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Buzzard75

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Everything posted by Buzzard75

  1. Haven't been around in while. It's actually been over a year and a half since I've done any imaging at all. Life has been pretty hectic and my weather windows have been limited. The two were very rarely in agreement. This past weekend I had the fortune of being able to image two nights in a row. I was kind of surprised that everything went as smoothly as it did. I figured I'd have some bugs to work out, but not too many. Only issue I had was the meridian flip. It didn't execute either night. Fortunately I was smart enough to set an alarm to check it. This is the resulting HaLRGB image of The Horsehead and Flame region in Orion. ZWO ASI183MM Pro William Optics Redcat 51 iOptron CEM40EC Chroma 31mm 3nm Ha and LRGB filters Ha 48x300s L 53x180s R 17x180s G 17x180s B 15x180s 9.1 hours total exposure Captured with APT, processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop
  2. Mine is a v1. I was one of the original Kickstarter backers as well as a beta tester. I talked about it in the thread I shared, but I ended up sending my original unit back after about a year and a half because I was having some tracking issues. They sent me back a new unit and I haven't had any issues since. Their build quality has definitely improved from those beta units. I would expect the build quality of their v2 units to be as good as my current unit if not better. The v2 has a wider field of view, higher resolution and better pixel scale due to the larger sensor and smaller pixels. Their processing algorithm is likely the same so I can't speak to how much quicker an image is obtained. I also can't speak for the noise or sensitivity comparison between the two, but I would hope the IMX347 would be an improvement over the IMX224. Otherwise, what's the point of changing out the sensor? All that being said, I like mine and I'm sure the v2 is better in every way. I just wouldn't spend the kind of money they're asking for on one knowing what else I could buy with it. The current price point is beyond what they originally quoted, but everyone sees value in things differently. You ultimately have to ask, what is that compactness and convenience worth to you in terms of money and reduced image quality when compared to a dedicated astrophotography rig?
  3. It's really going to depend on the object and how bright it is, brighter ones obviously requiring less time. I will typically stay on any given object for a minimum of five minutes to get an acceptable image. Brighter objects like globular clusters can probably be done in shorter time. When working star parties, it's not uncommon for me to be on the same object for at least 10 minutes as we tend to have long lines with hundreds of people. The people who come around and look at the object later will certainly have the better view than the one who looks at it after 30 seconds. While I'm sure there are gains to be had beyond 10 minutes, I feel you start to get into diminishing returns and the image doesn't really improve that much. So ballpark for me is 5-10 minutes.
  4. Andromeda not so much because it is massive and the field of view on these things is fairly narrow (34x47 arcmin). An object like Andromeda fills the sensor with the core and it has a hard time discerning what is background and what is galaxy so the processing algorithm has difficulty. Over a significant amount of time (10min+) you may be able to pick out the dust lanes, it just won't be as impressive as you would hope or expect. Now a nebula or a smaller galaxy, for sure. It can be pretty impressive and you definitely get a lot of 'wow', 'whoa', and 'omg' moments. Planetary nebulae are especially good with the various vivid colors. Show someone another galaxy that is tens of millions of light-years away and it can blow their mind.
  5. I have one of the original eVscopes. It does have an eyepiece as has been mentioned. The eQuinox does not have an eyepiece. The new one has a different camera sensor and an upgraded Nikon eyepiece. All of them require the use of a phone or tablet to use. I have not looked through a new one yet to compare the quality of the image. I had posted an initial impressions in the review below and have made a few other posts since then. I don't use it as much as I probably should, but it is certainly great for public outreach. What isn't so great is the current asking price. It is extremely expensive for what it is in my opinion. Had I not gotten such a great deal through the Kickstarter project on the original, I honestly probably never would have bought one. As great of a company as they are with excellent customer service and a wonderful product, it pains me to say that I certainly wouldn't pay the price they're asking for one today. It is currently way overpriced, again, just my opinion. You can get a a much more capable system for a similar price and the end result will be much better quality. Were these going for their original quoted price point of $2000-2500, it would probably be a different story. But at double the price, the compactness of the form factor and convenience wouldn't worth it for me.
