Stub Mandrel

It's not quite up to Hubble's 'Pillars of Creation' though is it? 🙂

This is always going to be one of the toughest targets for me, low down in the LP and through a lot of atmosphere. I'd tried to get mono data but I coudln't get the little touptec to reliably download long exposures 😞 So I changed to DSLR for this. The poor conditions on 1 September meant I lost the guide star a lot and so 30-odd frames gave me just 12 decent subs. The image is quite soft compared to the lower down M15 Swan Nebula a from a week before, showing just how exceptional the conditions were on 25 August.

M31 -the galaxy that just keeps giving.

Thanks, it's difficult to know when to stop thrashing the data! There's a touch more detail in the drizzled one. Some people stack a drizzled version then downsample, which might be worth a try. Personally I think the one with the moons also has the best Jupiter. Moons and planet got exactly the same processing, which is why Callisto is so faint.

Considering many of the subs here were through thin cloud, I'm surprised how this one turned out. 31 (appropriately) 5 minute subs hand selected from those taken on the 5th and 31st August:

No, I was spot on for focus. I tried all the different USB speed options. Going down to 3.2 second frames - every one works, then going up, most 7.5 second ones work, 15 seconds about 1 in 4, 30 seconds hardly any. The only way to get a long exposure was to set the exposure, close and rew-open sharpcap then the first one would work - showing M16 and even the pillars of creation! But start capturing and drop almost every frame. There is something on the sharpcap forum that suggests this is an issue with new ZWO drivers and that old versions of Sharpcap might work better, but that wasn't really something practical to try. This one uses teh Altair GPCAM driver but might have a similar issue.

Exactly the same one, and it only has the mount and mouse on it. Everything on the same ports. At least PHD2 seems to keep working once it's started now. I'm capturing 7.5 second subs, as it only seems to drop less than half of the subs. 15 second subs the most I got was three before it refused to get any more, 15 dropped. It even gets to odd 30-second sub - but only ever reliably loads the first capture. On short exposures - a second or two or less it captures every frame. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Well the trial this evening is a disaster! Alignment is fine. This afternoon I happily took 24 5-minute and 24 2-minute darks while having PHD2 running on the other camera, no trouble. Now, Sharpcap drops every frame except the first unless the duration is 7.5 seconds or less. PHD2 takes about four attempts to link to the guider. Exactly the same settings and wires, only difference is that I'm outside. I even had the mount tracking this afternoon. I'm despairing. My laptop seems to have become totally unreliable, I can only imagine its due to a change in windows. Robin @rwg are you out there? Do you have any ideas?

As the supreme cheapskate, I've decided to see what can be done with my Touptec Mono. (Edit this starts as a build log and rapidly degenerates into why won't Sharpcap save frames with long exposures??!!!) This has a webcam-sized chip the same one as used by the ASI120MC (and supposedly better than that in the ASI 120MM). I've taken it apart and made an aluminium plate to fit a peltier cooler with a copper stalk on to cool the chip. I'm still working on the 3D printed housing, so for tonight I'm just going to try it out with 2-minute subs and see if I can get some very basic mono data with the 130PDS. It's a change to be looking for small DSOs! It's pixels are about half the size of those on my DSLR and well matched to the 130P-DS at about 1" per pixel, recently my guiding has been at ~0.75". I bought a USB3 hub but it doesn't want to work for me. Found three old USB 2 hubs, one worked with a mouse but wouldn't work with anything else. Then I found a good one and I was able to run mouse and mount off the hub, so no worry about power through it. Got everything working in the living room, including PHD2 on the ASI120MC and Sharpcap with the toucam. I've found the special short 2-1.25" adaptor I made so hopefully I can focus - but will I be able to find anything?? At least the FOV is six times bigger than when I do planetary so hopefully it won't be too hard. Prepared darks in Sharpcap, but I might not use these and take some later at a closer matched temperature. If i get something, then it will be worth persevering with cooling, then moving on to proper LRGB. If that all works, then maybe a big cooled mono cam, if not maybe a cooled OSC cam. Fingers crossed.

