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5haan_A

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Everything posted by 5haan_A

  1. This is something to definitely consider, and also frustrating as I have only recently switched to a ZWO 1600 thinking that it would fit for most of what I want to do for now. Is there a more suited camera for longer focal lengths? The Explore scientific was high on my list, any suggestions on a RC OTA? This scope was on my radar as well, perhaps something to consider? https://www.365astronomy.com/sharpstar-20032pnt-200mm-super-fast-f-3.2-paraboloid-newtonian-reflector-telescope-red.html It does have a built in reducer that brings the focal length down to 640. Also I have heard good stuff about the build quality. Best,
  2. Hi Guys, I have that equipment itch again and I'm in the market again to buy a new telescope to use for imaging. I would most likely mount it on my EQ6R mount so weight wise there are lots of options. I am looking to fill a gap in my equipment and get something with a longer focal length to take images of galaxies. Currently I have an Esprit 100 and redcat so wide and wider fields of view are covered, now it's time to get up close and personal. I would be using the telescope with a ZWO 1600 and filter wheel. I have made a shortlist, with some of my pros and cons by each scope. Celestron Edge HD 9.25 £2450 (FLO) https://www.firstlightoptics.com/edge-hd-series/celestron-edge-hd-series.html Pros Good focal length Tried and tested (lots of advice out there from other owners) Cons Top of my budget (All in including accessories is around £3000) Not sure I like fat looking stars (I love the crisp images you get with refractors) Cooling time Explore Scientific ED 127 £1330 (RVO) https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/explore-scientific-ed-apo-127mm-f75-aluminium-essential-triplet-refractor-ota.html Pros I like the star shape and crisp images Bottom end of my budget leaves me change to spend elsewhere Cons Focal length is not as much as the other options, plus with a reducer it's even less. However, it is still much more than what I have currently. Apparently the length of the OTA can cause issues with tripod legs Orion Optics Newtonian 350/1600 £2210 (Astroshop) https://www.astroshop.eu/telescopes/orion-optics-uk-telescope-n-350-1600-vx14-ota/p,57573#tab_bar_1_select Pros Good focal length Don't mind the star shape Cons Collimation Weight is heavy at 20 kgs (I'd be pushing my mount pretty much to the limit) So what are your thoughts, I'd be happy with any of those three, but I'd be interested to hear any other ideas and suggestions. My all in budget is around £3,000 so there are plenty of really great options. As mentioned this scope is going to image galaxies so focal length is important. Thanks,
  3. In Yorkshire too. The weather has been horrible for anything astro related recently. Fingers crossed we get a glimpse tonight.
  4. Yep turned out it was. I put in a new mother board and it now switches on im going to check to see that it slews properly later on this evening. I cant understand how a motherboard in an otherwise newish mount could blow. Im going to pin the blame on these really small ants that used to climb up on my gear in spain. All I can think is that one must have climbed in and become part of the circuitry. Its a stab in the dark for sure! Best,
  5. I just got back from Spain and checked. There is indeed a steady supply of power coming out from the mount end of the lead. Which has left me scratching my head even more now. I have ordered a new Mother board and will now see if I can get it working using that.
  6. I'll try think of a way of doing this, perhaps I can pop into town and buy a multimeter from a DIY shop as well. However i do think that the power cable is working because the red LED light near the on cigarette socket end of the wire does switch on.
  7. Here is a picture of a motherboard does it look damaged in anyway? As I mentioned I had a cursory look, and couldn't spot anything but im not an expert.
  8. Can heat cause any issues with the mount? I leave the rig set up outdoors in Spain. It is covered, but I'm wondering if that might have caused an issue. Also the day that the mount packed in the weather was very humid. To the point that the cover was damp in some places. Again I wouldn't have through this would be an issue because these mounts are pretty robust from my experience with them.
  9. I'll have to buy a multimeter because I left mine in the UK. Re polarity, I dont think its an issue as all my other electronics are working fine like the focuser and camera cooling.
  10. Hi Guys, Very annoyingly my mount has packed in and I am not sure why. The red light won't switch on and I am at a loss as to why that would be the case, it's been working perfectly fine all week. As anyone had any similar problems with this mount? I power the Sky watcher Eq6 R pro mount with a leisure battery I had purchased from Halfords. The battery is currently charged and is outputting around 13 volts. I have tried wiggling around where you connect in the power supply to the mount, but there doesn't seem to be any issue there. I know that the cigarette lighter socket connector (the one that comes with the mount) is working because the red LED light is on. I also know that the mount does get some power because I hear that click sound you get after you turn on the mount, however this is as good as it gets because after this there is no response from the mount. The red LED isn't switching on and I can't connect to it from my laptop. I just had a cursory look at the mother board and couldn't see any obvious burn or indication that it is damaged, but I am not an electronics expert by any means so can't say with certainty that it is fine. The most annoying thing about this all is that I drove the mount all the way to Spain from the UK to make the most of furlough and darker nights, so any solution that involves ordering a new part warranty etc is out of reach for the next 10 days or so. Is there any hope?
  11. Great idea. That's some good thinking outside the box 😅 Thanks,
  12. Actually to be fair the crop doesn't need to be so severe, I reckon I can keep the dusty parts and still cut out the black parts of the image.
