blinky

cool, thats pretty much my normal method - except this time I removed the 2ndry for cleaning, its never been cleaned in about 15 years!

I've collimated with my laser a Hotech and was wondering how I use this other piece of equipment? It's like a collicap but it's reflective inside, do I adjust the primary or secondary?  I can see three reflections, and assume they should all be lined up, but which mirror do I adjust foe this?

Sorted!  Cr@p USB cable

Anybody got any ideas?  For some reason, if PHD2 (Latest version) is running and guiding, it hangs the main camera in SGPro...    If I have everything connected in PHD2 and click download in SGPro it works, start guiding and it just hangs, then eventually PHD2 says it cant connect to the camera.   Im sure Im up to date with drivers for Ascom etc

It should be 110mm if I remember correctly

I dont see the 45% off voucher 😞

It daened on me this morning, I had the same timeouts with an eq6 and one of FLO's eqmod cables,  that mount is on a pier in the observatiy and I went back to an ancient shoestring astro adapter and it has zero issues.  So I've tried swapping everything, mount, cables, power supplies, laptops and have nothing connected other than the cable going directly to the laptop.

See my wanted ad - Im trying to figure out why I keep getting timeouts with my HEQ5 Pro...  Im using an FTDI Cable, have also tried one of FLO's cables in the past with the same error.  Ive swapped power supplies, cables, ports and laptops all have the same timeouts happening in EQMod  (Have also tried an older version of EQMod).  As a final step, I thought I would see if the motor controller board needed updating, I downloaded the app from Skywatchers website and it says I currently have version 2.4.01, which is strange as the latest version on the website seems to be version 2.04, as I getting confused?  Why is my current version higher than that on the website ?

6 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

This is a very good question and, while I was typing, a little worm in my ear said, 'Have you ever tried it?' I haven't - and that is a very bad reason for not tyring it now!  I don't think I'll try it in Pixinsight because I'd end up in a psychiatric ward but I'll try it for sure. Your image is great. I have this object myself but have never been happy with it.

Olly

Pixinsight does have a LinLRGB tool in the utilities section, never used it before but its there....

Thanks for all the replies folks - it seems its more complicated than I at first thought!

1 minute ago, globular said:

It's never genuinely pitch black outside.

You're comparing;

* the reflectivity of the closed curtains 

with

* the reflectivity of the glass in the windows
* the amount of ambient light passing from outside through the window into the room
* the reflectivity of the, now exposed, window sill - which is often painted white 

I suspect the sum of the different 'open curtain' effects are about the same as the 'close curtain' - which is why we don't notice any material difference.

I agree with that, but this was defiantly more focussed around the 'in theory' rather than what we actually would experience

My argument is there is a finite amount of light being emitted, if you open your curtains, that light escapes and lights up the road outside, so there must be less light inside.  Another analogy, you shing a light on a wall from 6 feet and from 20 feet, 20 feet will be dimmer 'cos the light has spread out further

3 minutes ago, AstroKeith said:

Assuming the curtains are not pure black, ie when the light is switched on you can see them, then the curtains are reflecting some light back into the room.

When you open the curtains, that light escapes. The room gets darker.

ps: I have a degree in astrophysics too, but this is basic physics.

That is exactly my thoughts!

Argument sounds so much better but in reality this is just a discussion that myself and my mate are having with my wife and my Astrophysics qualified daughter.  It goes like this....  You turn the light on in your bedroom in the middle of the night, i.e. its pitch dark outside and your curtains are shut, now if you open your curtains, light floods outside and illuminates the street and people can now see you have turned the light on.  So.... the argument - when you open the curtains, does it get darker in your bedroom?

Me and my mate say yes - although its an in theory and in practice we don't think its probably even measurable but... some of the light that was lighting up the bedroom, now lights up the street outside, so surely the bedroom must have got imperceptibly darker right?  The light coming out that single lightbulb in the ceiling (the 'big light' as we call the celling light in our house) doesn't get brighter 'cos you opened a curtain, so the room must get darker as the same amount of light is spread out...

My wife says nonsense (but by her own admission knows nowt about physics) - my daughter says probably nonsense but she would need to do calculations based on the colour or something of the curtains since they would be absorbing the light until they were opened, then they wont be absorbing light so that light would escape.  

Thoughts from the SGL collective?

11 hours ago, georose said:

Canon Pixma pro 100. Prints color and black and white up to 13 x 19. Bought back in 2016 for $399.00 and then got an additional $250.00 rebate. Looks like they are over $900.00 now. Thus far haven't had problems with ink drying up even though I only use it on occassion.

I'm looking at the pixma Pro 200, so that's good to hear the 100 is good

Im looking at getting a home printer to print out my images and stick 'em on the wall in my office.  I want to print in at least A3 size (would love to go bigger but need to keep costs reasonable!), are there any printers that takes rolls of paper so I could print wide mosaic images?  I see you now get ink tank printers which seem to me to make more sense, especially for printing astro images as Black will obviously be used a lot!

I dont normally like starless images, but for this Rosette Nebula image, I think it works.  The data was 23x5min Ha (115mins), 18x5min O3 (90mins) and 36x5mins Sii (180mins) - I went with longer Sii as its always the weakest signal and ends up being noisy.

Ive not done too much to the image (other than remove the stars!) - WBPP, then channel combination, BlurXterminator correct only, SPCC, BlurXterminator again, narrowband normalisation, little bit of HDR wavelets then the dark structure enhance script.

Im working on other colour combinations, so there might be a few more images uploaded here with the other combos

Yeah thats what Im thinking - I have tried other runs and blue always seems to give that error for some reason, ive logged in on the authors source forge page so will see what they say.  I was going to increase the steps but not tonight, need to get some data for my Rosette image!

Here's green:

Thats one of the blue runs, see what I mean about the right hand side of the curve

Hi,

See the screenshot from the application that was written to calculate the filter offsets for SGPro - Ive ran 3 runs of R,G,B,Ha,O3,S2 and 6 of Lum.  I get offsets that look ok (to my untrained eye!) but the Blue channel just sats Nan and Ive no idea what that means!

The app is SGPro Auto Focus Log Viewer: https://sourceforge.net/projects/sgp-autofocus-logviewer/

Nowt wrong with that!  Always good when the kit behaves as it should, especially on its 1st night out

Or maybe this crop is a nicer framing of the target?

I managed to somehow get 11hrs in total in 5min subs on IC1396 - not entirely happy with this, but am not sure why, I think its the colour, I want it more hubble esque!  ZWO ASI1600, Ha, O3, S2, imaging scope WO ZS73, with 0.7 reducer