Chefgage

Thanks for the link. I missed that when searching the forum.

A couple of the providers I looked at stated that. But when I asked them they said it only covers items that are supposed to be in the garden. When I stated that a telescope of course has to be outside they said that it would not be insured.

If I was paying £550 a year for insurance I would certainly hope it would cover my imaging gear! As I pay £168 a year for buildings and contents this is not the case. There was no means to up any of the values i.e. increase the outbuilding payout to more than £5000. The definition of my property as you put it I did ask that to a few providers. They will cover items such as garden ornaments that are supposed to be outside but not photography equipment. I am looking at a separate provider for extra cover. I just thought I would start this thread just in case people assumed that because it's on their property it would automatically be covered, this is not always the case.

Good afternoon all. I know this has been asked a few times but here we go again. I have just renewed my house insurance and asked questions about my astronomy equipment. The specific question being if my telescope imaging setup was stolen from my garden whilst imaging then this is not covered under the contents insurance. So just a heads up to anyone who might assume that because it's on your property it's covered, chances are it is not (in the UK that is). So I then went into ask about outbuildings/garages/observatorys. I have looked at many policy small prints and pretty much all state that possessions in out buildings are insurered up to a value of £5000 total. So I would say in a lot of cases this would not replace all of the equipment. So the question to the good people of this forum is what do you all do about it? I guess the amount of times the equipment is actually outside not supervised is small (with our UK weather). Or do some of you have a separate policys (which seems like a good idea but probably is quite expensive but not if you had to use the policy).

Nice and shiny, I do like the red colour.

Let's see. No clouds tonight, only a 4% moon but lots and lots of gusty wind. Might still go out as my garden is fairly sheltered but could still ruin the imaging session. I cannot remember the last time I was out with a pretty much new moon.

I have the same issue. It became more apparent after modifying my DSLR. I then got a better lens (Samyang) rather than using the cheaper lens I had. This improved matters but it's still there. After a bit of reading it appears that the cls clip in filter could be the culprit. Depending on the setup this can cause the red halos (I notice it when focusing using live view). I have not tried imaging without the cls in RGB. I do a lot of just Ha so do not see the red halos because of the Ha filter. So this leads me to think yes it could be the cls. My next session is going to see if this is the case

I have my asiair attached just above the tray on my sky watcher 1.75" tripod. It is attached with one of these. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07F2WRHHF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_WCJDGZ9SJQQ5FKBPTHM0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 One end screws into the asiair and the other end clamps to the tripod. It's good as you can have the asiair on its side or at an angle etc.

I seem to find myself always doing sessions in Ha due to the moon as I know I will get a good image that way. With work the next morning most times, I seem to be getting only about 2 hours worth of RGB when the moon is away in those rare occasions. I need to start getting data from multiple nights or find a way to persuade the clouds to go away at the weekend. Anyone know how to bribe clouds???

Again a nice image of Andromeda. I do prefere your first version with the dimmed stars. I have started to process my images with dimmer stars as I think it makes nebula/galaxies etc pop out more.

For me the calibration step sometimes defaults to 500ms. When set at this it would calibrate the guiding. It would get to about 40 steps and then error saying guide star did not move enough. I change the calibration step to 1000ms and it then calibrated after about 20 steps.

I have just done a side by side comparison of using darks with my modified Canon 200d. I took the usual lights, darks, bias and flats of the heart and soul nebula. I then stacked the lights, darks bias and flats in DSS. I then stacked just the lights, bias and flats using the exact same settings in DSS. The two TIFF files were loaded into GIMP and processed side by side using the exact same settings and method work flow. The result? Well from my eyes I see no difference. When zoomed in to maximum I see a very small pixel change when switching between the two processed images. My conclusion? I will do this test a couple of more times but for my camera I see no point in taking darks. The added hours to an imaging session are just not worth it in my case.

