Stuf1978

44 minutes ago, Pitch Black Skies said:

See this thread.

Brilliant thanks, looks like it's easily sorted 👍

7 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

Also there are some strange asymmetric fans of light radiating from the central star.

 

This is what I'd also like to eliminate if possible. So I'd be interested to see what others have to say about this. 

The cloud cover in the north east just isn't letting up at the minute but I did manage to grab an hour to test out some changes to the spacing and focuser mod. After my initial efforts in my last post I'm much happier with the star shapes after adding another 1mm spacer and adding the third thumb screw to the focuser. There is some very slight elongation in one of the corners which moves to the opposite corner on rotating the camera 180 degrees but it's minimal. Here's a single 15 second exposure of Deneb which shows much better star shapes than my first efforts with the 130PDS.

Just need the weather to play ball and then I might actually be able to use this scope for a proper session

Stu

Beautiful shot 👍

8 hours ago, Icesheet said:

Hi,

Yes it’s possible. You just go to an old image from the previous session, tap on it and it should give an option to ‘go to’. If you watch this video from Cuiv it explains it better. He talks about that from 2:42. It’s worthwhile watching the whole thing. Some good tips. 
 

 

Brilliant, thank you 😁

Quick question. Can you use an old image (from a previous session) to plate solve with ASIair in order to get the same fov?

29 minutes ago, Bibabutzemann said:

Nice images! I also struggle with elongated stars with the MPCC. 

I think you should first rule out the source of the tilting. 

Go to a star rich area with a bright star in the centre. (For example Deneb)

Make sure to tighten the screws while pressing the cam against the focuser.

Now use the bright star and a Bahtinov mask to achieve perfect focus. Take an image .

Now rotate the camera by 180° and make sure to focus again. Take an image.

Now compare those images (with same orientation, to avoid confusion)

 

Case A : The same stars are stretched -> The tilting happens inside your telescope (Either focuser, secondary mirror or primary mirror).

This probably means you have to "just" collimate your scope. (I say probably because it could still be tilt due to a poor attachment between focuser and CC and its just coincidence, that you get this result. To be sure, just rotate again by 180° and see if still the same stars are misshapen.)

Assuming your 2nd mirror is descently collimated, you could first try to adjust the primary mirror while still having the bright star in the centre of your image in live view. Turn the screws so that the stars wanders in the direction, where you have more elongated stars. 

Then focus again and take a picture. Repeat those steps until the elongated stars are similar on all corners (or perfect in all corners  ). 

Now you can worry about perfect spacing. Try with different spacing rings on a similar target with a bright star in the middle many stars around.

I cant stress enough how important it is, to refocus everytime you touch your focuser. Otherwise it will mess up with your findings (Speaking from experience..)

 

Case B : The elongated stars are now in the opposite side -> This means the tilting happens at the CC or in the camera.

This could mean its due to poor attachment. 

If you still get the elongated stars on the opposite site, no matter how carefully you attach it, the tilting is inside of your CC, inside of your camera or at the attachment between camera and CC.

First thing i would do now is to lend a DSLR from someone and see how the CC works there.

 

Case C : Stars are now somewhere completely else elongated -> tilting is probably caused by poor attachment. (Those two screws are not very reliable as @alacant already pointed out.)

If you still have assymmetrical elongated stars after you ruled that out, you could now test if its Case A or B

 

 

I hope this helps. 

Good luck and CS, Patrick

 

PS: i know in my pictures above its not perfect, but its good enough for me to dont care. 

Altough, right after if went through this procedure (Mix of Case A and C) i got the following result

Great M31 😎

24 minutes ago, Bibabutzemann said:

Nice images! I also struggle with elongated stars with the MPCC. 

I think you should first rule out the source of the tilting. 

Go to a star rich area with a bright star in the centre. (For example Deneb)

Make sure to tighten the screws while pressing the cam against the focuser.

Now use the bright star and a Bahtinov mask to achieve perfect focus. Take an image .

Now rotate the camera by 180° and make sure to focus again. Take an image.

Now compare those images (with same orientation, to avoid confusion)

 

Case A : The same stars are stretched -> The tilting happens inside your telescope (Either focuser, secondary mirror or primary mirror).

This probably means you have to "just" collimate your scope. (I say probably because it could still be tilt due to a poor attachment between focuser and CC and its just coincidence, that you get this result. To be sure, just rotate again by 180° and see if still the same stars are misshapen.)

Assuming your 2nd mirror is descently collimated, you could first try to adjust the primary mirror while still having the bright star in the centre of your image in live view. Turn the screws so that the stars wanders in the direction, where you have more elongated stars. 

