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5haan_A

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Posts posted by 5haan_A

  1. Hi guys,

    Running into an issue. I recently purchased a new laptop, and despite downloading the programmes and drivers the same as what I had on the old one the EQMOD program keeps on crashing when it tries to boot. It goes unresponsive and I have to close it with task manager. 

    It appears to be the same whether I open it from Cdc Phd or from the run eqmod script. Also its worth adding that when on the

    I am connecting directly to the mount via a USB to my laptop, the mount is an eq6r pro, I am running windows 10 20H2, I believe all other drivers and stuff like the Ascom platform are up to date. 

    Everything worked fine on the the old laptop, so thankfully I don't think its a mechanical issue.

     

    These are the driver settings below from the toolbox

    Capture.PNG.42cdfcec85e59c229f5f6679aa063246.PNG

     

     

    Best,

     

     

  2.  

    11 hours ago, inFINNity Deck said:

    That should all be fine then.

    Which software are you using to slave the dome and did you correctly apply the signs to the scope- offsets?

     Currently I am using APT to capture and POTH to slave the dome, but I have to be honest I am not the biggest fan of it. I think I have entered in some of the information incorrectly. I will attach a screenshot in here and see if there is a anything obvious someone can spot.
     

    Essentially I feel that the dome and the mount are not quite synchronised. Last night for example I asked the mount to point to vega so I could get focus. The mount got to where it needed but the dome had to be manually adjusted to be in the right place.

    I thought maybe I had the wrong RA centre which is why I started this thread, but now it seems like it could be something else.

    The dome does calibrate correctly using pulsar software, so I do know that it does work as it should. 
     

  3. I spent the best part of my weekend trying to unscrew part of my imaging rig. A seemingly small benign part refused to be unscrewed despite me using various wrenches and tools.

    A lot of hassle would have been avoided if I had used some WD40 to lubricate the parts before screwing them together.

    I have now taken the time to unscrew and lubricate pretty much everything to avoid anymore frustration. I would definitely recommend application of WD40 to anyone is isn’t doing so already.

    The part that caused me problems this weekend. In the end I won, but only just after what felt like a gruelling war of attrition.

    BA27704F-E494-4317-B5B1-DB5598958733.thumb.jpeg.f93f76b83d446acb790165b48de53193.jpeg

     

    • Like 1
    • Haha 1
    • Confused 1
  4. On 02/03/2021 at 13:34, vlaiv said:

    You seem to have issues with calibration in that image:

    image.png.3ce0c1f543dc6b7bc7eeb94f463c1e7c.png

    OIII data is very faint and your flat calibration has issues that are higher intensity than intensity of data itself.

    There is almost no OIII data there, its faint. 

    The point about the flats, is it perhaps something that can be solved by taking a shorter exposure time making the flats darker. I use APT CCD flats helper. I select a ADU of 25000 and then put it to work. Maybe I will turn it down and see if that makes a difference. 

  5. Speaking of which attached is a single stacked frame of Oiii data. There are 46x10 min subs in there with all the dark and dark flats necessary. Nearly 8 hours of capture time on a eq6 mount through a Esprit 100. I know the Cave Nebula is a hard target but I feel that I may have been overly ambitious thinking I could capture the required nebulosity while the target was relatively low on the horizon and there being a fullish moon. 

    Can anyone squeeze any juice out of this one, or am I flogging a dead horse.

     

    Best,

    Autosave002.tif

  6. Yeah I think knowing the limitations of your data is an important point. Having just got started on the O stack I can safely say that for this particular target, given my set up and that the majority of imaging time was done under a fairly full moon no amount of stretching is going to bring out the type of detail I desire. Shame as I have 8 or so hours of what now seems to be fairly impotent O data. 

     

    Best,

  7. Hi Guys,

    The answer seems obvious, well it is to be fair- stretch until you have enough detail from nebulosity and stop when it gets too noisy. But, is there a more methodical/scientific approach to this. I use DSS and photoshop, the autosaved stacked file out of DSS is always very dark so a lot of stretching ensues. On my most recent project, C9 cave nebula, I have found stretching to be a real fine line because I need to stretch a lot to draw out the detail, but when I start to stretch too much I begin to lose the contrast between the lovely dark areas of the image, and then there's the noise element to contend with as well. 

    I have attached a screenshot of a single stacked frame of H alpha in photoshop. It's not anywhere near done by any means, but you can see on there the histogram and what seems like millions of level stretches in the history tab. It would be good to know when enough is enough. Or a workflow that you use that works. At the moment I work purely by eye, I levels stretch by say 5-10% a couple of times then move the black point across by 5-10 points then rinse and repeat until I have something that looks visually ok. 

