david_taurus83

Can you take a picture please and post an image of the eye pieces and how your using them in the scope? I doubt the eyepieces are at fault.

What are you trying to view? The 25mm that comes with your scope isn't a bad eye piece at all. The Baaders are a good quality eyepiece so very unlikely theres an issue with them. Say you start off with your 25mm and it gives you a nice bright view of a few stars. When you switch to the 10mm or 5mm, contrast does increase in the background sky and the focus point does become more critical. Especially with the 5mm. You should easily focus stars though. Not many DSO will benefit with the 5mm. More magnification doesn't necessarily mean a better view, especially on DSO as they are already faint so increasing the contrast can make it harder to view. The 5mm will be best on the moon and planets, double stars, Trapezium in Orion etc

Yes definitely a USB traffic issue. For ages I thought the issues with my 1600MM were because I use a Startech USB2 to CAT5 extender. It had a quirk where the 1600 wouldn't download images unless the 120 was looping frames in PHD!!! Every now and again it would also just give the dreaded BUSY message in APT and could stay that way for hours until I stopped the image plan and restarted it. Very infuriating as I couldn't take my eyes off it while imaging. Well, since moving to a modern laptop it works brilliantly. Downloads quicker and hasn't skipped a single frame. But then the 120 wouldn't work properly. It gives a split frame effect in both PHD and Sharpcap. Googling brings up results from CO and ZWO forums where it's a known issue for some. ZWO say they didn't anticipate such issues with USB3. As you have said though, the USB3 versions of the 120 and the new Minis have addressed the issue. I could have just swapped for one of those but it's nearly my birthday 😁

My 120MM works great in my old Win 7 USB2 laptop but I had trouble with the 1600MM. That's fixed now with the new laptop but the 120 wouldn't work!

New guide camera. The ASI120 is incompatible with my new USB3 laptop 🤷‍♂️

As counter intuitive as it sounds, you do need to take longer subs for darker skies. This is because you need to saturate the sensor with more light to overcome the cameras read noise. So if your imaging from light pollution at home there comes a point where the light pollution starts to overcome the faint detail your trying to pick up. Sure, your swamping the read noise but this is likely due to your LP. Longer subs at home start to be detrimental. So at your dark site with no LP, theres less photons hitting the sensor. The challenge then is to expose for long enough so the faint details overcome the sensor noise. But you will pick up much more detail and start to separate it from the background sky.

Usually, yes, most people will utilize PHD to control dithering. However, APT can dither the mount itself without any guiding whatsoever. I was using it successfully myself a few weeks ago after I sent my guide camera away for a check up. If you select APT Dithering like in my example above, it will do it based on your imaging focal length.

Ah I see. Mine is also a triplet so its probably the same lens in a different housing. I also have a tilt adapter on there but I've not had the chance to try and iron it out, if it is tilt. I seem to get ok stars on one side and not as ok in an opposite corner and then one corner even worse again. One thing I have thought of, is it could be slight play in the drawtube and this may change angles as the scope moves. But even with slight play in the drawtube, it's a tiny lateral movement. How much could this effect the plane of focus on the sensor?

Imaging, very likely. The CCTV cameras probably use the same sensors as us! See how much they pick up! Can you switch the IR lamps off while imaging?

Yes, apart from me using an Lynx astro EQDir cable, I was using APT dithering a couple of weeks ago. Works just as well as PHD. My settings below for APT Dithering.

Come to think of it, if I create a star mask should I be able to subtract it from the range mask with Pixel Math? I've never used it though so will swot up on the old YouTube this evening!

Ah I see what you mean. Are you looking at the stars in front of the galaxies? It could be because I created a range mask and went around and clone stamped every star out of it so only the 3 galaxies remained. Boosting the colour of the galaxies only has shown this aberration I'm guessing as I cant see it in the main star field. I use an inverted star mask for boosting star colour. I'll have a play later and see if i can split the 3 channels and manually align within the work space. The Dynamic alignment process is pretty good.

Thanks Adam. Do you mean the histogram doesn't line up or star alignment? I'm struggling to see where!

Light pollution, sky isn't bad really for where I am. Obviously low down in the north is the Birminhgam glow but zenith and south are ok. My main gripe is the orange streetlights overlooking the garden! Gradients aren't difficult to remove though. The IDAS D2 seems to be doing a good job. Regards gain etc, I think I'm going to give Sharpcap a go. I ran its sensor analysis tool at the weekend and had a play with its smart histogram as well. It takes a few images of your sky conditions and recommends exposure and gain settings.

