jjosefsen

That would be the focal ratio. fratio=focal length/aperture. is it a skywatcher explorer 150p?

Nice! Those seem a lot better. What focal length are you imaging at?

Aaaah ok..

I dont know what you use to process images, but PI, Star tools and I even think PS has tools to help remove this, could be worth as shot as it is very invasive.

Im not sure that is something flats can cure (assuming it is the bottom right you are talking about), looks more like light polution to me..

Last weekend I had an amazing 3 nights in a row to image - so I almost doubled the number of imaging sessions I have had since trying AP. Lots of lessons learned: Not having a goto system and having to "man handle" the scope to slew it to targets, has a very negative impact on PA. I suspect the flimsy tripod of the EQ3 has something to do with this.. I had achieved a very good polar alignment with Sharpcap before imaging, at the end of the session I did a test with Sharpcap again and the PA had gone from "Excellent" to "Fair" (the actual numbers are lost as I can't find my notes from that test..) Securing the drawtube with the focus lock screw on the SW ED80 shifts focus a bit, otherwise it holds focus quite well! Another reason to get the motorfocuser.. I need to get better cable management!! APT is a pretty good piece of software..! The pointcraft utilities in APT are so handy for someone like me without goto, as when I'm starhopping to my targets, I can solve a 10 sec snapshot and have the coordinates and FOV shown to me in Cartes du Ciel or Stellarium. Got some valuable experience on getting data over multiple nights. GOTO will make this much much easier. Saturday and Sunday were particularly good, monday had quite a bit of wind, but I managed. Gathered some more data on M33, initial measurements by PI seems to show it being superior to my original data, so my capture is progressing. All in all I managed to get data on: M33 (Triangulum) B33 and NGC2024 (Horse head and Flame) NGC7023 (Iris) NGC7380 (Wizard) Quite a haul that is.. Unfortunately I have a very limited view of the sky from my site here at home, so I can't get as much data on one object pr. session as I would like. I have attached a preliminary edition of my Flame and HH image, because we need more pics dammit! Found this one quite hard to process, it was very noisy, possibly because it is so low in the horizon, and I completely mucked up the framing and had to crop heavily. Good night!

I'm no expert, but I imagine one should strive to do this every time, for exactly the reasons you mention? It seems like less than ideal to stack the stacks.

Thank you, you are also under 1 sec total, looks like that is the goal then. ☺ I see you are running shorter exposures as well, gotta try that. Hoping for a hole in the clouds once my boy is tucked in, but doesnt look good.

I did not know about that no. Forecast for tomorrow says scattered clouds but no rain, so might just do some testing tomorrow, as it probably won't be good enough for proper imaging.

It's the deconvolution process! - my masking is not good enough. Was pretty much just confirmed by @alacantin another post.

Thank you for that detailed explanation Mikey, you are a star! I will definitely try the shorter exposures, see if more frequent guiding input has an effect. As for eqmod - I only have the deluxe edition with motors and upgraded handset, not the synscan model. ? So I don't have a direct pc to mount connection, just an st4 port. I read somewhere too, that the non-synscan motors are lower powered, which would explain the 6v power instead of 12v. Maybe this impacts guiding. I already balance east heavy, but haven't tried reducing DEC backlash via. Balancing.. Something to look at... Will try to fiddle more with settings along the lines of your settings, but I suspect that each eq3 mount is a bit of a different beast due to the less than desirable build quality. ? Now I have a reference point which was what I was really hoping for. My image scale / sampling rate is 1,94"/pixel - does this equate to me wanting for RMS smaller than 2" for "good enough" guiding??

Could some of you, using PHD2 for guiding, post some of your settings and what RMS values you get? Im trying to get a sense of what I should aim for with my settings and resulting guide graph. While my subs currently look pretty darn good (compared to unguided), I do have pretty heavy fluctuations in the graph. Included us a couple of guidelog graphs, would appreciate if anyone had some tips on improving EQ3 guiding. I have done the whole strip, clean and regrease on the RA axis - haven't done the DEC yet. Thanks

hehe I am - so much to learn in this hobby.

Yeah like I said - I need to get better at star size reduction - causing me all kinds of problems :/ Had to go a little ham fisted with the noise reduction as it was a little low in the skye and of course not a lot of images to go with.

Thanks.. I could always bump up saturation, but yeah star color seems to be lost in this one. Any ideas?

Tinkered with my short 7x4min stack of M42 from a couple of weeks ago, too bad i didn't get more data, but battery died on laptop. Processing is getting better I think, need to learn how to better reduce star sizes and fix oversaturated stars (Arcsinhstretch) next. As always - comments and tips welcome.

Oh I did not know that, thank you!

@JemC Thanks, looks good. Unfortunately I don't have PS, only PixInsight. I think I figured it out though, I added the green back into it in my linear phase, due to an incorrect placed step. As someone mentioned earlier. I will be redoing this image at some point, I just hope for more data to add to it soon. but thanks again, I'm still quite pleased with it, by far the best image I have captured so far. ?

Pretty much what I usually do, until I started to mess around with LF. I did try arcsintretch, but could not get it to work. It's like nothing is really stretched even at max settings. But it's probably me not understanding how to do it, will try and find some tutorials on it.

What?! Ok I'll stop moaning about my 2 hours in one night. ? Why did it take so long?

I would love to have gotten more data, but my view of the sky is quite narrow, limiting me to shooting only the western half, so I get on it quite late..

My process is highly experimental at this stage ? 1. Yes I actually did linear fit for my dslr images, for some reason the color channels are in no way aligned, and I found this process to help bring out more variable star color, other wise my images have a distinct blue tint. Even without a filter.. https://jonrista.com/the-astrophotographers-guide/pixinsights/linearfit/ 2. That's a good point, I will have a look at experimenting with that. So many different approaches to processing, it's hard to find "the right way" and I probably have to find "my way" instead. But any tips is highly appreciated.?

I tweaked it a little, and I think it looks better now, not so green.

Yep it's PixInsight. Yeah maybe it is a little green, could be fixed fairly easy I should think. ☺️

Here is my M33 from last night. 27x4 min for a total integration time of 108 minutes. My processing is still very raw - im definitely comming back to this data for a pass where i reduce star size before i start noise reduction. One thing im quite please with is how I managed to heavily reduce the chromatic background noise my DSLR creates, even when dithering quite aggressively. I did experiment a lot with the initial color calibration/correction. In this image i used BackGroundNeutralization -> DynamicBackgroundExtraction -> LinearFit -> ChannelCombination -> SCNR:Green -> ColorCalibration Other examples i did without LinearFit, with DBE first, DBE last, etc. But this seemed to give the best result to my eyes.