Hughsie

If you get the weather Sean I say go for it. I use APT and saved the ra/dec settings of my second night but looking at my third night I may be a bit off target. Having said that I looked in Astrobin and saw an imager who had...... wait for it ..... SEVENTY FIVE HOURS of data. Well, you know what I say to that sort of commitment? I don’t wear thermals in winter, that’s what I say 😝 John

I used the Baader Ha 7nm and Oiii 8.5nm purchased from our good friends at FLO. Personally, I would like to see a softer image and try as I may I couldn’t remove most of the small stars. Spent 6 hours this morning post integration processing and just had to stop. I will come back to it in a few days as I have it saved as a PixInsight project so I can choose where I want to start from. john

Went a bit mad over the Bank Holiday Weekend imaging this target. Spent three nights overall on it. I have posted the first nights work already but was not happy with the framing as I knew there was more to see below the broomstick. The second night, 24 and 25 August, I felt was better framed. However, I went a bit mad as this was only my second narrow band session and was I playing with the filter wheel like a loon! I was trying them all Ha, Oiii and Sii, I even popped a few IR/UV subs in for good measure. You know if I could have wrapped cling film around it I would have shot that too....and probably got a better image. Anyway, with complete disregard as to what the target needed to best show it I realised later (not even on the third night when I was trying sandpaper and cardboard in the filter wheel), that NGC 6960 looks great as an HOO image. Fortunately I had some subs; Ha 16 x 300s gain 139 Oiii 20 x 300s gain 139 Both captured with the ZWO ASI1600mm Pro Cooled at -15c and a William Optics Z103 mounted on a HEQ6R Pro. Enjoy and any feedback welcome. John

Great effort with some good helpful feedback as well. John

Thank you Martin. I just noticed the red pixels in the Ha image. In the end I found an article on the PixInsight forum for red and blue 'blips' and followed the PixelMath workflow suggested to remove them. I had to boost the formula to stop it attacking the Hydrogen gas but it seemed to work...I think. It was bit of 'oh they are gone' then the 'but how....?' then 'don't knock it you've been scratching your head trying to figure it how for far too long!'. Thank you again for your kind comments and suggestion. John

The Western Veil also known as The Witches Broomstick and Finger of God is part of a larger structure representing a star which went supernova c8,000 years ago. NGC 6960 is part of the supernova remnant, the remaining parts being the Eastern Veil, NGC 6992 and Pickerings Triangle. Located in the constellation of Cygnus, this represents for me one of my favourite objects you can image in the night sky (well visible from my garden anyway!). I have previously imaged NGC 7000 in H-alpha and that was a prelude to going deeper on NGC 6960 using the HOO palette. The red channel is represented by H-alpha and the Blue and Green channels by Oiii. This being my first foray into narrowband palettes, it presented a number of challenges some of which I have not really overcome. First there was a large number of pinpoint red stars which had to be removed. Second, NGC 6960 sits firmly in the glow of the Milky Way and so to really appreciate the object it was also necessary to remove/reduce a large number of stars (with some artefacts visible). Finally, it was a question of getting the colour balance where I wanted it. I favour more subtle hues and hopefully this is reflected here. The imaging was undertaken on the night of the 23/24 August 2019 commencing at 21:51.The Hydrogen/Red channel was made up of 19 sub frames @ 240s; the Oxygen/Green & Blue channels were made up of 20 subframes at 240s. Overall 2 hours and 36 minutes of exposure time. I also took a similar number of Sulphur and Luminance images but have not used them here. I followed up again across the nights of 24/25 and 25/26 August with what I hope is a much better framed version of this target and hope to follow up with this second version in the coming days. Thank you for looking in. John

Paid user here too. The only issue I had with APT was connecting to the planetarium software, Stellarium. To be honest though I think that was rather a Stellarium/me issue than APT so in the end I chose to use Cartes du Ciel and have never looked back. If I recall correctly, Ivo actually extended an extra month free on the licence earlier this year......it was cloudy so never got used I have played around with the idea of using Sequence Generator Pro, but once you get used to APT, changing is very hard when everything works........and once you do your first plate solve, you will chuck away that finderscope and wonder what the hell you have been doing on your hands and knees star aligning every time you go outside at night. John

If you want to stay mobile and have a Vixen Polarie equivalent then you could look at the iOptron Skyguider Pro. It comes complete with the full kit needed to mount a Z61, which is what I use on mine. Costs cGBP415 or USD510 by my calculations. Like you I purchased the Polarie then hit the weight limit and baulked at the upgrade cost so sold it and bought the Skyguider Pro. The Skywatcher version is also an option but again you have to purchase the tracking unit and weight upgrade separately. Have a look at the weblink below and the associated YouTube video. Peter does a great job simply explaining the pros and cons of each having used both in the field. He also has some great set up tutorials on YouTube. https://www.peterzelinka.com/blog/2018/8/which-star-tracker-should-i-get Hope that helps, John

Narrowband would be an option on imaging, no worrying about the Moon or street lights. Astrodons if you have downsized and released a ton of cash or Baader/Astronomik for us mere mortals.

