R26 oldtimer

Do you have the battery and SD card covers closed?

Who would pay a million for a camera? 🤣

Forgive me, I don't want to sound pertinacious but, you could take 10x1min subs in R, use filter offsets, take another 10x1min subs in G, filter offsets again and 10x1min in B. This way you will only refocus 6 times (using filter offsets) per hour, instead of 60 and have a full set of RGB every half an hour. The reason for being so persistent is because I recently moved from a guidescope to an oag. Had a decent 70mm guidescope and an imx290 cam with small pixels. Although phd2 calculates centroid on subpixel scale it's not as accurate as calculating it on a bigger pixel scale. Flexure creeped from almost everything (finder shoe - finder rings - plastic tipped finder screws), but my phd2 graph looked very good. Moving to oag and after fettling for hours to make it work (you 've got one so you know all about it), my phd2 graph turned a little worst, but my star shapes got a lot better.

I think that the main reason for sequential filter capture is to get even gradient across filters. But since your subs are so short, you could go for 10xsubs (10min total) before changing filter.

Fantastic!

Just saw the video, yet it still deals with the issues of the ultra high speed (preshifted) filters. My focal ratios are more "friendly" at F/5 or higher. What about the 3nm optolongs? Any hand on experience? Anyone? 😊

Just sold my baader 7nm narrowband filter set and thinking of an upgrade to an ultra narrowband filter set. It seems that there are the bulletproof but very expensive choices of Astrodon and Chroma (Antlia possibly falls in the same category) and the more affordable (although not cheap) Baader and Optolong. I'm currently between those two last options. I've read some ok reviews on the baader (and some not so good but on very fast f ratios) but there isn't much on the Optolong. I image from bortle 4,5 & 9 locations, my fastest setup is at F/5 and my current camera is a qhy9 (kaf8300). My Neq6 guides okish at 0.7-0.8" regularly and I mostly shoot 600sec subs. Are there any real life experiences with the optolong 3nm set? With the baader at similar f ratios? Should I be aiming at swamping read noise with 1800sec when using 3nm filters?

Come on, be honest about it... you tipped it over, didn't you? 🤣

That's a very nice find, congrats on the restoration too!

I shot this on new year's eve and the night after just to begin the new year on the right foot. This was my last image with my SXV-H9 mono (will be using it for photometry from now on) and a vintage but razor sharp Nikkor 105 f2.5 AI-s. Mounted on a SW az-gti and guided with it's dedicated guider camera. Baader NB SHO filters, 40x300sec per channel. Thanks for looking.

For newer models, daytime autofocus with a lens works fine as long as you autofocus in liveview mode.

That's a really nice monster you have, hiding in your basement!

There was a Tal apolar on astroboot 3 years ago and I was really, really close to buying it, but a SW ed120 popped up at the time for an excellent price, so missed my oportunity in owning such a legendary scope. Sometimes I still wonder if I made the right choice, peace of mind VS pride in owning a very special piece of equipment...

Looks like compact harmonic drive mounts are here to stay. Just noticed this sneak peek in Pegasus Astro's harmonic drive mount. Seems to offer dual equatorial/altaz working modes. Really exciting times ☺️ https://m.facebook.com/pegasusastro/photos/a.1502217729999525/3032808633607086

I really enjoy OSC with a good dual narrow band filter but (and this can be a huge but) you don't get exactly pure Ha and OIII data, when you split the channels. That's because the camera's RGB filter array doesn't have steep frequency cut-off, resulting to green wavelengths (OIII) leaking in the red channel and red (Ha) leaking in the green. Also that leak percentage is not standard, but is sensor related, as different sensors have different RGB bandpass graphs. So by splitting channels, your Ha channel (red) is essentially a 90-10% mix of Ha-OIII and your OIII (green) is a 80-20% mix of OIII-Ha.

Screwed the three sensor retaining bolts almost full (give a bit of room for tilt adjustment), as to place the sensor as forward as possible. All lenses focus at infinity except for one wide field lens paired with one specific filter.

You can indeed use it for IR daytime photography. Processing depends on IR filter bandpass. For filters >720nm, white balance on foliage & maybe red/blue channel swap. For filters <680nm, white balance on gray card. If you put a UV/IR CUT filter in front of the lens, you get a normal photo. Ofcourse IR photography processing can get pretty tricky, if you're after a really good result.

Bet you've seen that before...

Not anything decent, moved to dedicated mono since, but plenty of threads here to see examples pre and post modification. If you shoot nebulae just go for it, makes a huge difference (4x more Ha signal), and grab a dual band filter such as the optolong l-enhance or l-extreme or the IDAS NBZ, the results will be great!

With your Newtonian it will be ok, there won't be any bloated stars as you would expect from a refractor. It doesn't make much difference for broadband targets such as galaxies (although it will capture much better the red Ha parts in the spiral arms), but you'll see much more in Ha nebulae. Here is my full spectrum d5300 with a newtonian on broadband targets

You can remove it completely (making it full spectrum sensitive). You will be ok if imaging with an all mirror system (Newtonian without CC). If you're using a refractor or CC in a Newtonian you'll need a filter ( uv/IR cut, or cls-ccd, or dual narrowband, depending on target and LP) P.S. I think that Nikons ( most of them at least) have their filters bonded together as one, so no option for astro conversion by removing one of the two (astromod)

Does the motor controller firmware have alt-az or eq option available for use with a wedge or bent-knee pillar?

That's great! Are you planning to include a 3 point polar alignment routine?

Ten years ago I bought my first scope, mostly for terrestrial views, a Celestron 80/900 powerseeker on an eq1 mount. Only used it twice for terrestrial because of the small fov, but it opened up the night sky for me. Pretty decent for it's price, the f/11.something ratio of the 80mm lens produced almost CA free & crisp views of planets, clusters and double stars, and the eq1, although flimsy, taught me how to properly use a scientific instrument. Sold it 3 years later for a bresser 127L on a Tal2m mount which was certainly an upgrade.

Perhaps there is something more. I've been trying to find a decent manual on this motor unit but didn't have any luck. Some SW mounts use 3.3v TTL while some others use 5v TTL. Where you able to confirm that yours is 3.3v? If not, problem can be solved perhaps with a cheap TTL voltage shifter.