geeklee

Great FOV and lovely image @Whistlin Bob Well worth revisiting. The colour of the California nebula and Pleiades look great together.

Awesome Alex, worth waiting for the full res to load! 👍

Very nice Mick. Ha photos definitely have a charm of their own and can always be added/used later for other projects. Good job persevering under a full moon too.

Brilliant @Kinch What a great set of images for 2020. Glad this wasn't "pick a favourite" (all so good)

Great work @edarter - that definitely sounds like time well spent on an already good image - a noticeable step forward in the detail, colours and general balance showing above. Very nice 👍

Looking forward to seeing more of this camera 👍

I've been there 😁 I'm now ultra careful and "rocket blower" anything before closing up in the imaging train - just in case I miss the chance for flats as I setup and tear down each time. It also gives me a better chance of taking flats "on the bench" on a cloudy night! IIRC, the size is where in the optical train they are - the distance from chip. There's a calculator out there online that can help with this - but I can't find it right now 🤔 If you were so inclined, I think some careful masking could reduce it enough in post processing but sounds like onwards and upwards is your logical next step! Look forward to your future images 👍

Great set of images @DaveS I still love the Melotte 15 one.

Great start @Mr Thingy You did the right thing on the night - with so many new things or new processes to follow, if something isn't working and you can still carry on without it... then do that! Things tend to make more sense when you don't feel under pressure to get it working so you can capture images. Hopefully next time out (or before if it's that type of problem) you can resolve the PHD2 issue. Looks like a dust mote - Flats will take of this. If you still have everything connected, you may still be able to take the flats and capture that dust mote in the same place. Some gentle processing may stop the core blowing out and remember to try and avoid clipping the background (it looks close to, if not at that point in the image above).

Lovely Adrian. That deep, moody type of palette is very appealing too. Very nice data in there. I look forward to the Soul and hopefully the Jellyfish. My recent Samyang image of that area was very disappointing. I always planned to go back with mono and the RedCat but ... so many projects, so little clear nights

I typically prefer this palette, but enjoyed both images 👍 From some Ha and OIII combination I was doing recently (albeit mono) the above looks more H(HO)O with a blend of both into Green - was that the case or was the hue just shifted on the whole image? I mention it because you could get some more blue into a straight PixelMath HOO (like the first image) by boosting the OIII before combining - especially if you're using the Ha as Luminance. I have also added a bit of Convolution to the combined HOO before adding the Ha Luminance - this seems to create a cleaner colour layer before adding the detail. YMMV of course. Interesting camera though, I don't think I've seen that chip used on many variants.

😁 I think I'd forgotten the underlying theme of the evening when I got to looking at the image😁 Lovely image 👍

Very nice @discardedastro That's come out very well. Some nice Ha regions showing through too. The single sub above looks great. To my eye, the core area outwards looks a little green, something SCNR (green) might provide a quick fix for if so inclined. Could just be my phone view though. Looks great anyway 🙂 I haven't seen this written much, performing these two steps last on non-linear data. Do you find this easier or produces better results for you?

Stunning image David. Also, the majority of Melotte 15 that's captured has fantastic detail. Great "proper" first with the 460EX

Great start @Pryce Stars aren't bad enough to detract from the image viewed at size above - lovely nebulosity and star sizes. Not sure if you already used masks for this, but if not, give that a try - just concentrating on that area - see what you can tease out before the integration time shows. Keep up the good work, you did great especially having issues along the way as well.

Thanks Adrian. Yeah, it's looking good in the 533. I can worry about larger sensor if I ever have that problem! Awesome. Will still be plenty of time left to test it out before summer! Very nice! What integration and exposure times were they and what else is in the image train there... filter wise I'm thinking? Dual band or just the straight OSC? The smaller pixels seem to be a good match at this focal length.

