Rustang

28 minutes ago, Pete Presland said:

superb set of images, was it visible to the naked eye?

Not really, due to where I was its just to light polluted but further north such as Norfolk it was apparently.

Pitstone Windmill tonight. I have missed so many chances and some great displays this year so it was great to finally capture it tonight. I nearly didn't head out and was about to pack up after not seeing much when I got there but then it kicked off a little.

20 minutes ago, FenlandPaul said:

A beautiful image from one of my favourite locations! 👏🤩

Hope you had a great time down there; we’re Cornwall-free this year, which is a bit disappointing!

Cheers mate. Yeah a lovely holiday thanks, I cant get enough of Cornwall, such a stunning place. Shame you cant get down there this year, we might be having a year out ourselves next year, or it might pull us back again!

Back down to Cornwall again this year for another week away with my family. Although I made the decision to sell most of my DSO astrophotography gear, I still have every intention of capturing the Milkyway as and when I can. I decided on Kenidjack Valley as my main location this year and the foreground was shot on Friday just gone at approx 10:30pm and is a single 30sec, 800 iso, f4 capture. Now the Milkyway, although the weather was great for the week, the clouds did not play ball, I nearly had a chance on the Friday but the clouds just would not shift. So with that said, I have used last years Cornwall Milkyway data in this image which would be exactly how it would be anyway even if I had got more data this year. I hope to try again next year.

Thanks guys, ive tried two power supplies that used to work but now dont, i dont have any others to try at the moment. I will keep looking into it.

1 hour ago, Roy Challen said:

I don't have a quark, but I do have a Solarscout. No issues with power in the two and a half years I've had it.

If there were no issues before you sold it, then I would suggest that it must be a fault with either the cable of the new owner; or, something happened during shipping.

I would check that the socket on the quark is free of debris, that the cable is rated for at least 1.4 amps, and that the battery/supply is fully charged.

Also, is the owner aware that it takes a few minutes before anything meaningful can be seen through a quark?

 

It was supplied with the power supply i was using, theres no power what so ever, nothing on the led. Its coming back to me so i will see if i can power it up. Its incredibly frustrating and concering feeling that now I may now have potentially just lost alot of money which i cant afford to lose if I cant get it to work.

Has anyone had an issue with a Daystar Quark powering up? I had no issues before selling mine on, but the new owner is saying it's not powering up with the same power supply, no orange light. Any idea's what could be the issue? 

If you decide on the 224mc, I have one currently for sale in great condition if you wont to save a few quid. I used it for planetary, mostly on Mars and with an 8" 1000fl scope and a x2 barlow. I too just wanted to dabble and was really pleased with the results for a planetary beginner! I'm just up the road from you aswell.

Well its not the data I was hoping to collect, I was aiming for 10hrs or more each for Ha and OIII but with those lovely clouds getting in the way I'm not sure I will get the chance to gather more data. With this in mind I decided to process what I had anyway and I'm pretty pleased with the result. The usual hammer tool had to come out to play to smack the OIII data into submission!.

Ha 18 x 1200 sec subs   (6hrs)

OIII 12 x 1200 sec subs  (4hrs)

WO Z73, QHY-9 mono, Baader NB filters, HEQ5 Pro.

APT, PHD2, DSS, PS.

6 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Wonderful images! the first is my fav, its so clean and contrasty, beautiful job. It's been so cloudy here I couldn't see it at all, I'll catch it the next time around. 🤣

Thanks, i wasnt sure if i was going to have a chance to or not, im pleased i did.

10 hours ago, happy-kat said:

The comet with stars, I like how the tail is showing too

It took some processing to keep that while blending it into the stars but I'm pleased it's showing it a little.

This was a hard one to process, this is my 3rd attempt and I think I'm happy with it considering the data wasn't the best. I have never captured a comet like this before so at least Ive had ago.  Captured on the 31st January.

QHY 9 mono - shot as RGB x15 120 sec subs each channel

awesome

5 hours ago, Yawning Angel said:

Link to Google drive, Comet C/2022 E3 

1.1GB zip:

15 x 60 sec L
15 x 60 sec R
15 x 60 sec G
15 x 60 sec B

Master Flats LRG & B
Master Dark, 60 sec

Tracked on the stars

My version is here: C-2022 E3 (ZTF), LRGB

I'll leave it up for a few days , and I'd love to see what you do with it 🙂

Thanks, im not sure il match your processing but will give it ago plus it will be good practice for if i can capture some data of my own 

1 minute ago, Yawning Angel said:

If you want to try out processing some data, let me know and I'll try to upload it somewhere 15 x 60 per channel

Yeah that would be great, thanks. Maybe a shared dropbox folder would be easier!?

