david_taurus83

NINA isn't exactly setup for planetary work and has limited camera controls. It's designed to setup a deep sky imaging plan and press play. Sharpcap gives you much finer controls of the camera settings. You could use NINA to connect to your guide camera and mount for platesolving and centring and Sharpcap for capture on your main camera.

As much as I liked Stellarmate and Kstars and really wanting it to work, I eventually bought an ASIAir mini. Just works and is great for a mobile setup. Still not as good as a Windows based system though so I would also suggest a mini PC. That brings its own headaches as well as will need a 12v supply and you will need to remote desktop or VNC into it to manage.

My Mini does this after a flip. It looks like it just stops imaging but it's just a glitch with the preview. If you exit back to the front menu and reconnect to the device you should find that it has continued imaging as planned.

The 460 has 1 tablet and a mesh barrier behind it to prevent ingress of dirt and dust while changing it. If you take some bias frames now what is the lowest reported ADU value? At -10°C my old 460 had a minimum bias ADU of 163, in other words the offset value. Should never be 0.

I should add that when I had my GT71 and Flat6AII I never got perfect corners with either 600D or 1600MM. I was forever chasing it and changing back spacing. It's a road to madness!

It's correct. If you undo the knurled ring and wind it back to the front section you would see that the rear section is on around 9mm on the scale.

No it's the right way. The M63 end goes to the scope with the M48 end on camera side.

How much drawtube have you left when in focus? I had the older GT71 and Flat 6II and I'm sure I had about 30mm of drawtube available. The difference with my scope was I didn't have the rotator fitted like you have.

^^^This. If you can point at a tree a half a mile away or so then you should find that focus is pretty much spot on at night then. You won't be able to use PHD as it will be too bright. Use Sharpcap and a low exposure.

That reducer should be OK with f6 to f7 scopes. What size filters are you using? 36mm?

1.7 metres in length? Almost 6 foot? Surely not!

A few unexpected clear hours on Monday so decided to give this a go while waiting for the galaxies to get higher. 25 x 300s Ha 25 x 300s OIII 18 x 300s SII SHO and HOO versions. Approx 25% crop around the edges.

What equipment will you be using?

Are you just using a tripod? Not a tracking mount?

How long were the exposures?

I have both AZEQ6 and AM5. The AM5 would not be a good mount for an Esprit 120. I wouldn't put much faith in its guided performance beyond 500mm but for a small compact setup it is excellent though expensive. The AZEQ6 is my second one. I sold the first a few years ago in a mad fit of downsize fever, regretted it and bought another when we moved house. Works great with my Esprit 100 and now have a 200P on it. I would say that 1000mm focal length is probably on the limit of its capabilities but overall, a solid performer.

Sticking with Orion this week, was awarded a few hours clear sky last night despite the forecast for cloud and fog. Managed to nab 3 hours on this before the moon got too high as well though the nebula is fairly bright itself anyway. Also a good opportunity to get some more testing on the 200P. Have learned from last night that flats are needed each night and PHD calibration is worth redoing after a meridian flip! So far, I haven't touched collimation since it went on the mount! First image from the rejuvenated 200P 45 x 60s each LRGB binned 2x2

Top one is my favourite. Very nice!

Thank you! The top one was the first and only image I managed to process in Photoshop. It took me a few days to get it right. That's one of the reasons processing always seemed daunting as I could go round in circles for ages. Now about an hour in Pixinsight is enough. I have come to believe the less steps in processing, the better and certainly more enjoyable now. The top one, I always felt was a bit too red. Even the latest version, I had to pull back the red channel slider a little at the very end as the dust was too red.

Yes, I don't mind bright stars being big as long as they have that nice outward glow and not those filter induced halos! No, just used the framing tool in ASIAir. I think I bought the Air at the right evolutionary stage as its as good as anything PC based now.

It never gets old, does it?! Been a couple of years since I last took aim here. Last time it was with my Canon 6D, IDAS D2 filter, Altair 70EDQR and AZ-GTi mount. I was impressed with the amount of signal the 6D could produce. Result was this after about 5 hours: This time round it was shot with the ASI2600MC, Redcat 51 and AM5 mount. No filter this time. I shot a series of shorter subs for this as well, 5s, 15s, 30s with the intention of making a HDR frame for Orions core. Turned out I didn't need them as the wells on the 2600 are that good that 60s subs didn't blow out the core. As I said, no filter so stars are a bit bigger but no halos or reflections either. Lots more signal, about 4.5 hours worth of 60s subs.

Geez, who knew a bit of fun thread could turn so pedantic.

I did say if the distances quoted by Skysafari were correct.. And given the scale of the objects we are talking about, in my mind, the millimetre matters!

Just tried to work all this out on the calculator for fun. Assuming approximate sizes and distances on Sky Safari are correct: A 10mm diameter Sun would be 1.060m away and the earth would be a piddly 0.009mm in size, roughly 3 camera pixels wide! If we reverse the scale and make the earth 10mm wide, then the Sun would be 1.090m wide and be 115.631m away. To put into scale the vastness of space itself, if the sun was 10mm wide, then our nearest cosmic neighbour, Alpha Centauri, would still be 296.542km away! 🤯 That's like placing a marble sized Sun in London city centre and travelling all the way to Liverpool to get to the 3 marbles that make up Alpha Centauri!

A cheap SVBony 1.25" one would be fine. I got one for a tenner I think. It passes the TV remote test so works as intended!