  6. It's been a while since I have been able to get out and do some imaging. M8 and M20 have been on my list for a very long time, almost since I got started in this hobby over four years ago. My skills have definitely come a long way in that time. I decided to try a bit of an experiment and combine some narrowband data with broadband. I've done Ha combined with red before, but I'd never done OIII combined with green or blue. The process is obviously similar, but the Pixel Math variables in Pixinsight are slightly different. The humidity was extremely high that night and the seeing was poor. I'm still happy with the overall result. ASI183MM Pro William Optics Redcat ASI290MM and ASI Mini guide scope iOptron CEM40EC Chroma LRGB, Ha (3nm), OIII (3nm) filters Bortle 3-4 skies Luminance, 85x60s Red, 15x180s Green, 14x180s Blue, 13x180s Ha, 14x300s OIII, 13x300s Total integration time: 5hrs 46mins
  7. I had to replace mine this past summer on my B1200. It's easy to do as has already been said and yes, I did have to pay for it. I paid more for shipping than I did for the actual item. More than twice as much in fact. I live in the US so turnaround time for me was relatively quick. I ordered on a Friday, it shipped on a Monday and I think I had it by Wednesday or Thursday. Transit time to Ireland will probably be a bit longer and probably more expensive. At least it's an easy fix and they have parts on hand as they know it goes bad over time. I have to wonder though, what exactly causes it?
  8. IC443 is The Jellyfish Nebula in the constellation Gemini. It can be found near the star Propus (right), which makes up part of the left foot (our right) of the twin Castor. The star on the left of the image is Tejat Posterior. The other emission nebula in the image on the left is Sh2-249. There is also a reflection nebula in this image, IC444, but does not show up well with narrowband filters as well as part of the open cluster Collinder 89. This image was a late season target and I only gathered about five hours of data in just two nights this past weekend. It is transiting the meridian earlier and earlier and I lose it behind a tree in my front yard a couple hours later. Still, for just under five hours of data it's not a bad image. ASI183MM Pro, Gain 111, offset 10, temp -10C William Optics Redcat 51 Chroma 3nm Ha and OIII 31mm filters iOptron CEM40EC ZWO Mini guide scope and ASI290MM mini for guiding 28x300s Ha, 31x300s OIII HOO (PixelMath RGB channel combination Ha, .45*Ha+.55*OIII, OIII) Bortle 5-6 skies Captured in APT, processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop
  9. And one image to show the full path. The larger gaps in the path are where I dithered. Probably unnecessary for something like this, but I was too lazy to go in and change the settings.
  10. Video of Asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 captured last night (Jan. 18, 2022) during the close flyby of earth. It is approximately 1.1 kilometers in diameter and has an orbital period of 1.56 years. Asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 is classified as a near-Earth object (NEO) as it does cross the orbit of the Earth with a perihelion of only 0.9042AU. At the time of the video, the asteroid was moving at approximately 3775mph relative to Earth. The video is a series of 10 second exposures with a luminance filter captured over the course of just under one hour. A monochrome camera was used so in order to add a little color to the stars I captured several images of the same region with RGB filters after the asteroid had passed and then following the normal process for stacking and combining of images with the luminance animation layered over the RGB image. Enjoy! William Optics Redcat51 ASI183MM Pro iOptron CEM40EC Chroma 31mm LRGB filters Captured in APT, processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop
  11. The retailer asked for my email and shipping address because Celestron wanted to reach out to me personally. I haven't heard anything from them yet though. I'm sure it will get fixed one way or the other. Just have to play the waiting (even longer) game.
