Vroobel

Hi,

Try this online creator together with any 3D designing software:

https://satakagi.github.io/tribahtinovWebApps/Bahtinov.html

Do you have 0.2mm nozzles? They are highly recommended if you want to play with precise models.

Good luck.

3 minutes ago, Mr_Cat said:

How long do you think it will be before I put it on my EQ6 "for a laugh..." ??

Friday this week? 🤔🙂

As long as the ASIAir mini operates with 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi the antenna SHOULD work. I didn't try the two antennas with the AstroPC yet, but as I wrote, it works great with my ASIAir Plus v.1. Its cost is not too big to not give it the chance. 🙂

I got something else today. Thanks to @steppenwolf and his Vixen/Losmandy adaptor I finally solved one of my bigger problems.

Presently, I prefer a multi-night imaging, so I keep the setup fully configured at home, in my living room. Since I have a mono camera and a big, 7x2" filter wheel it became difficult, because the camera and filter wheel can accidentally rotate at a manual rotator if the setup is heavy (10kg) and the filter wheel reaches a lower point than a Losmandy plate. I experienced it once, I didn't realise it and all subs taken during one session were rotated about 20-30 degrees. Thankfully, I solved it in PixInsight without a crop. I used several thick books laying under the setup since then, but it wasn't comfortable and safe. Now it's sorted. ☺️

BTW, you can see the two 6 dBi antennas attached to the AstroPC. 

The nice postman brought me two 6 dBi antennas which replaced two original short ones provided with my AstroPC Pro. 

It's a second upgrade, I already replaced an original ASIAir Plus antenna with exactly the same 6 dBi one and the gain is significant, I reach 13 MB/s preview transfer instead of hardly 3 MB/s as default. I hope working with NINA will be more pleasant from now. 🙂

https://www.dewcontrol.com/details/p3099125_21560791.aspx

That's a lovely image, I'm jealous. Because of a lack of access to the object I have to settle for seeing another tarantula... 😏 

Sorry, I couldn't resist. 😇

Of course, it's possible. It looks like the 40mm (or less) is very sensitive to anything not typical in the optical path. I'm very curious how the Sigma 135mm (or 105mm) behaves with the APS-C astro-camera, but presently I have no money to find it out.   

Thanks anyway for thinking about it.  

The Crescent and it's surrounding are beautiful target(s). I also work on it now, but after two nights I have less than 4h in total while I aim at 20h of SHO plus RGB stars. 😐

I like the 3D structures and details. 🙂

I also look at the Statistical Stretch and the iHDR scripts, but without examples it's hard to experiment with the numbers and sliders. Till now I base on the GHS, masks and Selective Colour Correction. 

I experienced the same with my CGX, so have to check the backlash too. The funny thing is that it doesn't affect stars shape, they are OK as long as trend lines are horizontal. 

I have a Canon 6D (modded) which is full-frame and also have APS-C cameras (2600MM and 2600MC). I matured to a conclusion that the full-frame DSLR will work with lenses somewhere under a darker sky soon while the APS-C astro-cameras work in my garden under Bortle 9(+). Presently it's much cheaper to buy an affordable high quality APS-C astro-camera and another, smaller scope, even if it's APO, than the same quality full-frame camera which additionally requires much higher quality scope. The another smaller scope gives you a bigger FoV and more ways for the artistic composition. This way I have 2" 230mm Askar, 4" 572mm Altair and 10" 1285mm Newtonian which give me around 2.5x of difference between the FoV of each. And I always can do the crop, even if it's a waste of the sensor surface or photons. 

On 16/05/2024 at 18:34, Elp said:

Please let me know if any of the following is incorrect, I decided to do a bit of reading and have paraphrased a few sources to make the event more interesting (boy was it interesting).

 

We all remember the once in a lifetime viewing of “that” aurora from your home location on the night of 10^th May 2024. But do many people who witnessed it know where it came from?

As we approach our Sun’s next solar cycle peak (we know it to be every 11 years thanks to German amateur astronomer Samuel Heinrich Schwabe’s observations and discovery in 1843) sunspot designation AR3664 revealed itself from around the solar limb earlier that same week. It was so large people were comparing it to the Carrington sunspot of 1859.

Astronomer Richard Carrington of Redhill, Surrey, England studied and discovered various aspects of our sun. Both he and Richard Hodgson on 1^st September 1859 had observed the first Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) an eruption near the sun’s surface due to changes in its localised magnetic fields, throwing immense energy into space. Both of them had observed the effects the flash had had on Earth based magnetometers from currents arising from enhanced ionospheric ionization. Carrington reported the event to the Royal Astronomical Society.

A day later on 2^nd September (after around 17 hours of having witnessed the flash from the CME) the effect of what they had witnessed was seen and felt. Having travelled the distance between the Sun and Earth the high energy solar particles ejected from the CME Carrington and Hodgson had witnessed bombarded the Earth’s magnetic field (magnetosphere). The estimated energy that was released was estimated to be 10^35 electron volts of energy, equivalent to a 10 megaton nuclear bomb or the amount of energy the sun releases in 10 seconds. The aurora caused by the particles interacting with the magnetosphere causing atoms to glow was witnessed far south and north into the tropics akin to turning night into rising sunlight, causing havoc to telegraph systems causing fires in some instances, disruption to naval navigation systems and reportedly causing shocks to some people interacting with metal objects.

Carrington had deduced the two events were connected and his observations of the sunspot he had observed and sketched and the resulting event was named in his honour.