Yes, a layered Tiff saved in PS won't always display as you expect in other programs. I usually save a 16-bit TIFF as my 'archive copy' and use Astra Image (it compresses better than my old version of PS) to save an 8-bit compressed PNG for the web etc.

Looks good, maybe a touch green on my monitor? Hope you don't object, I hit a grab of your image with HLVG (Hasta La Vista Green plugin) in Photoshop:

Pin light only blocks light that is brighter than 50%, that's how this filter works. Saving should prompt you to 'flatten image?' which merges the layers. Otherwise it saves the layers separately and if you view in something other than PS you may only see one layer. Flatten your image and save a copy for looking at, you may also want to save a copy with layers for future modification but this eats up disk space.

I took an afocal shot through my dob, which was awful, but the dispersion was about 1/8 of the size of the disc, so unless you are imaging it about 8 pixels high an ADC will improve the results!

Nice Pic. I always crop them out or use intersection mode, although I haven't done any mosaics. They are areas of incomplete data you will only get rid of with perfectly centred images

Would you like a tissue?

Nice retro look 🙂

Be honest Gina, possession of a full set of Astrodon 3nm filters puts you on a par with the landed gentry...

Rob... you really get all your amazing pictures with the ASI178MM cool?

This one is very tiny compared to its namesake. 150PL and Canon 450D. Quite pleased with how it turned out. Considered to be one of the hardest Messier objects to see. Two different processings - which do you prefer?

I stared deeply into teh socket - clean as a whistle. My money is on moisture, especially as the symptoms weren't consistent. Fresh foam now pushed into all orifices!

Can you post a link to it? It doesn't come up if I search for my camera (450D) - I have spent a lot of time searching for it recently and in the past. Found it on the Canada site by searching for your whole sentence. It's marked as for Windows 8.1 which is why it wouldn't let me have it as it kept auto-detecting W10. Requested my serial number, which it accepted. (another edit - found W10 version in Indonesia now I know what to search for - the 'solution disk software' - it has V2 of Eos utilities but won't le me download with me serial number saying it isn't for my device - so W8.1 version or bust!) If it isn't available doesn't work I'll send @Davey-T a PM, thanks both.

True. Lets do a 'vlaiv' style calculation... The difference is 3 magnitudes = 2.514^3 = ~16 times brighter Area of M57 ~ 7.2, let's call it 7 to allow for the hole! Area of M13 = 3 x 10^2 = 300 Ratio of areas 300/7 = 42 Ratio of brightness per unit area 42/16 = 2.6 = 1 magnitude So in practice on a 'magnitude per unit surface area' basis M57 is one magnitude brighter. I'd guess that means you have fairly narrow range of sky brightnesses where you can see one and not the other, so worth trying again on good clear nights. Aslo, try low magnification! M13 is visible naked eye but M57 is not because they both effectively become point sources.

Being a lazy git, it's rare I am up at 4:30 am, especially with a set up scope, but just after parking the scope I noticed the moon in the cruck between roof and chimney and had time to get about 50 subs. Only stacked about 12, but picking the best of a small number of great subs has worked really nicely. 150PL and Canon 450D cooled, modded. Hardly any processing, just gamma, deconvolution and masking out the bright rim given by denconvolution.

I can't believe I got this target - usually even a two-minute sub in this part of the sky is washed out by LP, but on 25 August there was the best seeing and transparency combined I have ever seen in my few years at this game! Canon 450D modded and cooled. Skywatcher 150PL, HEQ5. Processed in DSS, Photoshop and Astra Image.. Downsampled 50%.

Crikey, I can see the 'keystone' fine here and have never had trouble seeing M13 through a scope. It is just a small fuzzy ball at low mags. Lower number is brighter - but that makes M13 MUCH brighter than M57 - it is one of the easiest DSOs. BUT it is about 2 magnitudes fainter than the stars in hercules and slightly diffuse.