tomato

Glad you have had some positive responses from suppliers after an incident that is all too easy to replicate. Just an observation on the supplier front, I discovered a broken roof tile on our new build house which is now 4 weeks outside of the builder's 2 year warranty. Even though the development is still under construction, and the roofers are still on site about 200 metres from our house, the builder's response was, "it's out of warranty, fix it yourself". Well yes, that's true, but they could learn a thing a two about building a good customer service reputation from your astro kit suppliers...

Like most good Astro kit they are currently out of stock.😉

To see Com Ports in Device Manager in Windows 10 you should select “Show hidden devices” in the View menu. They are there, why Windows 10 hides them by default beats me.

I would have expected the latest version of ASCOM to be backwards compatible with older ASCOM drivers. I needed to reinstall ASCOM recently and went with the latest version, but all of my historic drivers worked with it.

I definitely needed a bracing plate across the top of my scopes, but RASA8s are much lighter and shorter than Esprit 150s.

Looks like another impressive season coming up for the Hole Observatory, and there will be some RASA output from Les Granges to look forward to also. I must dust off my RASA8 at some point. Too much kit, not enough clear nights.😄

FWIW I always get nice, smooth symmetrical autofocus curves with the Celestron RASA focuser drive running through NINA. However, that was a while ago, it's not been out of the box since last Autumn.

If you have the same camera and filters on both scopes, finish your first panel in half the time then move on to the next one. That’s what I try and do with my dual Esprit 150 rig. However, I guess the saddle has enough adjustment to create a 10 or 20% overlapping FOV?

Great image, and beautifully framed with your set up. It’s so easy to crop bits off with a mosaic in an effort to keep the number of panels to a minimum, but you have it all.

So much detail in both the Bat and the Squid on such a challenging target. First class.

Far out, it just needs some zoomie headers…😎

Looks like a blower drive from a 60’s fueler…👍

Have you had a try with the Photometric Mosaic script in Pixinsight? It worked wonders on the data I collected for a 12 panel LRGB mosaic of M31 last year. You will need a wide field image of the region to act as a reference image. I am no expert with the script but with help from @Laurin Dave, the basic workflow I followed was: “the first step will be to create the individual panels as stand alone items... next crop these so that there are no artefacts at the edges.. this is important as any artefacts will mess up the gradient removal.. next step is to plate solve each panel using Pixinsight's Script... Image Analysis.. Image Solver.... once this is done you need to co-register them all, this is done using Pixinsight Script... Utilities.... Mosaic by Co-ordinates..... now would be the time to a) go for a long walk or do overnight... Once you have all the registered panels, including the wide field reference frames, the fun starts with the Mosaic script...” The script help file is very useful.https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sxPP-L2WMMQEESTsZVFEtQr8xr1ugti4/view I note your data is NB but this shouldn’t be a problem.

I have QHY268c OSC camera which is going on the scope soon for Sept/Oct/Nov so I’ll try the calibration on this one first. I just need to sort out a lens so it can image the monitor screen.

I can provide a calibrated monitor for the calibration device, it’s manipulating the data that I would need help with.

Ok, thanks. I would really like to follow the recommendations, so can anybody tell me if this can be done using existing processing software, (e.g. PI, StarTools, APP or Affinity Photo), without using spreadsheets to calculate the values of each pixel. Sorry if this sounds like the lazy option, but I think it has more chance of being widely adopted if it is relatively straightforward and easy to carry out. Perhaps someone smarter than me could write a PI script assuming one doesn’t already exist?

So we can have both. And on the perceptual element of the processing, taking @jager945 and @wimvb's point, we still need a white reference? So going forward, would it be possible to see an initial scientific colour calibrated image, (just to demonstrate that this has been done correctly) and then a final perceptually altered image? Would I be correct in saying every imager's scientific version would look the same when viewed on the same monitor, or as I suspect, would all other elements of the images need to be standardised for this to be true?

Getting back to the original post, can we assume the judges of the IKI M81/M82 competition will be assessing the entries on the basis of what makes a pretty picture rather than a scientific image, or is it possible to do both? If it is the latter, then there must still be an element of subjective judgment to achieve a balance between the two, and if the assessment is 100% quantitative then why do we need the judges?

Sharpcap is great value for money IMHO, the Polar Alignment tool is brilliant and you will make good use of it if setting up each time. The developer has done a lot of work on optimising the best settings for use with CMOS cameras, and new features are always being added. Other software you may not be familiar with is Astro Pixel Processor, which I primarily use for calibration and stacking, but it will also do post processing. Also check out StarTools for processing, an innovative package and a very well thought out workflow, great value for money. And I should also mention NINA, a recent (and free) integrated image capture package, my current choice of software for this operation. An awful lot of choice these days, enjoy the research!

Hi Neil, I wouldn’t recommend shortening the CW shaft unless you are 100% certain you will never increase the weight that’s currently riding on the mount. A shorter shaft could reduce the resale value as a shorter bar would limit what could be put on the mount, better to make a new shorter shaft and keep the original. I actually have a longer than standard CW shaft on mine as I have a big load of scopes on the Mesu, it just clears the inside of the dome, but just clears works for me, as I’m not in the dome when it’s running.

I've been following the @vlaiv initiated discussion on the many and varied colour renditions of the IKI OBs M81/M82 data with great interest and have made a few low level contributions to it. I confess to not fully understanding the discussions on colour transformation and reproduction, but it has motivated me, along with the ongoing UK permacloud, to try and get closer to what would be regarded as the 'right' colours on some LRGB data I acquired on M81 back in 2020. This is my latest effort to be compared to what is deemed to be an accurate rendition of the galaxy. Clearly not there yet, but if nothing else it has put more hours on my processing pilot's log. Reference Image:

May I suggest you do as much as you can while it’s cloudy to ensure your kit all works as it should when the clear night comes. Seven weeks ago I was all ready to go with my first automated unattended imaging session, now I’ve forgotten how to switch it all on. I’ve come to the conclusion that in the UK clear skies are a more precious commodity than all the imaging kit combined.

I could be mistaken but I think that Pillars image is narrowband, where there seems to be much more leeway when it comes to assigning a colour palette.

I have the 150 and the dewshield can droop a little if the two locking screws are not tight. I have fitted a foot long plastic tube extension to the existing shield (not dew control related) so some droop is inevitable. However, as you say it doesn't affect the performance of the scope at all. With the standard flattener fitted, the focuser is out at 6.3cm with an imaging camera on there.

Is it worth doing this on the IKI Obs data using an existing transformation matrix or would the IKI Obs have to create one with their camera? It would be really interesting to see the results.