Then focus again and take a picture. Repeat those steps until the elongated stars are similar on all corners (or perfect in all corners  ). 

Now you can worry about perfect spacing. Try with different spacing rings on a similar target with a bright star in the middle many stars around.

I cant stress enough how important it is, to refocus everytime you touch your focuser. Otherwise it will mess up with your findings (Speaking from experience..)

 

Case B : The elongated stars are now in the opposite side -> This means the tilting happens at the CC or in the camera.

This could mean its due to poor attachment. 

If you still get the elongated stars on the opposite site, no matter how carefully you attach it, the tilting is inside of your CC, inside of your camera or at the attachment between camera and CC.

First thing i would do now is to lend a DSLR from someone and see how the CC works there.

 

Case C : Stars are now somewhere completely else elongated -> tilting is probably caused by poor attachment. (Those two screws are not very reliable as @alacant already pointed out.)

If you still have assymmetrical elongated stars after you ruled that out, you could now test if its Case A or B

 

 

I hope this helps. 

Good luck and CS, Patrick

 

PS: i know in my pictures above its not perfect, but its good enough for me to dont care. 

Altough, right after if went through this procedure (Mix of Case A and C) i got the following result

Thanks, that's a great set of instructions, very clear. I'll try it on the next cloudless night and report back. If I can get stars like yours I'd be very happy.

I've got a couple of dslrs so can try it with different cameras as well and hopefully pinpoint where the problem lies. 

On a side note, I've drilled and tapped the locking ring and added another thumbscrew which can only help 😁

Thanks

Stu

51 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi

Nice shot.

Here's the/our pragmatic approach to the Baader cc:

• There is tilt: tap a third hole on the focuser collar at 120º to the two existing screws. The flo adapter may help but still has only two screws, so still needs tapping. Push the camera-cc assembly hard up against the focuser collar whilst tightening each screw a tiny bit at a time until you're tight.
• The Baader cc has to be within 1mm of 58mm between the shoulder of the cc and the camera sensor. Yours looks a touch too close. It also has to be totally perpendicular to the optical axis. One good method to achieve this is to use a 4mm spacer e.g. the ring from a low profile 2" filter, having firstly of course, removed Baader's own attempt at spacing;) Other ccs are far more tolerant to both spacing and tilt.
• Or don't bother, stay as you are and just correct the stars in software;)

** If you're still in the grace period, it maybe worth considering exchanging the cc for the sw, gso or -best of all- the gpu. Discussion here. 

Cheers and HTH

Thanks that's great info. I'll have a play about with the spacing some more and try and get an additional hole tapped and take it from there. 

I purposely avoided the SW CC as I wanted to retain the focal length but I wasn't aware there were other options. If I cant get it sorted I'll probably just sell the baader one and try one of the others. Ideally, I want stars like the ones in your M45 above..... just lovely 😍 

7 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

I like your M33. It's a natural looking image, rather like what you might see through a biggish telescope. Did you use a coma corrector?

Thanks, was more of a test rather than an attempt at a complete image. Yeah I used the Baader Mk III MPCC

Finally got round to giving the 130PDS a run out and have decided reflectors are a bit of a faff aren't they. I was intending to shoot the Wizard Nebula and thought I'd just set up as as normal and away I would go without issue, the scope had other ideas. I initially set up with an L-eXtreme filter but as I had no way of knowing where the focus point was I couldn't even find a star never mind focus. So I changed the filter for a UV/IR cut and changed tactics 😂

1. Balancing - this is a bit of a nightmare, I couldn't seem to get it nailed in declination. I thought I had it close at one point but the when slewing the mount (HEQ5 Pro) I'd hear the familiar sound of the gears grinding so the balance was obviously way off. I think I need to add more weight to the rear and get this sorted during the day before giving it another go. 

2. Star Shapes - These weren't great. I'm not sure if it's spacing or tilt.  I managed to grab 6x3 minute subs on M33 (ignore the lack of flats) to see what my stars looked like after I collimated the scope after it was delivered.  I suspect it's tilt (please correct me if I'm wrong) as the stars at the bottom of the frame were worse than at the top. I've included the image below with crops of each corner to show this. Would this compression ring help out in this case?:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/astro-essentials-2-inch-compression-ring-adapter-for-sky-watcher-newtonians-and-72ed-refractor-m54.html

3. Diffraction/reflection pattern - This seems to be biased toward one side of the star (see centre crop). What's the cause of this? Although this doesn't look completely horrendous it will bother me so I would like to get it sorted if possible. I'm using the Baader CC for what it's worth. 

If I can get these issues sorted then I think it will be a great little scope as it seems to be a bit of a light bucket, so any help in getting these fixed would be appreciated.

