david_taurus83

44 minutes ago, Padraic M said:

So have you decided what you're going to buy with the 500 quid you saved?

A shed to put it in! 

25 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Do you live on Mars?
Soil colour suggests you might 😊

Lol this particular site is all red sand. It makes a nice change from the typical wet mud we have to suffer for 90% of the year! Also, just to point out, I haven't stole anything! This is ductile iron left over from a pump station installation. I purposefully dragged the installer over to the pile yesterday and asked him what he needed from it. Nothing was the answer so this would have ended up in a skip! Can't believe my luck there's a double flanged length left over. Can pour a flat concrete pad now and bolt this to it. A purpose made astro pier is 500 quid and this hasn't cost me a bean!

It's nestled safely in the van now!

Postman Fate just happened to leave this in my path! T'would look good bolted to a lump of concrete in the garden, I'm thinking! 

Batteries? Is it well balanced? 

Oh I do like that!

Looking good to me. Its like how it looks through an eyepiece 

On the 600D you can flip the screen out and switch it off. Tjis helps it cool down. Can't remember exactly but pressing the menu button on my 6D cycles until the screen is off.

In Pixinsight, an initial unlinked stretch will give you a good idea of what the data looks like once you start to stretch it. If you colour calibrate, ie align the RGB channels, then you can do the linked stretch to show what the aligned RGB will look like.

36 minutes ago, StuartT said:

David, I am not sure what you mean by 29C... ? where are you getting that from? Although it was a very warm day, it had cooled down quite a bit by midnight

29C is in the filename of the CR2 file. That's the recorded temperature of the camera at the time of capture. I found that above 20°C with a Canon DSLR that it starts to get noisy. You may need to take darks to try and remove thermal noise.

That's just the colour cast from the filter. You can sort it out in processing by balancing the RGB channels. When you stack them all together they won't come out that bright anyway.

On a side note, 29°C is a bit on the high side for a DSLR. Are you making sure the screen is off and flipped out if applicable?

It may be possible to connect through the WiFi but I wouldn't trust much in it myself? Don't know how stable that is unless it's tried and tested by others? Personally, I would use the cable but by all means, give the WiFi a go.

The AZGTI does not have an ST4 port so do not try and plug the guide camera ST4 cable into it! That port on the mount is for a hand controller. You will need that Lynx Astro cable above to control via EQMod. APT is probably the easiest software to use and it's the best one for DSLR users. You can practice setting up during the day indoors as well. No need to wait until clear skies. It makes for good practice as well. Yes, Sharpcap for polar aligning this mount is a piece of cake. Have you got a counterweight and M12 threaded bar? You may need 2kg or a longer bar to balance.

If you want to make your like very easy and cut out star alignments and all that nonsense then give platesolving a go.

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/334568-setting-up-platesolving-in-astrophotography-tool-apt/

The one I used goes between the focusing ring and aperture ring.

It's odd that there isn't an actual collar for this lens.

9 hours ago, Budgie1 said:

Another thing to try;

After the image has been stretched, create a star mask using StarNet on the colour base image, so you remove all the stars. Create a clone if you don't want to try it out on your main image. Then you can work on the nebula and background separately to the stars. 

You can then use curves - saturation on the stars to bring out the colour you want and reduce them with Morphological Transformation, before adding them to the background again with Pixelmath.

Have a play and see how you get on.  

How do you find StarNet leaves the stars? It's great at removing them from nebulae but I often find the stars in their separate image are left with some weird hatch like artifacts. Do these artifact disappear if you add them back in with Pixelmath?

On 07/06/2021 at 18:13, Toaster05 said:

Yeah, that was going to be my use case. It might just have to be a suck it and see on this one.

This one will fit but its 1mm too big so I used some electrical tape to beef up the lens body. Fitted nice and snug and the bonus is you can still access the aperture ring.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DVKZBXG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_T0WDMBR512ZSNGT720GZ

40 minutes ago, geeklee said:

Great first light @david_taurus83 What a cracking FOV the full frame Canon gives with the RedCat.

