Hallingskies

Couldn’t agree more. However, I must admit that I take a set of flats once my camera is bolted on, and then only ever redo them if I move it or see uneven subs. And, like Mr. Penrice, I seem to be able to get away with using the same master luminance sub for everything as my filter wheel is fully enclosed. That’s probably the only similarity between his brilliant output and my mediocre stuff though!

Windows 10. Enough said. I am desperately trying to avoid it, and dreading the day that my XP laptop, XP desktop, Vista laptop or Win7 obbo desktop finally falls over...

Equipment: ATIK 460EX, Vixen 114mm f5.3 ED114 refractor, NEQ6 mount, guiding with Lodestar X2/PHD Subframes: 20 x 300s H-alpha, 16 x 450s OIII, 20 flats for each channel, hot pixel removal in Astroart (no darks). The H-alpha and OIII stacks were registered in AstroArt and then taken into PaintShop Pro (sorry folks, I don't do Adobe or PI) for noise and star reduction, and curve tweaking. I made a false green channel by layering the two stacks and hitting the "multiply" option. The three channels were then RGB combined in Astroart, with the final colour image slightly contrast adjusted in PSP. The OIII envelope shows up quite well but it otherwise all looks a bit flat to me. I think I'll try and get some RGB for star colours before I finally put this one to bed.

Focus. Focus. Focus. And then check that focus, especially if you are working at f6 or less. I’ve learned that “good enough” usually isn’t. And it’s certainly worth rechecking during an imaging session - autumn can give you a 15 degree difference in ambient temperature over a six-hour session and it can be frustrating to sift through a pile of subs and see the star sizes gradually getting bigger and your fine nebulosity vanishing. If your budget and set-up lends itself to a motorised/automated focusser then go for it.

Wow, you guys are faster than your download speeds! Don’t know if you have kicked a server or something, but things seem back to normal...

Is it just me or are SGL page views getting a bit slow again? SGL has been pretty sluggish at my end of the wire for the last day or so, other web sites are fine...

Yes, had I looked at your signature properly I would have realised that! . Even so, the Helix still doesn't get that that high in the sky, even in Southern Spain, so a great effort. I have managed to image it from the UK but I wouldn’t waste anyone’s time here by posting the result. In terms of the object size, I was on holiday in Almeria and was amazed to be able to sweep up the Helix in 8x50 bins. Prior to that I thought it was a “small” object that I would have no chance of finding, but I was rather surprised to find that visually it seemed to be a faint but distinct smoky disc about half the size of the full moon. The power of truly dark skies...

I really like this as it is. I don’t personally care too much for (what I consider to be) the bizarre psychedelia of the “Hubble Pallet” but it’s your show, of course!

You got this from a London southern horizon? Absolutely stunning....

With an economic death cloud on its way next March, there may well be an awful lot of secondhand equipment hitting the market late next year...

I’ve used HaRGB for years but now I’m just getting to grips with multi-narrowband imaging as well. There doesn’t seem to be any hard and fast rules for what filters and exposure ratios are best for any particular object, although I usually take a look on this forum to see what others have done before going after a target. Olll seems particularly sensitive to conditions and I find I lose a lot of contrast if I try and image in Olll when there’s a lot of moonlight about. I also find I need about twice the Olll exposure relative to Ha when looking at emission nebulae (though I guess planetaries are stronger in Olll), if it is there at all. There is the added complication of differing filter bandwidths as well. Some folk are going for the super narrow (and super expensive!) Ha and Olll filters and it is interesting to see the forum feedback on these. It would be good if there were a table which listed objects against suggested exposure ratios in Ha/Sll/Olll/Hb (assuming that you aren’t imaging at very short f ratios, which can affect the interference filter function, so I believe) but then I suppose everyone would have their own opinion about what works best!

Been there, done it myself.

Diagonal needed? Sorry tooth-dr asked the same.

I only use my kit in months with an “r” in them. And by the time September comes around, every year, I have forgotten how to use it all. Four months or four years, we’re in the same boat, so I know how you feel...

There are a pair of Tawny Owls in the woods behind my house. They (or, I think, their fledglings) seem inordinately fond of flying in through the open dome hatch. I think it may have been the light from my obbo PC screens attracting them. They perch on the end of my scope for a second or two, then fly off. Oddly enough, PHD doesn’t have a routine that allows for owls landing on the end of your ‘scope. It’s happened a couple of times while I’ve actually been in the obbo, which makes me jump a bit. I think I may have had a few other visits while things are running unattended, judging by the occasional dropped sub, wild PHD graphs and the odd feather lying around. Other than that, no harm done to either owls or equipment so far, although I have now learned to turn the PC monitors off once things are up and running OK.