Merry Christmas everyone! The weekend past, I finally got a chance for first light with my new Samyang 135 lens. It's paired with the Astrokraken rig which made light work of a lot of questions for mounting and focusing. I'm waiting on the M48 adapter for the lens itself but still had a Canon ZWO adapter, so used this not expecting much. Surprisingly, the fit seemed very snug and after a little spacer fun I got it showing focus within the infinity marking area. So far I've only used it with my ZWO ASI533, but want to get my Atik 460EX on it ASAP. Seems like an obvious question but do you need narrow band filters designed for speed like the Baader F2 ones? Would normal 7nm ones work with only a little signal loss? These were all stacked and calibrated in APP and then a quick process in PixInsight. Some of it will be worth revisiting for processing, some isn't. All taken wide open @ F2 Here's a quick tour of the easy targets I wanted to see wide field - with varying integration as I pushed through an all nighter. Click through for a slightly larger view (all 50% IntegerResampled) Heart & Soul nebula + Double Cluster. 2 pane mosaic, cropped. Each pane was 60 x 60s (1 hour each). Interesting comparison on FOV difference between this camera and full frame from @david_taurus83 on the previous page. M31. 50 x 30s (25 minutes) M81, M82 and surrounding area. 180 x 60s (3 hours) Jellyfish nebula, Monkey head nebula and M35. 90 x 60s (1.5hours) Orion nebula, Running Man nebula, Horse Head, Flame nebula and surrounding area. 45 x 60s (45 minutes) + 15x5s for core (75s). Constellation Lyra. 2 pane mosaic. Each pane ~13 minutes. I'm pleased with this start and trying out some easy targets to get a feel for the capabilities, signal and framing/mosaic challenges before planning longer projects. Who am I kidding in UK weather

That's come out great Adrian. Lovely palette too 👍

Lovely image. Even with the RASA that seems an impressive output for the panel time! Nice processing too.

That's come out a treat @Stuf1978 Well worth your effort to get the data over multiple sessions.

Some great reports and pictures in this thread. I was very happy to find a marginally accurate forecast for today and kept a happy eye on the skies this afternoon as they stayed fairly clear. There was some low cloud in the SSW direction, but it held about the same spot so headed out around 4pm with the binos and got a sighter for the planets, still bright enough I could only see Jupiter with the naked eye though. Got my small frac and larger dob out and ready. Even though I was ready for how close they would be, it still blew me away seeing the pair at moderate zoom with plenty of space around them. What a sight seeing them together in the same eye piece like that. With it being so low and early, Saturn was surprisingly clear but Jupiter was mainly a white blob with the occasional moments of slight clarity where some colour and structure came out. Jupiter's moons were also a challenge in the bright skies. By 4.30pm the sky had still darkened significantly (even for those 30 minutes) and Jupiter's moons popped out in the frac no problem. I could get closer with the dob but the view was poorer and the family and I just used the frac for another 5-10 mins until we started to lose them behind nearby houses. A poor sketch through both scopes was the last thing to do 👍 As an added bonus, got some quick time on Mars and the Moon before I had to bail and get the food started before a mutiny started... priorities? I'm really pleased I got the chance to spend even a little time on these so close to the main event (as I'm not sure what tomorrow will bring). I was getting concerned it was going to be a wash out up here.

That's a noticeable step forward, no doubt @matthasboldlygone Smaller stars and loads more detail. Nice work 👍 If you're working on it again... when I've stretched M81 I keep an eye on these two stars and try and keep some semblance of separation. That's not to say I'm successful though... 🙂 I'm not sure what processing tools you're using but you may be able to get some additional colour too - at 1:1 I'm fairly sure I can see some red and blue in there.

Nice result @endlessky Well done for persevering through multiple nights to get more integration time - it was worth it by the above image 👍

Great first light Dave. Good to quickly pull in a few targets like that to try out the lens further. "IC348 and NGC1333" looks lovely.

Stunning Tristan, just stunning. So much signal, so much dust. Great processing and very natural looking.👍