AR3664 was estimated to be around 200,000KM in length spanning the equivalent of 15 Earths side by side. It had expelled at least four CME’s into space towards Earth, as the energy hit our magnetosphere it revealed colourful auroras far further afield than around the northern and southern poles as people across a lot of Canada and the USA, down to southern Europe in the northern hemisphere and up to Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina in the southern hemisphere witnessed the colourful spectacle. It was a sight to behold.

So when news of the appearance of AR3664 had been announced this perhaps very rare event I had to see for myself so on the 9^th May 2024 I setup my solar rig to visually see in white light and hydrogen alpha the magnificence of AR3664 and have compiled my images into one composition to share, hope you enjoy it, oh and look out for the angry unicorn…

 

 

Thank you, Elp, it's really good. 👍

On 16/05/2024 at 20:01, LukeTheNuke said:

I see the angry unicorn!

Nice bit of background info about Carrington. I was reading about it the other day, as the whole country has gone aurora-mad. I was wondering if this monster AR and massive flaring means we probably are close to solar maximum. In which case, perhaps I shouldn't get a new solar filter, as it's all downhill from here, LOL!

I have this silly idea that one day I could be out observing the sun, going "Wow! Wow!!!! WOWWW!!! Oh no!!!!" And Kaboom, we're all gone. But what a way to go! But I think, perhaps I'd rather it doesn't put on too much of a show just yet.

What's a difference, if we're all gone? 🤔😏

I like this "Wow! Wow!!!! WOWWW!!! Oh no!!!!" 😁👍

BTW, I like your stars too. I'm a fan of clean and symmetrical spikes, if there is no choice and they just are there. 😁

Yes, I like it! 🤩

This is how I do it. 

They aren't particularly cheap, but it's really good and easy solution for a longer time. 

1 hour ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

I don't like the idea of trying to line this up with my main scope at least using my finder clamp thing it seems close enough.

Going to look at top mounting a spare vixen dovetail on top, and then something with two screws to attach my guidescope and cam I think, but I'll probably give your solution a try first and it's cheaper

Ty for the suggestion and pic

Invest in small Vixen clamps, you can use them to quick attaching the guider, ASIAir, mini PC, dew heaters controller etc. to the top and/or side Vixen bars. You will find them great when you buy another scope. 

Thanks to @astro_al and the RM finally I have a nice pair of Baader Genuine Ortho 18mm which I can compare with another pair - Baader Classic Ortho 18mm. 🙂

I'm really surprised how much details the tiny 2" Askar together with the powerful APS-C mono camera can give. 🤔

Thank you. 😊

Yeah, you can balance your setup as best as possible, if you have e.g. a filter wheel and a heavy electronic focuser, and you want to rotate it to change the composition, then you have to do the balancing again. I also use a lot of Vixen bars around, so another clamp with threaded rod across with a small load would be the solution. Thanks. 🙂

Wow, I don't know what to say... ☺️ 

Thank you. 

Hi,

After a longer time, I think presenting some DSO images would be nice, at least for myself.    I learned an SHO post-processing for around half a year and I still cannot say that I know enough, we learn all the time. I watched a lot of YT tutorials and compiled the knowledge into a digestible form, so hopefully, I can keep this level. 😊 

Miracles of Auriga - 2024.01.05-01.09 - SHO

It was my first image created using a mono camera and narrowband filters. After many approaches to the data, I'm finally satisfied with the latest revision.

Askar FMA230, Optolong 2" SHO, ASI 2600MM-Pro @ Celestron CGX;
18h of total integration time: 71x300s SII, 74x300s Ha, 71x300s OIII; Gain 101, Offset 50, -10°C;
NINA, PixInsight;
Liverpool, Bortle 9.

https://www.astrobin.com/r1dnj8/K/

It should work unless you have a problem with the module itself.

You have to set it up first.

I didn't want to detach the mono camera from my current setup, but finally, I did it. I replaced the MC with MM and ran it with ASIair Plus. During a few hours, I was able to capture literally three pics before I started an autofocus procedure, but I didn't save them, I didn't know that they were the last pictures taken with this mini setup. My ASI 2600MM Pro was continuously refusing cooperation, every time I received a message that the capturing of a frame failed. I wasn't able to perform the autofocus because of the same reason, which means an unknown reason. I realised that usually this problem is related to not enough power delivered to the camera (my MC camera is powered from the ASIair). I connected the camera to a 12V 10A PSU, but nothing changed, it still was unable to properly take even one picture, also after swapping USB 3.0 cables linking the 2600MM and 120MM mini cameras with the ASIair. I was very close to panicking, 2600MM isn't cheap. I gave up and replaced the MM with MC and screwed the MM back to the 4" APO setup - I wanted to perform a starfield test using the Sigma 40mm and the MC camera and also have a plan to start imaging a Crescent Nebula in SHO.

Both cameras work and ASIair works too. The only result of swapping the cameras is dust on the MM sensor, so I have to unscrew it from the filter wheel again, which I don't like. I gave up, I don't want to do another test, I'm happy with the fact that the PixInsight and BlurXterminator can give me a round shape of stars captured at F/2.0:

It's a result of stacking 137 subs with bias, dark and flat frames. I used the BlurXterminator with its 'Correct Only' feature. Below is proof that the 2600MM works as well - two first hours of the Crescent in SHO:

The mystery remains unsolved.

Everything above concerns the fight against an APS-C camera and it does not change the fact that this lens is unbeatable if it is to work with a camera 'dedicated' to it, in my case the Canon 6D.

1 hour ago, Mr Spock said:

From yesterday. Just looking at the moon with the 4", with the 12" waiting patiently for later.

It's also black and shiny.