david_taurus83

Most pictures I've seen with the L-Extreme show halos on bright stars. What camera will you be using? 

Bortle 4 is quite dark so if you don't have to deal with streetlights directly or nearby skyglow, I'd only use a normal IR/UV cut clear filter. If you use a light pollution filter you will need to expose for longer. With my 6D, clip in L Pro filter and Samyang 135 at f4 I can take a 2 or 3 minute exposure without over doing it. Pointing straight up with no moon about, I can do 5 minutes. The majority of the exposure is taken up by LP which is removed later in software. If I was to use the L Pro at a dark site though I would have to expose for significantly longer to get the histogram off the left side. Not enough exposure and it's difficult to get a less noisy background. 

I would have said the same that it's probably the simulator.

Also, 0.9 is a bit on the high side for pulse guiding. Most folk set both rates to 0.5.

Yes, we are all a bit mad. It has caused the odd argument in our house...

I'm still doing it though! 

There's a 550D on ebay with a kit lens for £200. Say £225/£250 for the modded one. Obviously you'd sell both with a charger and batteries. That would leave your other lenses and filters. If it was me I'd offer the modded one on here and stick the rest on ebay.

The thing with a newtonian is you only want light that is reflected from the primary to the secondary to shoot up the drawtube. If you put the light source for flats on top of the tube you risk light bypassing the mirror route and entering the focuser directly which will give you uneven illumination. Can you place the light source a bit further away from the OTA and aim at it? 

For that sort of money I'd want to be looking at a UK vendor for the support and warranty.

51 minutes ago, Neil27 said:

Now attached to my pier and adapter plate. So mechanically all in place. Looks good in its natural habitat 👍

Struggling connecting it to the laptop though, missing the usb/serial driver I think, will try again today 🤔

 

Curious how you polar align this wedge?

I don't have the 102EDR anymore but never had any blue bloat issues with my modded 6D (LPF1 still in place) and IDAS filter. Because it was so good I bought the 80EDR on the strength of that. But I've not used it with the 6D yet so can't compare. Given the price there's got to be some compromise expected. If you really don't want any chance of CA then it's a triplet I'm afraid and the cost that comes with it. I wouldn't buy any refractor for imaging unless it has FPL53 at minimum. And the SW 72ED doesn't have FPL53 anymore either.

Are you planning to do the mod yourself? It's supposed to be one of the trickier cameras to do, hence the cost when the professionals do it. I bought my modded 6D from https://cheapastrophotography.com/ and he only removes the inner IR filter while leaving the LPF1 (UV/IR cut)  and sensor cleaning in place. As Michael mentions above, the sensor is reshimmed so autofocus works with lenses. A clip filter in this camera will also lock the mirror up so restrict you to Liveview if using for daytime photography.

@Vulisha What are you worried about specifically? You mentioned my image above has some blue fringing but it's an HOO image processed with stars removed and I used Ha as Luminance to add stars back in so it's single channel stars!

3 hours ago, wimvb said:

Only 11.35 hours according to the publication by Gabany and Martinez-Delgado. It's the dark site that is most important here.

And the half metre mirror!

To be fair, my AZEQ6 'Pro' was bang on out of the box but after 6 months or so use I had to adjust both axis for backlash. Is there a guide for adjusting the EQ8? It shouldn't be hard to do.

16 hours ago, callisto said:

I could be wrong, but I'm sure 'Gina' has this mount

I think Gina has the older model. The newer stuff seems to have the 'Pro' badge

Well, their existing range are supposed to be halo free...

The first OIII (8.5nm) I had was terrible for halos. Credit to FLO and Baader though, I sent it back after 8 months of trying different spacing, optics, orientation etc and the like for like replacement was perfect, no halos at all. Luck of the draw with batches I guess.

Thats unacceptable for a mount in that price bracket. It's supposed to be Skywatchers observatory class mount. My CEM25 has 'only' 1370ms of Dec backlash.

In fact, I have another attempt from my early 600D days. This is my first proper attempt at M31 with a 600D and WO GT71. I was never happy with it due to short capture time and processing skills. 

Fast forward a year or so to when I got an ASI1600. I gathered 3 hours of mono Lum data and used it to add to the earlier DSLR data. The core is a bit too much but the noise and colour looks improved to my eye.

The one time I got a decent image using mainly Photoshop was by processing a monochrome pseudo Lum (RGB converted to grayscale) and one of the final processes for adding back in colour was to saturate and blur the RGB image and overlaying the Lum on top. Worked well so why couldn't this work with a true mono Lum and OSC RGB?

6 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Regular AA 102mm ED - with FPL51 glass does have some color fringing due to CA

and to be honest, I've seen couple of cases with AA 102mm ED-R which has FPL-53 glass - with also a bit of blue around bright white stars.

I do know 80mm F/7 is going to have less. Do you have any images with OSC sensor and that particular scope?

No, I've only ever put the Atik on it. I've never even looked through it!

1 hour ago, Vulisha said:

This looks brilliant indeed! there is small amount of blue on right halfes of brightest stars but it is barely noticable, and much better than refular 80ed. Do you mind me asking what FF you used for this, as stars are spot on all around? 

Thanks! This was taken with an Atik 460 and the Altair 0.8 reducer v2. I have a little bit of tilt in this image so stars are not quite perfectly round but close enough.

Hi. I have the Altair Starwave 80 EDR which is basically the same as the the TS FPL53 scope. It's a nice well built scope. I had the 102 version prior to that and got on well with it with a DSLR so I decided to get the 80mm EDR. I have only used it with a mono camera so far though and only completed 1 picture. The 102EDR was absolutely fine with a colour camera (Canon 6D) so I have no doubts the 80mm will be just as good. Here's my one completed narrowband image with the 80EDR.

I wouldn't get an ASIAir just for guiding. It's designed to be used mainly with ZWO products and most* DSLRs. A cheaper option would be to get a Raspberry Pi and install Kstars and Ekos on that. This will work with any brand of astro products unlike the Air. Or if you can't be bothered with trying to learn the workings of Rasberry (Linux) get a cheap second hand laptop. Mount control and guiding really doesn't require much computer power at all.

Does it move? Is it powered correctly?

If you want TS scopes then have a word with Zoltan at 365 as he stocks them. 

Let's say both cameras are the same and are gathering 1" per pixel. Won't the larger aperture funnel more photons towards each pixel?

If it were 2 buckets collecting rain and deposting into 2 identical baffled containers, wouldn't the larger bucket fill its baffles more quickly?