Catanonia

Finally got the remaining panels.  30 / 30 completed.

You can see I was not quite as accurate with my manual panel mapping and had quite a bit of overlap on the right hand side. Since this, I have learnt the ASI mosaic mode a lot better and won't make this mistake again.

But I have what I have for the image crop I want, so now for the hard work of stitching and processing them all together.  

This may take some time

ZOOM IN ON THE MAIN IMAGE to see the real scale of this project

SADR is no longer in a prime location and I can only get a few panels on a clear night now.

But still I am 21 panels out of 30 into the mosaic and making some good progress.

Attached here you can see the 21 panel stitching screenshot and a 18 panel mosaic I quickly made so you can see a sort of completed image.

It is going to be fun processing this proper and thank god I recently upgraded my computer to a Intel 13900K with 64GB DDR5 ram

Hope you enjoy

2 hours ago, gorann said:

When did you buy it and where? Most dealers would help you, like FLO tried to help @symmetal

Just over a year ago from Astronomy365

I will contact Zoltan and find out options

4 minutes ago, gorann said:

Yes, those star flares appear to be quite characteristic for the problem with the mirror of a batch of RASA8. @symmetal had his RASA8 replaced three times (see the link I gave) before he gave up and bought a RASA11. But, if it does not bother you then it may not be a problem and you can enjoy a very fast and capable telescope. But as I understand it from @symmetal thread Celestron is working to solve the problem and maybe you can get it replaced at some point if you contact your dealer. The problem is more clearly described in this thread:

 

mmm, going through some old images with the rasa8 and it can be clearly seen here on the HorseHead

12 hours ago, gorann said:

As you see from the comments here, the flares around your stars should not be there and are most likely a result of a defect in the primary mirror that appears to have affected a big batch of RASA8 that Celestron has sent out, but promised to fix (as I understand it). So you should really contact your dealer and ask for a replacement. Sorry for the bad news, but a proper RASA8s (like mine) will not produce such stars.

Gorann,

Attached is  a couple of single subs, 1 minute (2xbin) and 2 minute (1xbin)

I am using a LP filter that I think is giving the halo. I also have the cables routed by a semi circle cable router similar to Olly’s  that gives that artefact on the bright stars

I am currently running my 30 panel SADR mosaic, but after about 10:30pm, it gets too close to the horizon for my liking and I am normally hunting for a target to make the best use of the rest of the night

Our closest galactic neighbour, M31 is up high, so I swung the RASA 8 across and set it to capture 2min exposures. 

I managed to get in about 60 of them, so 2 hours worth and this morning got the processing done. 

I "tried" to keep natural colours  and not all those "purple" images you see of M31. Hopefully I did it proud as the colours look correct, especially when you look at the star colours.

Equipment

• RASA8 telescope and EQ8-R mount
• ZWO 2600MC Pro main camera with ASI 120mm guide
• ASIAir 
• Processed in PixInsight

Top drawer and amazing colours there and love the framing.

Please stop it though, makes me want another RASA8      hahahahaha

More good progress and now up to 15/30 panels added.

Each panel is 2xbin on the RASA8 for 3mins on the EQ8-R

As the panel count increases, so does the difficulty of merging them into a reasonable mosaic.

Also not helping that SADR is now only really visible for about 4 hours in the night before it starts to head to the horizon.

Hope you like

9/30 Panels

The weather has been pretty pants recently and I needed to redo a couple of panels as the data was not great.

In the last couple of nights, I managed to get the scope outside and grab a few hours to hit the milestone of 9 panels thus allowing me to at least build a semi image

One of the nice things about the RASA8, it is so fast I can get an hour here and there. I have it down to a tee now, take cover off the mount outside, put scope on, plug in, PA with ASI and within 10 mins I am good to image.

So here is 9 Panels. 

Next time hoping to add 10, 11 and 12 to extend it out to the right towards the crescent area.

Managed to get another 2 panels (8/30) added.

Some VERY QUICK mosaic work to see the progress

Whilst processing my mosaic of the SADR region, I noticed a definite straight (ish) line to the west of NGC7000. Straight lines very rarely occur in nature and so it really stood out to me.

At first I put this down to mosaic merging / levels etc, but on closer inspection, it does not look like it. It looks like an edge on shockwave coming from the west of NGC 7000, but I am not sure and can't find anything on the web about it.

Attached is an image with the  area showing where I think the shockwave is and the blue arrow showing the straight (ish) line that got me looking deeper

What do you think ?

Sweet, nice unusual FOV for the sisters and really shows off the dust clouds. Lovely colours . I have the ZWO2600MC Pro and love it.

