Jump to content

SkySurveyBanner.jpg.21855908fce40597655603b6c9af720d.jpg

Art Gecko

Members
  • Posts

    205
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation

234 Excellent

Profile Information

  • Location
    Norfolk

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. On my 130p I cut 15mm off the back of the tube and remounted the mirror to bring the camera to focus... a 2x Barlow will do the job but makes the image more unsteady and you need to increase open shutter time by something like 4x to gather the same amount of light
  2. I think I vaguely remember focussing mine Before screwing it into the mount... but I may be wrong I don’t know for sure if that makes a difference
  3. Does a polar scope have focus adjusters? I can’t remember!! Been so long since I had to calibrate one!!
  4. You should be able to see the markings in daylight... you need to!! Otherwise how have you calibrated/centred it to the mount?? Where did you get it?
  5. I used to strap a head torch with a red light to mine and angle it so the markings showed up but Polaris still showed through!
  6. Don't worry guys, I'll still come visit!! I'm just too lazy to strip down and calibrate the declination gearing on the eq3 for autoguiding... along with modding the handset for the st4 cable... I'm impressed with all your results but it's not for me!! New job.. new laptop.. may as well get a new upgraded mount as well.. it's the one I always wanted and I can afford it now!
  7. This might actually be my last picture on this thread as I'm collecting an Heq5 mount tomorrow!!
  8. Thanks Peter, I saw your picture of this target the other week and hoped I could get something similar... The night I got this had patchy cloud as well, when I got only 39mins out of 2 full hours worth of subs, lets say my fingers were hurting from crossing them so tightly!! They're not so much stacking artifacts as they are me trying to remove the mess caused by the starlight reflecting off the inside of the OTA... this is what it looks like without removing the glare... Edit: Though there is a line running along the bottom that maybe due to stacking artifacts
  9. Nice one nige, any plans to add some RGB? Managed to get this shot last week... 39x1min subs ISO800 with flats and bias, and for the first time shooting in RAW and stacking in DSS thanks to a new laptop I have been processing and reprocessing this one until I was fairly happy with it... The brightness of Alnitak was reflecting on the inside of the tube creating a light ring around the image... with a lot of careful gradient removal I was able to flatten it out enough to produce this image, which maybe looks like it has some vignetting but that doesn't bother me near as much as it did before! Obviously needs more data, but was good for learning to use the new software. Art
  10. And a very nice pic it is too!! I haven't posted anything for a while as I changed job and now have early morning starts to deal with, so my free time for imaging has been compromised. What few sessions I've had over the last months I haven't really had great results... in fact to start with I thought I'd broken something when trying to image M74... this is 33 mins @ ISO1600 (can't remember the sub lengths, probably 1min) didn't realise just how faint this target is!! Next up was the triangulum galaxy... 58.5 mins this time in 30sec subs ISO1600... I thought this one would be a bit brighter but I was pleased to have captured some of the red nebulosity within the galaxy... And finally, with Orion taking centre stage in the early evening sky, I had to get the obligatory M42 shot... 55.5mins in 30sec subs @ ISO800... might give this one a reprocess at some point as I feel the background is too bright, maybe because it's a HDR target and I've only done one set of fixed length subs, so could probably do with more data and longer sub lengths. Enjoy, Art.
  11. Had a bit of fun myself this week trying out different processing techniques... Made a last minute decision to get the scope out on saturday and shoot the pacman nebula, managed to get 1 hour of data in 30 second subs..... I was very disappointed with the result: This one with darks and flats. Then I thought to myself "I'm sure I've read people saying that darks don't always help and sometimes make it worse"... So I did a re-stack, same data, this time with no darks. Better, but I still wasn't entirely happy... So I had one more go... This time stripping the chanels down to R, G and B and stretching them/denoising them all separately before recombining in a new file.... since I'd gone this far already I also desaturated and slightly darkened the previous version and added that as a Lum layer, giving me a sort of "poor man's" LRGB image. Art
  12. Hey nige, if you want to layer two different files/images, open them both separately, click on one the press Ctrl+A to highlight it, then Ctrl+C to copy it... click on the other file and press Ctrl+V to paste as a layer. If you want to blend them, look at the layer panel (usually on the right hand side of the screen) above the top layer there should be a drop down that's probably labelled "Normal" (this is where you select your blend mode) next to a slider that controls the opacity of the blend... have a play and see which ones you like. hth Art edit, only just noticed you already solved this... looking good!
  13. Of course you can... It just requires a little more effort! @Nigel G cracking image!! Love the star colours and the faint Ha in the background... Wish I could call a 1.5 hour image a "quickie"
  14. Had a little go at M17 the other night... only managed to get 38 mins though as it sits in a tight window from my garden, very low and close to the neighbours rooftops... Had man-flu all week so haven't bothered adding to it yet as seems like too much effort to carry the scope outside.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.