Good tip on the tilt adapter.  Is the framing with a SGP a manual exercise?  i guess I'm getting at reframing the same target another night or finding a particular frame you like.  With the full frame you've got more options of course!

Thanks! I'm really pleased with how this has came out!

Yes all manual. But it's made easy with the Stellarmate/Kstars. I use VNC on my phone to control Kstars/Ekos. When you solve an image it shows the FOV and orientation of the framing. RA is easy as you just hold down the slew buttons for a few seconds to get into position. The Dec is moved manually by hand. It takes a few minutes at most.

28 minutes ago, callisto said:

Very nice image 👍....do you use ipolar or just the stock polarscope?

 

Mark

Thank you Mark! Just the stock polar scope to rough align. I tried the polar align routine in Stellarmate last night for the first time. Got it down to 1' accuracy though I think with the stock wedge it gets knocked out a bit after focusing and framing the image. Perhaps the WO wedge is worth the upgrade? It still guided fine with ST4 last night 🙂

What an absolute gem of a little scope! I really wish I had held out last year when I ordered one of these instead of cancelling due to the long waiting list! Browsing FLO the other week and I noticed there was a dozen or so back on stock. I let the cogs tick for a day or so while I thought about it and when I checked again they were down to 3! Nope, not missing out this time. Ordered straight away on Sunday and they were sold out again that evening!

Anyway, I've paired this to my 6D and mounted to my iOptron Skyguider Pro. Framing, imaging and guiding controlled with a Stellarmate. I think I have finally gotten together a decent portable setup. Just powered by batteries and a USB powerbank. No need for heavy 12v batteries.

Note to Redcat owners. I'm aware that some of these are reported to not deliver the promised flat field. Its worth checking the tilt adapter before first use. I measured mine with a digital caliper and it wasn't exactly flush so I adjusted all 4 push pull screws to be within 0.05mm of tolerance. The results are very good. How glad was I when I checked over that first sub to see round stars across the image! Not perfect to the sides and corners but considering the 6D has that big full frame sensor I think it performs very well.

Despite no astro darkness and only 2 hours of twilight to play with from midnight last night I nestled this little baby in the corner of the garden between the old shed and back wall to hide it away from the woeful streetlights that incessantly plague me.

This is the full frame image. Only the tiniest of edge crop to remove stacking artifacts.

Redcat 51 - Canon 6D - Skyguider Pro - IDAS D2 LPS

40 x 180s at ISO 1600

Processed in Pixinsight. Final tweaks in Photoshop.

@OJ87 how do you know he got angry from an email? It can be hard to get the proper context sometimes from a written message.

Anyway, your clearly frustrated that your mount hasn't been delivered within the ETA given at time of order and your not impressed with the customer service either at this point, but perhaps it may be better at this stage to be a bit more pragmatic and give Mesu a bit more time to finish the mount. You've waited this long and surely you were to be within the next batch of deliveries so it would be a shame to cancel now. That mount will sell regardless so if you cancel then ultimately you'll be the one who loses out. Though if you feel your being too badly treated then a refund should be issued and just move on and lesson learnt. 

Hi need a bit more info. What kit are you using? How are you controlling the mount ie interface between mount and PC?

The Baader ones are good value for money, or at least they were a couple of years ago before Covid. I had an issue with halos on the Oiii but a replacement under warranty was perfect. Probably not perfectly parfocal though. The Astronomiks I have now are probably the best you can get before jumping to Chroma/A$trodon but they too are pricey above 1.25".

Yes, I echoed the same thoughts about the current price in another thread. I believe its closer to £1100 for the CEM26. Its simply too much I think as well.

Funnily enough I had an AZEQ6 and sold it to downsize! And I regret that to this day! I will be moving house soon and looking for a more permanent setup on a pier and I had considered going for an AZEQ6 again. The CEM25 is good but it's very sensitive to balance and dangling cables and wind. Perfect for the 70 EDQR (which I also owned!) buy I think if I had an Esprit, I'd want the assurance of something a bit more sturdier.

Do you already have the mount? They have been discontinued now and the latest version is the CEM26.

Try without any filter to start with.