teoria_del_big_bang

1 hour ago, Stuart1971 said:

This was mine from last night 5 hours or 2 min subs of the Heart Nebula, under the full moon with the L-Extreme, and a crop of the centre….

and a brighter version, not sure which I prefer….🤔🤔

 

 

Nice, I tried to get on the heart but couldn't get to it, too many obstacles from my patio anyway.

Steve

1 hour ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

Not sure if we're still suffering from the dust or not - didn't notice any orange skies yesterday, but it did appear to me that there was a sort of haziness in the glow of the moon - my glasses are always filthy though, so not ruling out some very localised dust!

Looked same to me but then again my glasses are also filthy mostly with the dog licking them.

Steve

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

must say that I don't do anything during the full moon week, even in Ha.

Not even a nice red ? 🍷

Steve

11 minutes ago, Catanonia said:

Plenty of clear nights and I don't let the moon worry me.

Galaxy season is upon us and if you have a decent FL say 1000mm or more and point in opposite direction of the moon, you should have no issues.

I tried that and got a very nice image of my house 🙂 
 

I did realise I needed a longer FL than the Esprit 100 for Galaxy season and recently did acquire a RC6 but still in the process of getting it all set up so hopefully should have that in my armoury in next couple of weeks and maybe need to look at travelling or moving scope to bottom of garden to get some different sky to point at.

Steve

17 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

I'm lucky that I have pretty good views but I did have a play with M81/M82 and the l-eXtreme the other night and was surprised what I saw. If it hadn't been for guiding issues it would have been good to add to more broadband data. Worth a thought???

Definitely, I did try these targets, with my LP filter (IDAS P2 - I think) but I do not think that filter does anything regarding the moon so no decent data at all.
As mine is a mono I guess the l-eXtreme is equivalent to using Ha or OIII filters.
I did try Ha later on, as I had seen people often add Ha to galaxy images but that was not much better so put that down to maybe it was not as clear as I had hoped, maybe try that again tonight then add it to some RGB is I get  chance when the moon subsides.

Steve

As per usual in my neck of the woods the only clear nights coinciding with full moon again.
As not had the rig out for a month or so I put it out in hope last night, or at least to check it still worked.
But no real NB images were high enough to image and attempts at galaxies just seemed to give me very washed out pretty useless results, so had a bit of a play about then packed in around midnight.

It was pretty difficult se see by eye as I could almost read a book last night in the moon glow but didn't actually look that clear despite CO reporting zero clouds.

Anybody have more luck with their gear or any tips what and how to image in such conditions ?

Steve

If you can it's really well worth getting some M6 and some 1/4 -20 screws, they become very useful items in astro gear as you will find yourself using both at some stage, some manufacturers use metric and some imperial, generally any through holes (non-threaded) in dovetails and so on will take either.
Also a good tip is to keep them in separate boxes because they look very similar and to keep a 5mm and a 3/16 " allen keys close to hand as you will need different keys for metric and imperial screws.

I bought these recently, quite cheap and very useful.
5mm T Key
3/16" T Key.

Steve

1 hour ago, pipnina said:

If you can link me to the dongle you're using for your PI I'll be very grateful! There are a lot of ifs and buts when it comes to wifi kit on Linux, was it plug and play or did you need to install some drivers yourself?

Thanks again

THIS is the one I used with my RPi (also with metal case).
It works well with Linux but there is a knack to installing the drivers (which off the top of my head I am struggling to remember) but I think SGL members can get you going with it although I am sure there are others available maybe some work almost out of the box.

Steve

I would agree with the above comments not to platesolve on Polaris, there is no real need to do so and although it can work it often does either give errors or just struggles so take ages trying to platesolve it.
Some great advice from @Stuart1971.

