alexbb

There are a few sensors on the market, but not yet used in astro cameras. https://canon-cmos-sensors.com/canon-120mxs-cmos-sensor/

Thank you all so much!

Below M81 it's indeed another interacting galaxy, Holmberg IX.

This is another multi season project.

I started it back in 2018 with the acquisition of high resolution data through the disassembled 8" dob tube put on the EQ6-R.
Despite the rather long integration of 8-9h on each of the 2 panels, the gradients due to light pollution prevented me to stretch the image to reveal the IFN. Some traces of it were there, but some other streaks were not supposed to be visible.

Later that season I decided to shoot some RGB and Ha too and for these I used the 150PDS which covered the whole area in a single frame.

I didn't really bother to process that data as the background was so poor.

But this season I restarted when I "accidentally" had an old AstroProfessional ED FPL51 equipped refractor with me. I proceeded to shoot some luminance through it after finishing shooting with another scope for the main target for that night. It appears that less than 3h of exposures through the 4" refractor under dark skies revealed a lot more information than ~17h (you can divide by 2 actually as there were 2 panels) of exposure through an 8" reflector. So the past recent days I left the city for a while because of the virus spreading and during 2 nights I went out by myself and shot another 5:30h of luminance. The conditions were not so good, but I still guesstimated the sky at a ~21 SQM.

Combining the data proved really difficult as the stars through the refractor were so bloated and neither the RGB through the other scope didn't help too much either, but in the end I believe I have something decent.

I will perhaps revisit once I get a more decent and larger imaging scope, be it mirrored or mirroless.

You can watch the image also on astrobin and flickr.

Thanks for watching!

Clear skies and stay safe!

22 hours ago, david_taurus83 said:

Hi Alex. Incredible image! It was also your first take on it last year that convinced me to buy a Canon 6D! Great camera!

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/331573-orions-belt-and-sword-with-the-esprit-80-and-canon-6d/?tab=comments#comment-3610234

Thank you, David! It is indeed a very capable and robust camera and quite cheap used. In the far future I'm thinking of modifying it, once I buy one of those new Canon mirrorless for everyday use.

Thank you too!

Here's one more intermediary image I used for aligning the FOV. All framing was done manually, rotating the scope in the rings and slewing the mount slightly.

Thank you very much!

Here are some intermediary stretched stacks

All DSLR

9 panels of 1h of luminance

17.5h of Ha

I've been processing this image for quite a long now.

I started acquiring data the last season when I only managed to shoot 3 panels with the Canon 6D through the Esprit 80 for a total of ~7h.

This season I restarted and I added more data and covered a wider area. So a mix of portrait and landscape panels were planned and shot with the same scope and camera. Now every pixel represents at least 3-4h of integration, some have more.

All the above were shot from Bortle 2-3 sites where I traveled sometimes even for an hour of exposure.

To the RGB data I added 17.5h of Ha, same story with the panels. Some were oriented N-S, others E-W. These were shot with the SW 72ED and the ASI1600 from home and Bortle ~7.

Then I figured out I still had time and I planned and shot 9 more panels of luminance with the 72ED and ASI1600, each consisting of 1h of exposure.

I combined all of these into an image, processed it and for the Orion nebula and Running Man nebula I also blended some data I shot last season with the 130PDS and ASI1600 from home.

Below it's my first final version of all data combined. You can watch it in full resolution on astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/full/jni0w8/ or Flickr: https://flic.kr/p/2iBGUXq

Indeed, it will take the road back next week. On the left is Regulus through the SkyWatcher, on the right is Regulus through the TS. Both without reducer, 5s exposure.

Thank you all for your support!

I will discuss with them if they can send me a tested example or I will follow another route.

4 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

I don't really know. There are two things that you need to pay attention to when doing star testing with artificial star.

1. You should not resolve your artificial star

2. You should account for spherical aberration introduced by source that is close

Above we did first criteria - how not to resolve artificial star - by making it smaller than fraction of airy disk.

We can also do second criteria - we need to express difference in distance from artificial star to center of aperture and distance of artificial star to edge of aperture - in wavelengths of light and make that less than a fraction - let's say less than 1/8 or /10 waves of spherical in order to test telescope for correction.

I think that for collimation you need to satisfy first point and second is not important. For star testing you need to satisfy both.

Artificial stars are made with apertures in microns - like 20um. That is about x50 smaller aperture than one you used. This of course means that you could do collimation test at only 4-5 meters away with such device. Spherical would be very pronounced at that distance, so you still need to do something like 50m if you want to eliminate that.

