assouptro

4 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

I disagree - I think it is very special because you have achieved a great result whilst imaging below 25 degrees. "Well done" to you - and thanks for sharing.

Adrian

Thank you for the kind words Adrian

Your comment is encouraging and made me smile 😊

🙏

Bryan 

Hi Stargazers! 
 

It’s been a while! 
I lost the last 6 months wide field data due to hdd failure and I have been rebuilding my rig after the “flying boat” incident 

(some guys get all the luck) 

Whilst deciding what bits to replace, I cobbled together a rig with my old revelation Astro ed100 combined with my qhy268 (there’s another story!) and Antlia edge 4.5nm filters 

I took an image of Thors Helmet many years ago with a canon 350d on my 12” Meade sct  and was always going to return to it some day 

I was hoping to start this in Dec or even Nov but equipment and weather didn’t allow

One thing I’ve discovered, guiding gets tricky at this altitude! 

Anyhoo! This is a crop of the final, and it’s ok but I was hoping for slightly better, I guess a longer focal length, better guiding and living further south would help? 

It’s nothing special, but what can you do when imaging below 25°?

Thanks for looking 

Bryan 

Apparently the short back focus of the qhy268m can cause issues with the front glass not warming quick enough to match the cooling chip 

slower cooling helps 

also the orange desiccant provided has the added benefit of changing colour to a green/blue when saturated 

cheers 

Bryan 

Here in the North West Lancashire it has been really really wet for what seems like a ridiculous length of time! 
I have my rig permanently outside on a pier under a telegizmos 365 cover (has been for 15 years or so) 

I have a dehumidifier under the cover and up till now that has been enough, just recently, I’ve added another dehumidifier and a seed tray warming mat to attempt to alleviate the excessive moisture in the air and the length of time between letting the scope breathe! (Which I do as often as I can, weather and other commitments permitting) 

Basically, for my location, it’s the wettest it’s been for a long time. 
 

I’m not surprised there are a few soggy cameras out there! 

10 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

Thanks.

Just tried it all again this time cooling in stages, when powering this camera on it auto cools to zero, so left it at that for a few mins, then went to -5 for a few mins and then -10 and even -13 and all good no frosting issues….🤔

 

I’ve  had this issue a couple of times whilst trying to take flats on my qhy258m at -15 and the humidity rises above 60% 

It is normally solved by replacing the desiccant and leaving it alone for a couple of days, also I reduce the temperature slowly, and sometimes in stages normally 10-15 min in Nina as I’ve had this problem when I reduce the temp too quickly 

I leave my desiccant tube attached permanently 

Good luck, I’m sure all will be fine 

Bryan 

2 hours ago, Shimrod said:

I have recovered data from disk drives in the past (both SSD and mechanical) using r-studio that @Adreneline has mentioned above. It all depends on what has failed on the drive  - you mention that it cannot be seen by other laptops when mounted in a caddy. Is this not seen as in 'can't seen any physical disk at all' or just 'can't see the formatted drive'? The screenshot below shows  part of the disk management screen (search create and format hard disk partitions in windows) with allocated drive letters. If the disk can be seen but shows as 'unformatted', it could just  be the partition data or MBR has been damaged and that might be recoverable. If nothing shows for the disk, it most probably indicates a physical failure (or a defective caddy - you might want to check with another disk). 

 

 

Thanks 

I have 2 caddy’s and 3 m.2 drives (including the one that is in question) 

I tried disk management last night and it doesn’t even register in the list in either caddy 

I’ve exhausted all I can do as a layman and I as wondering if anyone has had experience with drive recovery via a business that claims to be able to recover data (at cost) 

I would probably throw a few hundred £’s at the drive if I thought it could be recovered but couldn’t justify a grand or more as I could buy a new swanky laptop for that

I’m weighing up the pros and cons

Downloading all the programs and training the ppec and  focus routine offsets etc when I get so few clear nights is  nearly enough to make me consider changing hobbies! 

That’s on top of the loss of data that I haven’t processed as far back as June! 
 