Very nice images. I especially like the Andromeda one. It's really nice how the core is not blown out. I wish I had some bortle 3 skies near me

Very nice image. There was a few targets I was determined to get this winter. I managed the others but not the Pleiades. Whenever it was clear skies there was always a fullish moon. Coupled with my bortle 8 skies makes this difficult. I did however have a session on it regardless of the full moon. Processing wise I managed to tease out some nebula but the overall image came out poor. Never mind I will try again

I have just re-processed the heart and soul nebula's I posted one before the last post above. De-cropped and then re-processed. Same capture information.

Heart and Soul nebula's in Hydrogen Alpha Capture information Star adventurer pro ASIAIR pro Samyang 135mm lens Canon 200D modified Astronomik Ha filter (12nm) ZWO ASI120mm mini guide scope ISO 800 EXP 300s Lights 24 Darks 15 Flats 40 Bias 40 Moon percentage 89% Half way through image session moon angular distance 70° 40' 08.3" Total exposure time 2 hr Stacked in DSS and processed in GIMP I did post this on the Samyang 135mm thread (a cropped image) but have re-processed using some new skills. These are a star size reduction method and a reduction in the amount of stars visible. Makes the nebula's pop out more. I like the way the nebula is spiraling away from the top of the heart nebula.

I am the same. There are many upgrades I want to do. I think maybe a new filter is the next one. Something like an optolong perhaps.

I have read a few posts about people leaving lens/scope caps on and every time I have thought that seems a bit daft, not something that I would ever do. Cue me one night spending 10 minutes wondering why I could not see anything in the LCD display of my DSLR. Stars on the LCD display are always quite dim and few and far between but this was ridiculous. Hmmm let me just look at the end of the scope, maybe it's dewed up. Nope scope cap is on. Just a little bit of quiet swearing and then on with the imaging!

Heart and Soul Nebula's in Ha. Star adventurer pro ASIAIR pro Samyang 135mm lens Canon 200D modified Astronomik Ha filter (12nm) ZWO ASI120mm mini guide scope ISO 800 EXP 300s Lights 24 Darks 15 Flats 40 Bias 40 Moon percentage 89% Half way through image session moon angular distance 70° 40' 08.3" Total exposure time 2 hr

So to rotate the camera you undo the two thumbscrews on the rotator and then rotate? What's the difference then in just undoing the thumbscrews on the telescope and rotating the field flattener? Unless I am missing something??

Just been reading this month's sky at night magazine. In it is a review of the newer type of mount, the star adventurer 2i. There are some results of their tests showing exposure times achieved (unguided I assume) which seem very good compared to what I get with the mount (I am using the star adventurer pro). So I was wondering what other users of this mount are achieving exposure time wise. The magazine's test results are for an 18mm lens they got 20 minutes with no star trailing. With a 100mm lens they got 5 minute exposures. With a 400mm lens they got 2 minute exposures. These seem high compared to what I get unguided. My results are for a 420mm focal length ed72 scope I get at best 50 seconds unguided (I know this set up weighs more than just a 400mm lens setup). With my 135mm lens I would get about at best 3 minutes. If I use guiding I can obviously get longer but the magazine's results I feel do show a lot longer exposure times than I would be able to get unguided. One further point is I have my tripod level, polar alignment good using asiair and everything balanced well. So anybody else got any exposure times they achieve that can share their results?

I have read people having issues with rechargeables. With the rechargeable being 1.2v so giving 4.8v total this has caused some people some issues. I do use rechargeables and have no issues (maybe some makes are definitely better than others). I did start using one of my power packs to power the mount using a usb output on the power bank. I then noticed I was getting very bad star trails after a certain time. I believe this was because if what you mentioned about the mount not drawing much power so the output on the power bank shuts down. I went back to the rechargeables and have not had a problem since.

Bear in mind the star adventurer mount can take quite a bit of weight. I use mine with a dslr attached to an skywatcher ed72 scope. The scope has a dual bracket attached which to that is attached a finderscope and guide scope. So a fair bit of weight there and it still tracks nicely. So my bet is still a power issue not helped by the load being not balanced.

Interesting. Might have to have a look at installing this at my house. If you can get it to tell you when the 'green' nights will be in advance then you have cracked it!

Very nice image. There are not many nebula's that i can say the image looks like the name. Definitely looks like a monkeys head.