john2y

Hey guys, I have an Explore Scientific 102/714 APO and I use it with ASI1600MM and it works great, recenly I've been thinking about upgrading my reducer/flattener to some that can correct wider field so I could use my Canon 6D with it. I found couple of 0.8x reducers that would fit my needs but they're for 2.5'' focusers and larger. I wouldn't mind getting a new focuser too (mine is 2''), the problem is that I've read that ES doesn't have officially switchable focuser and I'm afraid that if I'd get a new one, it wouldn't fit. So my question is, do you know about any focal reducers around 0.8x that are for 2'' focusers or does anybody here have an experience with swapping the focuser on an Explore Scientific refractor? Cheers Jan

I'm an idiot, exactly as Jkulin says. I almost never do a calibration and once I did it it fixed the problem. Thank you everybody for the help and suggestions.

Hey guys, so we've had a lot of cloudy nights lately so I had a ''briliant'' idea to update all my drivers and firmware. That included my CEM60, I got the latest firmware for DEC, RA and MAIN board (also HC but I don't use it or even connec it to the mount) and the iOptron commander with the ASCOM driver. I got the latest non beta version of PHD2 and bunch of other stuff. The problem is that tonight when I started the sequence in SGP everything went well untill PHD started guiding, once it did a correction on DEC, my mount just started slowly drifting in the opposite direction of that pulse and PHD just wasn't capable of correcting it. After couple of attemts and bunch of resets I didn't get anywhere. It does it only in DEC, RA is guiding normally and it does it both ways depending on the first pulse it receives. Any ideas on how to fix it? Cheers Jan

It looks like a really nice image but I'd definitely crop out the stacked edges, also try to denoise it a little less, a little noise is better than completely smoothed out image 😉

So about two months ago I did a widefield of the Cepheus using my Canon 6D and Samyang 135mm. Out of curiosity I cropped the Shark out of the image, using dynamic align I align it with my luminance data, then I really strongly denoised it and combined it to make LRGB image and even though it looks bad as an image it looks good as a preview of what I'm gonna get when I'll be done with it 🙂

You got good data but something wrong has happend during processing, using deconvolution you've managed to produce some artifacts that look like a white thread and the stars are really deformed possibly due to excessive use of star reduction. Try some reprocessing it I believe you'll get much better result 😉

New update in the first post 🙂

It looks like really nice image but try to reduce the chrominance noise either in Pixi using MLT or photoshop using Luminance denoise and cranking up the color noise reduction.

Thank you for the compliment but it wouldn't be possible without such good data 😉 about the noise, try cutting the exposures a little, it might be that but I don't think so, I use asi1600mm and I do 8min exposures but as I've said the data looks solid so you'll just need some experimenting, you could also add more data, that always helps if you're not running 40 hours already 😄 . About the processing it just takes practise, I usually try to process at least one image per day, even the same one over and over. Practise makes it best 🙂

This is what I've come up with, I've never seen data so clean, so well applied flat and everything and yet I had trouble denoising it which quite suprises me and I don't know the cause of that. I started by resampling it by 50% then manual DBE, TGVDenoise, LRGB combination as HOO, Masked stretch, Lum mask and playing with curves, Range mask and another curves and then ACDNR for smothing the background. What filters are you using, they seem really good. I'm asking as I use ZWO and they're not the best.

This is an awesome image but I can't help but notice the vertical banding. If you're using Pixinsight for processing, try Canon Banding Reduction script, it should get rid of all the bands 😉 otherwise it's an excellent result 🙂

I'll gladly have a look at that 😉

Sorry for tinkering with your data, I just wanna show what I ment, background does shine, it's not pitch black but it also doesn't shine like the nebula in front of it. If you look at your image, the background in the center is black but outside isn't. I did manually DBE (and yes there was a gradient from the center to the edges) and then just applied inverted luminance mask and using curves I slightly lowerd saturation and brightness of the background. It's jpeg so it's not ideal but you get the gist.

First post was updated with a preview of the mosaic

I know you were trying to pull as much nebulosity as possible but the background doesn't shine like that, what program do you use for processing? It also looks like your flat didn't apply correctly as the edges are much brighter than the center of the image. Overall the data looks really nice so it would be shame if you didn't give the processing another go