Bigfoot 9907

@Adam J here is an uncropped image. 

Target 3_180sec_1x1__0023.fit

53 minutes ago, newbie alert said:

Sorry if this sounds harsh as it's not intended but I don't think your eq6 r pro is capable of .23 arc secs per pixel ...otherwise no-one would buy top end mounts 

I'd check that you guidescope is fully tightened down to eliminate flex, and usually say to check that you're guiding on actual stars and not noise but your guide graph suggests that the mount is reacting to corrections

With a Rasa focus and spacing are much more critical 

0.23 arc seconds was a one off, normally I'm getting between 0.30 and 0.5. Also,  I'll make sure the guide scope is secured down.

Thank you gents for the feedback. I am using an Orion 50mm mini guide scope with the Orion Starshoot camera. I have just checked PHD2 and found an incorrect setting. the focal length is set to 300 when it should be 162mm. However, i don't think this would cause star trails, but instead the wrong RMS error readings.

I have taken 60 second and two minute subs with perfectly round stars, but this was a couple of months ago. My first attempt at 3 minute subs with the RASA 8 and I'm getting trailing stars, although they are not really visible when seeing the image as a whole as seen in the screenshot. I will try again tonight with the 60 second and 120 second exposures and see if I'm still getting round stars. 

Many thanks

Greetings all, 

I have a RASA8, EQ6 pro and ASI1600MC pro camera, using PHD2 as my guiding software. I have recently switched from taking 1 minute subs to 3 minute subs and have noticed egg shaped stars. They are not noticeable on the full image but when zoomed they are very noticeable. I have redone the PA using sharpcap and it gave me an 'Excellent' PA. the PHD2 graph looks pretty good too. So not sure where the issue is. 

Also, i have noticed that the bottom left of the image is slightly out of focus compared to the rest of the image (N again, only noticeable when zoomed in).

I attach my PHD2 graph and also a zoomed in imaged showing the elongated stars. This is the centre of the image where i would expect round stars.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

I'm still very much learning and here is my image of NGC6820, an emission nebula in the Constellation of Vulpecula. My Skywatcher 200p certainly needs collimating and i need to invest in a field flattener. I've used the Hubble palette with narrowband filters and an ASI 1600 mm Pro camera. I've oversaturated the colour, but all in all i'm very pleased with it

Greetings all, any RASA 8 owners out there?  I'm wondering what 2" filter drawer you are using. I know that back focus is important so i don't want to get the wrong one. I've seen a ZWO for £79 and a Starizona for £139.

Any recommendations would be great.

Cheers 

@Adam Jmany thanks

I purchased an ASI1600mm pro (mono) camera 6 months ago and what a great camera. I'd been using it without any issues, however, after a 4 week break i went back to it and took a 5 second test shot only to see an horrendous artefact on the left hand site of the image which did not lessen over time. I removed the camera, and noticed a streak of some residue running down the RHS of the sensor. I have had the camera in the warm house now for a couple of days and the residue hasn't evaporated.

Any ideas what it could be? I'm concerned the residue may be coming from the sensor itself due to some fault.

I haven't tried to clean the streak off the sensor as I feel that removing the lid of the camera to get at it may invalidate the warranty.  

@laser_jock99 Many thanks.

A happy accident! I was expecting a cloudy Welsh night, so to capture the movement of the clouds, I placed my canon dslr camera on a tripod and positioned it above Lake Vyrnwy and took 15 second exposures with a delay of 5 seconds, thus creating a time lapse covering about 2 hours. To my pleasant surprise, 28 seconds in to the timelapse the clouds opened up and Comet Neowise suddenly popped in to view. I assumed our celestial visitor would have been closer to the horizon and hence not visible from my location. But nice to have captured it with a normal camera and tripod. BTW, a couple of shooting stars are also visible, if you can spot them

Also, does anyone know the bortle scale of lake Vyrnwy? The clear dark skies appear darker than anywhere else i've been to including Kielder forest.

@x6gas Appreciate your kind words

@MarkAR Many Thanks. Regarding the elongation of stars around the edge of the image, i put it down to coma, although i may be incorrect.

