Demonperformer

15 hours ago, Jkulin said:

If I went to Olly's (Which I would love to do, then I would take my own kit and use my own processing, but would listen and learn from Olly to make my own images better.

A response which nicely ignores the point of my question.

I note from your signature that there are a lot of scopes, mounts, cameras and accessories that you presumably consider to be "yours" because you have given money to the person who did the work of making them. You also presumably consider the results gained by using this equipment to be "yours" (despite having not manufactured the chip in the camera you are using?). Indeed, the question arises, did you write all the software that you are using to process "your" picture? If not, it isn't really "yours" ...

So where does one draw the line?

If I give money to someone who has done the work of setting up a scope to buy an amount of time on that scope, the time and the results gained (using my skill - such as it is - of selecting & framing my object, and selecting settings, including filter choice) are similarly "mine" as long as I do not claim to have done something I haven't.

I've posed this before, so I know what the response will be,  but it bears repeating. If you went to Olly's and used his equipment, but uncollimated and unPAd his perfectly collimated and PAd scope, just so you could say you had set it all up yourself, imagine his reaction.

Definitely worth the wait. Nice result.

Agree with what has been said. I use platesolving with Sharpcap which puts the sync points in EQMOD. I have a list of bright stars at (roughly) 2h intervals at 30-60N which I use as my starting point. That way, I don't have to worry too much about how the scope is positioned on the mount after PA and can still get it within the required max distance for Sharpcap to do its thing.

On 05/07/2013 at 11:21, Jiggy 67 said:

how to find the star in a more recognisable catalogue

Does the certificate have a position (RA & DEC)? If so, it should not be too difficult to track it down and tell you (one or more of) it's official designation(s).

I have considered it, if only to get some data that I know is good to practice my processing.

From previous discussions, remote imaging seems to polarise opinion on SGL. There are those who say the image is yours because you have selected the target, capture details and processed the resulting data. There are those who say because you have not set up the telescope yourself it is cheating. My opinion: as long as you don't pretend that the data you get from a remote telescope it the Atacama Desert was taken from your light-polluted garden, I don't see a problem.

And doesn't look like we shall have one this coming week either ...

I think for that budget you are going to be limited.

It is possible to get quite good results on DSOs with a standard (unmodified) DSLR. For planetary, I thought the neximage was a bit overpriced. There used to be a lot of modified Toucams (Phillips) around that were good for planetary. I haven't seen many advertised lately, but it might be worth keeping an eye on various sale boards.

If you want to get a better camera for DSOs, I would recommend you wait until you can save up for one of the (for example) ZWOs.

Your unmodded canon is already blocking IR (and diminishing a lot of the red end of the spectrum as well!). If you have no intention of modding, then the extra IR blocking of the CCD version would just be duplicating what you already have. As such, I would make the decision based on cost ...

5 hours ago, MarsG76 said:

Well done.... challenge accepted....

 

I suspect it might be easier from Sydney, being a little bit higher ...

Some years ago, I tried to image this pair, but failed miserably. Maybe I'll give it another go.

I would hope a tracked mount is what is meant. Without any tracking, even 30s would be severely limiting in terms of focal length.

But you've got me thinking about PEC: apparently there are two sorts, one is dumb and the other reacts to what is happening "live". So, if you had been running an imaging session on an object, it would be learning what is happening to the mount in that session. This means that a sub taken at the end of the session would be more accurately tracked than one at the start of the session.

This is, as davew said, not as easy as it first appears ...

I am barely beginning to get to grips with CMOS ... I think I will join the "dinosaur" club and stick with what I have as well ... not that anyone will notice ...

An excellent challenge that could be a great "leveller".

A dark site is the astronomical equivalent of a unicorn.

On 16/10/2009 at 15:19, RobH said:

Gone are the days of the local ironmongers unfortunately, where you could buy nails by the pound, in eco friendly paper bags!

We still have one of those in Poole, Boones (they don't have a website but are listed on loads of the yelp-type sites). I can't praise them highly enough. They are the sort of shop you can go in with a nut and say "I want something that will fit this" and they find it and will sell you one. Brilliant.

1 hour ago, Jason D said:

It should look like that (with an offset). Here is a photo of my collimated scope

I stand corrected ... proved my first comment ("I am no expert")!

I am no expert on collimation (only just beginning to tackle it myself), but I think the black circle is supposed to be perfectly central and it looks offset to the right to me. I think this means you need to adjust the secondary a little.

Golden rule: whatever you do, do it in small (very small) steps, so that it is easy to reverse it.

On 15/03/2019 at 12:38, FLO said:

there aren’t many available

Does this mean they will become collectors' items and end up being worth 20x more than a boring old red one?

Some years ago I visited a cub camp with a scope for an evening. It was quite a dark location and, while setting up, I glanced upwards and had a quiet moan about the cloud that was invading a previously 100% clear sky - until I realised it was actually the summer milky way. Just not used to seeing any of it from home. 

On 03/03/2019 at 20:30, Peter Drew said:

wind farm turbines that now ringfence our location. 

is this going to become the new light pollution?

I wonder if it has anything to do with the increase in light pollution? Under a dark sky, you can see a lot more and under a heavy LP sky, even a small instrument, by darkening the background, simply enables you to simply "see" them.

This suggests a practical experiment for me: produce a 40mm mask for my 4" frac and take it out and compare what I can see with it "under the streetlights" compared with no instrumentation - a sort of "count the stars I can see in the Pleiades" sort of thing ...

Now, where's my "blue peter" kit?

7 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

There's a relatively new feature in PHD2 - you need the latest version - called 'predictive PEC' or PPEC. It 'learns' your system's behaviour over the first few cycles and then applies it, and  it constantly refines its model of the PEC. It does appear to work and I use it all the time now.

That is definitely worth investigating. Will go looking ...

Thanks.

Yes, I realise yours is, but not everyone on this forum has that luxury ...

Sorry, realise yours is permanent and wasn't trying to hijack the thread (much!), but the process obviously takes a significant amount of time and was wondering if it was still a worthwhile option when all the gear is put back together each session in not necessarily exactly the same relative positions. If PEC is working out of step it would be likely to cause more problems than it solves?