     

    Thanks

     

    1579759379_C9psstretching.thumb.PNG.5ecdf9d636ea13f4d0310c41ee915ccc.PNG

  8. On 01/10/2020 at 13:12, vlaiv said:

    What exactly were you not pleased with?

    What was the DPI of your print?

    Minimum that you should go with is 300dpi, and use 600dpi if you can.

    Size of your image is roughly 2500 x 2000. If you used 300dpi to print, this would make it 8.333" x 6.666" or about  21.16 cm x 17cm. That is about A5 sheet of paper size. That is rather small and this is lowest resolution that you should use for printing.

    With 600dpi - you are looking at a6 or post card size.

    How large did you want to print it?

    I think this was what my problem is. The size I printed was A3 size which explains why the quality of the print was so poor. 

     

    21 hours ago, knobby said:

    If you're trying to print larger, you could try step interpolation in photoshop, it's not magic but if you increase the image size by about 5% in steps it can work quite well.

    Don't forget that if it's big, people will usually stand further away so it needn't be perfect ?

    I think this is a really important thing to think about because I do want to print bigger in the future. What would be good on my part is to get a good understanding of how I can create big pictures. As Vlaiv said the size of my image is 2500x2000 at 300 dpi that translates to 21.16cm x 17cm. How would I go about doubling or tripling the size of my image without sacrificing a massive amount of quality? I do think A3 is a good size for a print, A4 at a minimum. I will try the interpolation method you suggested as an option.

     

    20 hours ago, old_eyes said:

    I use https://dscolourlabs.co.uk/; their metallic prints. I took images I wanted to give as gifts, created four versions with different brightness and contrast levels, and combined them into a single image. Sent those off and got a small trial print. From that test image, I could pick the version that I felt worked best and get however many larger versions I wanted. 

    I was happy with the result and so was my family.

    I will check them out. It's nice being able to share our hobby in this way with friends and family. 

     

    Best,

  9. Hi Guys,

    So I recently tried to print out one of my images to give as a gift to some friends and family using snapfish, a UK based printing company. On the first attempt that they tried I was very unimpressed with the resolution and print quality. They gave me a refund, but I am now looking to see what I can do to improve the image quality. I feel like something somewhere has gone wrong in the way that I have processed, scaled or sized the image. I am not too sure. I use photoshop and usually when everything is viewed digitally compression and quality doesn't matter as much compared to printing. When I export the image as a jpeg even at maximum quality selected the image file size will go down to 3mb the original tif file is 56.9mb, so that does seem like a significant reduction in quality.

     

    I have attached the base tif file here, if anyone could provide some guidance that would be great. 

     

    Best,

    SHO 2.tif

  10. 8 hours ago, Kinch said:

    Looking really good.....have fun when you do go for the Bubble Nebula....always a favourite of mine when it gets the time it deserves.

    Im looking forward to it, also I just had another look at that sub and I do believe there is something to be said for black and white images. 

     

    7 hours ago, vlaiv said:

    you'll need one of these to compensate:

    https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p752_Baader-Balance-Weight-1kg-with-Vixen-Level-Clamb.html

    I put mine almost to the front of the scope

    Cheers mate. I will look into this for sure. I have been looking into an OAG and it is starting to make more and more sense to me. Still though you can see from the 10 minute sub that the guiding is not bad as it is for the moment. We will see if any flexure or other issues start cropping up.

    • Like 1
  11. So the clouds finally passed last night which gave me a chance to finally test out my new scope. It has been almost a month since I bought this scope. The weather has been partly to blame for the long delay in getting a first light, and also a lot of the additional accessories have taken a while to come. For example, this scope was ordered brand new, and it didn't come with a focuser. Apparently the focuser that initially came supplied was pretty rubbish so the manufacturer thought to get rid otherwise it might detract from what is otherwise a nice product. Once some of the accessories came it was time to put it all together. Here's how it looks on its mount. I still haven't had a chance to collimate the scope as I am waiting for a laser to get delivered and a focuser tube tilt adjuster. I have heard that collimating an RC is fun and games so lots to look forward to!

    20200910_122952.thumb.jpg.12c3314740c79a0d822ac9c0ecb50281.jpg

     

    I am mainly going to be using this scope to image galaxies and other slightly smaller DSOs, the camera I am using for the moment is the ZWo 1600 pro. I had an interesting discussion on the right kind of scope for the job and the camera to use, see below.

