teoria_del_big_bang

Skywatcher spare part foot with rubber cover for stainless steel tripod

Steve

If you cannot get any they are probably something I could 3D print fairly easily.
However I would need to know what the end is like that glues onto the tubing. I assume as @Budgie1 says there is just a 1.75" depression that then slides over the tripos leg and is glued in place.

I probably could try and print in some semi-flexible material but would have to buy that in or could print in hard plastic but that may tend to slide a bit on a patio or similar to up to you.

Let me know if you cannot get any and want to give it a go 🙂 

EDIT: Having looked at them and thought about it I would not trust 3D printed flexible feet with expensive astro gear on top. Whilst I do not think they will fail to begin with the sharp end of the tubes could eat into the plastic over time and eventually they would break. 
Yes I could print some that would look the part but I would not want to be responsible for one breaking and maybe causing an accident. I think the proper ones have a metal insert inside them to prevent this happening.

Steve

That really is a very good image 🙂 
I like those colours, the processing has not been overdone so quite subtle, and the nebula is what the eye focusses in on first not any overblown stars that dominate some images  when overstretched.

All in all I really like it 🙂 

Steve 

Welcome to SGL, not really my area of interest but I am sure there are many members that can help and join in with your discussions.

Where about in China are you living ?
I have worked there quite a few times and my last job before retirement was in Guilin in the South

Steve

what filter wheel do you have ?
You may need to buy a new carousel for the 36 mm filters but still much cheaper than 3 good NB 2" filters, in fact buying a whole new filter wheel and 36mm filters is far cheaper than 3 new good 2" NB filters 🙂 

Steve  

I agree with above replies, I currently use 36 mm filters with my QHY268M, just get camera as close to filter wheel as possible. 

Steve

5 minutes ago, Budgie1 said:

....not forgetting the cushion & mug versions!

Isn't there an "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of their promo emails? I think I must have used it because I don't get any from them.

When I get these unwanted promotion emails I just click on Spam and the browser then asks do I want to unsubscribe and if I press yes it sends the unsubscribe email and then I do not hear from them again.

Steve

Definitely some of the best amateur images I have ever seen, so clear. Well done they are fantastic 🙂 

Steve 

Wow, looks great I bet you cannot wait, please keep us all updated when you are there sounds like a trip of a lifetime 🙂 

Enjoy.

Steve

1 minute ago, geeklee said:

Yeah, a calendar could be a struggle! 😊 The latter months may just have placeholder text of "TBC" (To Be Captured ! 😅)

I keep thinking I should start doing some Lunar pics again as most clear nights I get it's there in all it's glory 🙂 

Although I keep joking maybe it is not such a bad idea, I might get that calendar done at least 🙂 

Steve

Just now, geeklee said:

I like the photo album approach @tomato - is that A4 size? 👍  Sounds perfect for me to look over images in print without having to find wall space (and permission!)

I've used my-picture also and got two acrylic prints done (40cmx30cm, 40cmx40cm).  I was really happy with these but I would say they benefit from good light to really show off the image. I also got some smaller MIXPIX done from the same place.

As mentioned by @Budgie1 I brightened mine a touch following advice on SGL in another thread.

Yes I have started putting an album together on this site, its a great idea.
So far I do not have that many images, probably about 20 since I started in 2019 so will make one up from these images. Some are not so great when i started but I think it will be good to see how I have improved over my short time in imaging and hopefully improve further.
I would love to be able to have a yearly album from now on but up North I just do not get the skies to get enough images together I do not think so may have to wait a year or two for my next album. 🙂 

Steve

This is not something I can really help but following the thread as I am interested in doing this myself sometime .

Only thing I can say is about the colour reproduction and I would think for a start you would need to calibrate your monitors on whichever computer you do your processing as uncalibrated monitors can vary wildly in colour. I use a monitor connected to my laptop and also a desktop with dual monitors and didn't really take much notice of the calibration of them until somebody mentioned about the weird colours in one of my images I had posted and recommended getting one of THESE. After calibrating my monitors I then saw that some of my images had awful colours so now regularly calibrate the monitors every 6 months.
So if you do not calibrate your monitors your colours may not be what you think they are anyway.

Then I don't know if this would work but I would be tempted to print out on my own printer at A4 size and if I am happy with the colours give those prints to the printer to say what hues and brightness you are expecting.

Steve

Nice image,  Propus and Tejat (I think those are the offenders) are a real pain when processing this one.
I had this as my  last target and found these gave me halos on all filters to some extent but Ha and SII were manageable however OIII were horrendous.
I actually replaced my Badder OIII filter after this. 

Steve

6 minutes ago, sloz1664 said:

I can understand the frustration on the steep learning curves of either PS or Pixinsight. It's not just learning on how to use the software, to a degree where you start feeling comfortable with it, you have to keep using it on a regular basis or keep a precise journal of the techniques used in your processes, Because, if you do not, you will forget what you have done.

