Rustang

Lol 😄 the other thing is that the 'Orion' logo txt is white where as in all other pictures of these scope's, its black! Same font though!

Quick question, has anyone heard of an Orion Optics 'LX200' I've seen an old 8 inch Newtonian pretty much exactly the same as my old Orion Optics Newtonian f6 (white and green) but Ive never seen one from research that was an 'LX200', the sticker lettering looks authentic but the only LX200 I know of is a Meade scope!? A picture of mine for reference!!

Ive never quite understood most of astrophotography let alone all this calculations stuff! 😄

Thanks, appreciate the help as always. I will put this together with what Ive been reading and make some small changes and go from there 👍

When you say 'read correct;y' you mean from the blurry picture? By imaging scale you mean the imaging camera's Pixel scale which with my canon 600d and 600fl scope is 1.5 so as you says needs to be 1.1 or less, if its 1.53 then that's why I had star issues in my last session. Or do you mean the 3.44 Image scale of the guide scope would then need to be under 1.7 ? When you say exposure time, you mean the number to the right of the 'stop' symbol on PHD2 which i currently have set to 2s !?

PHD2_GuideLog_2020-09-09_215827.txt Ive found the logs, here are a couple from my last session. PHD2_DebugLog_2020-10-09_205113.txt

I'm trying to use my down time as productively as possible so I'm now going to try and understand my guiding graph/settings a little better. Up until now all Ive known really is to make sure the TOT reading stays under 1 and your good!, it has been doing that fairly well, keeping between 0.4-0.8 most if the time but really does get upset sometimes and as you can see from the picture, the graph gets pretty crazy. Ive been doing a lot of reading myself and have read that if its doing this I can lower the 'RA Aggressiveness' setting to 70-80% (currently on default 100%) so I may try that and also tweak the 'Min motion setting' There's a great document called 'Understanding PHD2 and getting it to work properly' that Ive been reading and it helped me set things up at the start. In there it talks about the Calibration step size, the example given for the writers set up with a pixel scale of 2.67 arc-secounds per pixel, he sets the steps to between 2000-2500ms, he states that if your pixel scale is higher then to up that amount, mine is 3.44. In PHD2 I have changed mine to 3000ms to start with but it wont allow me to change this in the advanced section settings and keeps it on the calculated '1950' for the guide scope details I have put in so not sure what to do here? The guiding can get upset after a dither, I have read that if the Dec cant recover well after a dither then to dither only in RA, from reading up this doesn't seem to be a good option and produces 'walking noise' I want to clarify in PHD2, what is the 'Guide speed n.nn x sidereal'? is, is that the Guide rate? Mine is on 0.5, it also states in the document to set that to 1x so should I? What are the readings to keep an eye on, in real simple terms? My graph can look crazy but what are readings besides the TOT that I need an eye on to help me tell how the guiding is really going? I believe there are some in regards to the image pixel scale? I'm not sure how to get the logs files from my sessions so currently I only have to below cropped image for you to go by and it would be good to get that settled out. i know there's lots of factors, I have been reading but lets start with the good basics, and as you know I can struggle to understand things so I simple terms please! ☺️ To add, I know about the Guide assistance but a little worried i wont really understand it at the moment.

Sure, just check the max weight capabilities and you should be fine.

Same here, didn't take me very long at all before going onto imaging, I now very much enjoy both Imaging and visual.

I started out with a decent mount which is really one of the most important bits of kit so it can handle the 650fl absolutely fine.

Hello! I shouldn't think you'll be disappointed with that set up. It will fit in targets such as the Heart Nebula really nicely. Get a Bahtinov Mask to aid focusing and your away 👍 Your right though, I really long focal length will be a bit harder to deal with but your way down at 360, I started at 650 without any trouble!

No problem, it takes a bit of learning to get them done properly 👍

Flats are a thing to master, I thought I had it right until recently. You need to try and avoid any unwanted stray light coming into the light path and i think the way your doing it may not be good for that. The way Ive got my best results recently is by using an LED drawing light pad from Amazon pressed right up against the scope, they are pretty cheap. Place a piece of paper over that and Ive also cut the same aperture of the scope out of foam which then sits around the end to help block any unwanted light. The light needs to dead even for Flats to work and also the correct exposure. There are more knowledgeable people that will come along to help but that's what Ive learnt recently. You can also try the computer screen option with a blank word document on the screen but the best flats Ive achieved to date is with the light pad. I was also told this recently in regards to LED's that they refresh many times per second so any capture shorter than the refresh rate and the light will be uneven so you will need to bring the exposure down to around a second. You will find a recent good flat of mine to go by below!

So to clarify on your test, you stacked a dithered set of images with and with out Darks and the noise appeared to be less when you still added Darks?

I've just got to work out if I've got the correct settings in APT and PHD2 now! 😊

Your a clever man but most of the time your knowledge is wasted on me as it goes right over my head! 😁

Cheers, I never fully got my head around the calculations for dithering and with that, the settings needed in APT, I will try and go over it again 👍

I've worked with a couple of drone companies at weddings, sounded like I had a giant bee over my head alot of the time but they produced some great stuff 😊

I'm finishing shooting weddings next year which I've been doing part time for a few years, once thats over I'm selling that gear which will then be time for upgrades but must be patient till then! Must be patient, must be patient......

That Hubble picture really helps settle the mind a bit ! 👍

Your not helping! 😊 😉

Some noticeable differences so something to consider 👍

Thanks guys, it apperas there may still be somethings to try before I decided to, and can afford to upgrade the camera 👍

Sorry, yes APT not APP, ! Its something I could look at in regards to higher ISO, shorter subs so may give that ago next session, I'm concerned it may add noise but hopefully the shorter exposure will counter act that so will just have to test, Ive got nothing to lose! Im post processing in PS, stacking in DSS until I can buy APP for stacking. What differences have you noticed with using Pixinsight?

Noise has always been a problem, one of those things with an un cooled DSLR and a DSLR at the cheaper end!. My thoughts about more integration time is that am I only going to be stacking more of the same issue!? I have starting dithering but I'm not 100% sure how effective its being, I've not fully got my head around what setting's I should have in APP to do so properly with my gear. How long should a standard dither last? From what I'm seeing my dithers go from approx 20secs start to finish to timing out sometimes, if they time out I'm guessing they haven't worked that time? It can run ok for a period then sometimes the dithers upset the tracking a bit to much so I turn it off. So all in all, yes I'm dithering but whether its set up properly or making a different I'm not sure but then when I think about it, I dont think I'm getting the "walking" noise as bad as Ive seen in previous images, just the noise you can see above!. Even with out the noise, the clarity and sharpness and colours are definitely not great, definitely more so with galaxies with this camera. I dont have the money to go for a dedicated camera so will have to try and soldier on but I am feeling I'm reaching the cameras limits but would really like some clarification on this. I apologise for always being on here asking lots of questions, I promise you I'm not being lazy, I honestly struggle with the vast amount of technical intake of information needed to do this and putting it all together. Its one of the worst hobbies for someone like myself with my slow little brain and is very challenging with many, many things to have to think about. I have to battle with myself sometimes to keep going with it and not jack it all in as the more it seems to progress to more I feel I need to take on, but I'm going to keep going as the results can be worth it even if it does make me go insane! 😊