Xsubmariner

Given the weather we have been experiencing that is a great outcome. Let’s hope January brings some long, cold clear nights.

Hi Desmond,

I also have the L-Extreme filter and from my experience believe it is excellent for imaging with a colour camera when there is moon present (light noise swamps signal). I would definitely increase your exposure time when using the filter, remember you are effectively conducting narrow band imaging with a colour camera. Here is an image taken with my QHY163C with L-E filter on a 75% moon night. It is the combination of only 13 x 10 min exposures taken when clouds allowed.  Remember that your mount/guiding limitations will have to be adhered to, no point having more signal if your stars are bloated or misshapen due to poor guiding. 

There is a Dedicated  ZWO camera heater available that sticks to the camera faceplate and comes with a power splitter cable.  Wether to fit one or not depends on your environment and camera setup. Unless you are experiencing freezing moisture on your camera window I wouldn’t bother. I doubt ZWO would sell the camera dew heater that’s available if there was the possibility of damage to the camera.  If you are using a portable power arrangement it may be better to reduce the cooled temperature to -10 than add another power drain. 

Hi Glen

A good video and great budget observatory, you must be pleased with the final outcome. May I ask if there was anything you would have done differently now that you have had time operating the system. Additionally have you fitted or considered environmental control to protect the equipment. I noticed you lined the inside with some form of insulation and how did you attach it?

Martin

I would be careful about purchasing old copies of PS on eBay. Many are unlikely to be legitimate. Even if you are successful at acquiring a genuine copy you will struggle to get it registered with PS, if at all. Look on the PS forum to see the many cases where genuine original purchasers are struggling. 

Hi and welcome to the forum, you will find a wealth of information on all aspects of this hobby, enjoy.

Wait a year or so and the reverse engineering experts will make a set available for half the price. 🤨

Thanks Oldfort, I found the TS adapter but there is a long lead time for availability. Given the prices that are charged for these adapters I wonder if it is a small market, I guess only the U.K. suppliers could answer that question.

Welcome to SGL, glad to hear you are enjoying this hobby.

  One of the most frustrating aspects of taking up amateur Astrophotography is the ever growing size of my adapter collection which is necessary to construct and rebuild imaging systems within the backspace constraint of the hardware for a given target.

Only yesterday I stopped an order for an M68x1 female to M54x0.75 male adapter at the point of purchase. While the €75 cost was a bitter pill, the €45 international postage for such a small item was beyond believe. With a total cost of €120 I backed out. You might expect the item to be coming from New Zealand but no, just Germany.

At the same time I am seeking a couple of M54x0.75 male to M54x0.75 male adapters for my other system upgrade to include a rotator. So far I have purchased the last adapter on Aliexpress and have found a limited source in the USA, who won’t support international post.

At times I question why I am bothering and wouldn’t it be easier to book online slots with a remote site. That said, for me it is as much the mental and engineering aspects of this hobby that I love. Online imaging is not for me and I am sure there are many others who defy logic and build expensive imaging systems in the UK where one can expect at most, a couple of dozen quality imaging nights a year.

These recent experiences raise a few questions I believe are worth some discussion among fellow imagers.

Should manufacturers of key imaging equipment be expected to provide more adapters with their core products; reducers/flattener, rotator, filter-wheel and cameras?

Why am I unable to find a U.K. source for many of these relatively standard adapters?

There is an option for custom made adapters From Precise Parts in the USA, but import taxes make this choice prohibitive for many. Why isn’t there a U.K. equivalent service, likely not cheap but affordable?

I am sure there are many who have purchased their new pride and joy equipment, only to find there is a lengthy delay with using it while seeking elusive adapters, any thoughts?

Great to hear you have your new Mesu, you will not regret it. I haven’t bothered with PA drift aligning, T-Point/SiTech  sky point-map and PEC is not necessary. I find my Mesu’s provide ease of imaging equipment swap outs that don’t need me to expend valuable clear sky (so few in U.K.) time to calibrate the system.

