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szymon

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  1. I'd get a used set of Canon IS Binoculars. Older models go for that kind of price and frankly they're the best easily portable views I've ever seen in dark skies.
  2. Oh interesting, I'm surprised to hear that. Avalon claim that the EQ6 is the root of all evil and that's why they moved away from it to StarGo! Do ask if he'd be interested in selling (although I've just had to pay a yucky tax bill so money right now just isn't available, but I'd be interested in knowing if it'd be an option..).
  3. Crazy. Is yours the older EQ6 motherboard like mine or the newer StarGo board? (And if the latter does that mean you have a spare ? 😉).
  4. Yes, that was me 🙂. Avalon were excellent, I only had to pay for shipping for the belts. Attached is the reassembly tutorial they sent me, should give you all you need. -simon linear-reassembling-tutorial.pdf
  5. Update: I've been doing some digging and I now understand things are meant to work with this scope. Here is what you will get with the scope without any reducer (it's naturally flat, due to the built-in flattener😞 This matches up with my experience -- the stars in the corner at APS-C are nice and round, and it works pretty well for galaxies at f/8. Yaaay. Now, with the reducer I have, 0.7x which gives me f/5.6, the stars in the far corner look pretty odd when you go in close up: and indeed that's been my experience. However, as evidenced by my soul nebula above, they do round off nicely in stacking (and it's only in the extreme corners). Finally, there is another reducer available, 0.77x which gives me f/6.16, which should in theory give better results in the corners for APS-C: In fact, this reducer looks like the stars wouldn't be "too bad" in full frame even (based on how my APS-C stars round off with the other reducer). For now, I think I can live with the 0.7x and deal with the stars in the extreme corners; as mentioned they do seem to 'round off' in processing. If the 0.77x turns up for sale inexpensively somewhere in future I might get one, but it's not vital imho. -simon
  6. So, with my ASI1600 I did manage to get perfect round stars in the corners using the #37228 0.7x reducer (using a Gerd Neumann CTU to adjust for tilt). However I have now moved up to an APS-C IMX571 camera (the Altair 26M) and it is indeed impossible to get perfectly round corner stars with it, no matter what distance I have from sensor to reducer. Without the reducer at f/8 I get a perfectly flat field, so it’s just the reducer which is not capable of properly handling APS-C — which is disappointing, because it’s sold specifically as an APS-C capable imaging scope! Do you have any sample images with an IMX571 camera and the new HD reducer by any chance? It might be worth me investing in it — it’s currently galaxy season and the 825mm f/8 actually works surprisingly well from Light Polluted London (bortle 8, 18.25 SQM on a good day). However longer term I think I can live with f/6.16 and 635mm if I know for sure that I can get good corner stars 🙂 It’s actually not *that* bad with the 0.7x — I may just live with it as the stars do round off a little in stacking (a couple of my sample images attached — soul with the reducer, bode’s/cigar without) but it’s going to bug me...
  7. For planetary stacking, I run VMware fusion and either registax or autostakkert. Siril native on the Mac can do planetary stacking by all accounts, I've seen some nice results but never tried it. For DSO stacking I use PixInsight, but I don't think it's designed for planetary.
  8. This has always been one of my favourite nebulae -- I have a thing for dragons (the fighting dragons are my favourite in the southern skies). Since I image from Bortle 8 LPLondon, I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to do justice to this very faint nebula; there is no signal whatsoever on my individual subs! Nonetheless I am not displeased with the results. This image was taken with a new setup for me, and it does have some obvious defects. First off, the corner stars are a mess -- I have tilt and spacing issues, and I am waiting on some adapters to arrive so that I can fix them, so this is a "best efforts" spacing only 🙂. In addition, when taking this image I didn't yet have my DeepSkyDad AF3 set up on the Vixen, so I was focusing by hand with a Bhatinov mask. The focus seemed to hold pretty well (I had heard horror stories of Vixen focusers but the one on my quad seems to be very good indeed), but I'm sure it could have been tighter (I usually set up an AF run if HFR increases by 10%). I do feel that my processing lets me down somewhat. The final edit I chose brings the Ha and Sii into the Red channel at around the correct frequencies and uses the stars from the RGB frames. My original idea was to just go with a duo-band Ha/Sii presentation, but it didn't really have the depth that I wanted, so I grabbed some RGB in order to get the star colours. I will probably go back to the data at some future point and process it again. Total of 32 hours exposure: • 240 x 300s Ha • 90 x 300s Sii • 18 x 300s R,G,B Hardware: • ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool • Vixen AX103S Quad • Vixen 0.7x Reducer • ZWO EFW3 Filter Wheel • Antlia 36mm 3.5nm SHO Filters • Baader 36mm LRGB Filters • SkyWatcher HEQ5 Mount • SkyWatcher Evoguide 50ED • Altair 290C as Guide Camera Software: • N.I.N.A. -- Capturing • PHD2 -- Guiding • ASTAP -- Plate Solving • EzSuite — LiveStacking and Processing • PixInsight — Final Processing Tweaks
  9. Their support page is misleading; they’ve been asked to remove the support claim until they actually implement it 🙂.
  10. Absolutely lovely! Shame about the Oiii — I suppose those posting HOO are just showing Oiii stars and no nebula. Good to know!
  11. 3.2 Gigapixel camera made out of 189 individual...CCDs. Should have gone with new generation BSI Exmoor sensors from Sony. Let the flame wars begin 🙂
  12. This sums up almost exactly my thoughts on the matter. Perfectly encapsulated. Yes it's not an 'astrophoto' in the way that we usually understand it, but it really makes it stand out. I look to the skies to spur my imagination; I am not a scientist, I am an imager; I see the future and the past, civilisation and void, the possibilities of life and the unknown. That is why I keep my eyes (and cameras) to the sky, and I very much appreciate the winning image.
  13. Whoops, yes you're right, google failure. The point however is that the diagonal is such that it should be reasonable, with flats, in the imaging circle of the scope. Pythagoras says slightly under 20mm diagonal with those sensor measurements...
  14. I am thinking future plans for my guide scope and ASI1600MM, along with a TS Optics filter drawer. The filter drawer is 10mm, and it fits direct to the camera's 6.5mm male M42. I'm thinking it will work as a very portable light-weight setup, and I don't think it will vignette more than can be handled by flats (28mm imaging circle, 13x10mm sensor). I will give it a try at some point and if the flats correct the vignetting enough then I'll consider the flattener for megaportable...
  15. Wow, that's nothing at all. Considering the quality of your gear (although I know very little about CCDs but I assume those are sensitive) perhaps there just really isn't anything, and the HOO images that are out there are just the Ha against background and stars.
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