10 minutes ago, jfrijhoff said:

I hope to get a clear night to try and image the comet (first time ever for me). I was also planning on 30sec subs, and I just have the Samyang 135mm, so hopefully star trails in the comet-aligned image won't be too bad. I'll be using Siril to stack, and there seem to be directions on their website to do it (https://siril.org/tutorials/comet/), maybe it also helps in your setting.

The next few days are not looking great weather wise, hopefully I haven't missed my chance!

2 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

The coordinates that Stellarium reports the comet to be in are fairly accurate, within half a degree for sure at least on the 3 comets i have tried so far. You can manually slew to those coordinates and you will at least see it in the frame and can adjust manually from there.

Good point, I'm pretty sure I can enter the coordinates into APP somehow or the mounts ASCOM/EQMOD controller.

1 minute ago, Yawning Angel said:

I used the Orbitals plug-in for NINA, but if you can use Stellarium / ACSOM to point, it can easily be added to it's database

Oh cool, I didnt realise I could add it to a database, I have the ASCOM platform for my imaging gear but I use Astrophotography Tool so could I add it to that? I will go and research that in the meantime, it would make my life much easier if I do give it ago. 

6 minutes ago, Yawning Angel said:

I tracked the stars for my attempts, then created a master star image. My thinking is the mount want to track stars, where as the comet movement if going to need it to work harder...plus comets are fuzzy anyway 🙂

After that, you can do a comet stack, aligned on the comet and a strong rejection algorithm can reject the stars (experiment with rejection settings)

Good luck!

Ok cool so track as normal then as if it was a nebula. I think my main concern is locating it and pointing everything at it, I currently dont have a finder on my imaging rig and I dont really wont to take it all apart or add anything so trying to get the camera on target with no eyepiece or finder isant going to fun! 

I have done some light online research in regards to technique used for capturing comets but I wanted to confirm how to go about it. Firstly I have a mono camera so it will have to be captured as LRGB, does the centre burn out quickly?, just trying to gauge exposure length. I'm guessing I have to locate it manually then start tracking? I normally use APP to get on target but I'm guessing I wont be able to do that because it wont be in APP's database? I believe I will have to track on the comet itself to get the correct speed/movement without star trails or is it possible to sort the stars out later? I think I've seen people do this is stacking, the stars separately then the comet etc, is that true or if my stars are trailed then they stay that way instead of fixed!? So if I use the comet to track on, I guess I select the comet as the star in PHD2? I normally track side rail at 0.5x, if I was to do that would it keep up with it?

Just trying to make things easier for when and if I give it ago as I've never captured a Comet before.

So I've been out of imaging DSO's for over a year due to the stressful year we had with our house build and to top it off my laptop died and I had no enthusiasm to get another and get it up and running again, Well I have finally got a new laptop sorted and managed to get everything going again without to much trouble. When I first got my mono camera I wanted to capture Orion with it but never got the chance until now.

The image is made up of 7.5hrs worth of data, 4hrs 40 min of which was Ha and the rest LRGB.

Gear - QHY-9 mono, baader filters, HEQ5 Pro, WO Z73.

Software - PHD2, APP and processed with DSS and PS. No calibration frames.

Ive also attached a starless Ha image

2 hours ago, StevieDvd said:

The first thing I'd do is connect a meter to those plug sockets to see if that gets any power.  Then if it did try various new car socket plugs to see if they light up - they do even if not wired up to anything, so good for socket testing.

Il see if they can get hold of a multi meter

1 hour ago, StevieDvd said:

@Rustang there is another thread here on SGL with this problem.  I've offered help and to check it out, but naturally she may be wary of popping over to a stranger. I did not realise the poster could have been female. 

If you need any assistance helping her give me a shout.

Steve

 

Found it, I didn't realise that she had started a thread, I had mentioned to her to join the forum and also didn't realise she had done so

1 hour ago, StevieDvd said:

@Rustang there is another thread here on SGL with this problem.  I've offered help and to check it out, but naturally she may be wary of popping over to a stranger. I did not realise the poster could have been female. 

If you need any assistance helping her give me a shout.

Steve

 

A recent thread? Have you got a link to it?

1 hour ago, bosun21 said:

Sounds like a faulty Nevada power supply. I change all my inline fuses like the one in the cigarette plug from quick blow to slow blow. If the LED Is illuminated by her car socket then it points to the Nevada (I presume it’s a Nevada). Remember that the on/off switch is reversed to normal electrical switches. IE: it’s up for on and down for off. Is the Nevada lighting up?

Yeah it's a Nevada, it powers up, light is on but nothing from the cigarette socket. I'm going to lend her a cable that goes straight into the red and black socket to see if that works.