  12. You have to love when you get a new piece of equipment. You get all excited because you got that one piece to finally complete your setup to push your skills to the next level. Then you open the box and find it broken or damaged. I received a Celestron OAG today from a reputable retailer here in the US. I do not blame them at all as the unit was new in a sealed box. There's no way they could have known. But when I pulled out the OAG to inspect it, I found the prism to be loose. Not loose as in relative movement, loose as in not installed at all. Just laying inside the plastic the unit was wrapped in. Not only was it loose, but it was chipped. It is entirely possible the chips occurred during transport, but still. It's painful and heartbreaking to get something as expensive as this is from a reputable retailer and a reputable brand. I have already contacted the retailer to see what I need to do to get a replacement. I'm worried though because I have found a couple other instances of this particular model and the prism falling off. Makes me worried to use it in my telescope. It would be captured between a flattener and a filter, so it wouldn't damage my camera or my telescope, but still. It's something that just shouldn't happen at all.
  13. I didn't realize there was a competition going on for Orion before I posted a thread in the Imaging section. I live in the US so I will completely understand if that disqualifies me due to shipping of physical awards, but I guess there's always the badge to try for. Thanks for looking and good luck to everyone! ZWO ASI183MM Pro William Optics Redcat 51 ZWO ASI290MM guide camera ZWO Mini guide scope iOptron CEM40EC Chroma Ha(3nm) and LRGB 31mm filters Ha 42x30s, 39x300s L 21x15s, 22x90s R 20x15s, 21x30s, 20x60s G 21x15s, 21x30s, 18x60s B 21x15s, 21x30s, 20x60s Just shy of 6hrs total integration (5hr59m15s to be exact) Captured with APT Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop Data captured Jan. 7, 2022 and processed Jan. 8-9.
  14. Thank you kindly! I know colors and saturation are a personal preference. Mine is always to try and keep it as natural as possible.
  15. Is everyone M42'd out yet? I'm just now getting around to it due to weather and other personal conflicts. In reality, it's actually been a couple of years since I've imaged it. This image has been a long time coming for me. Orion was the first object I ever attempted to image. I used a cellphone through the eyepiece of my 12" Orion dob. The image was honestly terrible (it is actually the one set as my profile picture), but I was still amazed at what I was able to see using my phone that my eye could not. There was actually color and a bit more detail. That's when my astrophotography journey started. I imaged Orion a few more times since then, but I never really did it justice. Over the last couple of years though, I have not only slightly improved my equipment, but I have significantly improved my capture and processing techniques. I spent 6-7 hours capturing data and at least another 24-36 hours processing all of that data. While the object is bright, it is a difficult one to process to bring out the fine details of the nebula and surrounding gas and dust and still not blow out the core too much. It was one of the most difficult images I have worked on to date. I can't say I'll never image Orion again, but I can finally mark it off my list having given it the attention that it deserves. Enjoy! ZWO ASI183MM Pro William Optics Redcat 51 ZWO ASI290MM guide camera ZWO Mini guide scope iOptron CEM40EC Chroma Ha(3nm) and LRGB 31mm filters Ha 42x30s, 39x300s L 21x15s, 22x90s R 20x15s, 21x30s, 20x60s G 21x15s, 21x30s, 18x60s B 21x15s, 21x30s, 20x60s Just shy of 6hrs total integration (5hr59m15s to be exact) Captured with APT Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop
  16. Appreciate the offer of assistance. I'll try and upload some files after work today. I did do some more research last night and found a discussion about the use of Local Normalization. I started playing around with the Normalization in the image integration and pixel rejection options of Image Integration process. I found that using Local Normalization produced the results mentioned above of not removing the amp glow in the stacked image. When I used Adaptive Normalization though, it was gone. It may be that if I want to continue using Local Normalization that I need to tweak my settings a bit rather than running with defaults. I've tried a few different scales (128, 256, 512). Of those, 512 gave the best results, but still not as good as Adaptive Normalization. I have not had the opportunity to play with the sliders at all to see what effect they would have.
