5haan_A

Hi,

After a recent purchase of a camera and filter wheel my scope, esprit 100, has become very unbalanced in Dec on my mount- eq6 pro.

I dont think I can buy any more weights and to be fair in RA my scope is balanced perfectly fine. The issue is that due to the scope design I cant push the OTA anymore forward. Im concerned that this will cause guiding issues. Is there an easy way to rectify this?

Picture of the scope and mount.

Cheers 

Just a quick follow up question re using an LED panel. I have one,  but you can clearly see that the light distribution across the panel is not even. Is that a problem when taking flats with this method, or not really?

I did a search and found this, you can use a LP filter with LRGB filters. 

22 hours ago, CloudMagnet said:

The dual narrowband filters are popular right now, but I wouldn't recommend it for an unmodified DSLR as they are just not sensitive enough to Ha to make it worthwhile. If you Canon is modifed, this makes more sense.

Thanks for the response. 

Ah that's good to know, I didn't know that. I'll probably tend towards the LP filter then. 

Another question I had was do you know if people ever put a multiple filters in the same image train, so an LP filter and say a HA filter or and LP filter and any of the LRGB filters? Actually a HA or O filter probably blocks out LP anyway? So I guess an LP filter with LRGB?

Best

Hi,

It would be good to get your advice on which filter I should consider investing in. I would ideally like to only buy one filter, as the cost of having two or three filters quickly adds. 

A bit of background, I would like to use the filter either directly onto a Canon EOS 5d Mk3 or with a WO Redcat 51. Currently I am undecided on which filter to add in. I tend to be imaging in and around Bortle 4-6 skies, so naturally an LP filter like this Canon filter or this  might seem like a good fit. The full frame canon filter does cost more for the same thing, the advantage of it is that it slots right on to the camera sensor reducing any potential vignetting problems, but if I change the camera to a dedicated astro camera it probably becomes redundant, so I would rule it out and go with the 2" filter that would slot in with the Redcat. That being said, the cool thing with an LP filter for the Canon is that it could help with getting some really nice Milkyway shots, so its another thing to consider. 

However, considering that most of  the targets  I would like to be capturing are likely going to be big nebula with the redcat should I be more in the market for one of these, a duo narrowband filter of some description. As I understand it the Narrowband does block LP as well, so it could be a two birds one stone situation. 

Ideally, I'd like to settle with just one filter, especially because I have recently gone mono with my other set up and the filter costs what with the wheel and Halpha filters and all that are really starting to make a considerable dent in my wallet. 

Best,

1 hour ago, symmetal said:

 Can you not run 2 instances of PHD2 on the laptop to control both mounts?

Alan

Can you?

I dont know, if you can it would be good just for the polar alignment with sharp cap like you mentioned. I hadn't even thought a about having to add the redcat on after PA. You're right adding it would definitely knock it and mess with the polar alignment.

Thanks,

Hi Guys,

I have recently picked up a star adventurer the mount and I was wondering whether it is worthwhile using the autoguide functionality with it. I plan to use it with both a DSLR for widefield, and a WO Redcat. I hope it will be portable and easy to pick up and take with me on my travels. 

I am used to guiding with my eq6 mount, but when I do the mount is guiding in both RA and DEC, but with the Star adventurer it only guides in RA. I guess a lot will come down to exposure time, and certainly for the DSLR and widefield shots RA guiding should be more than adequate, perhaps even overkill, but with the Redcat will RA guiding do anything at all. By the way when I say guiding I mean the corrections in RA as opposed to the mount tracking. 

If anyone has a similar set up, especially with a redcat or similar focal length OTA I'd be really interested to hear your experiences. My biggest concern with just guiding it anyway is that I think I would have to have two laptops with PHD2 on each if ever I was guiding both the star adventurer mount and the EQ6 mount at the same time. Whereas, if I don't guide the star adventurer I could get away with just having one laptop to guide and capture with EQ6 mount and have the star adventurer/DSLR/redcat combo used with just a shutter remote, which does save me hassle in a way. 

Best,

Hi,

I would like to ask what does 2x2 binning do for you with this picture? I am aware of what binning is but have never been sure on how to apply it. It looks like you have applied it to great effect because it is a stunning picture, but I am just not sure how and why it helped. 

Best,

20 hours ago, wxsatuser said:

These star shapes are most likely normal for the lens.

Sometimes called the 'flying bird' a mixture of coma and astigmatism.

Often stopping down will correct some of it.

As to the damage, it could be repaired but a red ring lens will most likely not be cheap.
May be the owner has insurance?

Thanks for the reply.

What is stopping down?

