alexbb

I've never been able to connect my EQ6-R mount through EQASCOM as it never recognized the COM port. ?! However, the SynScanPro app manages to connect to the mount and it provides all the functionality I need. I can drive the mount via the app interface as I can with the handset and I can connect with every other program through it, PHD included. You can give it a try, maybe it's even enough.

I didn't save any notes on this one, it was only to test the performance of the scope/flattener combo. But, as I blended all the data I had available, I don't really believe it's relevant. Perhaps the old data was shot through the Esprit and filtered by Optolong narrowband filters (which I sold as the OIII filter was really reflective), the new data was through the 102ED and Astronomik 6nm filters. The flattener on the 102ED is a push-fit one. It might have been tilted a bit as other times I didn't notice any deformation on stars. OTOH, all the connections with the Esprit are threaded, but I noticed elongated stars with that too. Easily visible in this one: https://www.astrobin.com/362549/. Note: it is made of 2 panels in portrait orientation.

Hello and thank you! Not sure about your user on astrobin, but I've more than a thousand recent notifications that I wasn't been able to follow yet due to many other activities. Will check them all one day. I've one example of narrowband image at hand, but I believe the data was blended with some Esprit data too. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VR3CCD_hTJYEsWAHHXXL7HbYl8CMphHO Narrowband stars are good. Broadband? Not so good, the following image was taken solely with the 102/714 ED with its dedicated 0.8x flattener. You can make an idea about the stars on the whole image. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xIM4ZSBuBLhNw9omr11uFYH8krmqXw4u I bought my Esprit 80 from FLO and it was checked by Es Reid. My copy displays some dark gap in the stars halos, but I don't see a symmetrical opposite gap. If I remember well, in the lightpath I saw a gap in the O ring holding a lens so that might be the cause. You can see at full resolution here https://www.astrobin.com/362549/ or here https://www.astrobin.com/389908/C/ Overall I'm happy with the small Esprit with regards to its broadband performance, but I'll probably use the larger ED for narrowband. Also probably, I will sell the 80 Esprit and buy the larger 100 with a good matching flattener that can deliver a corrected flat field for a 43mm sensor. Have a lovely day too and clear skies as well!

I found the same with my Esprit 80. I focus manually using a Bahtinov mask. The stars in narrowband through the Esprit are A LOT softer/larger than through a recently acquired AstroProfessional 102/714 ED with FPL51 + 0.8x reducer. In fact, I didn't really check, but I believe the stars are softer in narrowband through the Esprit 80 compared to those I get through the SkyWatcher 72ED + the 0.85x reducer for 80ED.

Thank you, Alan! After I connect all the cables, my habit is first to start cooling the camera. Then I proceed with the alignment, focusing, calibrating guiding, etc. By the time I finished setting up, the camera is probably cooled. Thank you, Craney! I used a few more MLT layers than usually and I also increased the parameters values higher too. It helps in making the spiral arms stand out more obviously. My 150PDS was a bit tuned. It has everything flocked, the focuser was tightened, the secondary mirror was replaced with a larger one too. I could have been more careful with the collimation/tilt, you can see to the bottom-left corner that the stars become elongated, but after the first night of lights I didn't want to mess up with the camera as that would imply to re-adjust a few things and retake the flats and it didn't actually bother me that much. Thanks! I found M31 much easier to process than M33. I didn't give M81 and M82 a real try yet as from where I live I get some nasty gradients depending where I'm pointing the scope. The IFN stands no chance to be obviously distinguished from the gradients so these have to wait until I carry the scope to somewhere dark. I do have good highlights for these 2 galaxies though.

At the same astro party where I shot the Pleiades and partially Iris + the surroundings, I started gathering data for M33. For this image I used only a SkyWatcher 150PDS through which I recorded the photons on an ASI1600MMC. Curiously enough, I shot ~3.5h of luminance there under Bortle 2 skies, but a simple STF in PixInisght revealed less details than in 4h of luminance (through a LP filter) shot from home under Bortle 6-7 skies. Nevertheless, I put all the luminance together, I shot another 40mins of each RGB + 1h45min of Ha and made an image. A bit of colour only I also borrowed from an image I made 2 years ago, but in a small ratio. For full resolution: https://www.astrobin.com/yqr8xe/

Yours looks smoother than mine, I really like how you brought up the dust, those hours of luminance really paid off

Thank you, Alan! Indeed, there are a few dark skies around us. Some of my astrofriends went from Bucharest to somewhere in Bulgaria last week to another astrofriend. I'm from the western part of Romania so I travel to other places than they do, but my girlfriend's parents live at a village ~2.5h drive and the sky is Bortle 2 there. Good enough for imaging and being able to get inside after everything is set up is a big advantage

Some excellent images you showed us, Richard! I love both this one and the Witch head! I'm never able to get results so good in such short integrations, despite traveling to dark sites for some targets.

Thank you! It was more challenging than I expected. To capture, but even more to process.

Thank you all so much! Thanks! It hasn't been so easy to get to some locations. Besides the required heavy gear, I doubled many of the items just to be sure I don't forget something. But, indeed, dark skies are not that far away. 2-3 or 5 hours long were the trips to get to those places.

Thank you, Adam! Glad you like it

Thank you, Richard, Tristan! The time spent collecting the data is maybe less than the time spent processing. This image required a different type of processing compared to what I am used to. Now that I see it on another screen, it might accept easily a little improvement, but not sure if I can apply it on the final image or I should need to start from an intermediate step. Maybe after a while...

