Adreneline

I know this is a personal thing but I really like to see images of HH without the diffraction spikes. This is a great image Adam - thanks for sharing. Adrian

Well I want to use my Samyang 135mm and I will never be able to justify Astrodon filters so I will stick with my Baader 2" filters and be satisfied with what I can achieve. Thanks again for your help and advice. Adrian

Thank you Gav. It was the first time I had used the Wizard and in true "who needs an operating manual" fashion I just pitched in and had a go. I've learnt quite a bit! Indeed there is no overlap - haha! But it does prove that Registar is not the magic bullet so many claim. Like every piece of software it has limitations that it doesn't know it has and you have to discover - whether you read the manual or not Thank you again for your advice. Just need some clear skies now to have another crack at it. Adrian

Attached are images from a four frame mosaic of the Heart nebula taken with my ED80 + Atik428. I used the Mosaic Wizard and plate solving in SGPro to plan the mosaic with a 20% overlap; it should be noted I do not own a camera rotator so I knew the end result may be a compromise, but as it was my first attempt I thought I'd give it a go. APP failed to stitch the four frames together, the best it could manage was two pairs or adjacent frames as shown below. Registar failed to register any of the images for integration into a mosaic. These are the two halves produced by APP. So APP did not produce a 4 pane mosaic but it did at least produce two 2-pane mosaics. Registar failed to register any of the individual four panes. Draw your own conclusions. Adrian P.S. I've made little attempt to post-process these images - I've stretched them purely for illustrative purposes.

Unless I've mis-understood it is not a two horse race. Registar does one thing and one thing only - register images; under certain circumstances it seems able to register images that other packages struggle to handle. APP is a complete pre and post processing suite; it calibrates, registers, normalizes and integrates. APP will also combine integrated masters using the equivalent of channel combination on steroids in PI but arguably not as well as PixelMaths - if you like that sort of challenge. APP is very good indeed at taking data from different imaging systems taken on different nights and registering and integrating the lot. APP is amazing at mosaics which it does with considerable ease compared with PI. I bought PI two years ago and it is still my first port of call, however, I invested in the Renters licence for APP and it has been money very well spent so far. I own Registar but now rarely use it as APP does what Registar does with ease - and more! HTH Adrian

Hi Adam, Best if I attach a few photos: When I'm feeling bold (or stupid!) I can piggy-back the guide scope on the ED80 so I can sit my ZS71 alongside and try a dual scope setup. Experience has shown I spend more time setting up than imaging! Oh for a permanent setup HTH Adrian P.S. I use to spend ages trying to get my guide scope pointing in exactly the same direction as the imaging scope (I used to think of it as a finder scope!). Once I gave up on that idea life also got easier. As long as there are stars in the fov all is good!

Hi Adam, I've battled with PHD2 since I started guiding two years ago. I've used the Guiding Assistant and found it gave worse results! After lots of trial and error and experimentation I now typically achieve this with essentially the default values. I use a belt-modified NEQ6 and an ED80 with a SW Guide Scope and ASI 120MM. I also set the ASCOM PulseGuide Setting in EQMOD to x0.50 on both RA and DEC rate. I don't know why I do it but it seems to work better! I would reiterate the fact that your images are amazing irrespective of the Guide Plot. The trouble is you can be haunted by that nagging doubt "could they be better". A tough one! HTH's Adrian

Thank you Adam. I think it is possible to buy a 1.25" carrier for this adapter. I was concerned that using 1.25" with such a large sensor might cause problems but if you are using it successfully that is obviously not the case. Thanks again for taking the time to replay. Regards, Adrian

Hi Adam, I was hoping to be able to use one or the other with one of these: and Baader 2" filters with a Samyang 135mm. Would that work in your opinion? Thank you. Adrian

Hi Everyone, I trying to suppress the urge to buy a large (for me) sensor CMOS camera. Looking at the specs for these two cameras there seems to be very little to choose between them, unless I am missing something. I see lots of people on the forum using the 1600 very successfully but was wondering if the 163 is a contender in the 4/3" CMOS stakes. Or is there something else (another brand/model) I should be considering. Any advice would be much appreciated. Adrian

Amazing! Puts my efforts with a Samyang 135mm + Atik428ex to shame.

Hi vlaiv, Thanks for clearing that up. Adrian

Hi vlaiv, The PI forum article (the link I've sent) says in Warning (Note) 2 : "Do not combine denoised images. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) will be enhanced by combining noisy images and denoising the result. Combined images must be equally exposed, have the same pixel resolution, and be registered by projective transformation with no distortion correction." The LV tutorial ( https://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorial-narrowband-bicolour-palette-combinations.html ) advises the opposite - perform denoising before combining. That's why I'm confused. Sorry if I am confusing you as well Adrian

This is the link vlaiv: https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=9206.0 Thanks for looking. Adrian

Hi Wim, I agree entirely, but these two articles seem to be at odds - one says denoise before combining Ha, OIII, SII masters using PixelMath (or whatever) and the other says denoise after combining the individual masters. I have a feeling it's all pretty marginal if the original data is good and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference as to when the noise reduction was performed. As you say, best to have good data and not to have to denoise and not to have to use deconvolution either! Thanks for your response. Adrian