR?! An image worthy of your dedication, I presume if this was completed recently the moon has been around also, it’s a brilliant result.👍

Here is one more, binned 35% in Startools, and a darker background. Halos have gone, but the background is noisier. Again, thanks for the feedback, I now have a workflow for binning the data before onward processing. 👍

Hi @vlaiv, Image binned 60% in Startools, and a less aggressive star reduction in PI. I think the smooth halos are still there but are somewhat less obvious?

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, it’s imaging at 0.7 arcsec/pixel so binning the data is a good idea, I’ll have to see how best to do this with the software I have available. StarTools has a good binning tool but I need to see if I can save it from there in a linear state. As for the halos, this might be a artefact of my star reduction technique, and it’s the very first time I have used StarXTerminator, I’ll take a look.

I managed to add another 3.5 hrs data to my IC 342 Hidden Galaxy image last night, albeit with a 70% illuminated moon in attendance. I added this to the raw data (Esprit 150/IMX 571 OSC sensors) to give 8.4 hrs of integration, then calibrated and stacked in APP. I then applied the APP remove LP and Calibrate Star colours tools before using the StarXTerminator tool in PI to separate the stars (very impressed), reduce these and stretch the starless galaxy image before re-combining for further processing in Affinity Photo. What is intriguing me is unlike my first image, I appear to have lost a lot of the golden hue commonly seen on images of this galaxy, the spiral arms in particular have more blue in them than usually seen. The image also looks odd as the galaxy is in quite a dense star field and my radical star reduction has now made it look like it is in a sparsely populated part of the sky. Anyway, I can appreciate the comments made that if this galaxy was in a different part of the sky, it would probably out do M101 or M51 as a fine example of a face on spiral galaxy. Thanks for looking.

Thanks for providing the link to this, there are some good old fashioned gears in the actuators! It is easier to see where the $10 billion has been spent when read articles like this, all tested at ambient then put it in the cryo chamber and do it all again. My previous post of hoping to see this technology move into amateur scopes was maybe a tad optimistic…

Just a tip if you purchased the Esprit 150 new, or you have everything that was supplied with the scope, one of the adapters supplied can be machined to suit your needs, if you took one along to your local machine shop this might save you a bit on the job. These formed the basis of the custom adapters I needed.

I’ve never had a problem but then I’ve never felt the need to link CdC with any of the control packages I use (SGP and NINA). I sync in NINA with a platesolve then Goto the object in CdC, the mount (Mesu Sitech II) is connected to both NINA and CdC, this doesn’t cause any conflicts.

I’m assuming the algorithms have all been coded in based on image feedback so a large part of the operation does not require manual intervention?

I’m pretty sure it’s not done by worm gear reduction.😊

+1 for the Photometric Mosaic script, I had real problems with gradients across a 12 panel mosaic, below was my best effort before using the script, the second, with assistance from @Laurin Dave, was after using the tool.

That’s why it would have been great to have had a couple of conspiracy theorists with me when I managed to image the JWST last week. Of course, they probably would have said it was an asteroid that was on the image…

Not much help, but I purchased a second hand 16” SW flex tube a while back and there were some issues with the azimuth bearing and clutch assembly which required some machining to fix. If @Tomatobro sees this I’m sure he will supply details of the defect, but having said that you have already had a replacement base unit which fixed that problem? The altitude drive has been ok but then it hasn’t had a great deal of use given our cloud cover this year.