jjosefsen

Wow kudos for getting all that sorted out! I must admit what you are doing is a bit of a dream for me too, but retirement is at least 30 years off.

That setup is looking marvelous!

Looking forward to seeing more pictures.

Here is a screengrab of an autostretched masterflat for my Ha filter:

So faster scope and 1,25" filters will probably be problematic..

Man seeing that image on my work pc... Background really sucks!

I can find a flat no problem, I am still working out how to best calibrate the data in APP.

So I've had the chance to do some work with my replaced Hypercam 1600M over easter, and I must say it has performed very well.

I can't wait to try it out on some nebulae after the summer. :)

Attached is a very short 75minute RGB of M3 in pretty much full moon which shows in the background noise..

1 minute ago, Adam J said:

Yes that is exactly what Starlight Xpress told me at the practical astronomy show about their upcoming CMOS camera..but ill believe it when I see it

What do they claim it will do?

What sensor are they basing their cam off of?

1 minute ago, FLO said:

 

Perhaps you should accept @RolandKol's kind offer ? 

It would enable you to make a real world comparison. 

Steve

Yeah not a bad idea actually, would be interesting.. Once I have a working camera that is.

2 minutes ago, FLO said:

When a retailer (any retailer) tells you a product they sell is better than products they don't sell... 

I hope your camera is soon repaired and returned to you so you can continue to share your experience with it. 

Steve

Yeah I know, but this one was on me..

I hope it lives up to expectations, but I guess there is always a risk when you are an early adopter of a new product.

9 minutes ago, RolandKol said:

My ASI1600MM is off the scope at the moment,

I can produce some darks in the basement for you and share them  via dropbox, just let me know temp, exposures and amounts...

if needed

Hi,

No need, but thanks for offering.

1 hour ago, Adam J said:

I doubt that as its inherent to the sensor, beyond adding memory to increase read speed on USB2.0 you cant really do anything about it. Even then, I am not sure you would need to make it better, as its never caused me a single issue on my ASI1600mm pro, it just calibrates out perfectly like it was never there in the first place. For that matter in shorter exposures (30 seconds lum at Gain 76) that I use for shooting clusters I don't see it even with no calibration frames.  

Sorry to hear that the camera is not working for you though, its never good when you are itching to try new kit. I am having to send a coma corrector back that is clearly missing an AR coating right now so I feel your pain. 

Adam

I've read stuff elsewhere from people claiming to be in "the know" who say that the manufacturers are doing clever things like changing clock speeds, switching off electronics during readout, etc.. So it sounds like it could be possible to make an impact on amp glow..

But yeah.. I assume at this point that there is some faulty electronics at work here within the camera.

1 hour ago, FLO said:

Who is telling you this? 

Steve 

Alright I might have misspoken there, what I meant was that it looked like it had less amp glow than a dark frame from QHY/ZWO with the same exposure length.

In reality there are many more variables to consider, so I will amend my previous comment as I can't know unless I have all three cameras... Which I don't. Sorry about that!

The point I was trying to make is: It should not look / behave as it currently does!

Little update:

Issue seems to be with my camera - final light leak test tonight, but I fully expect it to fail this as well, meaning it is probably a faulty electronic component.

I have seen some darks from another camera from the same batch, and it has less looks like it has less amp glow than both ZWO and QHY examples I have seen online. by all accounts .

4 minutes ago, Adam J said:

Take care as some caps are plastic and semi transparent to IR. However if you also chucked it under a towel with no change....

Yeah Nick mentioned this too, but it was also facing down into an oak table.. It must be a camera issue..

Looks like it is going back then..

Just now, Adam J said:

I don't think that is amp glow. The amp glow on the Panasonic chip is on the right hand side of the image. This looks like a light leak. If it's not a light leak then something is wrong. 

Crap.. they are in all frames, lights and darks.

These darks were taken with the sensor cap on, can't see how it can be light leaking. I even tried taking a few with the camera covered by a towel, no change.

@Adam J you could be right, even though every calculator I can find online says that the 27mm clear aperture of the baader filters will be enough. Until I try I guess I can't be sure..

Although it might prove to be a moot point, the camera has quite extreme amp glow, and I have not been able to calibrate any of my test data to remove it yet..

