Bobinius

I looked at your files. The Ha is out of focus, that's the problem. The other ones don't look too good. The red is probably out of focus too. And you have a polar alignment problem on the RGB (a field rotation seen by the star tails). The phenomenon does not appear on Ha. Do you have a motor focuser? It is pretty weird that you did not have this problem before with the flattener. I guess you have to check for perfect focus and see if the phenomenon persists. And polar alignment.

I have the Hypercam 294C. Works just fine, the starburst is there but you can correct it with the darks. Nice case, the cam is solid. I cannot compare it to the ZWO version (I don't have both, I don't know if anyone is going to buy both... :)) The cooling works ok. We are talking about SharCap pro if I'm not mistaken it is not the same as Sharp Cap (more interesting features). I have the ZWO 1600. The nice thing about ZWO is their USB 3 cable really light and flexible. They don't have the 12V (the one provided by Altair is a bit short for my setup). I don't know if there really is an objective superiority for ZWO (other than the fact that they have more experience in producing cameras). The Altair case is really useful though and that's one thing that bothers me for the 1600 MM Zwo, this missing case.

Your light photo clearly shows M31 in the upper half (but it is off center). The integrated tiff is not at all the same image. So either you aligned it on the wrong image or you put in some really off track subs. You should check all the individual subs to see that the sideral tracking was really following. If your entire set is made from the same subs as the first one you uploaded, it is impossible to obtain that tiff.

Thanx, I’ll have a look.

Thanx John ! I am pretty pleased that it finally payed off. The stars need some improvement, they are pretty bloated and I finally obtained a very good guiding only for the second part of the acquisition. best regards Bogdan

Thanx ! Not my first DSO, but my first narrowband. A lot of work went into it including a clear night when I found out in the morning that SQPro stopped after 45 minutes... Don't forget to activate the Recovery button : )

Hi guys, Here is my first narrowband image, which is exactly the same target and has a similar framing to John's (Starwiz) and also the same camera! - what are the odds? So as promised John, here is my try on the nebula. Shot with my 115 Altair Astro Wave refractor. I wasn't being careful and the OIII series had a tilt compared to the rest so unfortunately I had to crop the image. Altair AstroWave 115 ED on AZ EQ 6 0.8 Altair reducer Guiding Altair Astro 60mm + GPCAM3 and PHD2 ASI 1600 mm pro 7nm Zwo Halpha, OIII, SII ZWO filters 52x300s Ha, 52x300sx OIII, 48x300s SII at -10, unity gain 139 50 bias, darks, 30 flats Pixinsight; Photoshop I faced 2 'existential' problems: - what are the solutions for decreasing the star size in SII (of course better focus, I only shot a few frames with my new focuser) and consequently in the final image? - the combined image has a green tone. I decreased it a bit with SCNR, but I was wondering if this is an artefact or the real image (I lean heavily on a realistic and scientific approach to astrophotography, over a liberal aesthetic one; that's why I love pixinsight). Since Halpha is green if we reduce it we are actually cropping data. I can understand the green reduction with a Bayer matrix and OSC that have 2 green pixels, but monochrome should be different, no?. Thanx for your advice. And I hope you like it! Bogdan

Thanx John, hopefully tonight I'll finish the OIII and SII. Yep, I don't know how to do that in PS, in pixinsight the simplest way is to invert the image and use SCNR green reduction (mangenta turns to green when inverted). I'll post the image when it's ready! All best, Bogdan

Hi John, Looks nice and it should be really satisfying for your first narrowband image! I am doing my first narrowband with exactly the same target as you and an ASI 1600mm! 😃 I'm still gathering data because of the clouds. Some improvements could be made for the autoguiding, there is some drift from the lower left in diagonal. Secondly, you have to correct for the magenta haze around the stars, it can be done in pixinsight. Otherwise, very good, the focus is correct, there is no coma and you have no diffraction fan around the big stars (do you use a mask for the main mirror? ). Skywatcher and Orion newtonians rarely produce stars like that. Bogdan

Hi, As others have responded already, it is overexposed. I think you should be able to focus. If you are using Altair Capture, you can try video mode and auto-exposition while selecting the moon. If the camera is set on unity gain (159 for 1600?) decrease the exposure until you get some texture on the moon other than the light bulb and adjust focus. All best B