Jkulin

I'm booked and going both days as there are a number of talks I fancy listening to. Hopefully see you there, look out for a mad bloke with a Handlebar Moustache!

I take 25 of each filter for flats at 30K ADU My reasoning is that although I have a permanent pier, putting a cover on each night and with an open truss design, does encourage more dust as they are more exposed. If I was shooting most of the time with my Esprits then things may be different. But to be truthful I now shoot my flats before the session starts in twilight, so it really is no big deal and takes up very little time. Since obtaining some really nice flats panels, I have found a massive improvement in my images: - A4 Flat Panel, perfect for smaller OTA's A3 Flat Panel, perfect for upto 12"OTA's They run on a 12v feed from my Pegasus UPB. I ordered some coloured perspex cut to my sizes and then sandwich lighting gels between to get the perfect ADU vs. speed, I acknowledge that with the G2-8300 that to avoid the shutter curtain showing you need exposures over 2 secs. I have different panels for NB and RGB.

Unless you have an observatory and even then you should take flats after each session as dust bunnies can happen during any period of imaging. I do them after every night of imaging for the filters that I have used on that session

Thanks Tony, you have certainly improved the MW, one of the things I was trying to do without creating a composition was to keep the foreground as that was key to the image for me. You have given me some ideas as to what is there though, thanks.

I feel as I am doing OK with my Deep Space objects but really struggling with my Widefield of the Milky Way. Over the last 3 years I'm managed to get away to some dark site including Southern Spain where a Sand Storm ruined the week, Le Mans where I was in a really lovely dark site about 30 miles south of the race course and then a couple of weeks ago in Selkirk in Scotland. I have a Star Adventurer that I have had hypertuned and originally had a Nikon D800 mounted on it and it provided some marvellous tracking, such as this 450 second unguided image of the MW, I know it's fairly boring and to my mind a total failure, but the detail is quite good for a 450sec image without any guiding at all. This was done with a 14mm Samyang Len F2.8, ISO 160, 450s, so I have to admit that I feel a complete failure at the composition and exposure. This was supposed to be Bortle 2/3 Skies So last year I had very little opportunity for any widefield, so this year an opportunity arose to have a weekend away with my wife Deborah at the Tushielaw Inn, Ettrick Valley, Selkirk (Yes of 4 in a bed fame), some of the best skies I have ever seen, although it was claimed to be Bortle 3, I have never seen such clarity, even my wife couldn't believe how pronounced the MW was. This time I have changed over to a Sony A7RIII (The first time of using it due to health issues) from a lifelong Nikon/Leica/Medium Format User, I changed all my lenses and obtained an adapter for the Samyang 14mm and it was that that I chose to use with the SA in Selkirk. Now one of the main reasons for switching to Sony was its amazing ISO range up to ISO102400 and sensitivity not to mention the great flip screen that saved my back, so I hoped to capture some scenic shots using a higher ISO than I would normally use and shorter exposures to avoid foreground blur, yes I accept that I could do a composition and lay a sharp foreground over an enhanced background but being stubborn I stupidly stuck to my originally thinking of higher ISO with shorter exposure, this was a unprocessed image as the mist was rising from the river: - This image was taken at 10secs ISO16000 with the Samyang 14mm F2.8, so the composition is better but I feel deflated with the quality of the MW, there is no colour or emotion in it. I did bracket the shots but this one gave the greater detail. Now from my understanding of seeing @Daniel-K's work is that the MW needs capturing in the summer months, my question is, is this the reason why the my MW is not powerful and dramatic or am I not processing it properly? The above was taken on the 20/09 at 21:10 (if you check the exif the date an is wrong) and I was facing South as per the X on the map Map: - I really enjoy widefield, but can't walk far thus the limitations of not doing more/enough, with this image I could drive the car down and work out of the boot and Deborah didn't moan about the cold as she could sit in it once she had seen enough, but to be truthful she thoroughly enjoyed it. Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks for your input.

Hi Olly, I simply love that, beautiful processing, interesting subject, just stunning, I booked marked it on Astrobin and then had a look in CdC, even with my 10" it will be going some to get such nice detail, lovely!😎

@kirkster501 Sums up my thoughts perfectly.😎

Couple of things Ahmed, lowering or raising the prism should not affect focus, IMHO all that does is changing the vignetting from the prism, which can usually be removed with good flats and it will change the shape of the star that you are guiding on, it has no affect on focus. Focus is achieved by having your CCD of the imaging camera at the correct distance and then I adjust the guide camera until that is in focus. Critical focus of your guide camera is not imperative. I made my own adapter up so that I could maintain a 55mm back focus for my Esprits (Haven't used it yet), but I did have to make a thicker adapter as I needed to move the guide camera so that came into focus clearly. It takes a little messing around, but for me now I won't go back to a guide scope.

