david_taurus83

Thanks Stuart. No, I used BlurX in place of deconvolution after DBE. Normally would only try deconvolution on a mono image so it was an extra step with this. NoiseX came after before colour calibration. If your taking about the flaring on bright stars, I sometimes get this with the Redcat. I had similar artifacts a few years ago with an Altair 70mm quad as well and offset halos when using a filter. Myself and Emil swapped filters at the time to try out as he also had halos on his quad. We both concluded it was just a thing with these quad designs.

First light with all the ASI stuff. Wow! I can see why everyone raves about the ASIAir. Setup is very simple and it works really well with its own kit. Very pleased with it. Also the AM5 mount worked a treat. Guided under 0.8" RMS over the 2 good nights we had last week. I didn't have to throw a single sub. The 2600MC. Needs no introduction really. The single subs didn't look much better than what my 6D can produce, but put them all together? Different story completely. I didn't think it was possible to capture the faint stuff from my bortle 6 location. I'm going to enjoy this little setup I think. I jumped on the BlurX wagon with this, couldn't see much gains in the nebula (image scale is 3.1"pp) but the stars are sharpened and smaller. Not one for pixel peeping this one though its not intended as such. 140 x 120s subs gain 100 Optolong L-Pro filter

I like the idea but it would be perfect if the lens assembly itself moved independently inside the housing. That way you should stay relatively focused while you adjusted in live view or camera looping subs quickly. Or as Adam points out above, set it to factory specs and cheat with BlurX!

Do you mean these 2?

I got the new Air Mini direct from ZWO and it came with a bracket already attached. No it's the ZWO helical focuser. I have the SVBony one as well and they are almost the same except the SVBony one has a shoulder on the inside that prevents the nose of the camera from going all the way through. The ZWO one doesn't have this. The SVBony one has 10mm of focus travel though to the ZWO's 6mm. And the ZWO inside..

@geeklee Yes exactly that! I pinched it off the 200P I have in the shed as it won't ever get used but I might swap it for the red one that comes on the side of the AM5. Just need to make sure I have short enough screws to go back in the holes as I believe there are some wires underneath that can become snagged?

@The Admiral Here we go

I have to admit, it does look very good! I may have to swallow my pride on this one!

Not quite sure I understand your point Olly? To me it's like taking RGB data with an amateur scope and using Hubble Lum data then to tidy it up? I know it's not exactly like that but perhaps the same principle?

I agree, if it adds resolution to an image that exceeds the capabilities of the scope and equipment used to capture it, then what's the point of the hobby? Might as well just invest in a powerful PC, software and a load of processing tools and make it up as you go along. Surprised though that it's available on Pixinsight if this is the case, knowing how the developers feel about "real astrophotos"

I've just got home now and starting to get dark but looking at your pictures it looks the same? Probably a trick of the camera angle on mine?

When you say "jammed" do you mean it just tracked into the observatory? Or slewed or you moved it with force? I would be very surprised if it damaged any gears as it should just slip on its clutch. With the clutch tightened you should still be able to move the mount if you pull on the counterweight bar.

What a fantastic little piece of machinery. Just works straight out of the box. A well deserved tip of the hat to ZWO..

What do you plan to do with it? I know there's a Canon app and if the camera has WiFi you can connect to it and view images, maybe live view. Not sure what else it can do, I tried it once on my 6D.

I would have expected the Pegasus box should be shielding this sort of thing from happening givin the price of them. What happens if you separate the power source? Is the PC and mount all powered from the same socket?

Do the single subs have gradients? That's a stack you've posted? The 3 peaks will be the RGB channels. Depending on your light source, the 3 channels will vary. I see this also with my DSLR so nothing new there. Is that a debayered and stretched flat? It does look very bright.

My mini came the other day with impressive speed. It was picked up by FedEx in China on Saturday afternoon and delivered to me on Tuesday morning! 🤯 (You listening RM??) I had never used an ASIAir before until I had a play last night. Wow! I take all the criticism back! What a fantastic little gadget! I had absolutely 0 issues with it. Everything connected straight away, AZGTI, EAF, 2600MC and WiFi was absolutely fine with me sat indoors, no drop outs or glitches. Everything just worked, polar alignment, even guiding and calibration, as temperamental as the AZGTi usually is. If you have all ZWO kit it really is a no brainer. If that was the case on my main setup I'd probably ditch the mini PC and get a Plus. Well impressed with it overall.

Indeed the latter! As the old saying goes, "An astrophotographer and his money is very easily parted" 🙂

I can't take the credit as somebody else mentioned it on here before and I've sworn by it since!

Since I took up the hobby around 5 years ago, every October through to February has been the same. Cloudy with rain. You get the odd night here and there in between but certainly not clear, frosty nights with sparkling skies like we all associate with winter. And when we do get frosty weather it tends to come with snow which makes light pollution even worse as its reflected upwards! I would say I have 6 completed images under my belt from the past year with multiple nights used for capturing data on each. That's with a fixed pier so no setup time and I have the luxury of leaving running all night until morning. I certainly couldn't do it if I had to setup and strip down every session.

I found in the past that if gain is set high on the camera it tends to pick faint stars that are more affected by seeing wobbles. If I lowered the gain it tended to select brighter stars that wouldn't saturate and were not as wobbly if seeing was poor.

You would be better to use one frame for aligning them all. Any edge artifacts can be more easily cropped out afterwards. If you align by individual channel you can end up cropping more out after you manually align. I can't say ive seen any strange artifacts by doing option b though. I would have thought your issues would be more down to the pixel rejection algorithm chosen when stacking.

I used a 25mm water pipe as conduit. Wishing I had grabbed that 32mm gas pipe instead now. One of the data cables and power cable need to be fed/pulled through at the same time. Bit of a tight squeeze..

I've changed the RJ45 coupler but it's no good. Looks like a couple of pins on the plug have completely corroded so it will mean stripping down completely and try to feed a new cable through the conduit. My dilemma is do I replace with ethernet cable and stay Limited to USB2 or take a chance and try and feed a 15m USB3 repeater down there 🤔

I'm going to seal the new couplers with some hot glue to prevent moisture getting in there again. I always leave a spare dew strap left on under the cover to prevent condensation from forming and its worked a treat so far. I'm hoping the connector issue is due to being exposed to rain for a few hours. The downward facing side is bone dry and fine so hopefully it's not long term exposure.