Laurin Dave

Thanks Richard and Goran, might be my settings of course with Pixinsight.. the recent update did mess me about though, calibration went wrong as the darks got turned upside down for some reason..

After what seems like weeks of poor weather the clouds cleared long enough on Monday night to capture 3 hrs of luminance with my Esprit 150 SX-46 and an hour each of RGB with my piggybacked Esprit 100 ASI1600. I processed the image with a combination of APP (currently using the trial version) and Photoshop, interestingly from the same data APP produced an RGB combination with stronger colour and all integrations had higher SNR and lower FWHM than Pi.. I added in some Ha data in Photoshop that I'd taken this time last year with the Esprit 150 ASI1600 combo.. “Spiral galaxy M33 is located in the triangle-shaped constellation Triangulum, earning it the nickname the Triangulum galaxy. About half the size of our Milky Way galaxy, M33 is the third-largest member of our Local Group of galaxies following the Andromeda galaxy (M31) and the Milky Way. Clearly visible in the image is NGC 604, an enormous star-forming nebula. Spanning almost 1,500 light-years, NGC 604 is nearly 100 times larger than the Orion Nebula in our own galaxy and contains more than 200 hot massive stars. M33 has a relatively bright apparent magnitude of 5.7, making it one of the most distant objects that keen-eyed observers can view with the unaided eye (under exceptionally clear and dark skies). Although a telescope will start to reveal some of M33’s spiral features, the diffuse galaxy is actually easiest to examine with low magnification and a wide field of view, such as through binoculars. It is best observed in October. Although others may have viewed the galaxy earlier, Charles Messier was the first to catalogue M33 after observing it in August 1764. In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble studied dozens of variable stars in M33, which helped him to estimate the object’s distance and prove that M33 is not a nebula within our own galaxy, as previously suspected, but actually a separate galaxy outside our own.” Source NASA Thanks for looking Dave

Thanks Rodd.. needs more and better data really (especially RGB).. to sort those fuzzy stars out. Owing to persisitent cloud I've only managed an hour per channel RGB in each of the four panes so far and the reds were taken low down hence the issue I guess.. Dave

Thanks Vlaiv… with the Ha I blended Starless and Starry at 50:50 but didn't with the Oiii.. so maybe that's why.. Dave

The Heart Nebula in HaR_OiiiG_OiiiB. Imaged through my Esprit 150/SX-46 with piggybacked Esprit 100/ASI1600mm on a Mesu 200 from late September to mid November. Ha and RGB through the 150 and Ha and Oiii through the 100. This is a four panel mosaic totalling 52hours Ha, 16hrs Oiii and 16hrs RGB, I'd like to have got more RGB and Oiii and added Sii but progress has been clouded out for the last few weeks and I feel the need to move on to new targets. Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop with use made of the StarNet++ module in Pixinsight The Heart Nebula, IC 1805, Sharpless 2-190, lies some 7500 light years away from Earth and is located in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was discovered by William Herschel on 3 November 1787. It is an emission nebula showing glowing ionized hydrogen gas and darker dust lanes. The brightest part of the nebula (a knot at its western edge) is separately classified as NGC 896, because it was the first part of the nebula to be discovered. The nebula's intense red output and its morphology are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the nebula's center. This open cluster of stars, known as Melotte 15, contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, and many more dim stars that are only a fraction of our Sun's mass. Thanks for looking Dave

Those stripes look like walking noise? are you dithering? Most apparent on the Oiii as the signal is weak and the stretch most extreme .. the glows on the right are amp glow which properly matched darks will remove

It’s also best to do the darks with the camera off the scope, it’s 10mm adapter on, the sensor cap on and facing into a desk to stop any light leaks you might get if it’s in the scope .. Darkflats are just darks with the same exposure temperature etc as your flats.. obviously if you take the camera off to do them you mess your flats up so I have a library of darks to suit my flats and lights exposures.. they are a year old now and still work well.. hth Dave

Carole.. just a thought but maybe focuser/camera droop as they turn upside down Dave

Very nice Ceph, if you weren’t aware with this camera it’s best to use matched darks (time, temperature, gain,offset) for both lights and flats.. no bias. Might sort out the stripes on the low signal subs.. Dave