 

Thank you! It might be possible to do a star test tonight, otherwise I will make a proper artificial star test. Nice tip with the pen ball!

3 minutes ago, JamesF said:

I have one of these and have used it both with and without the TS 0.79x reducer.  I've not seen stars looking anything like the ones in your images.  I have found it tricky to get the reducer spacing just right, partly because there have been so few clear nights available to just play around with it, but even then the stars are still the shape I'd expect.

The colour image you posted is from the Skywatcher OTA, is that correct?

James

I found the backfocus to work well with the SW72ED somewhere at ~68mm. Focal length is ~430mm so I assume it should work fine with the TS scope too at the advertised ~432mm focal length.

The colour image is made by all the data combined, both SW scope and TS scope. I did not post the result from the SW scope only because it seems I did a poor job when I put the Canon sensor back and I have some tilt.

3 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

I'm not sure you can use 1mm hole. I mean, you can - but you need to calculate distance so that image of a hole is smaller than let's say half or third of airy disk diameter.

For 72mm aperture Airy disk diameter is about 3.5", so you want your hole to be about 1" or less. This gives about 206.26 meters of distance. Anything closer to that and you will impact shape of star with shape of aperture producing a star (1mm hole).

How close did you do it?

If you want to try DIY artificial star - maybe look into metal ball from ball bearing - you need something that is very round and very reflective - so any sort of very round metallic ball with small diameter will be good. It also needs to be placed far away from telescope.

It was ~10m away. But shouldn't it be good enough to verify the colimation at least?

I did a pseudo star test this morning. The star hole was a bit large (~1mm) to asses more optical defects, however, the out of focus disks appeared round with concentric circles.

Thank you, Vlaiv! I will try a star test, not sure when it's possible again.

However, the flattener worked well in combination with the SW72ED.

These images were shot with the SW72ED, the Orion is luminance and the elephant trunk is hydrogen.

I used the same reducer/flattener and filters and the same backfocus. The focal length of the SW72ED is ~430mm, measured with astrometry.

I ordered Monday a TS Photoline 72 F/6 from Teleskop Express. https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/language/en/info/p8866_TS-Optics-Doublet-SD-APO-72mm-f-6---FPL-53---Lanthan-Objektiv.html

Yesterday I received it and today I got it under the stars. I also ordered a Baader filter to mod my 550D which I managed yesterday evening.

So, under the stars, both scopes (the TS and a SW72ED) this evening. I didn't pay too much attention when focusing, but now I verified the stars and they seem horrible.

I also recall hearing some crackle sounds which were resembling ice cracking.

The target I shot was Rosette with both scopes.

Below are some crops from the stacked and stretched luminance, single 120 subs stretched L, Ha and OIII + a quick combination of RGB with the SW72ED and Canon 550D mod + L and Ha and OIII.

Is it probably a sign of pinched optics?

Does anyone has first hand experience with these scopes? What should I do? Ask for a replacement or a refund? I'm afraid that another example can behave the same way.

PS. I used a TS flattener/reducer 0.79x which worked well with the SW72ED.

Very few of my images are captured with a single camera/optics combination in fact

APP and PixInsight are able to handle this.

On 14/01/2020 at 17:30, kookoo_gr said:

1) when i have the clutches released the axes are a bit stiff when balancing, does anyone else have this?

Yes, they seem quite stiff.

On 14/01/2020 at 17:30, kookoo_gr said:

2) i usually polar align with my polar scope before drift aligning and i see that at the home position of the mount the reticle of the polar scope is upside down (6 is up 0 is down) from my experience form these polar scopes i need to have the 6 down and then polar allign, this is going to be an issue, since i will have to rotate the RA 180 degrees and the scope will be down in order to start the polar alignment and i want to avoid this. I would like to know if it is posiblle to rotate the reticle of the polar scope

I never used the polar scope, I found the polar alignment routine good enough even for longer focal length photography. 2 iterations and you should have an error less than 10".

On 14/01/2020 at 17:30, kookoo_gr said:

3) after slewing and the mount stops i have the dreadful sound that the old eq-6s and heq5s have, again this is only when the mount stops and not when slewing, does anyone have this sound? It's not bad and only for a second but i believe i can survive it and i want to know if anyone else has this.

