umasscrew39

Just purchased a QHY128C - my first QHY camera.  I have several ZWO cameras and they assembly quite easily.  The QHY is a nightmare.  The online instructions and manual are worthless.  No explanation as to what screws are needed and where to get them and the spacers.   Only the tilt adapter and a nose piece (T-adapter) come in the box, no screws no instructions.  It looks like Cyclops Optics in HK sells the spacers but no mention of the screws needed.  Other companies in the US just say 'more on the way' but this has been the case way before our current world health crisis.   Can someone at least tell me  where they got the spacers and what size screws are needed?  

Thanks,

Bruce

On 01/06/2019 at 03:13, Martin Meredith said:

I had a chance to try out live LRGB captures in Jocular last night for the first time. Its a fairly random collection of objects...

M92.

 

M5

 

Abell galaxy cluster 2151

 

NGC 6709, an OC in Aquila. This was quite low but there are very few OCs in the south until after midnight at present. 

 

M57

Definitely a blue colour cast on this last one that needs to be checked (there is automatic gradient removal in each filter channel but it doesn't look to be doing the right thing here).

There are still a few tweaks to make especially to stack combination, and there is no manual colour balancing yet.  I wasn't measuring total exposures but they are 15s subs except for Abell 2151 where I used 30s. The total sub count is at the top, but in most cases there are excluded subs so these are upper bounds.

Generally I collected 4 or 5 subs in each of RGB first then added the rest as L. I'm finding that relatively small amounts of colour info is needed along with LAB colour saturation to preserve colour even when a lot of L is included. 

Mostly,  I'm using LAB colour space (it is possible to switch to HSV, RGB or a fast hybrid LRGB combination, live, but LAB works best). The only colour controls are saturation, fractional colour binning, and colour stretch (CS in the screenshots). 

All of these used StarlightLive as the capture engine and for controlling the filter wheel. I still seem to have a fair amount of tilt or something in the optical train that needs to be sorted out too.

cheers

Martin

 

Excellent views and great progress, Martin.  Congrats to you for sticking with this effort.  It is a shame that SLL is non longer supported as I am sure Paul could have done amazing upgrades to what many of us think was the best EAA software ever made available.  Unfortunately,  because of the lack of support and my night skies seemingly worse when I moved from California to Florida, I've converted to CMOS cams and SharpCap.  The CMOS design makes a dramatic difference in my views with  much less noise but SharpCap is a chore to learn.   Best of luck as you continue to develop this model.

Bruce

Hi Grant

Yes- I think that covers it like I agreed in our exchange the other day and I think it would broaden the appeal.  Not sure what all of the in-fighting is about.  It was so bizarre to see this on CNs.  I just do not get it- this is suppose to be  fun hobby.  I have enough stress at work.  That is why I stopped posting on that forum on CNs.  It is just ridiculous what was going on.  I am friends with a few very nice folks who left CNs.

Anyway, if the name gets revised and helps folks engage more in a friendly way, great.  If not, I tried and I'll just be quiet and move on doing my own thing.  I am not a big social media guy to begin with.

Thanks for the feedback.

Bruce

Hi All

I am trying to explore the possibility of this forum becoming more  active like the electronically-assisted astronomy (EAA)/live viewing on CNs use to be.  A lot of the more experienced and most congenial posters have left and it is a real shame.  It is how I and others have learned the techniques and simply shared our thoughts and live views, in addition to the fun monthly challenges .

I had a nice email exchange with a SGL admin about this, just expressing my opinions to enhance this specific forum.  So, I'd like to challenge those interested in EAA/live viewing/realtime views or whatever name you prefer to develop a more active forum.   I'd like to start by proposing to have the name Video Astronomy revised to something like:

Live Viewing/Electronically-assisted astronomy (EAA) to help attract back more of the lost posters from CNs and add many new folks interested in the approach.  

Perhaps I am out on an island here and all feel there is no  reason to change a thing - just my 2 cents.

Bruce