wornish

What operating system are you using  Windows 10, Windows(other version),  something else?

If you restart APP and load a single light image does it do the same?

9 minutes ago, Datalord said:

I think I'm going to shy away from iOptron for now. Not in the mood for beta testing.

I know what you mean having read some of the posts on here.

For astro imaging Lunar close-ups and Planets what's the difference in using a

Sky-Watcher Skymax 180 Pro - Maksutov  FL 2700mm  for £805

And

Celestron Edge HD 8" - SCT. FL 2125mm. For £1275

And

iOptron Photon RC8 Ritchey-Chretien FL 1624mm. For £899.

I understand that for deep sky imaging using long exposures guiding becomes a major factor but for Lunar/ Planetary its less critical isn't it?

I am open to other suggestions.

Apparently iOptron are about to release a CEM70. see post on here

Its certainly in the second one see attached image.

And I just retried the first and it is there as well although less noticeable.

I tried over stretching in Pixinsight but there is no sign in the sub you shared it looks fine.

If you can see it on some of them you have answered your own question.

Inspect each one and discard the ones showing the shadow.

Can you share one of the individual lights?

You say you are in a light polluted location, it could be a shadow from something.

This might help

http://www.wilmslowastro.com/software/formulae.htm#CFZ

The formula there confirms your number for the size of the CFZ is 70 microns.

 If 7086 steps moves the tube 15mm then the distance per step is .0021 mm correct

and yes you therefore have approx 35 steps in the CFZ.

Your maths seem fine.

1 hour ago, MarkAR said:

Very nice, reds are really bright which make a nice contrast with the white.

Thought I would brighten up my day😁

Taken this week in two short sessions before it drops behind trees.  Only 8 x 180sec for Ha and the same for OIII.

Will have another go later in the year.

Stellermate. is OK but its basically a RPi4 with Stars/Ekos and few bits extra.  Its cheaper to just get the RPi4 and add Kstars/Ekos and PHD2.

There is a script that will do all the hard work for you.  Look here.

https://github.com/rlancaste/AstroPi3/blob/master/README.md

6 hours ago, msacco said:

I believe you meant 4GB?

Thanks for the comment, what do you think about a Pi against a mini PC? Sure it's a bit more expensive, but might be a bit more comfortable.

Thanks! Thinking about it, is there a dedicated polar align software in astroberry? I don't own polemaster or similar, and currently only using sharpcap.

If I won't have a polar alignment solution for the Pi that's probably a deal breaker for me.

Yes my RPi4 is 4GB.  Was a typo

Kstars/Ekos has its own polar alignment tool which works very well.  I also used Sharpcap but the Ekos version is very similar and it actually does the RA rotation for you before you manually do the actual alignment. Here is a short demonstration.

I have the RPi 4 with 4MB memory and run Astroberry which contains Kstars/Ekos as my astro software to control everything plus PHD2 for guiding.  It works great.  The one extra thing I did was to invest in a SSD with a USB3 controller and that made a huge difference to the performance. The improvement was 8X the speed of using just an SD card.  The RPi4 doesn't boot off USB3 yet but there is quite a simple mod that's available that allows the system to run completely off the SSD.  The performance I get now is actually faster than my laptop.

Here is a useful guide to adding a flash drive.

https://jamesachambers.com/raspberry-pi-4-usb-boot-config-guide-for-ssd-flash-drives/

8 hours ago, Callum1985 said:

Wow.. That is incredible..  Please could you let me know how you have managed that without the sky going red or noisy? Any help to get that kind of result would be amazing.. Thank you, that has opened my eyes that I have some way to go with learning ps

There was a lot of noise in the image but it can be minimised.  I did use PI for most of the processing steps. The easiest way to remove the overall red background was to use the Automatic Background removal tool in PI it works very well. PI does have a more sophisticated background removal tool but that takes a lot more time to set up.  I also used PI to stretch the image using its Histogram Transformation process and its Curves Transformation process.  In PS you can reduce the noise using the Noise Reduction Filter, and also using a Brightness and Contrast adjustment layer.

Good start.

Thanks for sharing your data.

Here is a very quick process in PI and PS.

That is simply amazing.  As others have said the depth draws you in.

Great detail in the full moon.  For me the stars don't sit right.  I also don't like marmite so that's probably why. 

What kit did you use to take the moon image?

Great detail.  But, what's causing the yellow banding?

I would use PIPP first to do the initial centering, aligning and cropping 

followed by Autostakkert 3 to stack them.

Resized R G and B to same as Lum as that carries the detail.

Integrated in APP and then cropped and tweaked in PS.

Colours are a real challenge have to say.

Thanks for sharing your data.

The Luminance file you shared is a totally different size to the R,G and B files .  

Can you share one the same size?

Thanks for sharing your data.

Here is quick integration using APP and then some final tweaks in PS.  Your Luminance has quite a bit of vignetting but the overall data seems pretty good.  I am certainly no expert but like you still learning.

Thanks for sharing your data.

It looks very good to me.

Here is a quick integration in APP and then tweaked in PS.

You need to debayer one shot colour images before stacking.  Otherwise you get a greyscale image.

Here is a good tutorial.

http://www.astropix.com/html/j_digit/using_deepskystacker.html