souls33k3r

2 hours ago, gorann said:

Clearly an object that stimulates imagination. I called it the Wild Boar Nebula since my version of it seemed to have tusks!

https://www.astrobin.com/386831/D/

Hahahaha now that you've said it, I can see the wild boar as well

Funnily enough, I literally just finished this target yesterday. 

It's also known as the Fossil footprint Nebula. 

Very nicely done. 

What a great image mate. 

53 minutes ago, Xiga said:

Thanks Dave and Ahmed for confirming. Just my geriatric phone to blame then! 😜

Ahmed, it's a prime lens, not a zoom one. Specifically it's a Tamron 135mm F2.8 Adaptall II lens. Being an Adaptall lens, you can attach different mounts, so to attach it to my optical train i picked up an M42 mount for it, plus another adapter known as a 'Russian Adapter', which converts from M42 to T2. You can see the full optical train below. 

I only found out after i got mine, but there is a supposedly better version out there. I think it's the SMC F2.5 version, so maybe look at that one instead. The one i have needs stopped down to be useable. The CA is way less in NB than in broadband though. I was using step-down rings as well, to avoid diffraction spikes, and for this the sweet spot seemed to be using a 30mm step-down ring (~F4.5) coupled with moving the aperture blade one half-stop between F2.8 and F4. I haven't tried it properly for broadband imaging, but i suspect i will need to close the aperture blades to F4 at best. 

Cheers for the brilliant explanation Ciarán which now makes complete sense. SMC Pentax lens, here me come!!! on a serious note, this looks super fantastic mate. The only thing I'm wondering is whether these such wide lenses are any good in Bortle 8/9 skies that I live in but I guess that's me distracting the topic away from the absolutely stonking image that you've produced which I wouldn't want

56 minutes ago, Xiga said:

Thanks mate. You should definitely give it a go. Since getting the Atik, all i've done is this image. I thought i'd be itching to put it onto the 80ED, but i might play around with more widefield work now that i've finished this. Might go for a smaller project next time though!

Hahaha you've made a believer out of me mate, that's for sure cheekily I have been looking at this lens on fleabay and I think for the price it makes sense So is it the 35 - 135mm one that you have?

Also the image looks fine on my phone mate. 

Good God man!!!! Bloody love it matey. How can you ever go wrong with this. I might be one of the very handful of people who just can't stand wide field imaging but this head turner has now made me question my stance. Absolutely awesome matey. 

5 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Ive got both Astronomiks 6nm Ha and Oiii being delivered tomorrow and Ollys comments gave me a bit of concern but you have reassured me slightly!

Hi mate, you'll love them. Trust me. I sold my filters back in February this year and have been in touch with the new owner ever since. Really nice chap. We talk about other worldly things and he also let's me know how he has been finding them. So far, he has been nothing short of impressed. He too had halo issues which these filters have now resolved for him. I hope the copy you get are as good as the ones I had. Good luck mate. 

I hope I'm not going off topic here but I used to have Astronomik 6nm filters and I live in Bortle 8 skies. No halos, pure class. I never tried imaging OIII during full moon but Ha had no issues. Just putting this out there so that you do not give them a miss when considering. 

18 minutes ago, Grant said:

That's odd - I just checked and 1080P is an option? Perhaps try on a different device or, it can sometimes take YouTube longer to process the HD version so maybe it wasn't available when you tried?

Maybe I was just a bit too quick to view the session. Can confirm I can see the 1080p option. Cheers mate. 

On 17/08/2020 at 22:44, Grant said:

Dave's StarGaZine video is here for you to follow along 🙂 

 

Cheers for the data Grant and it sure was an interesting episode. One thing I would like to say, the quality of the video was for me not good. I always want to bump it up to 1080p but this session did not have that option so all the formulas that Dave was typing (or had already typed) couldn't make sense of it. But it's good that he released the project so I can now check. But just a pointer really. Cheers mate. 

2 hours ago, Davey-T said:

Anyone read Chinese ?

 

I do, it says "Give it to Ahmed to test this for you and you can have it back when he's done playing" promise. 🤤

5 hours ago, Richie092 said:

You are not wrong. Will post up on what I decide but in the meantime stay well.

Cheers mate, will look forward to hearing what you end up buying and your thoughts.  Stay safe and well. 

5 minutes ago, Richie092 said:

Thanks for the replies. 
 

it’s looking like the Essato is in the lead. 
 

Might get have to sell some stuff to fund it though. 

Good luck mate. It's never an easy decision

3 hours ago, Richie092 said:

Just going through the research on this myself for my 8HD what did you decide on #souls33k3r ?

The Essatto looks lovely. For now I am "mainly" going to use for visual and would like a nicer focuser, imaging with it is deff in the pipeline though.