I spent a long time capturing this. Needless to say I was a bit disappointed with the master stacks. They were very noisy despite the integration time and number of subs. Also, the background sky levels were very very low after calibration. Somewhere in the region of 100 ADU! I've started thinking I'm doing something wrong at the calibration stage. All subs were 30s. The same as when I done M42 and that came out ok, good in fact, in my standards. What kind of background sky levels do other folks typically see? I really had to stretch this and push up the saturation to get a bit of colour out of it. Not entirely happy with it but it is what it is. It's still quite noisy even after a couple of NR iteration. Is it just a simple case of not exposing for long enough? Taken over 5 nights in March and April. Cloud ruined a lot of it. I even had to throw away 5 hours of data after I started 3 sessions with a new laptop and had the camera set at 0 gain, doh!!! William Optics GT71 at F5.9 (420mm) ASI1600MM at -25°C, 139 Gain, 50 offset Baader LRGB filters Approx: 480 x 30s Lum 400 x 30s Red 120 x 30s Green (cloud ruined every night on green!) 350 x 30s Blue Total integration around 11 hours. Comments and criticism welcome.

I have wrestled with this myself for a while. I have suspected the adjusting ring on the flattener might not be helping so I've wound it all the way in now and used spacers and the thin plastic shims that come with the ASI1600 to get me to 54.8mm. Last image taken with the Flat6A II below. (Been trying a Hotech SCA for a while since) Still distortion in the corners and the left edge is worse than the right. Stacking (16 x 900s) has made it better than the subs. Have you tested without the flattener to see if the vignetting is still offset?

Well with my 200p I had to add the 6" extension bar to push the 2 x 5kg weights out a an inch further for balance. Not sure why the bar is thicker. The AZEQ6 comes with a puck you can attach to the end of the counterweight shaft and mount another scope in ALT AZ mode. Possibly the reason its thicker. If your set on imaging only, then I'd probably recommend the EQ6-R as I only got the AZ for both visual and imaging. AZ design does enable me to run cables down through the mount. The latitude bolt does stick out like a sore thumb though just begging to snag a cable one of these nights!

Hi. I'm not sure of the Skywatcher quoted load capacities but I was imaging with my 200p on the AZEQ6 when i first got it. 12kg and was fine. Are you planning on buying one or the other? What are your intentions? Visual or imaging? Both?

Using Blink in PI is a good way of removing cloud polluted subs. Just make sure you apply a histogram transformation to the subs. When it loads it performs a stretch to the first sub on the list and if you don't change it it will just carry through the same stretch over them all. Press the top button to perform HT. Btw, it's only temp, it doesn't alter your raw data.

Possibly ok as a light source. A few sheets of paper to diffuse the light as well. The problem with Newtonian flats is you need to make sure that only light reflected from the primary onto the secondary makes it onto your camera sensor. If you stick that panel directly on top of the tube then you risk lighting up the focuser drawtube which can cause uneven illumination. Though some people take t shirt flats this way no problem.

Aha but maybe in the ST universe they did need to go back. What if, without the input from Riker and Geordi, Cochrane failed to make his maiden flight? Thus, the Federation never formed? Thus, no war with the Borg? In that scenario, they wouldn't need to go back! And earth and the rest of the quadrant would eventually, be, assimilated! So in fact the Borg unwittingly played a vital part in Earths history. A closed loop paradox?! I love Star Trek??

Thanks. I have spacers, filterwheel and ASI1600 on a scope at F5.9. I guess you've just landed on your feet with spacing as it's meant to be. I will just have to experiment more. I have read reports of people needing 70/80mm for best results.

You have nice round stars Alan. Can I ask what spacing you've got on your Hotech flattener? I'm at 65mm now and still not enough.

If your guiding make sure it's set to PHD or PHD2, whichever version your using. If set on APT and your guiding then this will probably confuse things. The default values should be fine. The only thing you should be changing would be how many images between dithers and the dithering distance. The scale of 1 to 5 is, I believe, 1 to 5 pixels. Assuming the default values of PHD haven't been changed, if you select 3 in APT, then it will issue a command to PHD to move around 3 pixels. Whether its guide camera pixels or imaging camera pixels, I'm not sure. Once you get comfortable with it all, and if you wish to make larger dither movements, then there is the dither setting in PHD. This will multiply the scale you have set in APT. For example, the APT distance is set at 3 and PHD is set at 1. So a dither should be around 3 pixels. If APT distance is set at 3 and your PHD distance is set at 4, the mount should dither around 12 pixels. For now, start off with a setting of 3, 4 or 5 in APT and leave PHD alone. See how the mount copes with recovery. The bigger the dither then the longer it takes to recover and settle.

I think that box is blanked out when you select APT dithering. When using PHD is there a default value?