Also I would be tempted to start off using an ethernet connection if the scope is not too far away from the house, you can get some very long flat cables that can go through very narrow gaps in almost closed windows so n need to leave doors wide open. 
I say this just to eliminate any WIFI issues as they can just add to the frustration, when everything is working then go onto WIFI then and if y=using a RPi I would really recommend using a WIFI dongle, I could never get the RPi internal WIFI to work reliably at all and if it is in a metal case then forget it.

So if all is in place in KStars correctly just select a target on KStars that should be visible, but away from Polaris, and slew to the target then platesolve using ASTAP.

Steve

That is not at all bad considering the moon stage.
At least you had a clear night, no such luck for me, according to CO it is due to be clear on Friday, just as the moon is at its fullest and no real NB targets in view for me so I probably will have the same issues.

Steve

You should be able to get them on Amazon pretty cheaply.
 

Steve

An interesting thread HERE also mentions the intrusion of the focusser into the lightpath.

Steve

Ah I might be lying there, I think this is what I fit to my 200 Dobsonian so this may not fit your diameter tube

Steve

Just now, BrendanC said:

Absolutely no idea! I guess I'm looking for a shorter tube, so if that's what that is, then yes! Thanks, this might be an option too.

I fitted one to my Explorer 150PL so assume your tube is very similar just shorter slight different diameter  and it was a straight forward fit and has a very short tube from what I remember (not used this scope for ages but can get it out and take some pics if that helps) or even give FLO a ring and ask their opinion.

Steve

What about a low profile focusser similar to THIS with a much shorter tube ???

Would that be an option ?

Steve

2 minutes ago, Peter Reader said:

Thanks for the replies, chaps. Raw files here (when they finish uploading): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13mJ3zgJo75LnBnkSNvxpc_QNNnOVPEMX?usp=sharing

Ignore my first reply, it was me trying to do more than one thing at a time and got mixed up.
But having the light frames might help.
 

Steve

I am not necessarily saying it is the debayering, but you can zoom in on the single frame and all looks perfectly as you expect, the colour is there and right down to individual pixels it loos fine, but the stacked image when zooming in looks like that chequered pattern, it looks like they are the pixel size but it's back to greyscale.
To be honest it's so long since I processed any colour images I can't remember why you would get that pattern.

EDIT:
Sorry, me doing things in a rush, I got the two images swapped over, yes you are right I was looking at the single image before stacking and thought it was the final stacked colour image.
 

Steve

34 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

That's not debayered at all though is it, isn't it a single light frame?

The top one that looks okay is a single frame but the close up lower one is the stacked frames

Forget that

Steve

I do not pretend to be a processing expert but a quick look at the stacked image looks promising

Definitely a fair bit of detail ther.
 

Is there anyway you can upload all the lights, maybe by sharing a dropbox file or similar ?

Steve

That's a great image 🙂 
I love the deep red colour and the fact there are so many stars but they are small and very natural so do not detract from the main target (nice colour stars too).

Steve

I have Just updated Pixinsight to 1.8.9 and the NormalisedScaleGradient script has vanished.
I have looked at what this update involves and am thinking that now maybe this script is integrated into the WeightedBatchPreprocessing script but cannot find any actual indication that this is the case.

Anybody know about this ?

Steve

She certainly is a beast, I look forward to seeing some images this produces, I hope the skies clear soon for you 🙂 

Steve

3 minutes ago, DaveS said:

Gah! that's Amazon.de, don't want to go through the hoopla of importing from Germany. 

UK Amazon

Steve

Looking into this more I read that Intel do not actually make a fanless NUC as they all have fans.
So the fanless NUC's are 3rd party builds using the NUC motherboards.

Steve

Regarding your confusion over aperture, think about the main principle of a lens, it focusses all light from any one single point into a single point on the focal plane (the camera chip), that is to say all light from a any one point on the target will hit the same pixels on the camera chip.
So, no matter how big a diameter the lens at the front of the scope is all light will still get focussed at the same places, or pixels, on the chip, so the size of the image will be the same no matter what the aperture is, but, the greater the aperture the more light it will gather for any given time.

Steve