Check your power source. Does the power led blink when the mount is slowing down? 11V is not really enough, regardless of the current, even if the specs are 11V-16V. I switched to a 15V power supply and everything is smooth now.

1 hour ago, FLO said:

Special thanks to @Uranium235 for suggesting this new Astro Essentials Samyang Lens to M48 Adapter 🙂

You made Rob less fissionable on the FLO product page

That happened to me too some time ago. There might have been multiple reasons for this, but I tried to do everything right. Same temperature for lights and dark, same temperature for flats and dark flats. I also see that you're using a newtonian so make sure you don't have any light leaks. I cover the end of my newtonians always (lights, calibration) and try preventing light leak through/around the focuser too.

I suspect you might have some light leaking into the OTA.

Thank you so much! Congratulations to the other 2nd, the 3rd place, all the other participants and especially to the winner!

Alex

46 minutes ago, R26 oldtimer said:

A little background...

I've been happily using my AZEQ5 mount with my DIY wifi adapter for the past year now with my phone utilizing the synscan pro app and skysafari for visual.

Starting with AP, I still used the above method, only difference was using the synscan pro app to control my dslr via the mount's snap port with excellent results.

Then the AP kicked in for good, so i got myself NB filters which require longer exposures, hence the need to guide. So loaded up an older laptop with APT, PHD, EQascom platform, and the synscan pro app. Managed my first guided session where I controlled my main & guiding camera through usb connection and the mount through wifi ( APT -  EQascom  synscan driver - synscan pro app). Then it struck me that there is no need to control the mount wireless since I already had my lappy tied up to the rig with the camera's usb cables. Also the AZEQ5 mount comes with a usb port so no need for specific cables.

That's were troubles started.... I downloaded eqmod and could not connect the mount to the pc. It seems that the AZEQ5 has a prolific chip onboard. There are endless discussions on the net about genuine or not prolific chips, drivers, settings etch. I was struggling for hours with eqmod trying to configure COM3 port to recognize the mount, changing baud rates, trying every possible solution on the net, with no results and I really started to hate EQMOD.

Then it just struck me. I remembered that when I was configuring the synscan pro app  settings for  wifi connection under SETTINGS-CONNECT SETTINGS-NETWORK there was also another tab marked as SERIAL. So I tried that, had a com selection setting, set the COM port to 3 (where the device manager reported the prolific usb to serial) and... presto. The synscan app on the pc communicates through usb with the mount, and all the other apps (APT,PHD2) via EQascom  synscan driver do too seamlessly.

I really prefer the synscan app UI instead of EQMOD, and really happy that my mount's usb port works as it should!!

Indeed. I've never bothered spending a lot of time convincing eqmod to connect to the mount. I managed on the AZ-EQ5, but never on the EQ6-R. Regardless of the combinations, eqmod refuses to create a stable connection. OTOH, the SynScan app connects without issues and allows pulse guiding too. You can connect to SynScan mount with any other app, pulse guide, etc. Moreover, you can polar align without seeing Polaris using the SynScan polar alignment procedure which I found accurate enough. I didn't find that feature within the eqmod ecosystem.

Thank you very much!

It is similar to that one indeed, Dave, except the coloured stars. I might shoot some colour one day some nights. I do have some real RGB, but at a much lower resolution so it's not really worthy to combine them.

Thank you Adam and Tom!

For the starless versions I used the Starnet plugin in PixInsight. You can either generate a starless mask or a star mask. Any subtracted from the original image results in the other one. I generated starless images, used the healing tool in GIMP to remove the remaining large star traces, removed the starless images from the original images, removed the non-star traces from the star masks and then removed the final star masks from the original images. This has to be done on the stretched images.

Thank you all so much!

I've been very fortunate lately and had more than a week of consecutive clear nights. Since the first of them had the moon around, I started recording some Ha and ended recording OIII for the Rosette nebula.

This year I used an AstroProfessional 102/714 FPL51 ED reduced at 0.8x. I bought this scope mostly for visual as it came at a decent price and I couldn't find somewhere close a used SkyWatcher 120ED.

I thought of putting the camera on it and the results were good in narrowband.

For this image I shot 2 panels, 5.5h Ha and 4h OIII for each panel.

I made 2 starless images for each channel, I combined them then I added back the stars.

A full resolution 6410x4586 image + the starless components can be found on astrobin here: https://www.astrobin.com/ral6gn/

Now back to cloudy nights, but there's so much left to process

Clear skies and thanks for watching!

Alex