I do not know if this is just my experience or applies to others on SGL but I think because of Family life, work and lots of other stuff although always interested in Astro related stuff I just never got into it till I had more time (and a bit of spare cash helped 🙂 )  and I think , for me anyway, being well over 50 did not help with any of it, either learning the imaging side of things or the processing. 
I am sure I am not alone but stuff just does not go in there and get retained like it used to.

Steve

5 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Oh but you can! It's quite easy: consider black as being the darkest possible form of grey, while white is its lightest form. Both being grey they are, therefore, the same colour...

🤣lly

Let's save that for another thread eh 😂

Steve

Always two sides to an argument. Well almost always, I can't argue that black is white. 

I cannot comment on the PI developers attitude as never had any dealings with them, and I totally agree if the case is as said then they should listen to their customers, or potential customers, like any other business.

But from the software side of things I tried to get into PS for a year and just could not get to grips with it, couldn't do a thing with it without following a tutorial religiously, watching the tutorial on one monitor whilst pausing then doing the processing on another. I just really struggled.

I put off trying PI because so many people of SGL said it had a steep learning curve and that it was just so difficult to use. But then when I tried PI it just made sense to me and once I understood the ethos behind it I just took to it and like I said it made real sense.

Why one and not the other, not sure, maybe the more Arty amongst us, or those already familiar with photography find PS so straight forward and whether it is that those with a more mathematical or logical approach take to PI  and prefer that path I am not sure.
I know that I tried photography in my younger days, all the gear (before digital SLR) even all the darkroom stuff so was keen, but I was pretty useless at it, I could take the images and develop them no problem , but they were poor to look at, just didn't get what made a good photograph. Also I was never good at drawing or art, struggle to even write legibly. But, maths and logic I was much more at home with.

 I think it is just a matter of horses for courses.

But, without going on about it it does worry me about your comments, and Olly's, about the developers attitude, and although I said I could not comment on that I just thought about  a recent issue regarding what I thought was a great third party script, called NSG, which when I did the latest major update of PI I found the script and all my settings had disappeared and no idea why, until I read on the PI forum that the developers had a disagreement with how the script handled weighting of images and decided there way was right and the script was wrong so just removed it from the repository of anyone who did the update.
That did really annoy me to say the least.
The script is still available but PI made it really harder to install and use it as the script could no longer then call an instance of a PI process. Luckily the script developer did find a way around the problem and thankfully I can still use the script but took me several hours to find out what had happened and how to reinstate it and get it working again.

So sounds like the attitude issue is true. Shame because (for me and I think so many others) the software works for us.

Steve

THESE are the same (I think) on Amazon UK, and at around  80p a piece definitely worth having.

steve

That's a possibility, a;though still no idea why it would do that.

Like I say not sure how the integration determines the figures it puts into the header but my best guess is it uses the reference image as it should be aligning all others to that reference image so logically that makes sense so if you manually select the image I think it would be better.
I have a;ways manually selected it and never seen this before.

Steve

Sorry, in an earlier reply I said the time was impossible but it wasn't, I just did not have my reading glasses on, looking again it just seems to be all the images taken after about half past midnight that do not have the coordinates in the raw data fits headers.
No idea why.

And looking at the fits header of the integrated image some of the images you did include were after this time and so those images had zeros in the Ra and DEC.

You can see the time on the latest image was 02:29:38 so at least one image had zeros in the Ra and DEC on the raw data, maybe more than one.
Now I do not know how WBPP determines the Ra and DEC of the final integrated image, and more likely it has nothing to do with it because the script itself does not actually integrate the images it just loads them into the ImageIntegration process in the background and runs that so I am guessing it is the ImageIntegration that determines these values in the Fits Header of the integrated image. 
So whether that uses the reference image (which if left on auto could have been one with zeros in the header) or whether it uses some sort of mean, median or Mode of all the images I have no idea but my best guess is it is these zeros in the raw data that is causing the issue.

That would be my thoughts anyway although not certain.

Steve

which one was the reference image, or did you leave it on auto ?

Steve

Also just noticed that all these first set I mentioned, so images 733 to 770 have a plausible airmass

But all the later ones have an airmass of 35 which is huge.
In fact I seem to remember that an airmass of 35 atmospheres is pretty much when pointing pretty much at the horizon.

No idea what happened, maybe just getting very close to the horizon, but still shouldn't have 35 for the airmass, but also looking at a lot of those later images the tracking has been poor with some pretty elongated stars.

You may well get a better final image by leaving out these last images 778 to 808

Steve

Looking through all the light raw frames the Fits headers all seem okay from the L_0733to L_0770 with a sensible date and time and also then has somewhere near the expected RA and DEC. coordinates.

But then I have no idea what happened but all the next images from L_0778 to L_0808 which all seem to be taken after midnight on the fits header do not seem to have put any coordinates in for the RA and DEC.

So I guess if you used one of these images between L0778 and L_0808 for the reference image I guess it may not keep the correct coordinates.

Steve

I still have all those raw files, when you did the WBPP script which image did you select as the reference image in the script ?

Steve

it should be maintained,.
Always has been for me.
I guess somethings may trip it up but not sure what.

Steve