    Basically in summary: given that the focal length of this scope with a reducer is 1088mm we need to bin at 2x2 to reduce sampling issues, guiding needs to be particularly good and I decided that this scope, TS-Optics 8" f/8 Ritchey-Chretien, was going to work for me. 

    As I was setting up last night, I noticed that balance was completely off in Dec. I am going to need to order a longer vixen bar or get some weights to improve it. Set up was otherwise quite straightforward. After a lot of playing around and fiddling I was able to take some basic photos to show you. They are nothing special and my focus won't be 100% because I was mainly focusing by eye, and I haven't tried collimating the scope yet! This was more about getting a feel for what else I might need to think about, and addressing any problems I might have.

    First up we have M13. 

    10 x 90 seconds of LRGB 

    I calibrated with some darks, but no flats, or dark flats. In photoshop I only quickly breezed through some levels stretches.

     

    1051738474_M13minorlevels.thumb.png.fad6e8a2f0ad69ddc69cc80a4f9001aa.png

    I thought it would be cool to compare this to a single light frame taken with a Skywatcher Esprit 100, just to see the FOV difference.

     

    1062819604_m13singleframe.thumb.jpg.44be2eaa9eacbb9e4825a768a21c5b3a.jpg

     

    Finally after having enough of a play around with M13 I wanted to see what the bubble nebula might look like through this scope. Here is a single 10 minute frame taken with a H-alpha filter. I wasn't disappointed at all, and now I am really looking forward to collecting more data on this in the future.

    615546464_SingleHbubble.thumb.png.6e8ea917d257f0926f28fbfcf78b1b4a.png

    Overall, I am really looking forward to getting this scope in action more. There's plenty to look forward to.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    • Like 10
  12. 10 hours ago, MarkAR said:

    Looks really good, there's a green reduction plug in for PS but can't remember what it's called.

    Hasta la vista Green i think. Thats the one I have anyway. 

     

    Thanks for the comments guys I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I feel like I'm progressing in terms of what I know now and can do. This type of image 2 years ago was so far away from my capabilities. 

    • Like 1
  13. Hi,

    A couple of months back I drove down to Spain from the UK, with rig boxed up in the boot ofc. My mount packed in half way through the trip, so it was a real bummer, but I did manage to have a fairly good go at imaging the lagoon nebula. For me it was the first time properly using my new ZWO 1600 pro and a narrowband filter set. I have to say I am really pleased with the results that one can get.

     

    The image was taken through an Esprit 100, mounted on an EQ6 pro. The camera used was a ZWO 1600 pro. 

    12 x 600 seconds H 

    12 x 600 seconds O

    10 x 600 seconds S

    I used the Hubble pallete, and edited in Photoshop. This one was fun in Photoshop because there is a lot going on in the image. I still haven't quite got round how to get rid of the purple stars. I had intended to take some RGB stars real quick whilst I was out there, but the mount packing stopped me doing that, so I was looking at ways to change the purple stars in post processing but so far I couldn't get it to work right. 

    Best wishes,

    Shaan

     

    139209338_SHOfinalp.thumb.png.1a765c7f9e6993b7453410087d9dfd0d.png

     

    • Like 9
  14. Lots to think about!

    Thanks Vlaiv for the explanation it was insightful enough for me to come to some initial conclusions. Firstly that I am not going to go for a massively long focal length just for the sake of it. Secondly that I will bin, I had never considered binning and always kind of viewed it as something  that people do when they are in a rush, but it  makes a lot of sense especially when trying to reduce the amount of sampling. 

    Also thanks for the guys giving me their thoughts on SCTs, the celestron edge was a real front runner in my list but after the comments from you guys I think I'd prefer to make my life easier not harder. 

    With all that being said, I have done some research and have identified two potential candidates for a longer focal length scope. 

     

    Option 1 is to go with the refractor

    Explore Scientific ED 127 £1330 (RVO) https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/explore-scientific-ed-apo-127mm-f75-aluminium-essential-triplet-refractor-ota.html

    Option 2 is to go with this RC 

    TS-Optics 8" f/8 Ritchey-Chretien Astrograph with Carbon Fiber Tube https://www.365astronomy.com/ts-optics-8-f-8-ritchey-chretien-astrograph-with-carbon-fiber-tube.html

    I'd bin at 2x as it's got a focal length of 1624 mm. 

    Here is the FOC calculator I put in a 10 inch version of option 2 as well. As you can see the difference isn't massive considering the £1500 and nearly 10 kg weight difference.

    1318425909_Telescopecomp3.PNG.6d7cefdcc8385453483671fbfb33f22f.PNG

    What do you guys think? I am tending towards the RC as I think it offers a drastically different alternative to what I currently have in the locker. 

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