I’m really disheartened. 
This hobby gives great personal rewards but when things go wrong, really wrong, it’s devastating 😢

Thanks to all that have shared their thoughts 

Backup, Backup, Backup seems to be the consensus 

Has anyone had anh success with data recovery from an m.2 Drive? 
 

cheers

Bryan 

Hi Stargazers 

A lesson learned, I guess. 
my capture laptop M.2 nvme drive just died this evening

I was setting up a new rig after my equipment was damaged in the storms recently and my laptop decided to show the message “no bootable disk”

I removed the ssd and put it in a caddy to check it

It cannot be seen by my other laptop, I’ve checked with 2 caddies 

I have months of unprocessed data, all of my capture programs, pixinsight, astropixel processor, photoshop, and several other programmes on it that will take me days to re-install and train, not to mention the lost image data 

I am so frustratedly angry that I didn’t back the laptop up. Or as a minimum transfer the image data to a separate drive 

I don’t think it’s recoverable. 
I have reached out to a company that claim to be able to repair m.2 drives but looking at reviews I’m not hopeful. 
 

Has anyone got any advice (beyond, backing up data?)  

I'm not having a lot of luck recently 

Anyway, rant over 

Bryan  

12 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

That’s a bit of a nightmare Bryan.  Hopefully you get sorted.  Looking at the video, that couldn’t have been a worse hit, right on the button! ☹️

For me personally, if it was one item I wouldn’t bother, but given your entire imaging rig has been damaged I think I’d be inclined to do a tally of the cost of replacing it and see what it’s looking like, with a view to putting in a claim.  If it’s one of the better companies you’ll be ok. 

Thanks for the input Dr!

I spoke to the insurance today to make sure my policy would cover it and I have been told it will

The camera and the mount are going to be difficult to test but I can’t see them liking the impact and it’s bound to have caused some miss alignment with gears, and cmos sensors etc 

I’m waiting for a call from the Specialist company that deal with electronic goods, it’ll be an interesting chat! 
I doubt they’ve heard of a Pegasus Astro focus cube let alone a qhy268m or an eq8! 
 

Thanks again 

Bryan 

44 minutes ago, Louis D said:

In my experience, once you have enough damage to get past the typical 2% of insured value deductible, file for everything possible to make it worth your while.  When I had a lightning ground strike wipe out my plumbing and multiple electronic devices, I had repairmen and original cost receipts along with photos and videos of the damage to show them.  They just took my word for everything and wrote me out a check for plumbing/electrical repair costs and full replacement value of fried electronics minus my deductible on everything.

Six months later I found I'd missed that my water softener had gotten partially fried as well, so its $600 repair didn't end up being covered because the claim was closed.  It worked post-strike, but at only 40% capacity.  That was a subtle issue to track down and root cause once I noticed the reduced capacity.  Thus, make sure to assess all damage before claiming.

It will be hard to know if anything you have is repairable back to the level it functioned at before.  That would depend on finding a repair facility qualified to do the repairs, and it being able to do the lab testing necessary to verify factory tolerances are being met once repaired.  Good luck with that.  Instead, push for full replacement value as much as you can.

It turns out trying to dispose of a fried 50" plasma TV was the most difficult task of all related to that claim.  Our trash collector and our recycler wouldn't take it.  I finally found a local repairman who would take it for spare parts.  He could sort through it to see what was salvageable.

Thanks for the input Louis

I was only going to claim for the lens at first but as it’s all sensitive precision equipment I think it should all be replaced if possible 

we’ll see what happens 

Thanks again

Bryan 

39 minutes ago, malc-c said:

I'm no expert so take this with a pinch of salt, but from my experience with a loss adjuster when my £1000 camcorder was knocked off the counter by my 5 year old son (now 29) is that they only pay out the full amount if the item is damaged 100% beyond a repair, and if damage appears cosmetic it may be a case that they will pro-rata any pay out.  The other thing to be concerned over is the impact having a claim on your policy might have.  There is every chance that your premiums will sky rocket next year.  Having said that things may have changed in recent years so only your insurance company can really advise you what may happen.  But be careful.  Years ago I contacted my insurance seeking advice to see if a small issue with flashing on out roof was covered.  The following year out policy jumped and when I looked at the details the call was logged as a no pay out claim.  When I asked them to go back and listen to the call as I disputed this as I never asked or suggested I was making a claim did they correct this and removed the claim form my details.

Personally, if the mount / camera and lens still works fine, and there are no cracks in the lens, so you can still get the same results as before the canoe attached it then just put this down to an experience that you can learn form and save the claim for a more pressing time should you ever need it.  But its your call

 

Thanks for your response Malc

I had the foresight to protect my no claims discount so I’m hoping this will help when my insurance is up for renewal? 

I too had an insurance hike 10 years ago  when I called about a phone screen but decided to get apple to fix it, the call was logged and the insurance price went up until I proved it wasn’t a claim!

