tomato

Wonderful detail around the Elephant’s Trunk region, and certainly no shortage of colour. I prefer the toned down version but I always think with narrowband there is a lot of scope to adjust the colours to individual taste.👍

Any CEM120s coming?

This, most definitely not grab and go.😊

Thanks to advice received here shortly after joining SGL I purchased a Mesu 200, and would agree it’s the best Astro imaging equipment purchase I have made. I heard a comment today that Mesu mounts are purchased by folks who like to tinker with their mounts, I would venture the precise opposite is true.

Indeed, but RASAs have lots of other ways of producing dodgy stars, at least in the corners.😉

This is my Grunt ‘n go 16” Dobsonian, about 3 mins from garage to back lawn.

My Mesu dual Esprit 150 rig guiding performance seems to be susceptible to both seeing conditions and scope orientation, which probably means the balance needs work. Nevertheless it can vary from 0.35-0.7” total RMS. My experience concurs with @gorann, RASA8 with separate guidescope is not as good as OAG on the 1050mm FL refractor.

Great rig, nice to see someone making a Mesu portable. That drilled semi-circular plate on the adjustable wedge looks suspiciously like the ones installed on the Mk I Mesu.😊

Glad you are feeling better Steve, I agree with @callisto, I would get a PCR test.

Oh boy, the weather must be really getting to us, I really like the broadband vs Ha analogy. Isn’t nebulae imaging just taking pictures of clouds anyway?☺️

The artic fans as used by @Tomatobro are vibration free, certainly down to an imaging scale of 0.47” per pixel.

Agreed, I unpark the mount, slew to the target, then let NINA and ASTAP platesolving do the rest.

I think retro fitting Peltier coolers to CMOS cameras can be a good thing, but in my experience you need to be careful. Full on unregulated cooling fitted externally to the casing can easily lead to moisture or ice formation which can get on the sensor window, especially if the camera is pointing near the vertical. I use ASI178 cameras retrofitted with regulated set point coolers, so they run at a reasonably stable set point (+/- 2 deg C) so more along the lines that @vlaiv describes. My preferred set point is above freezing, 5 deg C.

So I manged to remove the corrupted files from the ProgramData folder, I then reinstalled ASCOM followed by the Atik core software, but the filter wheel was still not being picked up. Then I noticed the working laptop was using an earlier version of the Atik software (June 2020), so I installed this and success! NINA will now connect to the EFW2 on my second PC.

I prefer the first image and I have to say your composition with the terrain is great, I love the way the star clouds tower over it, almost like thunder clouds.👍

Great M108, and I love the mosaic of distant galaxies captured. I presume that was just painstaking work on your part to create this?

Here is another DSO "lucky imaging" effort, the best 150 x 5 sec Lum subs of M27 from over 1800 taken with the Esprit 150/ASI 178. Processed in Startools ver 1.7.

Sorry should have picked that up from your signature info. I have the QHY colour version, looking forward to giving this a work out on the Esprit and not just keeping it for the RASA.

Very nice M81, that’s a mono camera with filters, right?

I think I have traced it to a couple of Atik corrupt files on the one PC. The trouble is they are in the ProgramData folder and Win 10 is very protective of them, I’m finding it very difficult to replace or overwrite them, the corrupted code appears to be protecting them from deletion? It’s beyond my software capabilities so I’m keeping the one laptop that the EFW will connect to as the RGB slave scope and reconfiguring another laptop to control the OAG scope and mount.

I have posted about this on the NINA forum but thought I might see if anyone on SGL has encountered this issue: I am running two versions of NINA currently, the latest full release, and the nightly build 114, both on Windows 10 machines. I have an Atik EFW 2 which connects to the full release version no problem but I get a "file access path denied" error on the nightly build version. The wheel connects OK under ASCOM on both machines, they are both running the same version of the Atik driver, any thoughts? Logically it sounds like the nightly build version is the problem, but it was working yesterday on both versions after I installed the earlier version of the Atik core software, but today not so. Maybe a Windows update issue? I uninstalled the latest Windows update from yesterday but still the same, works OK on the one laptop, but not the other.

Wonderful image Peter. I find getting a great photo of M31 hard enough, never mind trying to capture any faint Ha that surrounds it!

No, I will try that, but I do find the collimation changes over time anyway on the 16”, it will shortly receive an upgrade by having some fans fitted to the base of the mirror cell. I store it in the garage when not in use and at this time of year the garage door sees all of the afternoon sun so the Dob must be at 10-15 deg above ambient when I first take it out to use, not good!

Yes, that is correct. The lift may look awkward, but if the scope is put horizontal on the mount, with the clamps loosened you can just tilt it out of the dovetail with these handles. If you have tall tripod/pier it would be harder but my pier was a short one for imaging use only.

Do you want the handle to stay on permenantly? @Tomatobro made these for an Esprit 150, from aluminium angle and some sturdy plastic handles off the internet. They do have to be bolted on and off but I safely put the scope on and off the mount with these maybe 30+ times before I got a permanent setup.