Cheers Paul

A couple of clear nights last week and i managed to capture 3 hours of data on the eastern veil nebula, 1.5 hours Ha and 1.5 hours Oiii ( Meade 480mm F6 refractor + ASI1600mm camera) and combined using the HOO pallete. Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop. My processing skills are still very basic and I am still very much learning the dark craft.

7 hours ago, ApophisAstros said:

What would happen if you put a EFW with narrowband filters on a OSC, would you get the best of both worlds or just no benefit?

Roger

I've never tried that with my OSC bit i assume the image will not be a higher resolution as a mono camera due to the Bayer matrix.

I live in a Bortle 9 area and even on a dark moon free clear night i can count no more than a dozen stars in the sky.  I suffered terribly with OSC imaging, even with a LP filter and processing was a nightmare as my images were incredibly noisy.

However, recently i decided to go the NB route and a few weeks ago i took a 1.5 hour exposure of the veil nebula in HA and 1.5 hours in Oiii using a skywatcher 200p reflector telescope and ASI1600mm camera.  The resultant HOO image is below. ( The image with the diffraction spikes) Compare that with a 5 hour OSC image i took a couple of years ago from the same light polluted back garden, i used a Meade 80mm refractor telescope with an Atik 320e camera and Light Pollution filter. I would have needed to go to a dark sky site for a comparable image.

Galaxy imaging will still be a problem with the RGB filters, but at least the nebula images will be a lot better

@AbsolutelyN Good call. If the problem persists, i'll change the cable, see if it makes a difference.

@johnoelliott I've taken the red pill i think 😄

@andrew s last night was the hottest night we've had this year (25 degrees) and the camera cooled to -20 below ambient without any issues. Never have issues with cooling.

@tomato I've opened up the bad images  in pixinsight and the vertical lines are still present. However, last night i didn't have any issues at all with vertical lines having imaged for about 2.5 hours. Will keep an eye on it.

I have loaded the fits file in Deep sky stacker and the vertical lines are still visible unfortunately.

Interesting, tomato! I'll check the subs outside of SGP.

Thanks, I've just sent them an email. I assumed maybe that there was something outside of the camera that would fix it

I purchased an ASI 1600mm Pro camera from FLO back in May. What a great camera and it certainly exceeded my expectations with superb image quality. All was working fine until last week, when all of a sudden, the resultant images had these horrible vertical lines running down them. Nothing else had changed. I'm using Sequence Generator Pro with Narrow band filters, although the vertical lines are not filter specific. I updated the camera driver and that seemed to fix the issue initially, but within an hour the vertical lines had re-appeared. I have enclosed a screenshot.

The Camera Firmware is Version 5.0 and the FPGA FW version is 1600 V 1.1.2.7. However, not sure if this is the latest version.

Any ideas what could be causing the issue?

Thank you in advance,

Surinder

Beautiful, love the orange. Great looking stars as well.

Thanks I have used the Hubble palette with Sii -->R, Ha -->G and Oiii-->B

Greetings, hope you are all safe and well,

After years of struggling with light pollution with an OSC camera (I live under a Bortle 8 sky) I have finally bit the bullet and purchased a mono camera complete with NB filters and began partaking in the dark art of narrowband imaging. I have been blessed with several clear nights recently, so my first narrow band DSO was the elephant trunk nebula. Please see the attached image. I forgot to use my coma corrector so the image has edge severe edge of field distortions.

I have processed the image using Pixinsight, but I am new to the software and very much still learning ( Thank you YouTube). The attached image is the best I can do with my level of knowledge at the moment, but as I took almost 14 hours of exposure (6hrs HA, 4hrs Oiii and 4 hrs Sii), the picture probably doesn't do justice to the data that is within it.

I will no doubt process it again in the future when I have more knowledge, but I am curious as to what seasoned Pixinsight users could do with it in just a few minutes of tinkering I have attached a link to the master light files. If you could take a few minutes, I would be most grateful

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-AMa9GGS_blgvDqNWyNp1DeitKscvo_k?usp=sharing

Surinder