I use SGP for sequence control and just complete a manual platesolve which sync’s the mount on startup. Following a sequence commanded slew to target, both mounts centre to within 2 pixels, usually within two plate-solve iterations. This level of goto performance is then repeated on other targets in the schedule for the rest of the night. While guiding performance is affected by the seeing, I generally get 0.2-0.3 arcsec guiding accuracy with good seeing.

If you plan to operate your mount in the same fashion above, there is minimal interaction with the SiTech controller beyond the initial setup. Good luck with your first light. 

Thanks, I have just tried mine for the first time and was using gain 26 offset 30 so fairly close. These new cameras have introduced another layer of complexity for dedicated imagers to experiment with, shame we don’t get the clear skies needed to experiment effectively without loosing image production. It would be handy if the guidance was better.

May I enquire what offset and gain you are using with the 268C camera.

Thanks.

Nice simple solution, what spacing have you provisioned for the filters you will be using?

1 hour ago, Stuf1978 said:

 

Additionally I don't have pixinsight so everything would need to be stacked in DSS and processed in photoshop . 

Hi Surf,

Pixinsight has a steep learning curve and starting mono imaging can be demanding.  I would recommend anyone starting out to use a simple processing application that will give good images, quickly.  Its all to easy for people to become disillusioned when they struggle with the software. I started out with Nebulosity 4.0 which is very intuitive, then migrated to pixinsight once my skills were ready for a more complex process.

I purchased the original ZWO filters with my 1600mm-cool a few years back and while there are plenty of threads that discuss the issues, I found them fine for my first excursion into mono imaging and they will produce very good images. The new Mk2 ZWO filters you would be getting if buying new, are an improvement and great value for someone transitioning to mono imaging and wanting to offset the cost.

Yes there are better filters but they come at a cost.

Hi Stan, welcome to SGL and a fascinating hobby. As your experience and knowledge increases so will your equipment collection. With most things in life there needs to be balance, so your bank account and savings will diminish proportionally.

The original thread is 2009 so I suspect the site no longer exists.

Martin

Yes, but if you start searching for good used items now, I am sure you will have a full set by the time the new generation CMOS mono cameras are available. You might want to consider 36mm of 2” filters for the new cameras.

You should be proud of that picture as only your third DSO. Greater things to come I am sure.

Martin

Hi Steve, I have a few ZWO cameras and several other brands, of them all ZWO has been the easiest to install reference the drivers. You should have no problem with Windows 10. There are lots of guides and tutorials on the web that will help should you find a problem.

Enjoy your new camera.

Martin

My Altair Astro 250TT (GSO 10” ver2 truss ) has a back focus of 230mm from the back plate. Yours may vary slightly but it’s a good place to start.  If you are new to this type of scope, be prepared to find a lot more fiddling is needed to get it just right for your imaging train.  I have a 3” feather-touch fitted and used it with my SX36 full frame camera, so your cameras will present similar fun. Getting the guiding right with an OAG (loadstarX2) was problematic given the prism is on the edge/outside the flat field (due to sensor size), this resulted in guide stars that are elongated which compounded the usual seeing challenges. No a problem if you have an ONAG or are fortunate to have an unguided Mount, in the end I settled for using a smaller sensor with this scope.

Good luck with your scope, you will learn a lot configuring your new setup.

Martin

Hi Derek, welcome to SGL and Astro Photography an addictive and fascinating hobby.

Hi and welcome Michael, let’s hope the scope didn’t sustain any damage from the fall.

I experience the same problem with my SX FW. Once I’ve completed the system power up, the FW spins up, then when I select the FW maintenance box in SGP all appears ok until I attempt to connect the FW in SGP, when it hangs. Unplugging and reconnecting the USB on the FW solves the problem and everything then works fine. Both of my active USB 3 extension cables have independent DC supplies, suggesting it is not a signal level issue. More likely a port connection conflict in the PC.