cuivenion

Problem is though, is that it's not just a few eccentrics. Although they're firmly in the minority at the moment flat earthers have their own convention now and are starting to get quite a lot of mainstream exposure. For me they're in the same bracket as anti vaxxers. There's a weird brand of anti intellectualism in the world at the moment where the individual opinion is prized above evidence. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, they're not entitled to have it protected from scrutiny.

Aborting a slew I'm not sure about, but you can definitely sync the mount. As far as I'm aware you can abort a slew in eqmod or the synscan app anyway, although I agree having it included in Stellarium would be good.

Cheers.

Cheers Craig, I do like my 130PDS.

Hi, I've not done lunar imaging in a while so I'm fairly happy with how this one turned out, no gaps! This is a 14 panel mosiac taken at 1300 focal length with a ZWO AS224mc, Skywatcher 130PDS, x2 Barlow, and a Skywatcher HEQ5. I used a ZWO 850nm filter and filmed in mono 8. I actually focused on a star before imaging using FHWM values instead of eyeballing it on the moon. Software used was Sharpcap for capture, Autostakkert 3 for stacking, Microsoft ICE for the mosiac and Pixinsight for processing. Each panel used the best 5% of around 4000 frames. Comments and criticisms welcome as usual.

I think you can do that but it won't be random. Backyard EOS software gives you the option to dither while not guiding with a DSLR, not sure about APT.

it's called walking noise. You need to dither to get rid of it. It happens when you have a slight drift in one direction and becomes apparent in the stacked image.

Brilliant explanation and something I've not taken into account during my forays in planetary imaging. Regarding the earlier point about colour cams and Bayer drizzle I may have to reprocess some of my earlier attempts.

Fantastic!

Just to let you know the latest Stellarium now supports ASCOM (on Windows) telescope control, so you no longer need Stellariumscope to connect to EQMOD.

Your polar scope needs to be calibrated, that is, aligned to the RA axis of the mount: https://www.myastroscience.com/polarscopecalibration You need to also account for cone error if you're expecting to see Polaris centered in the main scope and the polarscope at the same time. Having Polaris centered in both isn't necessarily what you're looking for though. Just make sure that your polar scope is calibrated and you've corrected cone error as well as possible. Then go through whatever polar alignment routine you use. If you're imaging and using a guider just use Sharpcap Polar Alignment. Just get Polaris in the FOV of your polarscope (you have to get a rough polar alignment to get Sharpcap to work) and then use Sharpcap from there. It's great.

Wow, great final version.

It's looking good, the problem seems to have gone. You do seem to have a strange artifact either side of the galaxy's center: But I'm not sure what is causing that. That being said it's quite hard to see the new artifacts unless you zoom in and the it's a great image. Nice one mate.

No probs, There will be a way to protect the data, Pixinsight uses masks, other software may be different. Hopefully someone familier with ImagePlus and Photoshop can give some advice.

Hi, the artifacts are in the tiff, as you said you applied star reduction in the luminance. Here's an example using my M82. Unfortunately you cant see the Ha tendrils as well from the centre as I don't have your data but you can see how the star reduction blurs the details when applied without a mask or other protection. The three images are with no star reduction, one iteration, and two iterations. Again I'm not getting exactly the same effect because I'm using a slightly different process and your data is a lot better, but hopefully you can see what I mean.

Hi, morphological transform is the Pixinsight version of star reduction. It's basically effecting most of the detail in the galaxy, I don't use photoshop so don't know how you'd go about protecting the galaxy and background. Try a version without the star reduction and look at the image at full resolution and you should notice the difference. I would add I can't wait to look at the image at full res with that effect removed, it's a cracker.

Hi Geoff, it's a great shot but it looks like something went wrong processing wise. Did you use morphological transform or other star reduction without using a mask? The galaxy has a weird blurring crystalline effect that I've seen before when I've done this.

Ouch, thats not good. When you say many people haven't received their scope how do you know thats the case? Not doubting you've had problems, just wondering what the backstory is here.

Thanks Ouroboros.

Had another go, Let me know what you think:

I've always controlled the mount via my laptop so I wasn't aware the handset had a polar alignment routine, yeah that's definitely a good way to go. If he's guiding anyway then I'd recommend the Sharpcap method.

If you're on a tight budget try using the folder monitor option in Sharpcap with the polar align feature as outlined above. If you're going to be using a guiding set up anyway use a ZWO ASI224 (about £220) for the guide cam and a 9x50 finderscope with a suitable adapter. I'd recommend the 224 because it's also an excellent planetary camera if you ever want to go in this direction and it's very sensitive for a colour camera. There are cheaper options as well such as the Altair GPCAM offerings. There are plenty of guidecams out there. I'd advise against using a 640x480 webcam. Its likely that the webcam won't be able to expose for longer than 0.5s. Sharpcap polar algnment will be struggle under those conditions. I will admit I havn't used one of these webcams so maybe you'll be lucky and find one with long exposure. Guiding and polar alignment exposure lengths tend to be about 2s or longer. One more bit of advise is to find as rigid and stable a mounting system for your guider as possible. The bracket that comes with the 9x50 finder is only useful for visual observing. I quite like the look of this package as an all in guidescope and mounting: https://www.modernastronomy.com/shop/accessories/qhy-accessories/qhy-miniguidescope-kit/ It does depend on what focal length scope you want to guide though.

Thats very impressive, the 12v power bank i got recently only powers my heq5 for 3 hours. Unfortunately I need about 5a to run the HEQ5 without a hitch. It's also quite finicky on voltage. If it goes below 12v I get the flashing warning light so I use a step up circuit to keep it at 14 volts. I think I'm going to save up and buy one of these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/36-hole-Lithium-Golf-Battery-Pack-ideal-PowaKaddy-Hill-Billy-and-Motocaddy-22ah/392118280960?hash=item5b4c122300:g:L~4AAOSwFqJWs3Ry A bit cheaper than the tracer batteries.

You have power banks that supply 2.4a per USB output connection now, that being said the USB isn't the important thing you could use a USB to jack converter, its more being able to the have lower voltage and use a battery that doesn't cost that much and doesn't weigh a ton.

You can get power banks that supply about 2.4a per 5v USB output now, fairly inexpensive too. Maybe the voltage is to low to drive suitable motors though.