wimvb

Thank you, Peter. My first version was a bit toned down. But then PixInsight crashed, I had to start over and decided on a different approach.

Very soon they will be giving these away with so much competirion. I wonder how these mounts would perform with high precision (renshaw?) encoders on the RA axis.

Thanks, @Richard_. Good luck with your version

The Linux gods aren't nice to you, are they? First your troubles with your mount not connecting, and then also rdp not working. That's Windows holding up a huge sign, saying "Choose Me".

Yes, plain old xrdp works just fine.

FYI, you can run Kstars/Ekos from a Raspberry Pi 4 on the mount and connect to it with Windows RDP with no issues. I do so. I've never liked VNC, and never got it to work properly either. RDP feels like I am hooked up to the RPi directly, even though I'm sitting 30 m away from it. (And it might as well be on another continent.) But I don't rely on wifi and have an ethernet connection to the RPi. I've tried wifi but I lost connection too often. With INDI (the underlying architecture) you can opt to run Kstars/Ekos on a Windows machine indoors, but there is a risk involved. If you lose network connection between the RPi which runs INDI and the Windows computer which runs Kstars, your imaging session will crash. Otoh, If you run everything on the RPi (INDI, Kstars/Ekos), then even if you lose the network connection, the imaging session will happily continue.

This is going to be my last image for this year. I still have data waiting to be processed on my hard drive, but there won't be any more opportunities to collect more. This is my take on this popular object, Melotte 15 or IC 1805. I collected 4 hours and 40 minutes H-alpha and 7 hours RGB data for this image. Unfortunately, of those 7 hours, I could keep only 4 hours and 40 minutes, the rest was spoiled by clouds. Gear: Skywatcher 190MN on a Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 mount, with a ZWO ASI294MM camera. Processing: PixInsight

ZWO, Sharpstar, Pegasus Astro... Which chinese company just developed a harmonic drive mount (and allows it to be rebranded)? It just seems too much of a coincidence that three companies independently come up with such similar designs using basically the same technology. Btw, both the Sharpstar and Pegasus seem to have connectors on the "bottom" of the RA housing, which is bad for us living at 60 degrees North.

Give it a few years, both will stabilise 😁

That answers the question I had. If ZWO would drop support of other mounts, they could as well discontinue the ASIAir. What also surprises me, is that this is the second harmonic drive mount I've come across within this last week. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003408574030.html

I never use ABE, only DBE, where I have control over where I put the samples. Most of the time I only place about 12 samples; one in each corner, one further in along the diagonals from each corner, and one along each side.

I don't think there ever was an issue. The use of ABE (or DBE for that matter) on images that are not cropped, and where samples are not placed carefully, can have the effect visible in the original post. The absence of darks would add to that.

Is it collimated? 😁 Seriously though, impressive work 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽

I use a barlowed laser to collimate my skywatcher 190MN. The secondary has a center mark which I can see projected on the primary. I align this with the mark on the primary, and both back on the laser's disk. I also check that the secondary mark is centered in the focuser.

Sorry for your loss, Peter. That is an excellent image of this planetary.

Good luck eith your project. Unexpected clear skies here as well, at least for a few hours. I'm collecting Ha for an M82 image. May stitch it to M81 and make a mosaic out of it.

Thanks, Paul. As I already wrote in my reply to Göran, there are quite a few very distant galaxies in this image, that are further away than the usual "faint fuzzies".

Thanks, Göran. Not only Holmberg. I have captured a few small galaxies that are several billion light years away. I have annotated them in this image (red brown tags, the blue tag is for a globular cluster that is part of M81). The small galaxy near the top is approximately 1.7 Bly distant, and the one near the bottom 4 Bly, according to a simple Hubble model (no relativistic effects taken into account).

This is a "you take it while you can" image. Data captured two nights ago with almost a full moon. Total integration time 4 hours (80 minutes per channel, RGB only) Telescope: SkyWatcher 190MN Camera: ZWO ASI294MM at -20 C, gain 0. Processed with PixInsight

I ibspected frames taken between 21.09 and 21.16 and didn't see anything. How wide was the occultation zone?

Unfortunately, either I missed the occultation, or the asteroid did. I did a test run of a SER sequence first, but didn't like it. So I opted for a sequence of 200 3 s exposures, starting at 22.08 (5 minutes before the occultation). But I couldn't see any change in the star's intensity in the previews. According to Aladin, I'm looking at the right star. I'll inspect the images in PI and maybe make a short time lapse.

I have clear skies and saw an announcement for the occultation on a Swedish Facebook page. Atm I am imaging ldn 1374, but will interrupt that sequence and try to catch the event. For me that will be at 22.13 local time, since I'm just North of Stockholm. I'm not sure I will succeed with this, because I have a few trees to deal with. Does anyone know how best to capture the event with a reflector and a mono cmos (190MN and ASI294MM)? The moon is bright, but I thought of shooting a sequence of 3 - 5 seconds exposures.

What camera are you using? To me it looks like this image was taken with an unmodded dslr. When dealing with problems, look for the source of the problem. If you want to image emission nebulae, use a camera with good sensitivty near the Halpha line and use narrow band or dual band filters. A narrow band filter will block much of the star light, keeping their intensity and size down in the stacked image.

Interesting. I had planned to buy the EAF for my second scope, but now I think I will pass and either stay with the Pegasus or invest in a Sesto Senso.

It looks to me like the calibration is not valid anymore. A first step in trouble shooting should always be to clear the calibration and let the guider recalibrate. Also make sure that the guide scope focal length and camera pixel size are set correctly. The internal guider works well for me, but I clear the calibration every imaging session. This is with a ZWO ASI290 guide camera, binned 2x2, and an OAG. I always let it calibrate near the target.