  17. Using offset 10 for all of my light and calibration frames. I used SharpCap and examined the histogram to determine what the best offset was. A setting of 10 pushes it off the left side of the histogram enough to not clip the black, but not too much. I'm using darks, flats, and dark flats for calibration. I create a dark flat master using ImageIntegration (no Normalization, Weights don't care, Windsorized, and no Normalization for pixel rejection). I calibrate the flat frames with the dark flat master using the ImageCalibration process (unchecking the optimize button for the darks and then create a master flat with ImageIntegration (Multiplicative, Weights don't care, percentile clipping and equalize fluxes for pixel rejection). I then create a master dark with ImageIntegration (same settings as dark flat). I use both masters to calibrate my light frames (Local Normalization, Weight FITS Keyword, Windsorized, Local Normalization for pixel rejection) and then create the stacked images. I'm essentially following the Light Vortex Astronomy tutorials and have been for quite some time with no issues until recently. I attempted to calibrate a dark frame with a dark master just to see what it would do and it also left a bit of glow behind, which I found extremely interesting and very confusing. I am using APT. I use the flats aid to determine the length of exposure for a specified ADU value and then use that exposure length for both my flats and my dark flats. The broadband filters are usually 1-2 second exposures. I up the brightness of my flat panel a bit and get exposures of 3-4 seconds for my narrowband filters. I do appreciate any insights you may have.
  18. This is kind of a weird one. I know how to do calibration frames, take my darks, flats, dark flats, etc. I've been doing this for a few years and I've never seen anything like it. I recently purchased a full set of Chroma 31mm filters in Ha, SII, OIII, and LRGB. I have successfully taken images with all of them and all of them have been properly calibrated except for my Ha filter. No matter what I do, I always have a little bit of "amp glow" left on the side of my images. Any thoughts on why that might be and how to correct it? It doesn't make any sense to me at all. Thanks in advance! EDIT: For what it's worth, I have a ASI183MM camera, which is notorious for "amp glow". I'm using APT to capture all my images including my calibration frames. I process everything in PixInsight manually. I have not used the WBPP script in quite some time. I have gone back and examined some other files that I have done recently with other filters. It appears that it is actually a problem with all of my images, but it is just more pronounced in the Ha. Possibly due to the higher signal to noise ratio. It seems that PixInsight is not doing a great job completely eliminating the dark noise from my frames even though I am using all the same exposure settings. I have read other posts on other forms expressing the same issue. Some have claimed that SkyX does a significantly better job. Any thoughts or tips on something I may be missing in PixInsight that solved a similar issue for others would be appreciated.
  19. Haven't shared an image with the group in a while. My version of M45, The Pleiades. Captured over three nights from two different locations. I made a bit of a boo-boo. You'll notice the image has something that is typically characteristic of reflectors, but not refractors. There are some diffractions with the brighter stars. On the second night of imaging, I removed a twist tie from one of my cables and laid it in my lens cap so I wouldn't lose it. Well, I forgot it was there and I put the lens cap back on the telescope the next morning after imaging had completed. So the third night comes along and I planned to just do luminance frames. I didn't notice it during the imaging at all. It wasn't until I started processing the luminance frames that I saw the diffractions. I thought it was odd, so I went to inspect my telescope to see what the heck was going on. And there lay the twist tie inside the dew shield. So rather than throwing it all out, I decided to keep it. It's obviously not ideal for a perfect image from a refractor, but I don't hate the effect it gives. It looks similar to what you would see on a RASA or a Hyperstared SCT due to cables. So, if you want to add natural diffraction spikes to a refractor image, try a twist tie in your dew shield. Can confirm it works. WO Redcat 51 ZWO ASI183MM Pro Chroma 31mm LRGB filters ZWO EFW ZWO ASI290MM Mini ZWO Mini Guide Scope Optron CEM40EC 39x300" L, 24x300" R, 17x300" G, 23x300" B (8.58 hours total) Gain 111, Offset 10, Bortle 3-4 Captured in APT, processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop
  20. It's been a while since I've been around and posted an image, but just finished this one with some new equipment (Chroma filters) and wanted to share. It's probably one of my better images to date. ZWO ASI183MM Pro (111 gain, offset 10) William Optics Redcat 51 iOptron CEM40EC ZWO 290MM mini and ZWO mini guide scope 34x300s Ha (Chroma 3nm), 31x300s OIII (Chroma 3nm), 24x30s G (Chroma) for star color Captured using APT, processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop with a Ha, OIII+G, OIII+Ha palette using Pixelmath
  21. I agree, it shouldn't be that far off. The scope I have is a WO Redcat and the mask is the one that came with it. Sometimes it's just off for some reason. It's integrated into the lens cap. I guess it's possible that when I put it on, I didn't get it flush and perfectly perpendicular to the imaging train which may throw off the Bahtinov pattern. I don't know. I've never actually attempted it or seen anyone else show that to be the case. Might be worth looking into. I've just defaulted to using the Bahtinov to get close and then using the AF routine to guarantee the stars are as small as possible.
