wimvb

Couldn't agree more.

Nice images, but if you used any form of sharpening, the comparison isn't relevant anymore. (The image taken with the Esprit looks sharpened.) The amount of sharpening during deconvolution eg, depends on snr. Better would be to show the images with just an stf stretch applied. Btw, with the youngest generation of sony sensors, one may start to question the need for cooling, or the use of calibration frames, for that matter. It'snjust a shame that ZWO put the power/data connectors on the wrong side for their non-cooled cameras.

Marketing, with the help of chatgpt, I'd think. Never read the blurb, Michael. Wait for Cuiv to do a review. 😉

Yes, the principle is the same, but 30 years is a very long time in tech development. A lot has happened in those years. Like any discrete event process, you can't predict when an avelanche event will happen, only how often on average. So there is shot noise. They've probably come up with means to refuce that noise, using clever measuring methods.

The Eq3 has a capacity of 5kg, or just the 150pds by itself. The problem with this mount is that it has no load carrying bearings. In stead it relies on teflon washers and the black grease it comes with. I think that with a sturdy tripod and new motors, the load capacity is only marginally affected. But, use it as is and gain experience. In a year or two you’ll be in a better position to specify what you want. The eq3 is a nice grab and go mount for a lightweight setup, with maybe a 60-70mm refractor, so very well something you may wish to keep.

Small collimation errors are barely noticeable. Small focus errors are barely noticeable. Small guiding errors (if you're imaging) are barely noticeable. But if you have all three, you have a fuzzy image.

It really is a wonderful sight, isn't it?

So, mint in box. Definitely save it till 2060

So, if I interprete the results correctly, @han59: Cooled is better than not cooled, regarding both noise and hot pixels It's beneficial to use (matching) darks even if you don't cool your camera Darks should match lights within a few degrees. Two questions come to mind: How many degrees difference can there be between lights and darks? (At 26 C, 3 degrees seems ok; does that hold at -10 C as well?) How critical is temperature for amp glow removal (the other reason we use darks)?

Excellent rework. With this example you may just put camera modifiers out of work.

Wow! A stunning, bold image with lots of details if you zoom in.

That's a very colourful Gandalf, neither gray nor white. Excellent image.

Do you mean that summer is late this year? 😜

In theory, yes. But focus can shift during a night, due to temperature change or simply due to slipping. That's why you need to check focus every now and then.

Thanks @gorann. Just a few more weeks ...

You are right of course about the objects being different. But I wasn't satisfied with a few details, mostly near the core of ngc1931, where I had lost colour. Fixed now. I'll put the improved version in the original post shortly Thanks Göran. To paraphrase a certain song from the Beatles. "Mak is all you need" 😜

Late summer reading.

Thank you, Peter. For some reason, this image was harder to process than the Heart nebula I posted yesterday. Here, I had to work hard not to burn out the core of ngc 1931, while also keeping the delicate shades in the rest of the nebula and in ic 417.

The Spider and the Fly. Reprocessed data from March 2022. The central region of ngc 1931 is quite bright, and reminds me of the core of M42. This nebula also has a small group of stars in the core, similar to the Trapezium stars in M42. The core is home to a dark nebula, DOBASHI 4431 Almost 6 hrs worth of HaRGB data captured with my MN190 and ASI294MM Original version: Improved version:

(Don't mind at all.) I'm glad you find it useful. SCNR removes one of the primary colours, red, green or blue. If you invert an image first, it removes the corresponding complementary colour, cyan, magenta, or yellow. In this case, the image didn't have much bright and solid red in it, as many Ha images tend to have. That's why it was easy to remove the dominant red/magenta and get something which looks like a Hubble palette.

Thank you very much, all.

Thank you for your kind words, Rodd.

Thank you, Sunshine.

I'm glad you like it. This area of the Heart nebula can look fabulous in a proper Hubble palette image with a 3D look to it, but here I was aiming for a natural look. The "mustard version" was more of a coincidence. A nice one though. The Hubble palette is meant to show the abundances of Hydrogen, Oxygen, and metal (Sulphur). But this colour scheme is as far from reality as you can get. Hydrogen under low pressure has a red/magenta glow, while under high pressure, it glows in pink.

Thank you, Peter. I like the natural look better too. Someone on a Facebook group suggested that I do this target in narrowband and create an image in SHO. I don't even have any nb filters other than Ha. So I played with the data and stumbled upon a simple method to completely change the colour scheme of an image. I posted it here just for fun. The natural look with the blue haze is the one that I was aiming for.