symmetal

7 hours ago, tomato said:

There is a halo but it is at least centralised on the star, yours appear to be offset?

Near the centre of the image the halos are concentric, but the further the star is from the centre the halos become offset towards the image edge. This is evident on my OIII posting above. This indicates the cause of the halo is away from the sensor surface.

@Skipper Billy Hope you're enjoying your time in Sweden. 🙂 You're welcome to borrow my Astronomik Blue filter try, to see if it fixes your problem. I use the narrowband filters on the RASA but if I need RGB I put on the OSC camera as it's quicker, so the RGB filters are not really being used at the moment.

Alan

Here are my results using Astronomik filters on the FLT-98 from a few years ago. They are using the full frame ASI6200MM which the FLT-98 can't fully correct so the corners aren't too good. 🙂 These are the raw stack outputs given an STF in PI.

Astronomik Deep-Sky RGB 2" Blue filter. The Deep Sky filters have narrower passbands than others. No halos. 😊

Astronomik OIII 6nm 2" filter. Halos are present. though not too severe. 

I had to buy new Astronomik Fast FR narrowband filters for the RASA 11 and these show no halos on OIII. Whether this is a bonus of fast scopes which also show no dust bunnies even when there's visible dust specks on the filters I don't know.

Alan

You possibly may need to push it a bit harder to plug it into the battery. As seems to be the case throughout this thread the actual specifications that matter are missing from the components themselves.

The TalentCell manual page calls the 12V in/out connector a DC5521 which 'implies' a 2.1mm pin diameter and 5.5mm width outer diameter. The plug with the two inner prongs rather than the round inner connector as on the Kenable can likely be forced over a pin which is slightly larger. The two pin sizes in 5.5mm width DC connectors are 2.1mm or 2.5mm, with 2.1mm being the most common. Enlarging the picture on the TalentCell manual and measuring with a ruler it looks to be 2.1mm if the outer diameter is taken as 5.5mm so the Kenable cable should fit. Try again using a bit more force. A tight connection is better than a looser one.

Alan

As a follow up to my previous post which only showed the bottom half, here's the full 2 panel mosaic. The Ha shows up quite well even with RGB imaging only. 🙂

RASA 11 v2 and ASI2600MC on EQ8r. 3 hours per panel of 90s exposures. Stacked in APP, processed in PI and finished off in PS. StarXTerminator has unfortunately removed all the PGC galaxies by the look of it so further processing of layering back the PGCs only, using a non-SXT layer is needed.

Alan

Another little gem. 😊 Your scopes must be running non-stop with all the images you're posting recently. 😁

Alan

That's an excellect image. Well done.😊

Alan

I bet that was a more drawn out discussion than you were expecting. 😃 Your 2m cable will be fine.

Alan

1 hour ago, a6400 said:

I can ask the seller for more details, should I just ask about voltage?

Or perhaps you can link a different cable that you are sure will work?

I really don’t want to fry the motherboard haha

No, the voltage used is confusing the issue here and isn't relevant to you. Kenable quoting a watts rating is rather meaningless on its own. I've bought several of the same multicomp pro cables from Farnell as linked by Bivanus and their 0.6A rating is rather conservative I would say. Current rating is dependant on where it's used, and is governed by the rise in cable temperature when in use, to prevent fires. In the open air the current rating is much higher than if was enclosed in a bundle of wires. If they specified the actual cable size in AWG (American Wire Gauge) or CSA (Cross Sectional Area) we could say exactly how it would perform, but unfortunately that's missing from all the sites data.

Amazon used to sell plenty of thicker higher current cables with the same 2.1 x 5.5mm male connectors but they are not available anymore.

I've looked through my cables bin and found an identical 3m Multicomp Pro DC power cable. I've measured it at 0.3 ohms resistance per wire. At 2A current it will drop 1.2 volts. The Star Advenurer GTI spec states 8AA batteries (DC 9.0 to 12.6V) or a 12V external supply. The Star Adventurer will actually draw less than 2A as the supply is always rated higher than the max current drawn. If it however, did draw 2A then the mount will have an input voltage of 10.8 volts. This is significantly higher than the minimum required, so I can't see any problem with using the 3m Kenable cable in real life.