Regarding the damage, the lens is broken, not the glass but the plastic ring at the back was ripped out,

I may be able to glue it back together but it’ll never be the same?
My camera works but has had a big knock, is dented and this might have shifted the chip and surely effects its re-sale value

I can’t be sure the mount or the camera will perform as they did unless I get the chance to test them thoroughly, which will be difficult with the weather we’ve been experiencing of late 

So as I have the no claims cover, and had the telescope equipment mentioned in the policy, paying extra for the privilege I’m hoping it’ll be ok? 
 

Thanks for taking the time to shed your thoughts and experience 

kind regards 

Bryan

Hi all 

I had a disaster today! 

We had a freak gust of wind that blew my Canadian Canoe off my garage roof, across the garden and into my scope! 
 

warning! 

Not for the faint of heart! 
 

Main damage was my Samyang 135 which was ripped off my Qhy filter wheel, also a dent to my qhy268m and a broken Pegasus Astro focus cube 

lens

focus cube 

camera 

mount 

I have been in touch with my home Insurance (never claimed before) and I had the foresight to include extra cover for my telescope and photographic equipment so it looks like they are going to help! 
 

my Qhy camera works, but it’s taken a big knock! 

What I’m wondering is, should I claim for the camera  and possibly the eq8 mount? 

With them  being sensitive precision pieces of scientific equipment that have taken the brute force of an old  heavy 40kg canoe slamming into it at speed will it be sensible to claim for them both? 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions! 
 

Bryan 
 

Stunning Rodd

I know how difficult it is to do justice to this jaw-dropping visual target, and I really believe you have done it justice!

Thank you for sharing 

Bryan

Hi, Richard.

Actually, I think this was the image I was experimenting with, I’m not completely happy with it but I’ll share it anyway so you can see the star colour

Thanks 

Bryan

1 hour ago, Richard_ said:

Thanks for the suggestion Bryan! I've used SPCC for my LRGB/RGB images but I haven't used it for SHO as I use the "Narrowband Normalization" process for managing colours of the SHO nebulosity.

Perhaps it may be useful to make a clone of my image and perform SPCC just to correct star colours, then take the stars out of that image and insert into my processed, starless image? Do you have any experience in this approach? 

I’ve only had one go at it so far, and it did seem to help with star colour, the process was at first, frustrating as I had registered and integrated the images in App not pixinsight so it didn’t have any plate solve information, I had to then learn how to solve my image in pix and download the gaia catalogue and learn how to link it etc then I could recalibrate the image using my filter specific info.

It seems better to do this and remove the stars  whilst the image is linear, but it’s definitely worth a pop at doing it in its current stretched state just to see what you get!? 
 

I haven’t any examples on my phone to share sorry. 
 

let me know if it makes any difference? 
 

Cheers 

Bryan 

1 hour ago, Richard_ said:

Yeah that's narrowband stars for you! I did remove them via StarXterminator after stretching so when I was adjusting the colour of the nebulosity, it shouldn't have affected the star colour. I did use the Correct Magenta Stars script to remove typical purple cast on SHO NB stars but maybe there's a few tricks to improve the star colour?

I did want to replace them with RGB stars but I don't know when I'll be able to image next. I can live with these stars for now

Hi Richard 

great image! 
it’s a shame the weather has been so poor recently, I hope we get some clearer weather soon (probably the next full moon!) 

I just thought I’d mention a method I saw for improving star colour in narrowband images, it was a YouTube instruction by James Lamb regarding creating a Hubble pallet from an OSC camera, I’m not sure why I was watching it as I don’t even own a OSC camera! Probably due to the weather and lack of clear skies?! 
Anyway, you may already be using this method, or be aware of it, but if not, it’s spectrophotometricColorCalibration

I’ll pop a link here, it’s what he does about 9 minutes in that I found informative 

Anyway, as I said 

fab image!! 
 

cheers 

Bryan 

I was just doing some research when I stumbled across this old post  of mine!

I then thought, ,someone else may be having a similar issue so I thought I'd bring the discussion to some conclusion as it may help someone at some point

The problem turned out to be a fault with the camera!

I was unlucky to buy a second hand QHY268M with a fault!

My inexperience with cmos sensors and the assumption that the camera was ok made me question my methods of acquisition but all along the sensor was at fault

I was only able to prove this by learning about sharpacap sensor analysis and being fortunate to have a neighbour who owned a QHY268C that I could borrow to test my methods 

The camera appeared to have little to no well depth! 

I was also fortunate that Rupert from Astrograph.net was kind enough to take the camera back as it was under warranty event though I wasn't the original purchaser!