I had a good clear night and managed to get in the first 5 panels anlong with the final 12 reference images (see top post) to extend from 18 to 30 Panels.

So roughly 6 hours real imaging data obtained which is not bad for the 1st session on this project. I woke this morning to loads of dew, but thankfully my heaters did their job. I even remembered to take some flats

I also managed to get about 3 hours of M78, once SADR was out of optimal range, that I have yet to process

A quick and rough stitch together along with basic processing to show the progress.

I have also updated the top post of this thread to show progress and leave the ramblings to the update reply posts like this one.

Gathered the last 12 panel previews to see what the final mosaic will look like. 
Now gathering panel 1 to as many as I can tonight with perfect conditions all night. Hopefully 5-6 panels tonight

On 15/10/2022 at 16:33, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Wow what an amazing project 🙂 

Steve

Thanks, I was after something different to put the Rasa8 to task with. With it's F2, this is certainly achievable with about 10 clear nights.

On 15/10/2022 at 16:55, simmo39 said:

Amazing! and I get fed up after a few hours an a small project. Hats off sir!

lol, me too at times hence the F2 Rasa

Wow, that some dedication there, nice image, love the colours

18 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Going to be great. Good luck with it 👍🏻👌🏻

Thanks

4 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

It's a great field.

Olly

Yeah, so much to see and nice and high in the sky for me

3 hours ago, Elp said:

It's a great result even as it stands at the moment.

Yes, I am always amazed at the RASA

1 hour ago, gorann said:

Great project and the very best of luck with it! With more data I think you also will be able to bring out a bit more colours. Are you using any filter?

Hopefully as only 60s per sub in this image so far. No filters other than a standard LP one, so hopefully I can get proper star colours. I was debating using the Optilong lEnhance, but that washes out star and blue colours.

Reference 30 Panel Mosaic with single 60s uncalibrated images

Screenshot of the stitching 

Intermediate Mosaic - Screenshot

Image Progress so far - 30 Panels (each panel 25x 3min subs at 2x bin F2) 

Eventually the skies are clear and dark long enough to make it worthwhile to image.

With my 10inch RC scope, I grabbed 9 hours over 2 nights with my 10 inch RC scope.

I tried my best to keep the natural colours the OSC gave me instead of the usual pinky colours you tend to see when others blend in Ha data. This image has no Ha data, just a LP filter inline

I hope you like it

Details

• Bortle 6 skies
• 10inch RC Open Truss Scope
• ZWO 2600 MC Pro OSC main camera
• ZWO OAGL guide on a EQ8 Pro mount
• 9 hours in 5min 2xbin subs on OSC
• Processed in PI

3 hours ago, Paul M said:

That's a beautiful crisp image.

I assume that the ratio of blue to orange (red) stars is fairly constant throughout the cluster but the orange outliers don't get swampped by the blue as much as they do towards the core. This, in my wild imagination, makes them look like a swarming invasion force!

Sorry, I don't do technical critique 😇🤣

Thanks,

Not sure on the spread of orange to blue as clusters are generally very old structures in the Milky Way (perhaps others can comment)

I always try to get the natural colours by mixing luminance from the OSC with the RGB content using LRGB combination in stages of luminance to get the colours to pop.

The only way I know to get the natural colours and no "faking" it.

One from the data stored in March and only gotten around to processing today.

M3 from Sandbach Bortle 6 skies

Data

• 2 hours OSC in 2 min subs
• 10inch RC open truss @ 2000mm
• SW EQ8 R
• ZWO 2600MC Pro
• ZWO OAG-L and ZWO 120mm guide
• PI processing

Hope you like my new processing method of getting colour from a LRGB combination with an extracted LUM channel onto the RGB raw.

17 minutes ago, juno16 said:

Beautifully framed chain. Super image!

 

RASA’ s are amazing scopes. Nicely done!

Thanks, yes they gather so much light and form an image so quickly. Only issue is the 400mm and the inability to use changeable filters on the 8inch

I present to you NGC 2403 as galaxy season is with us.

Playing with the 0.67 TS Optics reducer on the RC to see how it would perform.

Details

• 4 hours OSC in 5min subs
• Scope - 10 inch RC Open Truss + 0.67 reducer so 1340mm @F5.3
• Camera - ZWO 2600 MC Pro (no filters)
• Mount - EQ8-R with WO66 Guide scope with ZWO 120mm guide cam
• Control - ZWO Asi Air Pro
• Bortle 6 skies no moon

Note - I should have gone without the reducer for this target and x2bin for faster acquisition, but I wanted to test the reducer.

Very nice rendition here and you are right, puts the galaxy into context.

Very nice colours, working on this myself but zoomed in at 1340mm and only hope I get as good as this