You won't fry the motherboard if the input volts are too low, so don't worry about that. 🙂

Alan

21 minutes ago, a6400 said:

So the cable I’ve linked will work despite the output/input looking slightly different?

And I should go for the 2m length?

 

The cable will work despite the ends looking different. They both perform the same function.

The Kenable site just specifies 75W rating for the cable used, no other details, which isn't very helpful without specifying the voltage it's used with. I expect it's nominal 3A cable so will drop some voltage when the mount is slewing depending on the cable length. The current used determines the voltage drop down the cable. The Star adventurer doesn't take much current so if you can use a 2m cable then fine, but if you need 3m to make things easier to work with choose 3m length. It's very unlikely to cause any problem.

Alan

1 hour ago, gorann said:

Thanks Alan! Yes, RGB is a good idea, but with all the reflecting snow on the ground here I only get SQM at best around 20.5 so then NBZ filters give the best results. So I wait with RGB until the snow cover is gone and I am back at a Bortle 2 sky.

Ah! that makes sense. 🙂

Alan

Another gem Göran. 🤗 Nice little bubble in Sh2-282 too.

Have you tried plain RGB imaging of these Ha areas with the RASA. It's surprising how much shows up. I've almost finished my mosaic of the Christmas Tree Cluster area in RGB which has plenty of Ha detail. You should need shorter total exposures too. 😉

Alan

Good collection of objects for an hours worth. 🤗 Would have been much higher in the sky too which would help.

Alan

Good result considering your trials and tribulations. Your usual short exposures came to your rescue here. 🙂

Alan

Very impressive. Certainly no shortage of colour. 😉

Alan

This link may help. Also the following video uses the same method as in the link to fix RDP credentials problems when he had just changed his microsoft password.

Alan

There is this python tool on GitHub which will read and write XISF metadata which may be useful if you're familiar with python. 🙂

XISF Encoder/Decoder

Alan

Marvellous Image. 😊

Alan

Hi Luke,

Personally, I would get a heavy duty storage box like this which can hold a cable reel and the power supplies etc. At the scope run the cables out the top of the box and lay the lid on top to keep any possible dew from the inside. This way you don't need to get the 'outdoor' type cable reel which should be cheaper.

Just remember that when you plug the cable reel into your house mains outlet, you connect it via an RCD adapter like this for added safety.

Alan

Excellent image Göran. Very moody. 🙂

Alan

You can change the orange to a reddish hue using the Curves tool in PI, selecting the 'Hue' option and making the curve similar to this. Hues along the bottom axis are mapped to the corresponding hue on the vertical axis. With red being at the ends of the axis and not moveable there's less flexibility than you have with greens and blues though.

Alan

Just for information, I received a PM from Chris later and I've given him the AI2 files. 🙂

Alan

By default Spiral search is assigned to Button 1. Has your joystick config file got corrupted? 'Load Defaults' may help.

Alan

That's very impressive Göran. 🤗

The result though is that the dust can end up being the focus of attention and the in reality, far brighter elements get subdued. The bright blue reflection nebula at the bottom in the original, has almost disappeared in the latest version. 

With these fast systems and modern processing, I think it's best to present two versions. A 'standard' one showing the brighter elements against a dark sky, and another showing the dust present.

It's surprising that DBE and GraXpert work as well as they do, considering there is no uniform background to work on.

Alan

If you're referring to the separate hand controller that's available for it, then any 3.5mm TRRS 4-way headphone/mic/AUX male jack to jack cable should be OK. Length is not critical. This one is available in 10ft lengths which is 3.05m.

Alan

Great image, not heard of this one before either. The same apparent size as the full Moon on some reports. It's well north so should be viewable for most of the year. 🙂

Alan