Oh and I did manage to at least get an image of the moon out of the session so it wasn't completely wasted

200x0.001 second exposures stacked in Autostakkert and processed in Photoshop (ZWO ASI294C Pro)

Cheers,

Stu

Lovely image as usual 😍

Hi All, 

I'm trying to process some moon images that I took with my ZWO ASI 294MC Pro but I'm running into issues getting any actual colour into them. I've done lunar imaging in the past the same way with a dslr (obviously no debayering required) so the technique should work. I'm trying to pre-process in PIPP and then perform the stacking in Autostakkert but I just can't get any colour into the images. They are just coming out various shades of purple or green depending on which option I use. The 294MC Pro has a RGGB bayer pattern but selecting this option in the colour debayer (on the right in the image below) options doesn't do anything. I've tried every available option and nothing seems to work. I've also tried all the different options on the 'debayer raw image files' options on the left hand side all to no avail  

I've also tried just adding the fits files straight from the camera into Autostakkert and stacking them but I get the same result. Again I've tried all the different debayer options without success

Does anyone have any idea on where I'm going wrong as it's driving me nuts

Thanks,

Stu

1 hour ago, tomato said:

Awesome veil, great framing and processing.

But is it the entire complex? Some of the very faint outer Ha strands look like they continue right to the edge of the frame and beyond. I’m currently trying to image this with a bigger FOV, but I very much doubt I will get as deep as your image.

Thank you

Well most of it 😂 but yeah you're right, there is probably more to be captured outside of this frame, especially Ha. 

Good luck, you may be surprised. I find the Veil gives off a pretty strong signal 👍

6 hours ago, megrez said:

Wow!

4 hours ago, simmo39 said:

Another Wow from me too.

Thanks chaps 😁

Thank again to both of you. I think an ASIair plus may need to go on my Christmas list 😉

1 hour ago, Rich1980 said:

I'll jump in here with my limited knowledge. 

 

1 - Yes, exactly that. Auto focus is clever but not essential. 

2 - Home network do you mean? If so yes, I used mine out in the field. Just WiFi to phone/tablet and jobs a good un. 

3 - The Pro (and expect plus) has power outputs that with using an adapter can be adjusted to power dew heaters. I think it's 5% or 10% steps but only seems to be manual (unless I'm missing something) unlike the pocket powerbox set to auto. My old original air (which is for sale! ) ran alongside my pocket powerbox perfectly, as pictured. 

Brilliant, thank you. Yes I meant without home network.

Were you powering the pocket powerbox from the asiair or using a different power source altogether? 

11 minutes ago, Mike73 said:

Thats a great version of the Veil Stu. 👍

Thank you, appreciated 😁

8 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Love the rim of fine Ha strands around it all. 

That's my favourite part of the image, I was really pleased when I managed to pull it out. There is so much Ha in and around the Veil that's not part of the main structure. 

I've posted this before but looking back on it it I was never happy with the stars as they were overly blue which seems to happen with the L-eXtreme. So I decided to have another go at processing it, much happier with this version

87x300s/ZWO ASI 294MC Pro/WO Redcat 51mm/HEQ5 Pro/Optolong L-eXtreme/Bortle 8

Critique welcome  

Outstanding  

Great widefield 👍

That's a lovely M31 😍

I've been ASIair curious for quite a while and have been contemplating ditching the laptop and trying it out. I currently don't have any means to power a laptop, mount, cameras, dew heaters etc in the field and I'm thinking not having to run a laptop would simplify my power requirements. I do have a few things I'd like to clarify before deciding whether I should hit the buy button:

1. Manual focusing - Not having an electronic focuser, could I just run live view on the imaging camera (294MC Pro) and manually focus with a bahtinov mask as I'm currently doing?

2. Can you run the ASIair without a wifi network?

3. Dew heaters - Does ASIair have dew control? Or could I just run my Pegasus Pocket power box from the 12v output of the asiair and leave the dew control to that?

Thanks,

Stu

Great shot, I'm in a bortle 7 zone and have always avoided dark nebula as I just always assumed I'd be wasting my time.... but this gives me hope  

26 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I wondered what the RASA/CMOS would be like on star colour and have been pleasantly surprised. I thought the combination of super-fast F ratio and reduced well depth (after my Atik 11000) might give little star colour but in fact there's a lot. This may be connected with one of the scope's weaker points: stars tend to have a soft outer glow but, being soft and faint, this glow will contain a lot of star colour which can then be pulled in towards the cores in processing. I did this partly by the simple use of Noel's Actions Increase Star Colour and partly by selecting the stellar cores and blurring them to bring in the outer colour.

Olly

Well it definitely works that's for sure. Look forward to seeing more of this 👍

Wonderful 😍