Life got in the way, a series of unfortunate events meant that I had put all of this to the sideline for the time being and everything became meaningless.

By the time I got my life back on track, I needed a distraction and ended up playing with the Lakeside focuser that I had which was originally installed on the focuser knob. Turns out, a bit of playing around with it is getting me the perfect focus that I needed. 

I might still end up buying something else but for now, I'll happily image away with the lakeside focuser. 

Hope this helps mate but Essato was a real contender when I was seriously looking in to it. SyedT is a great advocate of the device

You're a true artist mate. Every single image of yours is full of clarity and detail. I still ca not understand how you manage 20min exposures on this mount. I know balance is of utmost importance but still. Hats off to you mate. 

"Ouch". Truly sorry to hear about all the troubles John. I really enjoyed the read and was most certainly looking forward to the first light. I hope when your builder comes in and creates that gap between the original pier and dome foundation, that should resolve the issue. Good luck mate. 

On 04/08/2020 at 21:50, carastro said:

Well this was a surprise as I was told I would have to wait until September for it.

Came today, but was not expecting such a huge and heavy box.  chair stood next to it for size comparison. 

Also never seen such solid packing before.

Also was not expecting such a huge case for a telescope. 

Well no wonder it was so huge, because it accommodates all the accessories too.

 

So here it is.

 

Not going to be able to use it just yet, as I need to get a Vixen Dovetail and a focal reducer and adapter.

It is much bigger and heavier than I thought it would be as well. 

Carole  

Gorgeous isn't it. Wait until you use it. You'll love it but it is (as you've already experienced) by no means a light scope

What a cheap and easy way of getting up and running in no time. Really awesome build mate and one which has now given me an idea too. Thank you for sharing. 

42 minutes ago, johnoelliott said:

The UPB only has USB2 ports.

Don't you have a problem with amp glow at usb2 speeds?

I'd try plugging everything into the UPB rather than trying to use the 1600 hub.

It does have USB 2 but I don't normally see any amp glow but it does show up slightly on the Darks. 

Yeah I will try plugging the guidecam in to the UPB and see how that behaves which for the love of God I can't remember if I have tried that already or not. 

Just wanted to see if anyone had any other ideas what could be causing this. 

Hi All, 

Hope you're all keeping well and safe. 

I'm going to put this down to a software related question rather than the hardware but please don't let that hold your thoughts on this issue. 

So I have ASI1600MM as my main imaging camera and I use 174mm mini as my Guidecam (OAG) which is plugged in to the back of the ASI1600 hub. The camera USB3 is then plugged in to the Pegasus UPB. I've been having this issue for months now (It was initlaly fine but then 2 updates ago this issue started to appear) and I feel like it's time to ask for some help and suggestions. 

Issue 1: If I start the session by plugging in the ASI 174mm mini Guidecam at the back of the ASI 1600 hub and fire up Pegasus UPB, it keeps showing the camera as unplugged. The solution is to unplug the ASI174 camera and restart the laptop and now the ASI1600MM shows connected. 

Issue 2: I fire up SGP and let my camera cool down, it works just fine but as soon as I plug in the ASI174 Guidecam and (or is it when I hit connect on PHD2) my ASI1600MM camera stops responding. Only way to fix it by closing down SGP and then fire it back up again and cool the camera down once again. 

I do have workarounds and these seems to fix the issue for the entirety of the session but I don't know what could be the cause of the issue. Whether it's a hardware issue or software. I don't remember if I have tried plugging the Guidecam directly on to the USB hub of the Pegasus UPB but that's one thing I'm going to most certainly try. 

Any ideas? 

Thanks in advance. 

55 minutes ago, iapa said:

fully covered

disrobing

in full glory

 

 

Cheers mate. Much appreciated. I'm slightly jealous with your view to the North and West and I'm pretty sure it's the same on the East

Great image. Same, curious to know as well. 

1 hour ago, PhotoGav said:

Thank you @MarkAR, @souls33k3r and @Laurin Dave!

@souls33k3r - yes, it was at the telescope's native focal length of 2032mm at f10. Thank goodness for the Mesu! The main reason I purchased that mount was to improve the long focal length stuff and thankfully it is working. I just need to upgrade my seeing and I will get better results! Can't find a reliable website for that upgrade though......

Mate don't blame you for going the Mesu 200 route. A beast of a mount and worth every penny. You brave soul imaging at f/10. With my bortle class and seeing, it would take me 20 years to get a single image done at that f ratio 😛

Absolutely stunning. Was this imaged sat F/10?

Sorry I haven't been able to update this thread. Documented everything on the link here

So for now, I'm going to pass on any external focusers for now. Have spent too much on this hobby in the last year already.