Both very nice, like others I prefer the HSO, but some details are to me clearer in the SHO, if it were mine I’d tone down the green with selective colour.. I’d also do an HOO version Dave

That happened to me at Barry Island once 😕

Hi Alan Like Goran I have Esprit 150 and Esprit100 but have them piggybacked. The 150 has an SX-46 CCD on it and the 100 an ASI1600 cmos.. the 100 combo has a slightly larger fov and I aligned the scopes with shims.. image scales are similar at 1.5/1.2 arcsec/pixel. Both controlled by SGPro with the 150 as the master.. I dither and use an OAG and so lose 15-20% of the subs from the 100 but that’s still 80% more data than I’d get from one scope.. I have this setup to make the most of the UK’s cloudy skies.. and for Nebula take Ha, Oiii, Sii through the 100 and RGB Ha though the 150, for galaxies RGB through the 100 and Lum through the 150. what is your objective? Is it a close up and a wider field image to give it context ? If so you may find that having the scopes aligned doesn’t give the optimum framing for one or the other.. ( will depend on how large the larger fov is) is it to combine Narrowband or lum with colour at similar image scales? Etc Unless you are doing the later then given your excellent skies I’d just run two setups if you can get two mounts in your observatory.. more flexible simpler and you can still image the same target in different wavelengths.. Dave

Hi David I have encountered something similar with Mesu Sitech SGPro and Platesolve.. It does the flip ok but if, as last night the target is very close to the zenith/meridian then on target commence the mount will go to the correct side, take a plate solve image then slew to the other "incorrect' (ie just about to hit the pier) side and fail to solve.. I suspect its to do with Sitech settings conflicting with SGPro but have no idea which ones.. I get around it by switching off slew and centre and doing a manual plate solve very close to the target and then a manual slew to it.. When it gets to 30mins or so beyond the meridian it all works fine Dave

Another thing to maybe check is whether the USB ports on your laptop are timing out under power save..

Be interesting to see Rodd, maybe the sky background with lrgb will masks .. my mates instance was with Astrodon Oiii and asi1600

Rodd, a friend of mine had this happen the other day with Pixinsight, I referred him to Vliav’s response and he sorted it by changing the resampling back to to Mitchell Netrali (or something like that) Which he had previously used .. he thought it was down to a recent Pi update .. Dave

Very nicely done Richard.... StarNet's a great tool Dave

The Crescent Nebula NGC6888 in Cygnus. This image combines data acquired in 2018 with my Esprit 150/ASI1600mm with some recent wider field data from my Esprit150/SX-46 and piggybacked Esprit100/ASI1600m. In total 9hrs Ha, 7hrs Oiii and 30mins each RGB for the stars. Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop with starless narrowband images made using StarNet module in Pixinsight. The Crescent Nebula (also known as NGC 6888, Caldwell 27, Sharpless 105) is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, about 5000 light-years away from Earth. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1792. It is formed by the fast stellar wind from the Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 (HD 192163) colliding with and energising the slower moving wind ejected by the star when it became a red giant around 250,000 to 400,000 years ago. The result of the collision is a shell and two shock waves, one moving outward and one moving inward. The inward moving shock wave heats the stellar wind to X-ray-emitting temperatures. (Source Wikipedia) Also visible at the lower middle-right is the Soap Bubble Nebula which was discovered by amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich using an Astro-Physics 160 mm refractor telescope with which he imaged the nebula on June 19, 2007 and on July 6, 2008 (Source Wikipedia) Thanks for looking c and c welcome Dave

Interesting.. what length delay do you find works? Thanks Dave

Yep you'll pay VAT plus £12 handling charge. So £811.. Dave

That's lovely Martin.. very nicely done and you've given me an idea! Dave

All looks very neat, especially the plumbing ! and just noticed the drainage channel, very clever.. Angle grinder?

Great books Olly, very informative and I enjoyed reading your copies 😊.. I’ll put them on the Xmas list Dave

As Filroden says with this camera use matched darks and flat darks to calibrate and disable dark scaling. Bias on the ASI1600 is unstable which is why it’s best not to use it.

Oiii wavelength lies at the overlap between the green and blue filters, hence it showing in both.. Dave