It took 6 Months!! but, I finally got my camera back! and I am very happy to report, all is well! ( apart from the uk weather!)

Anyway, I just thought I'd close this case and hope it might be of use to anyone unfortunate to be in a similar position 😊

All the best 

Bryan

24 minutes ago, John said:

A bit murky out there tonight. Very warm too. I can just see a handfull of the brightest constellation stars. I have my 100mm scope out and I'll take a look at Saturn shortly. Somehow I think Enceladus will not be viable tonight - I'll be lucky if I can see Titan !

Seeing is terrible here in NW UK!

It seems criminal to have had such a lousy summer then when i can see the sky, the turbulence is soo bad it doesn't seem worth the effort of setting up!

I hope it improves 🤞 

36 minutes ago, Elp said:

It's a broadband/RGB target I believe so any camera will do. What you don't know is what your local light pollution will be like...

Thanks Elp 

this is true! 
Ig looks like the local lp should be low but as it’s a Villa, I would imagine there will be outside lights on sensors

As an electrican I should be able to deal with anything really local if I need to! 
 

thanks for your input! 😊

 Hi starpeeps!

I’m really lucky to be going to Corfu on Monday! I haven’t been abroad for some time and struggling with making Astro kit decisions 

 Being so far south so close to the longest day I am hoping to capture an image of Rho Ophiunchi

I will be reverting back to one of 3 dslr cameras with a Samyang 135 lens 

canon 6d unmodified or canon 6d modified (full spectrum) with  a full frame clip in Idas D1 filter or a canon 60d (also full spectrum no filters, or clip in astronomic uhc, ha, oiii, lp filters)

I will be using an Astrotrac TT320AXG (remember them?!) on a Giotto tripod with 2 Manfrotto  410jnr heads, one for the Astrotrac, one for the camera of choice 

I would love to take a cooled mono with filters but I can’t work out the logistics! And I can’t carry power supplies or extension leads so I will be dependent on batteries 
 

so….

Which camera, filter combo will best suit my task?? 

I should add, I will only have couple of nights at the start of the holiday due to the moon phase and the site is south facing bottle 4 (ish) 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions! 😊

Bryan 

1 hour ago, neil phillips said:

Appears to be a country wide seeing problem. We all had it.  Its not a jet stream. But some kind of large warm air mass. it constantly knocks the image out of focus

Thank you for replying Neil 

I thought it might have been the jet stream last night but after checking the the  meteorological data I could see the jet stream is still high above the uk! 
 

I just needed some confirmation as I have been changing a few things, mount, software, pec training etc and I slightly worried I had cocked up somewhere in the process! 
 

Thanks again Neil 

kind Regards 

Bryan

Hi Starpeeps! 
 

I have just changed my mount and after spending the last few nights getting everything working as I would like I’m having real issues guiding and imaging even just focusing tonight, I’m wondering if there is some high turbulence playing havoc with my imaging or if there is something else more localised to my system at fault 

Btw, I’m at an extremely long focal length of just over 2000 with a 12” sct with a Starizona focal reducer so any turbulence will be exaggerated. 
 

it’s clear! But is it?? 
 

Thanks 

Bryan 

You’ve coped well without effective flats 

You’ve captured a lot of dust! 
what length of subs a did you use? 
What’s you skies Bortle value? 
 

nice image, has depth! 
Thanks for sharing 😊

Bryan

Hi Stargazers! 
 

it’s been a while since I posted an image 

I have been waiting for 6 months for a faulty Qhy268m I bought last year to be sent to and return from China! 
I was fortunate the camera was still under warranty and even though I wasn’t the original purchaser of the camera Rupert from Astrograph.net was amazingly helpful, taking the camera back and dealing with the repair for me! 
 

Since getting it back, I have had to set it up with the current scope I have mounted and then learn how to navigate Nina (which I am slowly becoming a fan of!) and Cmos imaging!

I haven’t managed to get enough colour subs to produce a final image but I’m pleased with what I have achieved in less than 2 hours 4min subs high gain mode 56/26 (my starting pain/offset whilst I learn the intricacies of Cmos) 

Surprisingly quick processing too apart from the initial stacking due to the 50Mb file size, very different to CCD. 
 

anyway, I could waffle on but I won’t….

Here it is.

Meade 12” lx200 with Starizona LF reducer 

I could have squeezed more from the background, but will leave that to the final image with the colour subs (still waffling, sorry!) 

Thanks for looking 

Cheers 

Bryan

Stunning job! 
Thanks for sharing 

Bryan