wimvb

Can you buy a rigrunner from another supplier? As long as you know what you're doing, 12 V is quite safe. Depending on your setup and budget, you could go for a power box, such as Pegasus Astro or Hitec Astro. Not cheap though. But they allow for a tidy cabling solution.

Not necessarily. The pa method used by sharpcap, ekos, and polemaster, needs a field of view of about 1 degree in order for platesolving (near the pole) to work.

@BernardH: if you will use your gear in the desert, my guess is that you want something small and not too fast. Night temperature can drop fast, and you'd want your scope to cool down as well. So, small rather than large. Slower optics will probably be affected less by temperature changes. Otoh, a cooled camera rather than a dslr, to keep that part of your setup as stable as possible. Just my uneducated guess.

Very nice. And welcome to SGL, @MylesGibson

That limits the size of the mount & scope. Suddenly a Star Adventurer becomes attractive.

Invest in the book "Making every photon count" by Steve Richards. It's available from FLO.

Excellent first result. The problem with hdrmt is that you lose colour in the bright core. For this target, I would combine a lesser stretched image with a more aggresdive stretched one. You can also use a dimmed down lightness mask to control the effect of hdrmt. In curves transform bring the white point of the mask down to 40 - 50%.

I find it better to grow out of an app than to try to grow into one. Use dss for stacking and gimp/lightroom for postprocessing. (cost: 0) Then when you see you need more, you are in a better position to specify requirements, and spend your money wisely.

http://wimvberlo.blogspot.com/search/label/MMT Hope this helps

I've so far never bothered with the Mure script, but afaIk, it must be used before any other processing in order for it to work. I know that Barry Wilson has a tutorial on this. https://barrywilson.smugmug.com/PixInsight-Tutorials

Look at the histogram. I bet that the red peak is lower and wider than the green and blue. If so, you have more noise in the red channel. (If not, then I just lost that bet, and I'll buy you a pint whenever/if ever we meet.) A wider histogram in red means that you have more bright red pixels in the background, even if all three peaks are at the same level. You also have more dark red pixels there, but those don't show (brighten) your image. Hence a red cast. Applying dbe or background neutralisation, generally don't remove this. Just create a mask that targets the background and apply scnr red or just decrease contrast in red with the colour saturation tool. Btw, with an osc camera, I wouldn't bother splitting the channels and applying dbe on each. Dbe works just as fine on colour data as on mono. But what you can do, is apply mmt to chrominance just before you start stretching. Use 8 layers.

What software? For pixinsight, try this http://www.deepskycolors.com/archivo/2010/05/07/multi-scale-Processing--Revealing-very.html

In the image, I mean.

From the pixinsight forum (pre-starlink) This is with pixinsight large scale pixel rejection

This is actually the only reason why you would drizzle. In other words, if your stars aren't square blocks, don't drizzle. https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/drizzleintegration-example.6901/ https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/new-drizzleintegration-tool-released.6911/

Yes, I forgot that the wider model has usb3, and the mini only usb2. For solar and planetary imaging, usb3 is faster and better. I too prefer screw on connections, but they can end up at awkward positions sometimes. Usually, zwo items have everything included to fit with other zwo products. With my zwo filter wheel, and oag, everything was included and matched re distances. You just need to put everything in the right order. Very much like that Swedish furniture store.

Very nice! What software do you use? Pixinsight allows one to target chroma noise aggressively without destroying detail.

It certainly does. Isn't that why they are called "SWMBO"?

The mini fits easier as an oag guide cam. Other than that, they're the same, afaIk.

I binned the asi120 and am under the impression that I got lower noise. With a fl of 1000 mm, I might test binning the ASI290 3x3. That would be the equivalent of 7.2 um pixels, vs 5.86 for my imaging camera. Still somewhat smaller than the Lodestar's 8.2/8.4 um, which are oblong, btw.

I was also looking at the lodestar x2 for a guide camera. I have the cooled ASI174MM for imaging, and a zwo oag + ASI120mm-s for guiding. I can usually find guide stars, but snr is low, resulting in poor performance. I may go for the ASI290 and use it binned 2x2 to get the pixel scale up.

I like it. Getting the outer arms to show is a challenge. Do you have pixinsight? If so, try scnr noise reduction. You'll find it will turn the slight green cast in the galaxies to blue. I don't know how to do it in PS. Hasta la Vista Green, maybe?

Just use the mlx ir thermometer, if you don't want a complete weather station. It's possible to swap the esp32 for an arduino and connect through usb in stead of wifi. "Blink" in PI, is your best friend here. Do 100 - 200 at a time if you think all at once may be too much. Don't even try subframe selector, unless you got time on your hands.

That "yellow dust" is a combination of stars and galaxies, with an odd quasar just to spice things up. At least, that's my experience since I started analyzing the background in my images. I use Simbad for this. http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-fid Seeing can have a huge impact on guide rms, imo, even if you expose for 3 seconds. I also suspect camera noise to be an important parameter, especially when you use an oag like I do.

Great narrative and image. Unfortunately you can't dodge LP photons, the stream in along with target photons, and after dbe/abe, you're left with their associated noise. A diy cloud sensor isn't too difficult.