I did some research on aperture, something that I have never had to think about properly with a dedicated astro camera attached to a telescope. I had set my lens on APT to max aperture, so the lowest number possible and perhaps I could experiment with pushing that number up a little bit to see what happens. 

Re the lens I have come across a company online that does lens repairs. I am going to give them a go. It won't be cheap but still better than returning in its current state. 

Best,

On 25/06/2020 at 11:44, feverdreamer1 said:

Hey Shaan,

A Spanish from the south here!

First of all, I'd like to ease your mind and let you know that at least where I live dew isn't something to worry about, what you should be concerned about if imaging during long periods of time is the amount of insects that are there specially now in summer so be careful about that. Also be careful where you're shooting,as I have been told off a few times 🤣. But like you're imaging from a private place that should be fine. If you're anywhere near Andalucía and don't mind driving a bit you can get to some amazing high peaks and trust me, they're really great. Let me know what part you're visiting and if I've been there I can give you a few heads up. 

Thanks for the message. I will be in Andalucia, staying near a town called Motril. I will have a car, and wouldn't mind a drive up to some peaks. Let me know where you recommend. 

Insect wise I can imagine it to be a problem, my plan was to keep the scope set up outside, but given what you said I may bring a dust sheet as well to keep it protected during the day!

Best,

Ah sadly I think my widefield shots are going to come to an end. Weird star shapes are a secondary concern now.

The camera just unscrewed itself from the SA mount and fell lens first on to the floor. It was completely unexpected and I dont understand how a screwed on camera could fall down.

There are some deep scratches on the optical glass and dents on the lens cap ring. The lens in question is a canon 16-35mm f.28 ef usm 2. The camera itself is working, thank god.

I did a quick Google of how much the lens costs. Used is about £690 brand new is double that. Oh dear!!

The camera was kindly borrowed to me, lens included. I cant return it back in its current state, so now I'm in a bit of a pickle. 

Apologies for the phone pictures of a screen, the laptop I captured off isn't allowed to connect to the internet.

First screenshot stars look fine perhaps out of focus but not too bad.

Second screenshot, same image but further along towards the edge of the image very weird looking star shape. 

I dont understand it. This image I think was an exposure of 5 seconds so not very long. The camera is mounted on a SA but I wouldnt think guiding issues cause that sort of star shape.

Hi,

Im not sure if the mirror/shutter vibrations is causing some of my star shapes to be quite weird. 

Is there a way to fix this.

Im currently getting to grips with some wide field shots and I am borrowing a canon 5d mk3 to practice with. Worth adding that the lens used is just a standard canon one.

The action of the shutter and mirror closing and opening is very substantial to say the least, and I'm wondering if this is what is causing some weird srar shapes to pop up on the APT preview.

I'll see if I can attach a screenshot as an example.

Hi,

In a couple of weeks time I am going to be driving down from the sunny Yorkshire to sunny southern Spain. I am aiming to spend two- three weeks down there and thought it would be great to travel down with the full rig. The place where I will be staying is private and I should have no issues leaving the mount and scope set up. Where we will be staying is Bortle 5 sky, so not the best but still I'm looking forward to having some clear nights and actual night time, not this semi dark sky rubbish we have here in the UK over the summer months. 

It would be great to hear ANY advice on travelling and imaging, because this is the first time my scope will be leaving my back garden and shed. 

I will be taking down my eq6 mount, Esprit 100 refractor, a ZWO camera (not sure yet which one I will be bringing as I have one up for sale here), power supply, plus all the cables and what not. I also just picked up a WO redcat 51 and plan to use this with a canon 5d and skywatcher star adventurer. 

I have never imaged in a warm country before, so I am not sure how the air temperature will affect the quality of my shots. Dew is usually what I have to worry about in the UK.

I have also never used the star adventurer mount, I was hoping to guide it with PHD2, but can I use the same laptop to guide two different mounts at the same time?

I am hoping to take some milkyway shots using the DSLR and a wide lens mounted on the star adventurer, however I have never taken full milkyway shots before so I would be grateful for some pointers to any good bits of info on this, even if its just recommended exp time etc. 

As you can tell, I am quite excited about taking this trip and getting some lovely images at the end of it. It will also be great to learn some more about the craft. Please do share anything you think might be helpful on your experience travelling and imaging.

Best,

Shaan

23 hours ago, Notty said:

Stacking them together shouldn't be a problem as long as you stack them with their own calibration frames. Sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs but just in case you can use the groups tabs in DSS? Eg front group would have you reference frame (for alignment) and any common calibration frames (which I don't think would apply in this case unless focus and orientation was identical on both nights in which case you could use a common flat, and if it were multiple nights at the same exposure and camera temp you could use a common master dark) then groups 1-n would be each night's lights and unique calibs. 

