MartinFransson

That is nothing short of breathtaking! Excellent job, very impressive!

Could it be a collimation issue? I noticed that my images has a darker edge, suggesting something blocking the light path. I then started thinking that maybe the secondary should be centered when looking down the focuser? It was not. I then made some adjustments, trying to move the secondary to a more centered position and the adjusted the mirrors so that the laser dot is centered in the marking on the primary mirror and that the reflected dot "dissappears" in the hole on the laser collimator. This is what the camera see now, if I take a photo down the focuser. Looks OK or am I totally off? The camera lens looks centered on the cross formed by the spider vanes but the central marking on the primary (faintly visible ring) is not. Is that correct? Maybe I´ll start a new thread since this has gone from CCDinspector to collimation... P.S. The black, flat thing blocking the light to the right is the focuser tube.

Just for comparison - here is the same scope/camera as in the first post, but with Astrodon 3nm Ha-filter. Less spacing issue it would seem?

And here is a sub from my Sigma 500mm tele lens. Does it look OK or are there issues here too?

I have problem when using my Skywatcher 150-PDS newtonian and my ASI1600MM-Cool. I know I have some tilt but I think there is also an issue with the spacing. Could someone help me evaluate these CCD-inspector results? Do I need to add spacing or should it be less? The images where taken using the Zwo Lum-filter. When using an Astrodon 3nm Ha filter (thicker), how should the spacing be altererd then?

Got Image Of The Day at Astrobin.com with this one today 😮🤩

But for Lum you still get the problem with fat stars I guess? Since you cant focus the different wavelengths separately.

It is a very nice image! Yeah, astrophotography becomes even more addicitive with a cooled camera pulling out lots of clean data

What I meant was something like this. Hope you don´t mind! Of course this doesn´t look prefect since I only had the 8-bit data to use as an example, I just wanted to show the shape of the curve. You can see the two sampled points, where I altered the curve.

No, please don´t go pitch black for the background! I really don´t like that either. I try to stay above 25,25,25 for RGB values. I think for me it is more of overstretching it or maybe you could just try some local contrast enhancement without touching the stars? For example a curves layer where you bring the dark nebulosity and the bright nebulosity closer together, without touching the darkest background or the brightest highlights... kind of hard to explain in text 🙂

That´s an excellent image! The detail is awesome! I see you found the same problems as I did - the amount of O3 and S2 in this region 🙂 And you also use the same filters as I do - Astrodon 3nm for Ha and O3 and Baader 7nm for S2. I had the exact same problems with star sizes and halos on the S2 data. I also had problems with haze in quite a lot of my O3 subs so I actually made two stacks. One with the cleanest data for better star shapes and one with all the data for the faint nebulosity. I then made a starless version of the full dataset and blended it into the stack with better stars.

That looks great! If I may be just a little bit picky (which I only am if the image is great to begin with 😉) I think it´s pushed just a bit too hard. I would have preferred a slightly darker image and maybe with the added bonus of less prominent stars. But I fully understand the urge to push it as far as possible since you have massive data to begin with.

I have owned astromodded versions of both and the 550D just smashes the 1100D in my opinion! I can´t give you any technical reasons to why that would be the case, it´s just my experience. But one thing I had huge problems with on the 1100D is vertical dark lines below bright stars. I know this does not occur on every specimen of the 1100D but it is not uncommon. For me it´s a nobrainer. I loved that 550D and would be using it still if I hadn´t gone mono cooled camera.

I already posted it a few days ago 😉

Ah, but with a controller it works? My plan was to get a Hitec (or similar) anyway since the whole point was to be able to adjust focus from indoors. Enough of running out in my pyjamas in the middle of the night to refocus

@johninderby do you know if mounting the DC-motor to the single speed knob (as is done in the video) gives enough resolution for really fine tuning focus? In the video I think the focuser seems to move rather fast even when he´s got it on the slow setting.

Oh man, that is a beauty! How the heck did you manage to get the framing right for the 10 panels on "just" a Skytracker? 😮

Don´t be confused, it might be that I mixed up the terminology. I have a bad case of man-cold right now. Fever does not exactly make me think more clearly

Right after imaging the O3 here I had a go at O3 for the Veil Nebula complex. It blew me away, almost stronger than the Ha signal! 😮 Don´t know if there are more areas like that...

Didn´t see your other version but this one looks very nice and clean

First - the images: I like the first one best because of the field of view with the surrounding area. I does however feel a bit mottled in the darker parts when inspected at full res. The second image is smoother, but softer due to over sampling. Second - the likes and comments: I´ve thought quite a lot about this myself since I´ve noticed the same thing. I think part of the problem is not being able to see thumbnails of the images. You have to click on a topic to even get a hint of the quality of the image. That means people (at least myself) probably look at subjects and go for something they want to see. If I´ve seen 10 images of M31, it is not likely that I´ll click another one. Next, you go by topic starter. If I see a new topic by someone who always posts mindblowing images, I´ll click. There comes the part about being in the "elite group" So I think it´s a combination. Regarding comments, a lot of the time I browse on my phone. Writing comments is a pain in the... but a like is easy to click away. However, if the topic starter has specifically asked a question seeking advice I am more willing to write something. And also, if I see that the topic starter is someone who already knows what they are doing I am less likely to write something.

Thank you! Yes, the exposures are kind of short for narrowband I guess but they were shot at f/4 so it equals 10 minutes or so on an f/5.6 scope. The Ha data was actually this smooth already at 30+ exposures but to get the combined smoothness I needed a LOT of O3. Didn´t want to use only the Ha as Lum either.

No, not really 😬 The Ha was really nice and easy to process but that O3...

Yeah, I calculated the price per gram of those filters to be a lot higher than the price for 24K gold... and that´s for mounted filters that weigh a bit more than just the glass ones 😱.

Thanks Pieter! Yes, I really like the sensitivity of it! Thank you! Thanks! It´s been something I´ve wanted to do for a long time