  13. Ahh, I was hoping you wouldn't say that 😅 As you can see from this side by side comparison that sort of a crop would end up cutting out some really nice looking areas where the dust is. Still though if this is the only way to get something then I best take my medicine and try better next time. Best,
  14. Hi guys, I got round to processing some narrow band images for the first time and have encountered a little problems in DSS. Basically I had captured H O and S data on the lagoon nebula on separate nights. Silly old me I had not thought about framing too much when I was capturing the data. I have used a good Halpha light frame as a reference frame in DSS and have begun to stack the H O S light frames separately in three individual stacks. When I had stacked my O data this is what I saw. Clearly my H reference reference frame is at odds with my O stacked data. How much of a problem is this? I anticipate that when I combine the channels in photoshop I am going to be with parts of the image without any data in say the blue channel if I mapped O to that. So what do I do about this, and whats the best method for trying to make sure that this doesn't happen again? In hindsight I could have started off better when originally imaging with my scope, it does have the ability to rotate, but I haven't ever thought to use it, and I haven't given framing too much thought, because I always assumed that If you goto to the same point in the sky using software it would goto and everything would be hunky dory. Best,
  15. Hi I recently switched to a mono cam and filter wheel, and now I feel like I have an abundance of choices to make and not much idea on why I should make certain choices and what combinations of filter data I can combine in one image. So far I know that RGB is basically what my old osc cam would do so that filter combo seems pretty straight forward. Then there's SHO, good for nebulas, I'm currently taking an SHO image of the lagoon nebula that is shaping up nicely. What would happen to the SHO image if I added some data captured using an L filter? And how would I go about doing this? But then there's stuff like LRGB a combination im not sure what it gives but I have seen people use it really nicely. Is L added as a luminance layer in photoshop? Then there's HaRGB again I assume that you can add it in as a lumince layer in photoshop? Are there other combinations that are common practice and how do you pull them all together? For example at the moment I am working on the western veil nebula. I have captured some decent O and Ha data, but I would like some RGB in as well to get some natural star colour in there, but I am not sure on how to add the RGB data in. I love that the mono cam and filter wheel has given me all these options, but I am not sure how best to utilise them. Best,
  16. Thanks for the input. It sounds like it is tough to get right and fiddly no matter what. I settled on method that seems to yield some success. It might not be pretty but it does work. What I do is eyeball approximately where the target is and move my mount manually to that position. I then take a series of single frames, around 5 second exposures and feed them in to astrometry.net. This gives me an exact position of where I am. I use this information plus sky safari to start gradually making my way over to the target with manual adjustments. Once in place I pray that PA is still good and star shooting. Its not as exact science as what I would want but still it helps me get some results. Thanks,
  17. Hi Guys, I recently purchased a sky watcher star adventurer pro. I thought that it would be a quick and easy solution when travelling away. However what I have found is that it is very fiddly to navigate around the stars. I am not much of a visual astronomer and usually I use software to go to and image various targets with ease, not so with the star adventurer, I have to say that I am really struggling with it. My SA set up is this, SA mounted on a decent-ish tripod., a redcat 51, a guide scope connected to PHD2. and finally an unmodified canon dslr to image with. I use sharp cap to do PA, which is easy enough, beyond simple polar aligning though I really struggle to get to precisely what I want to image. If I fiddle too much with the mount often I knock it out of polar alignment, but the problem is that I need to fiddle with the mount to navigate to a target. I am trying to follow this method here which is a manual go to method for the SA. It's the best I have found, but still it is much harder to implement than I had initially thought. I would be very grateful to hear your advice on how I can manage better. I don't want to be spending hours attempting and failing to navigate around the stars and waste precious imaging time, and I would really like to unlock the potential of this cool little mount. Best,
  18. Cheers for the replies. Its not too much to worry about all being considered. The fact the counterweight doesn't count to the overall payload certainly helps.
  19. Hi, A quick question on the starwatcher sky adventurer payload. The advertised payload capacity for this mount is 5kg. Currently with the set up I have: Redcat 51 1.8kg Skywatcher guide and zwo 120 mini 0.5kg Canon DSLR 1kg Dovetail and counter weight (the ones that come supplied) 1.7kg Gives a grand total of 5kgs, well actually a bit more because I rounded down the above weights. This is more than double the recommended payload of 2.5kgs. So i have two questions. Does it matter? Are there anyways to reduce this? I also assumed that the supplied dovetail and counter weight should be part of the payload capacity. Im not 100% sure this is a correct assumption. If it's not then I'll be running the rig at 3.3kg which is fine by me. Thanks,
  20. Lovely image. Do you mind me asking what gain and offset settings did you use?
  21. Some really good suggestions in here. I think I will give APP a go and also look into Registar. Both look like good options to me. Pixinsight is also something that I should learn, but the learning curve looks a lot steeper than PS to me, also I have finally kind of got to grips with PS now. @ollypenrice i think the above is exactly what I want to do. Can you explain a bit more on how you do this, in particular the part in PS when you combine the widefield and high res point of interest. Also why are there taunts doing this technique? Is it just friendly banter or is it something more. For me I just want to create the best possible images with the data that I collect; so if it helps I think why not?
  22. Hi, I'd like to know if its possible to combine data from two different scopes on different mounts into the same image. Ideally I would like to supplement images taken with osc dslr through a redcat with Ha data taken with a completely different scope, mount and camera. Im trying to get my head round what the work flow for it would look like. I think I can get framing where I would want it to be, but at what point would I add in the stacked Ha data? Do I have to resize images, if so how? Because the fov is different the size of everything is different stars from one setup would be bigger than the other set up. My biggest concern is combining the two images on top of each other correctly. Is it something I do at the DSS phase or is it something I do in photoshop? My worry with doing it just in photoshop is aligning the two images precisely it seems like it would fiddly to do it by eye. I saw that there might be a potential Pixinsight solution although I'm not sure, I try to avoid PI if possible because it seems so much harder than photoshop. Thanks,
  23. I bought a bigger losmandy bar. It's about 5 times bigger than the one that I originally had. Its fixed the problem perfectly, I'm looking forward to a clear night to see what guiding improvements have been made. Thanks,
  24. Don't worry I just got it! 😂 Took me too long to process.
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