That is a cracking image by the way!

Thanks. 

I hadn't actually done the above mentioned when I was calibrating so I appreciate that. 

Best,

Looks great. Lots of lovely detail in there.

How are you finding using pixinsight? 

9 hours ago, MarkAR said:

Not too bad, I think if you cooled your camera down further you would have lost some noise.

I like the colour tone, more orange gold than red makes it seem more natural.

What temperature do you think would be better? 

Re the colour tone thanks. It's just the way it came out in the end. I had a black and white reference point and all I did was make black black and white white.

A quick question for anyone that can help. When capturing this I used lights of 180 seconds and 240 seconds. Essentially I did 180 on the first night and 240 on the second night. The reason was because after a cursory check on the 180 second exposures I thought I could get more with longer. Now when I stacked the image I stacked all in one go. Does stacking them all together as one diminish the 240 second exposures, or does is it not matter?

Hi Guys,

I'm happy to share this one. After all the bad weather it was nice to get the rig set up and get some imaging done. I hadn't had a much of a chance to practice and improve since making some early headway around September time, so I was really excited when I saw that the weather was looking clear on the 25th/25th March. On earlier attempts polar alignment, short exposure time, and not enough data had meant that most of what I had done so far wasn't what I was hoping it could be. Which is fine, because there's been a lot to learn, there's that cliche about journeys and destinations that holds true for my own experience for sure. 

Of those things to learn, I have found the area of processing a little bit daunting, relying on the quick and easy solutions out there like a bit of DDP in Nebulosity and that's that. I had thought about photoshop but took one look and thought 'I'll come back to that one'.  So I came back to it for this image. I downloaded a free trial of Photoshop, watched a lot of videos and got to work.  I was blown away by just how much finesse you can have with a powerful bit of software. Hopefully over the next few months I can learn a bit more about PS and start putting that power to good use. 

For this image I took:

40x180 sec and 40x240 sec lights at -10celcius

49x240 sec dark frames 

Flats

The setup I use is:

Esprit 100 ED Scope 

ZWO 294 OSC cooled camera

EQ6 R Pro mount

Feedback is most welcome, I felt I struggled the whole way getting the colour true, and definitely struggled with noise reduction.

16 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Last night it was well below zero and mount, scopes, tripod, computer, computer  bag and everything else was frosted worse than that pic.

Both my scope and guide scope had a 'hot hands' handwarmer bag held close to the lens cell with a rubber band and I( didn't get any condensation or frost on the lenses. Cost about £0.50p per night, and at the end of the session a friend and I were both able to warm our hands with the bags.

Great shout. I have just placed an order for some hot hands and rubber bands.

8 minutes ago, Pompey Monkey said:

I'd say go home and have a nice hot chocolate.

Thanks so nothing to be concerned about? 

Hi guys,

I am currently out in the field, and I noticed this after I came to check up on my scope. 

Theres spiders of frost all over the lens. Inside and out. Is it my session finished for now? And is it a major problem? 

Haven't got the foggiest idea how I would begin to deal with the cause of the frost on the inside of the OTA.

Best,

On 28/11/2019 at 19:52, symmetal said:

Check the Lakeside motor unit is firmly attached to the focuser shaft. A grub screw can work loose causing severe backlash. There should be no movement when trying to lightly move the coarse focus knob on the other end of the focuser shaft and a small amount of movement (around 5-10 degrees) when the fine focus knob is gently moved.

Cheers Alan. It was the grub srews. I took apart the whole focuser down to the gears. Put it all back together with the right level of tightness. Now the coarse knob doesnt move at all, which before taking it apart it did. 

Thanks for the help. 

Hi,

Has anyone had any issues with a lakeside auto focuser attached to an esprit 100?

I am controlling the auto focus unit with APT and essentially what I am finding is: the the position it shows that the focuser is at means jack diddly. Every session the focus is at a new point sometimes 150 steps away even if I have the same Temperature. What I have inferred from my testing is that the focuser seems to go more in one direction than the other if you know what I mean. Basically that a step in is not the same as a step out. 

What this means is that it takes me forever sometimes an hour just to get my focus right, which is quite funny because the lakeside auto focuser was supposed to save me time. I use a bahtinov mask as well whilst focusing and use the bahtinov aid on APT to help me get there.

Has anyone resolved similar problems and how do you speed up focusing with an auto focuser.

Best,

Hi,

So here is a stacked file with what I deemed were the naughty frames out. Looks much better and the star shapes look a lot more regular. This is still a work in progress but now my nights work looks like it might bear some fruit.

Thanks,