Adam J

Just in the post from Ian King Imaging (IKI / FLO). 1) 11 inch losmandy bar for my Esprit 100. 2) ASTRODON 5nm SII 1.25 filter. Not sure how I feel about the filter, you see I have had the 5nm OIII and 5nm Ha for a quite a while now. I have been slowly adding to my colection when opertunity has arisen. I got the 5nm OIII second hand for £180 maybe 2-3 years back old style astrodon from Don himself with the cheap looking white sticker and all. I got the 5nm Ha for £250 on a trip to the USA in 2018 just after AD got sold to OSI new branded version with the laser etching on the holder. Finally I got the 5nm SII today to complete my set and at mind boggling price of £384 from IKI. So ill be frank about this, if I was starting out down the path of choosing filters right now there would be now way on earth that I could justify a simply unbelievible £1152 for three 5nm narrow band filters. Dont get me wrong, I could easily afford to...just could not justify it to myself. They are great just relitively speaking not that great. As things stand I justified this to myself on the basis that if I ever sold them I can probaby ask 70% of new (new now £1152 being) and having paid £814 for them 70% of £1152 is £806.40. They will never be removed from the filter wheel so will likely maintain their condition. As for £1713 for the 3nm set...well thats the same cost as my Esprit 100. Like I say the mind boggles. But admittedly it does not boggle so much as when I noticed that Chroma 5nm filters are £459 the weirdest thing about that being (well beyond the fact that they have managed to be more expensive than Astrodon) is that you only have to pay £20 more to get their 3nm filters, work that one out because I cant. If i was starting out from scratch today then I would most likely go with ZWO Ha and SII and only buy the OIII from astrodon as it does do better on those reflections. At any rate I now have the set and will be giving the SII a run at the next opertunity. Mainly to make sure that it really is an SII filter as a few people have recently reported getting Ha filters marked as SII filters. Adam

no 800 on the 1000D all the way.

Water block and trickle feed is the answer lol. Stop messing about with fans and ill litterally give you a water block and connectors lol.

Did this get resolved?

Yeah the GPU is a step up too but for my money the ES CC is better.

If you want the best get the Explore Scientific Coma Corrector. If you want one that just gets it done without been too expensive the Baader. But the ES one is much better. Adam

Yes that is what I did when I purchased a ATIK 460 a while back.

There are a few options but all are smaller than your current chip. The ASI1600mm pro is about the only option you have. The next biggest sensor below the ASI1600mm pro is in something like the Moravian C2-12000a and its only slightly bigger than what you would get in a ATIK 460. Adam

The camera has a 6.5mm backfocus without the black threaded adapter on the front, with it its about 16.5mm so you will need another 38.5mm between that and the m48 adaptor on the Esprit 100 flattner. Adam

Oh I agree, unless you are at an elevated location then you are just not going to get those results, the shocking thing is that on my Esprit 100 at 1.41" I can tell the difference between a night with good seeing and bad seeing in my images and so going below 1" at my location seems pointless to me. You would probably be looking at something like 1 in 5 nights having sufficient seeing to work at 1" let alone lower. Adam

I would say that this is more like bad colimation to my eye. Adam

Which filter are you trying to use with it at the same time? Maybe try just using the 2 inch filter and a empty filter wheel position. Is there any chance that the filter wheel has lost its position referance and you have the dark frame filte or a narrow band in line with it by mistake? It would explain the odd data that you sent to me on the iris as that did not seem to be the filters you thought it was. You can recalibrate the wheel in the drivers usually. I would visually confirm its giving you the filter you want. Adam

That has two possible causes on a 130PDS, 1) Your spider vains are twisted and need a tweek 2) The coma corrector has pushed the focus position closer to the scope and as such the tube is now in the light path within the body of the scope, so it creates additional spikes just like the spiders and takes a chunk out of the left side of all your stars. I think that you have a bit of both here. One is easy to fix two is not so easy and requires that you cut about 1cm or so off the focus tube to stop it happening. I did it on my scope. You then need to glue something onto the bottom runner to stop it from popping out when fully extended. Focus the scope then make a mark on the inside of the draw tube within the main body of the scope. Leave some tollerance 7mm or so when you cut. measure twice cut once.... All you need is a hack saw and some patience. Looking at the star shap i would say this is a big part of your other issues. Appart from that its a nice image. Only other thing that would cause it is rotating the scope in its rings over two sessions. Adam

No problems.

I used a 130PDS for imaging for years, try to adjust the tension on the focuser first of all on the bottom there are two grub screws that will adjust it. The other issues with it is that if you are using just the two original thumb screws to attach the camera, those are insufficient and most people will drill and tap a third to stop droop. You cant expect too much out the box from a £180 scope, when you see people taking fantastic images with them with perfect stars 9 times out of 10 its been modified in some way. Adam

Well those have spring mounted sensors, they can be adjusted and if you are not careful when you remove the sensor for modification you can end up with tilt. The other big possibility on a DSLR is a poor quality T-ring allowing movement between it and the camera. The last possibility is your scope focuser is not colimated or is experiancing droop. What scope is it? Adam

Depends on what camera your using?

Nothing immediatly comparable. You either get slightly less QE and a slightly larger sensor but a near identical pixel size or you get a slightly smaller pixel lower sensitivity (but still better than osc). So something like the ASI1600MM Pro, or the Moravian C2-12000a if you want similar pixel size. or If you want similar price, the ASI183mm pro. Personally on balance I would give the Moravian C2-12000a a shot if I did not already own a ASI1600MM Pro. Its expensive but its from a premium brand and should not have such bad microlens patterns (although you will still get something). https://www.365astronomy.com/moravian-instruments-c2-12000a-monochrome-cmos-astrophoto-camera-with-sony-imx253-sensor-for-12-bit-long-exposure.html Personally I am not a fan of the 183, for me those pixels are just a little too small. I think FLO do have an account with Moravian but for some reason I dont understand they dont list them on their site. Adam

looks like sensor tilt or maybe colimation.

If you want something more premium and without the lateral chromatic aberation of a two element corrector then the Explore Scientific coma corrector is a great option. Adam

I thought that was the name for the entire area including things like the propeller and the cresent etc. Guess I see this as a sub feature of that complex.

Might be that the worm gear mesh has slipped and its binding on part pf the rotation, its tended to be the case that the tollerance on these mounts changes from one place to another so it can be fine at one angle and then at another it will bind as the mesh gets tighter. The sound you heard was most likely just the sound of stepper motors stalling, which can sound horrendious without anything actually getting broken.

An alternative for you might be the new Moravian C2-12000a. Bigger sensor, more sensitive and higher resolution.

half the price mind you.

So I was scanning about signus looking for things almost doing EEA - perish the thought, but with more the intent of seeing if I could "discover something" without just slewing to something I had seen before, when I found this area, looked interesting so I started to capture some data on it. Not one I am familiar with though, anyone know if this structure has a name? Lots of work to do this is only 12 x 240 in ha so far. Will add many many more hours in Ha and OIII and SII so please no one spoil me and tell me that there is not OIII in this object or whatever, want to findout for myself. It was nice to go through the process of finding something without looking it up first and just slewing to it and then imaging it. I happend to pass through the propeller nebula before this and was just like, na I know that that is not interested. If it does not have a common name I shall name it lol! Adam