alacant

I'm surprised to see so much blue. @AnonymousAnimosity I wonder if we have the same lens? On our example, the blue and green coincide almost perfectly. Maybe it's the filter... Dunno. Cheers

Yep. Essential. The camera screen is hopeless. We used EKOS' live view at 10x. Perhaps you mean the lens was set on A? Cheers

Hi Learn the other modules too of course, but don't spend too long on them. The Scheduler allows you to get some well deserved sleep;) Cheers

Thanks for the references. We tried an example over the weekend. II's nice. It doesn't give the usual undersampled looks-like-it's-been-taken-with-a-cheap-lens type images; better than my Takumar 135. Focus is however super critical as outlined below. Apart from being painfully slow at getting the light captured, one annoying point is that the diaphragm blades have a sharp notch-indentation at each corner which produce spikes even on dim stars. Gonna try some step down filter rings instead. Focus against the lens stop gives red star halos with true infinity being around 1/10 of a turn away. The best way we found was to centre say, Capella and focus away from the lens stop until the red halo just disappeared. Focusing with a Bahtinov yields red halos, so not much use with this -and many other- old lenses. Here are some samples two clicks down from open. Not sure what that would be as there seem to be several click stops between those marked on the lens barrel. Thanks again and HTH. ** Do we think a thread, imaging with vintage lenses, would be useful?

Hi Does anyone have any astro samples taken with this lens? Cheers

Hi No need to install. There is a ready built version here. Just extract the tar.gz. e.g. to ~/Desktop/ To test if it runs OK on your system: ~/Desktop/release$ ./run_rgb_starnet.sh Reading input image... Done! Bits per sample: 16 Samples per pixel: 3 Height: 712 Width: 1048 [... ] 100% finished Done! If not, it only takes a minute or so to build. You too can have the processed with starnet appearance! Cheers and HTH

Yeah. If you want conventional menus-along-the-top with graphs and stuff, then StarTools is perhaps not the way to go. Stick with that which you know best. Cheers

Hi I tried light pollution filters and TBH, I came to the conclusion that if you want to get natural galaxy and star colour (and there aren't many of us left!) you're better without. Otherwise you're fighting colour which has had chunks of the visible spectrum removed and impossible to replace. If you can't get StarTools working for the gradient, Siril which is a free download, comes a close second. Or just go with whatever you're most familiar. Cheers

In StarTools 'Crop'. Lovely shot. Loadsa detail. You may have lost a bit of data. Use AutoDev - Bin - Crop - Wipe - AutoDev with a good slice of background for the latter. Otherwise could begin losing faint detail. After 'Colour', try Entropy on Ha; there are some nice red bits in m33. The new Super-Structure module will then put the icing on the galaxy for you. Cheers and HTH

Hi Either use Standard for both or just crop the edges. StarTools, so lose the rgb align. HTH.

So save it as .fits and avoid the DSS intervention. Stacking? Siril. Forever.

It's compressed. Save it as a pure tiff ( or better .fits) after you have stacked your frames. I converted it. HTH

Oh dear. Are you perhaps trying to open a compressed/non linear file, such as the one you posted? Cheers

StarTools. The latest release candidate. HTH

Hi I like it. Some lovely detail.

Hi Can't help with the ID, but if you have enough frames, stacking with a clipping algorithm will remove whatever it is. Cheers

Hi As @happy-kat enquires, you probably already have what you need to begin. How about an equatorial mount to get started? Add a telescope at a later date if you get fed up of deep sky. That's perhaps as simple as may satisfy what you want to do ATM. Cheers

We've a 2005 vintage blue tube 250p. The mirrors are indistinguishable from those of more recent acquisitions. HTH

Hi My experiences with it were not good. But of course, you may get a good one;) If you want the minimum of setup, this one has a proper focuser, good mechanical build and trustworthy mirrors. It should be OK on an heq5 but I'm with @TerryMcK on the eq6 recommendation; so much easier. Cheers and HTH.

Hi Yeah, well, Thursday, so about 99%? Bright; no torch needed find usb sockets or the focusing mask when you drop it... I'm not a fan of filters and in this case, I don't think there's one which would block sunlight -albeit reflected- and allow you to image galaxies. Or maybe there is? The accepted norm at full moon seems be leave your telescope in its box, or use expensive narrow pass filters. But rules are there to be... Have a go anyway! Cheers

Hi everyone Another example of what to target at full moon. I suppose the narrower field of view and the further away from said satellite the better. We began capture from around 00:30 at just 30º above the horizon. Strange to see the telescope in much the same position at dawn. I suppose that this close to the pole, there's little movement. The EKOS scheduler looked after proceedings until just before sunrise. It managed over 70 frames all, apart from some of the first few, usable. The gradient was strongest entering from the top and required one of Siril's big hammers to remove. Anyway, I don't think it's officially galaxy season just yet, so here's hoping we're not chased off by the gamekeeper. Comments on how to tame the cigar would be great. Thanks for looking. 700d on gso N203

If it's anything like as good as EKOS' own internal multistar implementation, phd2 users are in for a treat.

Is there a filter anywhere? Was there a dew shield? The artefacts are in line with the elongation. There was a full moon. Blacken the edge of the secondary. Rotate the camera. Same?

Hi Sorry, only got a 'phone ATM but will reply anyway in case you have a clear night ahead... The stars are trailed bottom left to top right. That may explain the unusual diffraction spikes. Did you try guiding the mount? The stars are distorted toward the right hand side. Is the camera square to to focuser? Do you have a good coma corrector? Cheers