festoon

Hi @almcl apologies for that...hopefully this helps DSS (72 light frames, 1 master dark, 1 master flat) Register = 2 mins Stack = 4 mins 40 secs ASTAP (72 light frames, 1 master dark, 1 master flat) Analyze and Organize = 1 min Stack (Sigma Clip) = 5 mins So as I suspected in my previous message, there is hardly anything in it

Thats super cool - I'll give that a go @han59 Thank you for including this

Thanks for the suggestions @han59. If I understand correctly, what you are suggesting here is for for each nights work in ASTAP calibrate the subs with the correct dark and flat then save the result. Then for different night repeat the same procedure. The stack all the results together at the end. Is that correct?

Yes, good point, you can stack stacked results in ASTAP. Not sure of the science of this, but if you have subs n1,n2,n3,...,nn with master dark d1, master flat f1 from night one and m1,m2,m3,....mm subs with master dark d2, master flat f2 from night two - is the resulting signal to noise of a stack of ((n1-d1)/f1+(n2-d1)/f1+(n3-d1)/f1+....+(nn-d1)/f1+(m1-d2)/f2+(m2-d2)/f2+(m3-d2)/f2+....+(mm-d2)/f2) subs equal to the signal to noise of a stack of ((n1-d1)/f1+(n2-d1)/f1+(n3-d1)/f1+....+(nn-d1)/f1) with ((m1-d2)/f2+(m2-d2)/f2+(m3-d2)/f2+....+(mm-d2)/f2)

I've found the speed of stacking in ASTAP to be similar to DSS. I'm still to find a way of applying different flats to datasets from different nights using ASTAP. Using DSS this can be done by grouping data. To me this is an advantage of DSS, unless it can be done in ASTAP.

That's a very good suggestion to have a play with data sets and try it out. Last night...we a had a night of clear skies from dusk till dawn in Cambridgeshire and I took hours of data on M81 and M82....However, Murphy's Law - Clear night=Moon out! The forecast is also the same for tonight. I'm debating if I should set up or just wait for the next dark night Or just image the moon

Hoping for some advice on how to stack data from multiple nights imaging sessions. My set up is with an OSC, and I don't have narrowband filters at the moment (waiting for an NBZ). If I acquire data on a clear moonless night, does adding data from another night where say its a full moon going to lead to the image signal to noise going up or down? I'm particularly thinking about faint nebula or galaxies. What I'm wondering is - am I wasting my time imaging during full moon. If I add that data will it degrade the image from a dark night or sky.

Having planned this for over a month, I was delighted to have captured the ISS as it transited the moon tonight (21/03/2021). I used the webpage https://transit-finder.com/ to find where and when the ISS would transit the moon in a location which I could drive to. The afternoon was overcast, so my expectations were low. However as evening approached the moon was occasionally visible between clouds. So, I packed my stuff up during the day, drove to the planned location (Longstanton, Cambridgeshire), and set up. As the moment approached of the ISS transit, there was intermittent clouds, but luckily I could make it out on Sharpcap as it passed through. For this capture I used a Celestron C5 with an ASI385MC mounted on an AZ-GTi in eq mode. Data captured using Sharpcap with 5ms exposure and a gain of 142. I used SER Viewer to extract the relevant frames, then deconvolution in imgppg , then GIMP to create the GIF. Today will be an imaging session I will never forget!

When I'm planning EEVA sessions I often use https://tonightssky.com/MainPage.php Once you have put in your parameters, you can select e.g. if you want to look at galaxies, nebula, or clusters. After you click whats in sky tonight, at the bottom of the generated list, you can sort by RA rise time and generate an observing plan. I often find I spend the night doing EEVA galaxy marathon sessions this way going through the list one by one. I'll spend 5 to 10 minutes on each target and record the image at the end and take some notes in my book showing a log of date and time and what was observed.

This may not sit properly in this thread...apologies if not I'm happy to move it. I've been thinking about the MTF of optical systems and how to model the MTF of a lens from basic principles. The minimum spatial resolution in lpmm for ideal lens with diffraction for 550nm light can be modelled as 1812.2/F where F is the focal ratio. From this we can calculate the Rayleigh Criteria as this number divided by 1.22 and MTF50 as half of the Rayleigh Criteria. So fo an ideal lens the MTF50 at 550nm for a varying F number would be as below Now in reality this is never the case. The actual MTF50 never reaches the theoretical due to the resolution of the sensor and optical abberations. I've found this reference below showing the effect of the sensor pixel size on the MTF50 value (https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/63709384) Is anyone on here able to please help me to understand how to simulate this? i.e. how to go from the diffraction only to diffraction + pixel

Seems there was a bright fireball/meteor tonight visible in the UK. Very disappointed not to have seen it, it happened between me being out observing and putting the kids to bed. Hope some of you managed to catch it

Not sure of your location but SES-4 was pretty close to there at a similar time. Image taken from https://in-the-sky.org/ 29/02/21 at 20:35, location Colchester, UK

Point taken about zoom and how you sample or re-sample an image - dont go beyond 100% And I guess the point is it depends how you process your data i.e. if you re-sample use a method which smooths. In terms of the specific lens I have (the Samyang 135mm) the measured resolution at the centre of the image plane at f/2.8 is 47 lpmm (as defined by MTF50, reference https://www.lenstip.com/442.4-Lens_review-Samyang_135_mm_f_2.0_ED_UMC_Image_resolution.html). That corresponds to a size of 21 um. To sample 47 lpmm sufficiently you would need a pixel size of 10.5 um or less. If you use a colour sensor (sampling reduced by x2) and you would require a pixel size of 5um or less not to lose detail. Is this interpretation correct? You also might argue that a vanishing resolution of an image could be defined at somewhere between MTF10 and MTF20. That would correspond to smaller and smaller sizes in terms of pixel size....at which point you come down to the seeing limit of perhaps 2 arcsec/pixel and a pixel size of 1.3 um.