dodgerroger

Last year I upgraded from dslr to a dedicated camera. After a lot of head scratching I went to mono, namely a 183mm. It has brought my imaging on in great leaps although I am still learning. One of my iterating habits with my dslr was image hopping. I would end up with loads of different targets on my pc with little data on each target and not a great deal to show for it. Mono has forced me to pick a target and stick with it over several nights to collect a good amount of data, which in turn I now spend more time processing that one image. I bought some narrowband filters as well which has been great fun

Yes I think they can give bloated stars, what make of filter are you using?

I can’t really comment on suggestions to the above as I am a mere beginner with pixinsight but have you tried stacking your images in a different program, APP or DSS. See if you get the same results. This will narrow it down to your issue

There are many like it but this is my Elephant trunk, looks more like a ghostly figure to me though. Shot with AA183MM, SW72ED and processed in pixinsight. Please feel free to give me any pointers for improving this image, all greatly received.

Cracking image, very nice

Thanks Martin, in my latest image the amp glow is not evident to my eyes. Same settings in Wbpp. Darks matched and optimise darks unchecked. It’s only evident in the Sii image of the bubble neb.

The play is in the dec axis, I literally spent hours adjusting it until I got it the best I could. It guides very well so I’m not going to fiddle anymore. Part of the axis has no play and part has a just noticeable amount. I can live with it and can get reliable 5 minute subs from it.

Should be good for a field test now👍

It’s got to be smooth if it’s tight it will feel rough, try it by hand and then use the hand controller to rotate. Listen for changes in motor pitch but if you turn it by hand with little resistance it should be good

You don’t have to strip it down. My point is , even with new bearings and grease i couldn’t eliminate all the back lash. Don’t assume that you will be able to get it totally backlash free. A smooth rotation with slight backlash is better than it running with tight spots and binding

I recently stripped the dec axis on my HEQ5 as it had developed quite a lot of backlash. Bearings where replaced with quality items, cleaned and greased. It is much better but I was unable to fully remove the backlash entirely. I found it had a tight spot so I had to reach a compromise. It has the belt mod and guides very well but I am well under the recommended weight. It’s a mass produced item and I think it’s hit and miss on the quality of the machining. Get it the best you can a small amount of backlash is better than tight spots on axis

I use the Stella flattener from flo. Altair Astro sell one, they look exactly the same. Just unscrew the thumbscrew holder out of the focus cube on the 72 and the rotator screws in its place. My friend is after a flattener they seem hard to get hold of at the minute

FLO do a camera rotator for the 72 then a field flattener can be screwed to it. I use a generic 2” flattener and some small spacers to achieve back focus and round stars to the edge

Hi folks, well this is my pretty much my first foray into Narrowband imaging, NGC7635 HOO integration. Having left the world of Facebook I thought I would give some time to this forum of which I have been a member of for a few years now. Any constructive criticism is more than welcome. There is slight amp glow on the right hand side which I struggled to remove as well. AA183MM SW72ED 60x 300s Ha 60x300s Oiii HEQ5 processed in pixinsight

Hi, your first image has more promise, less noise and more detail but the second is more colourful. I have been in your position before and its no easy task. I started with dss and photoshop. I struggled with photoshop and gave APP a go, its very processor heavy and although the latest release is far quicker it is still slow. For stacking I like APP but found the processing side again very difficult, loads of sliders to play with but no real instructions. There are other processing programmes to try and my advice is to make use of the free trials and find one you feel comfortable with from the start and stick with it.

Great advice. This is a bit of learning curve compared to my old canon 600D

Yeah that does make sense, good job I have pixinsight then. Thanks for the info. So if I can summarise in my laymen terms shoot 1x1 in APT and then follow your earlier explanation in pixinsight to get 2x2👍. All good fun eh thanks again.

I am using pixinsight at the minute, something else to get my head around. I thought the 183 was a good match for a short focal length scope

So out of interest, if I wanted to bin colour it wouldn’t be in APT but at what point would it be done? I’ll keep it at 1x1 for now while I get my head around it all

My pixel scale is 1.18 I think

Hi there folks, I have just taken a big leap from dslr to mono cmos,A hyper cam 183. i had the filter and camera all set up on my desk I thought I’d try a quick image plan in APT just to see how it all works. Anyway I set my RGB filters to 2x2 bin as people seem to use that for colour and 1x1 for luminance. Set it all going and APT came up with “ 2x2 binning not supported changing to 1x1?? I am I missing something??

Well I think he now has it working but is unable to test due to the constant cloud cover we are suffering from in Hull at the minute.

Thanks for the info, he has tried what you suggest and it appears to connect just need to star test now. One of our Astro friends suggested that his guide scope is to small for the lx90 gearing but I don’t get the logic behind his suggestion

In this day and age it shouldn’t be so hard, should it

Thanks, we have read that post but not sure if these drivers work with audio star. He had tried that I believe and lost his rag with ascom😂