Laurin Dave

Well done Steve that's looking good and I'm pleased that your enthusiasm has been re-kindled. For those with Pixinsight there is a new Photometric Mosaic Script (available in the latest release) which has been developed by fellow Basingstoke Astronomical Society member John Murphy. On the examples that have so far been tested it has given excellent results and is worth investigating although by necessity it is most definitely not one click. Dave

Fabulous image Richard, and I shall have a look at the link thanks Dave

Excellent talk @tomato Steve, thoroughly enjoyable and informative Dave

Very nice Adam, I'd suggest a fair bit of RGB and L on the Horsehead, Flame and the various reflection nebula in the region NGC2023, IC432 etc ... hopefully just one frame with the Tak .. for the rest there's always next year by which time the pier extension will be ready ! Dave ps your Epsilon180/2600 will frame that nicely

I'd suggest that the diagrams indicate that if you want to use with a Canon or Nikon camera lens get the short back focus version.. they both have setups for 55m

I have that ticked ... (used with SGPro).. so it may be that

A real Christmas Cracker! beautiful .. Merry Christmas Dave

Hi Adam I use 2x2 with 3/15 at f7 and 3/10 at f5.5 so I would try reducing the exposure for your faster system .. (although I’d thought SGPro rejects saturated stars) and also reduce the step size, you could increase the number of points just in case.. also do you know the relationship between your critical focus zone and step size in micron .. I’d imagine there’s some guidance on this somewhere in the ether.. Dave

Taken last night after watching the conjunction. A couple of panels with my new Askar200/ASI2600mc combo, 1.5 hrs per panel with a large overlap over IC405 and IC410, enhanced with some higher res Ha and RGB (over the Flaming Star).. Spacing/tilt still to be fixed and more practice needed with focus.. resampled at 50 % as its huge! Seriously impressed with both the camera and the lens.. Thanks for looking Dave

I did that in both directions for my side by side by side rig... I used a workmate though and some masking tape to mark the balance points ... it worked a treat.. Mesu's seem very tolerant of balance

Congratulations , just seen this image in Astronomy Now together with a write up by @ollypenrice extolling the virtues of colour CMOS .. if I hadn't just bought one and seen what they can do I think I'd need a lie down! Dave

Indeed .. gives us something to do.. hopefully get some clear skies soon

I’ve already got one. All part of the plan

I've found that they usually do, but just drop them a line to make sure ..

Very nice... I got my ASI2600MC, its been out to play once and I'm very impressed with it Dave

It is always very dangerous browsing on FLOs website at this time of year with so many tempting offers on display, I did this on Monday 7th December and before I knew it an Askar 200 f4 lens and ASI2600MC were on order. The camera was quoted as out of stock with a lead time of 15-20 working days but to my surprise both turned up on Saturday morning together with FLO's seasonal warning of snow, even more surprising was that for the first time in weeks a clear sky was forecast that evening. The new system was quickly attached to the mount using a vixen saddle which I screwed to the piece of wood between my scopes that carries all the cables (actually a piece teak from my school physics lab bench where my dad was the handicraft teacher) and darks and flats were taken. At nightfall the lens was quickly focused using a Bhatinov mask and the coarse and fine focusing rings. My main target for the evening was going to be a mosaic of IC348 and NGC1333 in Perseus but in the hour or so before they rose high enough I went for the area around the Fireworks Galaxy. In total I got 1 hour on the Fireworks, 2.5 hrs on IC348 and 1,5 hrs on NGC1333 before the clouds rolled in. Processing was relatively straightforwad although when debayered the 150subs took up 45GB, the darks look very good with and very CCD like with as promised no amp glow, the flats were flat, very little vignetting and no dust bunnies. The results are below.... (I've added my hi-res Fireworks galaxy to the first image). There are some spacing and tilt issues to work through but overall I'm very pleased with the results for such short integrations times, particularly with the richness of colour that the camera picks up in the dust which I always struggle with on my mono setups. Even more so since these are from Bortle4/5. Thanks for looking Dave The Fireworks Galaxyand Barnard 150 IC348 and NGC1333 in Perseus The new scope between its bigger brothers..

Excellent. Looking forward to seeing it . as I’m sure you’ve got, it’s 55mm from the m48 thread , also at f7 pretty forgiving and with a smallish sensor (Sony694 size) I’m told by a ‘man who knows’ that you can dispense with the flattener

Hi.. It’s not quite like that as the focuser bearings are a fixed length and so support the same length of drawtube regardless of how far it is extended Dave

its both 63 and 55 mm .. the flattener has an 8mm spacer/ adapter attached that reduces the thread from M66 to M48.. on the 150 there’s a somewhat longer M62 to M48 spacer .(I think the 120 is the same as the 150) So for the 100 it’s 63mm if your using the M66 thread and 55mm if using the M48 thread ..

Astro Pixel Processor will do this and has a 30 day free trail

I'm sure it'll be fine, I have an Esprit150 and ASI1600/EFWOAG etc, the drawtube needs to be a long way out to focus but I have never had any tilt issues with this setup and the stock focuser. The only advantage an extension tube will give is that there'll be 2" or so (length of the extension tube) extra of drawtube on the scope side of the focuser bearings to possibly add a small bit of counterbalance to the weight of the camera etc. The camera will still be exactly the same distance from the focuser bearings.

Very nice Adam.. if you haven’t already done so then maybe try this.. check all subs in Pixinsights subframe selector and discard outliers .. register and integrate the panels separately .. then background extraction, light stretch/ levels on each panel to get the backgrounds the same then register all against the master (I use Pixinsight Thin Plate splines plus distortion correction for this) and then integrate the whole lot in APP with Register switched off .. you may have to use TIFs for this if APP objects HTH Dave

The Esprits are very good (I have two a 150 and a 100) .. as Olly says the crucial question you need to ask yourself is what fov do you want. What camera do you intend to use ? The 150 (or a TEC140) is great for galaxies but needs a large (ie APSH or Full Frame I have an SX-46 ) sensor to capture decent areas of the most popular nebulae, (and may require a focuser upgrade to cope with the weight). It can do planets but when I tried on Jupiter the images were someway short of those taken with my 20 year old 10" LX200. As for doing mosaics my experience is that I can get them to work in narrowband but not LRGB as the gradients (I image from Bortle4/5) are just too much to deal with... as a result of this the Esprit150 is on the linen cupboard, the SX46 is on the Esprit100 and is dual scoped with a WOGT71/ASI1600. Dave

Nice one Goran.. Dave

I ordered it last Monday.. wasn't expecting it till the new year as FLO quote 15-20 working days delivery but DHL just told me that it'll arrive on Monday