  22. I will say this for a Bahtinov, it will get you close, but it's not always perfect. I have found a number of times that I can nail focus with a Bahtinov and the stars look good with an auto-stretch in APT. However, when I check the same image in Pixinsight, I find I have holes in my stars meaning my focus is off. I don't trust Bahtinov's any more. I will use them to get close and then run an AF routine. It seems to perform better. As for refocusing throughout the night, it's already been mentioned, but temperature and seeing conditions changing throughout the night will affect your focus and it may need to be redone occasionally. It's good to recheck it after a certain change in temperature has been detected and periodically based on time. This is where a good AF routine will be more beneficial than using a Bahtinov mask. It can be automated where using a Bahtinov mask requires user intervention.
  23. I was doing a write up for my club about the Slooh service and thought I would share it here as well, with the images I've processed over the past week and a half. Between all the LRGB frames, there probably isn't much more than an hours worth of data in each image. Some have considerably less. You can of course put as much time as you want into them. The presets discussed below in the write-up are typically binned 3x3 for LRGB, but you can run a mission specifically for 2x2 binned Luminance frames. This was generally what I did in most cases and then just drizzled everything back to 1x1 scale before combing. All images were processed in Pixinsight and some ended up doing a little post processing in Photoshop. Don't ask me which ones, I don't remember. On to the write-up or skip to the photos, your choice! Begin write-up: Over the last week and a half, I have been actively using an online telescope control subscription service called Slooh. I have been curious about the service for a while. I obviously love imaging deep sky objects, processing those images and sharing them with others. Lately though, I had not been able to do much imaging of my own due to personal conflicts or weather conflicts. Since imaging objects myself wasn’t an option for the foreseeable future, I decided to finally check out Slooh and see what it was all about. They just happened to be running a free 7-day trial when I signed up last week, so it was perfect timing. The free trial appears to still be going on as of this posting. As I said, Slooh is an online telescope control subscription service, so there is a fee involved. There are three tiers to choose from, Student ($50/year), Apprentice ($100/year), and Astronomer ($300/year). The 7-day trial is for an Apprentice membership. After a few days though, it was obvious to me that I was really going to enjoy it and get a lot of use out of it, so I upgraded and paid for the full Astronomer tier. The different tiers give you different abilities and access to different types of data. The Student tier is allowed to schedule five basic missions for any of the Slooh 1000 catalog of objects. So, what is a mission? Simply put, a mission is an imaging timeslot on the telescope schedule for a specific object. With a basic mission, you pick an object from the catalog and a timeslot and telescope are automatically selected for you. All of the image exposure settings are also preset for you based on the target. As a Student, you have access to PNG files of the images that you can download for yourself. A PNG is about the same quality as a JPEG. The Student tier is intended more for schools and clubs doing observations and those who want to look at objects live. The Apprentice tier includes the same abilities of the Student, including the five basic missions, but allows you to schedule an additional advanced mission where you can pick the specific telescope and even specific coordinates of what you want to image, as well as which exposure presets to use. You also gain access to the FITS files for your mission. FITS files are raw data files from the camera and are very important for people who post process images. The Astronomer tier is all of that, except instead of one advanced mission, you can schedule up to five advanced missions in addition to the five basic missions. With all of the tiers, you gain access to watching the images live as they are taken from all of the telescopes. They also do live star parties during special events that you can tune into and hear professional astronomers talk about the night sky and answer your questions. There's a lot more to the website than just imaging objects