There might be with some filters Adam, but when I asked the question from Chroma as some are not marked, they said it made no odds whatsoever with their filters, not sure about other brands though.

Yep missed this as well, lovely contrasty detail, that Epsilon really was lovely, was tempted myself but am told it is better with DSLR rather than CCD's

Yeah but that Ahmed we need clear skies...chance a be a fine thing! Thanks Steve, appreciate your thoughts.

As you have PI, use the SCNR and remove the green and you'll get this. BTW love the widefield view

Ever since I saw @steppenwolf beautiful rendition of this nebula I wanted to have a go but wasn't sure I had the skills to do it justice. I'm due to have Major Surgery on my spine in November/December and will be out of action for possibly up to 6 months, so whatever scope I have on my pier is going to have to remain as I have been advised no lifting whatsoever! So working on that basis and knowing what a pig it is to slide my 10" Truss out of the Losmandy saddle on my mount I have decided to stick with the 2008mm FL rather than change to a smaller magnification when Galaxy Season is in full swing come the new year. So on that basis all of my image captures will be rather closer than some of the gorgeous widefield images that I would liked to have captured. Thus the reason for doing this at this magnification. With this in mind, I membered Steve's beautiful version that he did on his Esprit 150. So yesterday afternoon, suddenly appeared as though we might have a few hours clear, so not being one to miss an opportunity I planned the sequence in SGP and waited. Of late I have been capturing my flats prior to the main imaging commencing as that means I can take advantage of the twilight and get to bed 45 minutes earlier rather than hang around at the end. So flats duly completed at Binning 1x1 and then the first two 20 min subs down and looking promising, I sent a copy over to my mate Peter Shah via Whatsapp for his view which I always value and his view was that I should be binning at 2x2 or even 3x3 as my image scale was 0.55, so with muttered cursing I cancelled my sequence and started all over again at 2x2, but knowing Peter was right. As the night progressed the guiding on my mount got better and better down to 0.24 rms with a small patch of poorer seeing, but I managed to get 11 x 1200s Ha subs before sleep and seeing ended play. The intention is to get 11 x 1200s of OIII and the same with the SII, but until we get further clear nights I decided to process the data I had, I was rather blown away, all I have done is process and calibrate, a very quick stretch (and I mean quick) and a tiny amount of sharpening, nothing else, I recognise that i will need a lot more processing, but as a quickie I'm quite pleased: - I'm quite sure if I can capture the other channels as nicely then I should produce something respectable so I am posting this as WIP and as and when I get the other channels then will process and post. iOptron CEM120EC Moravian G2-8300 MkII Moravian 7 Postion 2" FW Lodestar x2 Guide Camera QHY M OAG GSO/AA 10" Truss RC Chroma 3nm Ha 2" Unmounted Processed with SGP, PHD2 and PI Thanks for looking.

Cheers Dave, Early Access was clunky to add images to, the newer versions are a cinch. I'm finding that I may need to modify the form and add some extra data rows, as I'm not using some of the fields and could do with fields for flats durations, binning and focus points with temps. I have tried to keep it simple without any queries (more because I couldn't work them out 😉 ),

From the shoulder of the flattener to the CCD is 55mm, get it as close to this as possible or you'll end up with odd shaped stars.

The eagle is about the same price as 4

Pegasus UPB, I have four of them which is still cheaper than an Eagle!

I use a Moravian G2-8300, a Moravian 7 position 2" FW, OAG+Lodestar X2, Lakeside focuser, so I don't see any reason why the focuser won't cope.

I'd love to Steve, but the little tweaks I did were only to test myself and only took about 3 minutes, your data is so good that it deserves hours to do it justice.

What about this: -

Yes, I know Rodd, but working with a .jpg was the only option and I only really tried to see if I could up the blue.

I have looked at that and did wonder but can't find anyone who has tried it.

Hi Steve, I bunged it into PI photometric calibration then tweaked the blue and red and then subtracted the magenta, I then created a range mask, inverted and knock the blue from the sky, not sure if you think it is better or not but the quality of the data is excellent: -

Lovely image, just a small comment, you need to bring the blue back into the dust lanes, other than that it really is quite lovely.

Pier Drawing.pdf Hi Adam, Attached is the pier drawing, and the top plate for the pier which was designed around an Altair pier adapter, which worked perfectly with my AZ-EQ6-GT and my iOptron CEM60EC, I have also attached a drawing of the pier plate that was made for my iOptron CEM120EC and I had some holes drilled to allow it to be bolted to the top of the pier. HTH