I believe this is my longest project shot only under Bortle 1-2 skies. I shot for this image ~11h of data with a Canon 6D through and Esprit 80, 12.5h of luminance with an ASI1600 through the Skywatcher 72ED and some 1h x RGB with the mono + 72ED. 5h were from the last year, the others from the last month. The 6D and the Esprit 80 covered the whole area, but the 72ED and the smaller mono sensor only covered a part of it. Therefore, I had to plan a 2x2 mosaic and I had some tough times in aligning the scopes and realigning them after the meridian flip. Not everything went as planned so I had for one panel to travel once again to add more data. 2 mono panels have 2h of exposure, the other 2 have 3h. In the middle I added the LRGB data I had from last year. Processing was tough too, I spent a lot of time and I believe there's plenty of room for improvement, but I'm pretty satisfied with this version. Not too aggressive noise reduction, stars are still there, I can call it final. In the image are present the ghost nebula and the Gyulbudaghian's variable nebula too. And a full resolution link to astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/n8y8sz/ Now off and out to real life Thanks for watching! Alex

I prefer the second image, clearly, but both are very nice! There are a few things I'd do to the second image. At deconvolution, I'd tame down the highlights by increasing the deringing global bright. Maybe I would apply the deconvolution only to brighter areas. The other thing would be to sharpen the final image with some MLT. And maybe, just maybe, run some more aggressive ACDNR on chrominance. I like especially that the stars have no artifacts, a thing I fail to achieve many times mainly because I get tired/bored to edit an image for so long.

Thank you too!

Lovely Iris, Adam! I also went for this target recently, but I won't be able to process it soon. By that time, you might be able to shoot that RGB too. If interested, when I get back from holidays, I can share with you some 11h of good full frame DSLR data shot through the Esprit 80 from under really good skies and some luminance too. Gyulbudaghian's nebula looks interesting too these days, like a jet, and it's not too far out of your framing

Thank you, sirs, I'm happy that you like it! I still hope for some warm-ish autumn days and nights, Adam, but yes, even Orion is rising already

This is the third target at an astro party, least amount of data, but easiest to process. Others will be processed after summer holidays. 2 scopes were shooting in parallel. A Skywatcher Esprit 80 and a Canon 6D shot 38 x 3 minutes frames and a Skywatcher 72ED and a ZWO ASI 1600 shot 2 panels of 28 and 24 x 2 minutes frames. All easily carried by an EQ6-R under a dark sky @21.8 SQM. What a difference dark skies make... Click on the image to visit the astrobin link Clear dark skies!

Thank you all very much! Happy that you like it! I always use 300s subs @unity gain when shooting narrowband. Not sure it's optimal for every focal ratio, but I'm too lazy to re-shoot darks. As Andy mentioned, you can find other technical details on the Astrobin technical card. Just click on the images. These clear skies don't usually come for free. A couple of days nights ago we had ~30C. At midnight 🥵

There's already some work done for sensors in this area: https://www.anandtech.com/show/7149/aptina-announces-ar1331cp-13-mp-cmos-with-clarity-plus-we-take-a-look Having one on an astronomical camera? Perhaps not so soon.

Thank you! That's why I put both images 😛

The bubble nebula. Not much to add about the target itself as it is already popular enough. A combination of HOO shot with the ASI1600MMC + Astronomik narrowband filters through the 200mm newtonian tube removed from the dobson base and put on the EQ6-R. About 6h of exposure through the Oxygen filter and about 9h through the Hydrogen filter. Clicking on the pictures will redirect to the astrobin images where you can watch them in full resolution. Crop close-up And widefield Thanks for watching and clear skies to you too! Alex

For the particular example of an ASI183 + a RedCat, besides going past the diffraction limit, the aimed resolution is less than 2 arcsec/px. You'd probably want a HEQ5 class mount for that resolution at least, mount which should be able also to carry an Esprit 100 too, aiming for a resolution of ~2.4 arcsec/px with a Canon 6D. In order to match the Esprit 100 + the Canon 6D resolution wise and FOV, you'd need a 200mm F/4 scope/lens + an ASI183. That relaxes a bit the requirements from the mount though. However, the 100mm aperture captures 4 times the amount of light a 50mm lens captures. The ASI183 mono pro + electronic filter wheel + ZWO LRGB filters + RedCat combo costs a tad more than 2200€ at FLO. An Esprit 100 + flattener + a SH Canon 6D estimated at ~400€ would result in a bit less than 2400€. Not such a big difference. But narrowband imaging with the DSLR is less efficient. Of course, you're right about the QE, and the above are valid only with my example and a few other combinations. Depending on the purpose, a smaller more sensitive mono sensor with smaller pixels might be much more desirable. I wouldn't worry so much about set point cooling on a DSLR with big pixels. The sensor doesn't heat that much and I found that shooting the calibration frames at a couple degrees warmer or colder doesn't make any difference.

I'll just pop in to make things more difficult. Whilst I am aware that mono is more efficient than OSC when the sensors are about the same size, how about a full frame DSLR compared to a camera with a small sized mono sensor? The IMX183 sensor is perhaps the cheapest decent sized mono sensor available and the Panasonic in the ASI1600 is a tad more expensive, but larger. If the optics allow using a large sensor, would it still be more efficient to use a small sensor with a smaller scope or a larger scope with the larger sensor, even with a Bayer matrix? A ZWO183 colour/mono behind a RedCat records a smaller FOV than a Canon 6D behind an Esprit 100. If I were to image RGB only, I'd rather get the much larger scope + a full frame DSLR than a ZWO183 mono + a small scope. A used full frame DSLR can be found rather cheap. Helpful, eh?