AKB

Discussion here...

It does look like a nice product. They’re very new and mostly intended for fine focus on an SCT, AFAIK. The 3" version has larger travel, but I use the Sesto Senso on my 8" Quattro, albeit with the stock focuser. Tony

Fantastic... ...those large wooden counterweights look very classy. 😁

It fits directly to the telescope side of the UFC body (see attached image.) Oh, er, yes, why not? I was foolishly looking for a more engineered solution. I think the real challenge is the dew shield – I have a flexible heated one which, TBH, doesnt' stay very straight or round. Haven't found a UK supplier of metal ones (although I'd prefer lighter weight... carbon fibre perhaps ???!!!) Tony

I have a 9.25" Hyperstar and a Baader UFC, using the 70mm diameter Varilock variable spacer to achieve the correct back focus. You mention that yours is permanently installed in an observatory. This means that you do not remove it from the corrector plate between sessions? Very intrigued to know what solution you use for a dust cover / lens cap in that case? Tony

Oohh, crunchy! Thanks! BTW, this was Esprit 120ED, ASI 294MC Pro, and the debayered red channel from an Altair 'Quadband' filter. Single 20ms frame.

Thanks SO much for this thread... ...just managed to catch an image (single 20ms frame) before the clouds rolled in. (I’ve perhaps not stretched this enough.) Tony

Yup, that’s what I did!

+1 for that! Would that also mean that we could script an OSC capture / debayer / split into separate RGB, so that Jocular would see it as a mono capture with different filters? Tony

Looks spectacular. My one comment, which is probably more about processing than acquisition, is that it would be great to see Alnitak as a double (and, IIRC, the other bright star whose name I forget.) Tony

I just grabbed the JPEG and had a quick go. It doesn't work too well because of the JPEG compression, but this gives the idea on your data...

One solution to this dilemma is to process the stars and the nebulae separately, and then combine. Software such as Straton or Starnet++ can help with this. An example here...

Not to flog a dead horse (to continue the unfortunate animal analogies) but in general it is good to know that the coefficients of any number of weighted images don’t have to add up to unity... a + b/2 + 3*c Sorry! Didn’t mean to hijack the OP and all the excellent advice here. 😉 Tony

...you could just write this as original + copy ...if you check the rescale box.

Jocular does colour?? When did I miss that. Tony

This is entirely the purpose of Starnet++, which you’ll find discussed in several places here on the forum and you can get from here... https://sourceforge.net/projects/starnet/ Workflow is essentially calibration and background removal modest stretch with, say, arcsinh stretch Starnet++ to remove stars subtract starless from stretched original to give stars process/stretch each separately to give the result you want combine/merge in some ratio I’ve suffered exactly the same issues with the background (or foreground) stars dominatng RGB images, but this processing seems to work very well. You can find a very good example of this here, on a difficult target with rather poor data, for Ced 201 which I recently reprocessed with the above workflow here (original processing in same gallery.) Tony

Splendid! HH-555 showing well. I like the colour scheme and framing too. Tony PS: How did you remove the stars?

Oh, great choice of target! Quite a challenge at the best of times, at least for me. RGB in due course? Tony

Yea, saw that. Huge mixture of emotions here, including largely jealousy. Very best of luck with the new one, I was sorely tempted myself as that model has been on the wish list for a while. Strangely, though, I'm moving in the opposite direction, away from the 8" Quattro I've been using, and to an Esprit 120ED for this season. Painfully trying to up my game on the processing side too. Tony

Very nice! ...and yes, the translate works well. Is that angled pier for a Mesu ?? Tony