Susaron

I add the picture of M53 and NGC5053 with the color corrected.

Cheers.

And the other one picture from last Friday night, M5 in Serpens

A mix of subs of 120s and 60s but no more than 30min in total, a shame.

M53 and NGC5053 first quick process, taken with the QHY168C at Gain 10, Offset 40, Temp = -10ºC, IDAS D1 but with white led streetlights beside :-(. Only 13x120s unguided subs.

Taken in Aranjuez 30km from Madrid downtown, so below the lightpollution mushroom.

Cheers.

Today I am going to try the couple M53-NGC5053, fingers crossed.

Which settings did you use Uranium?, I mean gain, offset, times....

For my attempt of NGC4565 with the SW200PDS and the ASI385MC I did use a gain of 420, time 15s, I do not remember the offset, but the histogram was around the 75%.

11 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Craig Stark's famous pdf goes into more detail - he suggests you work out what is the limit on your resolution (seeing or aperture) and what that limit is, then select a pixel size of roughly half that. I'd guess teh AS178 is very well matched to the 130PD-s under our wonderful British skies

Out of interest - where did you take that image of Bodes?

Last Friday I tried to use my brand new ASI385MC with my other scope, the SW200PDS, the idea was to use the combination as a globular cluster, planetary nebula and galaxies smasher. The 385MC has a 3.75 micro pixel but with doubled sensitivity with regard to the 185MC.

But maybe I will give a try to the 130PDS as well after Uranium tests.

Take a look here below:

The answer to collimation problems comes from adding good collimation screws to the secondary and to use such a wonderfull collimation tool named Hotech laser.

Like a Boren Simon 10'' F2.8

10 hours ago, Uranium235 said:

Now properly calibrated:

Still a bit noisy, but what do you expect for just over 1 hr exposure! Its alright, but its not a miracle worker...lol

BTW: This was shot at just beyond the Rayleigh limit of the telescope (0.85" p/p)

New Benchmark for the 130PDS gents.

Last version of M81 M82 pair, after learning some tricks with Pixinsight, take a carefull look to the picture, as there are other 3 PGC type galaxies in the background, all Mag 15, it is amazing what this little imaging gem can do with only 2min subs.

Dear 130PDS friends,

Herewith a reprocessing of the Rosette nebula, this time while learning PixInsight I did the correct process for Halpha subs, thus I extracted the Red channel only to follow the dedicated process recommended in Warren Keller´s book to process this kind of subs. It is a little bit forced, I still need to soft the background.

Dear 130PDS addicts, herewith my first attempt in narrowband with an Optolong H Alpha 12nm coupled to the QHY168C. Taken yesterday with the Moon an a lot of jet stream with clouds from time to time, just a rough processing of 6 subs x 120s with bias at Gain 5 Offset 45 no guiding as EQMod did not want to work again.

Even for being 12 min I am quite happy with the camera sensitivity.

Cheers

At least you don´t have clouds in Eastern Spain. Here in the center it is impossible to have a decent night.

FYI

Congratulations to the author

http://www.aapodx2.com/

And the M46 M47 pair with a little bit more of processing.

Dear 130PDS fans,

Here another picture from last Saturday with quarter Moon, the Horsehead Nebula and NGC2023, NGC2024, IC3435. The picture has a lot of readout noise due to the integration frame is an HDR of 15 subs of 30secs and 15 subs of 150secs at Gain 1 Offset 0 with the QHY168C, at low Gain and with shorter exposures de reaout noise is increased. I also used an UHC filter from Optolong (a 2'' 40eur filter). It was also made on the Madrid outskirts with all the light pollution dome above our heads.

Cheers.

Mario.

Dear al 130PDS fans,

Yesterday we went out to the -6ºC with the Moon just to test guiding, but in between I tried some subs with the QHY168C using a visual UHC filter from Optolong. I am (happily) surprised about its performance in terms of color balance as the stars didn´t look purple, the color balance for this filter seems quite similar to the IDAS LPS D1 I also use often. The big difference here is the price less than 50 eur the Optolong agains the almos 200 eur for the IDAS.

The picture of the pair M46, M47 it not completely processed, only the integration of 29 x 1min subs with bias, 10 darks, and flats at Gain 1, Offset 0.

Cheers.

Mario.

With ISO400 you will get better FullWell for an object like M42 it is great. The sub you have preserves the core without burnt, so what you need is to increase the time exposure up to 3 min to reveal the nebulosity.

We were lucky last Saturday as there was a small window without clouds from 7pm to 1am, but here in south Europe we´ve  also suffered (fortunately for the dryness) two months of continuous clouds, rains and snow.

Edited: Added a second version of the pair M81 M82, if you zoom in there can be seen another two galaxies in the frame, one on the below right corner and another one upper center, I guess they are PGC galaxies, anyhow with only 150sec exposure it is amazing to see that this little scope is capable of capture Mag 15 galaxies undere Bortle 5-6 skies.

Second review of the M42 subs, with better HDR set up, now the core is not burnt.

Dear all,

After waiting for the fix of my QHY168C, we went finally for testing last Saturday, at -5ºC all the night the EQDir bluetooth module was unable to stablish connection with my laptop, so after polar alignment with the polemaster I had to use the handset instead of EDMOD. The pictures below for M42 and the pair M81, M82 were therefore done without any guiding.

In brief, Gain 8 Offset 2 Temp -10ºC for the QHY, subs taken with APT.

M42, 1s x 30 + 30s x 30 + 150s x 15.

M81 & M82 20subs of 150seconds.

Quick processing with Pix.

On ‎2‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 15:34, spillage said:

@carastro I am sure some will say I have wasted time and money, but since wrapping my scope I have had no dew issues at all. Maybe I have been lucky or maybe it works. Please ignore my rather sad looking camping mat dew shield for the st80 (its works well).

 

I have a similar approach using camping mat from any sports shop, not only it provides a softer feeling when the frost is all around, it also protects the scope from hits.

I can assure you that I have suffered -5 degrees temperatures sometimes and the scope is absolutely free of dew. I even added a small 12V fan at the back in sucking configuration, but by the moment I had never the need to use it. Below an old picture at home

Cheers.

On ‎1‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 22:48, al-alami said:

I am quite happy with this result for now.    I guess the light pollution is messing with my colouring, but the Ha detail is coming out really nice.

 

Le Moulin Rouge o la la :-)

Last Saturday I went out to practice astrophotography but I was not able to make a decent picture because mi QHY168C suffered a problem of noise at -10ºC.

There was a colleague with us doing some visual astro with binoculars, but he was also interested about my AZEQ5 mount and about a decent and manageable scope to start with DS photo, he was impressed about the lower noise of the AZEQ5 and about how compact and light can It be the 130PDS for these duties.

Merry Christmas to all of you 130PDS fans.

Actually Fakhri you are breaking the sound barrier with your last pictures.