and live streams from the telescopes that you can't really see or get a feel for unless you subscribe though. One of those things are the Quests and how detailed they are. Quests a series of objectives and are designed to try to teach you something about astronomy as you complete those objectives. Each objective is more or less to image a specific object. In order to continue to the next objective and complete the entire Quest though, there are simple knowledge checks at the end with a question or two about the objective you just completed. There are some Quests that you can complete in a day and others that will take a week, a month and possibly even years to complete. Of course, all the quests are optional. You don’t have to do a single one of them and you can just read them or complete them at your leisure if you so choose. Along with the information in the Quests there are also a lot of Guides on the website. These Guides provide even more in depth educational information about the history of astronomy and the objects in the Slooh 1000 catalog of objects. As you interact with the website by imaging objects, scheduling missions, completing Quests, and contributing to the community discussions, you’ll earn Gravity Points. Right now, there isn't a use for them other than "leveling up" your account and for bragging rights. They may implement something further down the road for gravity points, but they have nothing planned at the moment. The different "levels" are signified by different astronomers throughout history and there is information about each one of them in the Guides as well. I am currently at the Su Song level. Su Song was described as a scientist, mathematician, statesman, astronomer, cartographer, horologist, medical doctor, pharmacologist, mineralogist, zoologist, botanist, mechanical and architectural engineer, poet, antiquarian, and ambassador of the Song Dynasty (960–1279). An extremely talented person. It has been extremely fun over the past week and a half collecting the data for these images and processing them. Even for me as someone who knows a fair bit about astronomy, I’ve actually learned a few things. The best part for me so far though has been seeing some things that I may never be able to see unless I take a trip half way around the world to the southern hemisphere. Again, I hope you enjoy the images and I look forward to working more with this great service and providing more great images of deep sky objects! End write-up. Now pretty pictures! Seven of these are from the northern hemisphere and the rest are from the southern hemisphere or at least southerly latitudes. We have: Barnard 33 - The Horsehead Nebula M1 - The Crab Nebula M42 - The Orion Nebula M51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy M81 - Bode's Galaxy M104 - The Sombrero Galaxy NGC2392 - The Eskimo Nebula NGC3532 - The Wishing Well Cluster IC2944 - The Running Chicken Nebula (part of) NGC2070 - The Tarantula Nebula NGC5128 - Centaurus A Galaxy
  24. As far as NASA goes, I'll just leave this right here...
  25. About two months ago I took out my eVscope while my imaging rig was working away. I don't always get it out, but it seemed like a good opportunity. While using it, I noted some issues with image stacking. It would regularly fail to integrate the image. It appeared to be caused by a backlash issue causing the target to drift and not allow proper registration of the star field. While adjusting to recenter the object, it wouldn't appear to move at first and then would all of a sudden jump across the field of view or out of frame. I contacted Unistellar and within a few days I had a return label to send the unit back to them for inspection. About a week after they received the unit, I received an email notification that they were sending it back to me. When I received the unit, I discovered it was a completely different unit than the one I had sent based on the serial number. The original unit I had was a beta testing unit that I had for over a year. This new unit was recently constructed by all indications. It did not appear to have seen any previous use or have any visible signs of wear. It seemed much more solidly constructed than my previous unit. The beta unit had a bit of free play in the altitude adjustment. Every time I would pick it up, the whole thing had a bit of a "plasticky" creak to it as well. This new unit had none of that. Everything was tight and very well put together. Hats off to Unistellar for exceptional customer care and service.
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