Doesn't this seem a little extreme for amp glow? It is a master dark at -15c, 316 gain (unity) - stacked with APP.

This thing is really high on my list of future purchases! Those widefield ha mosaics are just mind blowing!! Thanks for sharing guys.

Just now, Adam J said:

The slow F-ratio will help no doubt.

Yes. Im hoping this combo will be good down to F5.5..

I don't know how reliable this calculator is:

http://astronomy.tools/calculators/ccd_filter_size

But when I plug in the details a 102mm TS/AA doublet reduced to F5.5 shouldn't be a problem with the smaller filters. I hope as that is the configuration I am hoping to go with in time.

Judging by my initial tests vignetting shouldn't be an issue, as long as you have a pretty thin FW.. I use the ZWO EFW mini with 1.25" filters at F6.4.

1 minute ago, Adam J said:

 

Do you both mean the cooled TEC version or just the passive cooled version?

Mine is the Pro TEC 4gb version

I just received mine today, so will let you know once it's seen first light. ?

10 hours ago, emyliano2000 said:

Found it and joined. Thanks 

Yeah I see you on there, and already in talks with Dark and Isbeorn. ?

8 hours ago, Shelster1973 said:

Decided to switch target tonight and went for the venerable M101.  Managed to get 7 x 600s for G,B,L and Ha.  This is a rough and dirty Lum sub, with zero processing other than a stretch and curve tweak.  As i blindingly obvious, I need to give my filters a wee clean, but did manage to get some flats in too, so that all may calibrate out.

Went for a full go of letting NINA run everything and all worked well.  Did have a few small issues with the flats wizard though.  Kept getting ewrrors about not being bright enough and too bright and some of the flats looked completely off the scale.  That was using it in multiple mode.  Managed to get it all sorted when doing single iterations, so not that much of a biggie.

The only thing I need to look at now (which may be there, i just havent found it yet) is having individual subs go into dedicated folders based on the filter in use......but enough waffle, here is the pic

 

Your filters will let in varying amounts of  light, that is why you can do different settings for different filters.

Once you have the settings pr. filter, and you can accurately control your light source (like a flats panel), then you can just create a sequence template for your flats and run that every single time.

5 minutes ago, emyliano2000 said:

Thank you.

I was thinking about the background. I'm used to framing in stellariumand I can see if there are small fuzzies that I can frame with the main target. I toogled between the image sources and I worked it out in the end.

I'm outside now hoping for a ful test. 

Looking forward to use it. Looks very promising.

I've vbeen using APT so far but I was thinking of switching to SGP.  N.I.N.A came at exactly the right time. I installed the 1.9 Nightly version. I hope it works all right.

Emil

If you know what discord is, it might be an idea to jump on there, can ask "live questions" to the devs and other users.

2 hours ago, emyliano2000 said:

I downloaded N.I.N.A too because my daughter in Nina and I have to like it ?

I had a little play with it, connected my equipment, cooled the camera, checked the filterwheel is working properly. I quite like it.

On the framing assistant, how do you make the image a bit darker to show the objects a bit better on the screen or what image source do you use for framing?

Emil

Hi Emil,

Glad you liked it.

Im not 100% sure what you mean, but I will take a guess.

There is an opacity control (+/-) top right, which will change the opacity of the framing box.

You can try the different image sources, the quality will vary quite a bit, from excellent to absolutely horrendous! Not much to do about that i'm afraid as it is the data provided by NASA, ESA, etc..

You can also switch to the offline version, and get a sort of Cartes du'Ciel like approach to framing.

12 minutes ago, Shelster1973 said:

Do you have the temp probe with the Sesto too?  I contemplated buying that, but find £41 a bit on the steep side (hey this is astronomy....) for what is effectively a thermistor and a 3.5mm jack.  Am doing some looking around to see if I can find out what particular thermistor they use and see how much they cost.  Can then knock up one that fits exactly to where I need it and does not require me to hide masses of extra cabling

No i didn't splurge on that, I too had a bit of a allergic reaction to paying that much for a damn temp. probe.

NINA will do autofocus based on a number of criteria.

The obvious one is - on filter change.

I usually also use - after # of exposures or # of minutes, depending on what my sequence looks like.