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carastro

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Everything posted by carastro

  1. Imaging is very difficult on a mount that only moves in Alt/Az mode. The hyperstar is fast, but you're going to be cheating yourself of good data by taking such short exposures. I have no idea on length of exposure as never imaged on the sort of set up you have. Is there a wedge available for this mount? You would stand a better chance with that, and if you say you have bought a guider for it, it is obviously capable of guiding, you just need to make it work, but it will struggle if not in wedge mode. It looks like a nice piece of kit you have but just not really suitable for long exposure imaging with the current mount. Might be worth starting a new thread on this topic and hopefully people who have used the same or similar kit can give you better advice. Carole
  2. Glad it worked. BTW my name is Carastro, White Dwarf is my classification on the SGL. Shame about the mount, is it on a wedge? Carole
  3. I think it's definitely the cosmetic tab, I had a similar conversation with some-one on another forum only yesterday, who had holes in his stars, and after me advising him to re-stack unticking the cosmetic tab, they were perfectly fine and the stars looked pretty much the same as the ones you are showing. Carole
  4. If you are using DSS to stack, check what settings you have on the cosmetic tab. If it's ticked, then untick it, it is supposed to remove hot pixels, but seems to eat the centre of stars as well. Carole
  5. A couple of mine taken at Astro camps. Not that you can see the kit very clearly. 1st one was in a camp in East Sussex 2016 you can see my campervan behind (the one with the slits of red showing through). You can just about make out my dual rig of the ED80/WOZS71. PS: 2nd photo is taken as a screen shot from a video that Mark Shelley made with his A7S walking around Kelling at 4am in April 2016. He says on the video that the sky was black and he couldn;t see where he was walking except through the live view on the camera, just shows how sensitive the A7S is. Again you can just about make out my ED80. My laptop had red plexi glass over it, and was inside a plastic box and yet it looks bright white, again due to the sensitivity of the A7S. PS: Just looked at the photo again, and I think this was my gold ED120 (not the ED80).
  6. Straton will remove stars from Mono images, so you have to remove the stars of each channel. I can see how the above would work with a narrowband image, but surely you are going to remove all the colour data from the stars of an LRGB image. Carole
  7. Thanks Neil, you've been most helpful. I can see how that would work, but I think I'll leave that mod alone in case we mess it up completely. Carole
  8. Thanks, just one more question, what stops the focusser from winding all the way out? i.e. is there a wider bit that acts as a "stop" that I shall be sawing off? Carole
  9. That's what I thought, so chopping a bit off should sort that out, just need to sweet talk my engineering friend as I don't have the tools to do it, and neither does hubby, he's more of a carpentry man. Carole
  10. That's why I want to adjust the length of the focusser. This is what a defocussed star looks like:
  11. I am not concerned about the dark segments, I am concerned about the weird non circular blob shape of the central part of the star. Carole
  12. Thanks Spillage, though I can't see how the remaining protruding parts of the tube in that link wouldn;t still cause a problem. If you guys think you have problems with star shapes and the focusser just take a look at mine (this is a crop):
  13. Thanks for all the advice guys, have copied it off to show my friend when the time comes.
  14. Which end did you cut it off, the inner end or the eyepiece end? I am not at all able to do this myself, but need to be able to give my engineering friend instructions if I ask him to do it for me. If you take it off the eyepiece end, is it easy to remove the bit that had the compression ring on and put it back on again? If you take it off the inner end, I presume you have to unscrew the whole focusser assembly to get it out, so is there some sort of "stop" mechanism to take into consideration that might get cut off (i.e. that stops you from winding the focusser all the way out. Any pointers and links would be appreciated. Carole
  15. I have in the past before I got dithering working stopped the imaging for a few secs and put the slewing onto the slowest speed and pressed the button for a second or two to move the mount slightly, it seemed to work.
  16. Right, not sure if you can do this with only an RA motor. But APT talks to PHD and tells it to dither between subs, I don't know how it works but all I know is I have done it when I only used a handset. The APT/PHD commands somehow tell the mount to dither, the same as PHD tells the mount to make guiding corrections. Carole
  17. See my previous post, can be done automatically with APT - no need for mount control or doing it manually. Carole
  18. Yes, I don't use mount control I use a handset. I used to dither with APT when I used my DSLR camera. APT (Astrophotography Tool) also supports CCD cameras. Very cheap and good support. It talks to PHD so it knows when you are taking a shot and dithers in between shots. Carole
  19. Interesting read and congratulations. I don't normally read observing reports being an imager. I really admire the perseverance of observers to find and see these faint objects that can be picked up so easily with a camera. I did a few years of observing when I first got a scope, but these days I image and the only observing I do is when my imaging is up and running and then I wander round looking through other people's scopes whilst it is "capturing data", this is when I am at a star party of course. Carole
  20. Well so far it did not work, Ended up with a pink mess, so I went back to the original tutorial and Actions I have made which worked before and that didn't work either. So maybe somewhere I am trying to use the wrong data or am missing something, as it has worked brilliantly every time up to now. Carole
  21. Thanks "Got em" I just missed out a step, needed admin permission for that too. Will take a look at the new instructions. Carole
  22. Hi Mark, hit a problem. Have loaded the curve presets in as you can see from the screen shot, but when I try to perform the action in Curves itself, the only presets that show are the ones originally in Photoshop (see lower screen shot). I tried rebooting to see if that was needed, but it has made no difference.
  23. Just to be clear Mark, does this go in place of step 8, or both step 7 & 8 in your previous tutorial? Carole
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