.... and was completely forgotten by me when I changed scopes! 😖

Hi Alan, I could be going off at a tangent here, but if you are using APT and platesolving, have you adjusted the focal length of your scope in the APT settings to take into account the reducer as this will impact the FoV and accuracy. Your new F/L will be the actual F/L of your scope multiplied by the effect of the reducer say 0.8x. Mine is 710mm x 0.8 = 568mm. You then store the adjusted F/L in the Tools tab (in my case 568mm) At the bottom you will see an object calculator where you can select your camera type and populate your F/L then hit recalc. Apologies if I’m wildly off the beaten track with this suggestion and its completely unrelated. John

David has created a step by step guide to setting up platesolving in APT. Worth a look to get a feel as to what you need.

I use APT and it will sync easily with Cartes du Ciel. Stellarium can be a pain and I never quite got it to sync consistently. John

What acquisition software do you use for capturing your images? Astrophotography Tool and Sequence Generator Pro offer a plate solving solution. Just take a picture of the sky you are looking at and it will sync your location between the mount and planetarium software. Takes a few minutes and you are away to concentrate on imaging. John

I agree Trevor. Nice to keep things simple and enjoy the moment. John

Night 3 of imaging NGC 6960. Started at 9pm Friday, Saturday and tonight and will wrap up about 5am when the calibration frames are done. Just waiting on the meridian flip then I will get my head down for a few hours.

I am a proud owner of both a William Optics Z61 and a William Optics Z103. Both scopes give me a huge amount of pleasure but the Z103 is becoming a source of frustration. I have a field flattener for the Z61 and it is a bespoke WO design for that scope. However, WO in their wisdom opted for an adjustable reducer for the Z103 which covers a couple of their scopes and I need to adjust the Flat 6AII to 4.6mm. With the Z61 I have perfectly round stars to the corners of the image. For the Z103 I have made adjustment after adjustment and still cannot get pin point stars in the corners of the image. So my question is whether there is a non WO flattener/reducer out there in the market place for a Z103 which can be attached to the scope without the faff of having to get to a seemingly impossible measurement of 4.6mm or some other number. Failing that has anyone got any tips for achieving the goal of round stars in the corners with a Flat 6AII? Many thanks for reading my grumbles! John

Hi Tony, I bought the same filter from FLO in the last month and used it last night on the Western Veil Nebula. I was processing the images this morning and whilst waiting for Pixinsight to do its thing I came across this thread. Suffice to say i did a quick stacki and other than the glow from 52 Cyg which is pretty much in your face, there were no obvious signs of halos around the other stars. Plenty of egg shaped ones but no halos John

Hi Alan, As Laurin suggested, best check which camera is Asi camera 1 and Asi camera 2. I have been down that frustrating road and an easy way to see which one you are connected to is to check the pixel size for each camera (online specs etc), then click on the brain on PHD2 and select the Camera tab. At the bottom left of the screen you will see the pixel size being used for calibration. If its your imaging camera pixel size, then you need to go back to the connection settings in PHD, click the spanner icon and choose the alternate camera which will be your guiding camera and remember which is which. Hope this helps, John

Reminds me of the office conversation......”it’s really quiet today isn’t it” then all hell breaks loose! So, ssssshhhhhhhhhhhh, no one talks about astronomy weather, it only upsets the Astronomy Gods ☺️

Thanks to you both, I thought that was the case. J

I understand that for each LRGB or Narrowband filter I will have to take flat frames for each one, but with regard to dark frames do you need to take darks for each filter? Apologies for what may appear to be a daft question but any guidance would be appreciated. John

Ok, with so many Borg refractor purchases in the past, who will be first with the Star Trek / Borg comment.............? Awwwww alright then...... ‘Resistance is futile’

The North American Nebula is situated in the constellation Cygnus close to the star, Deneb. It represents a large area of ionised Hydrogen gas which is comprised of both this object and the Pelican Nebula. Being a Hydrogen emission nebula, it is an attractive photography target especially using a Hydrogen filter and is ideally placed being close to the Zenith. It is not known what star is causing the Hydrogen to ionise, however if it is Deneb then this object is c1,800 Light Years away. The dark area representing the 'Gulf of Mexico' is actually an interstellar dust cloud located between the observer and NGC 7000 which is blocking out the light of the nebula. This gives the object the distinctive 'North American Continent' shape. Moving along to 'Mexico' we can see an area along the 'west coast' where the gas has started to consolidate into a star forming region. The following image was taken on 3 August 2019 between 00.44 BST and 02.33 BST. It is comprised of 35 two minute exposures and calibrated with 25 dark, flat and dark flat images. These were stacked and processed using PixInsight. Equipment used; William Optics Z61; 2" Astronomik Ha 12nm filter; ZWO ASI 1600mm Pro Cooled camera set at Unity Gain and sensor temperature of -15c. Mounted on an HEQ6R-Pro. Guiding with PHD2 and image captured using Astrophotography Tool (APT). Thanks for looking in. John