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TerryMcK

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Posts posted by TerryMcK

  1. Interesting topic. I use the IDAS D2 which I believe is the predecessor to P3. I bought it primarily for use with my OSC camera as I am surrounded by LED lights in my area which is Bortle 7/8. I put up with the annoying green cast it gives but process the green out. I also have the Altair Astro TriBander which does much of the same blocking around LED wavelengths - that actually is a more of a narrower band filter letting Ha and OIII/Hb through. That produces a blueish cast.

    Prior to installing the IDAS D2 filter I seem to recall that I couldn't get much longer than 30 second subs without the sky being washed out but I was using an astro modded DSLR at that point. Now I do 6 minute subs with no issues but I might try it out again without any filters in light of your tests.

     

    Here's my M81/M82 mosaic which I have been doing over the last few days.

    IDAS D2 in front of the ZWO ASI 183MC with William Optics ZS103 - just over 19 hours of 6 minute subs

    Ha added from the mono camera ZWO ASI 183MM - 2 hours of Ha again 6 minute subs

     

    M81_M82_WithHA.thumb.png.595481f89714747b425d8b8fa402fb32.png

     

    It would be so much better if we had a bubble of Bortle 1/2 over our observatories :)

    • Like 3
  2. 10 minutes ago, M40 said:

    If I might offer my diy solution to the soft grass challenge. I simply got hold of a piece of 32mm black plastic pipe, cut three lengths of it each about 150mm long and pushed them into the ground at the correct position for the tripod legs after you have polar aligned etc. Remove the mud from the pipe, fill the pipe with gravel, cement or whatever is available that's solid and there you go,  job done. You can then mow the lawn straight over them, reposition your mount very quickly and no sinking in the mud. HTH

    Sounds a great idea for those of us with mossy lawns. I'm fortunate to image on more solid foundations but on odd occasions where I drag the tripod out onto the lawn I will certainly use that method.

    • Like 1
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  3. Here are the two settings I use:

    This one works well on overall greenish cast images. It also works a treat if you invert a starmask created with Starnet to remove green around stars. When you invert the image back to normal you see that the red halos have gone.

    image.png.1b56159479e2830fb0f7e7330f59e452.png

     

    Whereas this one eliminates green pixels/cast in the nonlinear state while preserving the teal colour of OIII in planetary nebulae and supernovae remnants.

    image.png.3c5ad00a56cb58cb4f68f32d2e86181f.png

     

    Play around with the amount in either instance.

    • Like 1
  4. I have a similar one and it is a waste of space. Not waterproof, had to sever the strap holding the door section together at the bottom so it could be slid over the scope without lifting it into the air, the poles are an art form to put together oh and it is liable to blow away in the slightest of breezes despite been guyed down. So I sacked it.

    I now use a Telegizmo telescope cover directly on the scope mount with an outdoor waterproof cover intended for covering stacks of chairs on top. Then the poop tent, just as another cover without its frame, is put on top of the whole lot simply to capture bird droppings. A bungy cord around the middle holds it in place.

    • Like 2
  5. 2 hours ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

    Just to add to my previous ramble I have had some issues with auto focus lately which now has settled down and has worked flawlessly last 4 or 5 sessions.

    Generally it needs to pretty much close to focus before letting it run or it can struggle.

    Also there a a host of things you can change, things like parameters, exposure time, averaging over more than one exposure, algorithms.
    And not sure which way to point you as I asked the question about what parameters work best .

    ekos-auto-focusing-what-parameters-do-you-use

    I also did a lot of searching Google and apart from ensuring it has all the correct settings for your scope, camera etc people seemed to use quite a differing variety of parameters and algorithms, some claiming they were the best , others to say just what they used.

    So whether this is just a difficult process to get right anyway, or all these algorithms do the same job essentially I am not sure.

    Some common things did seem to run through what most of them suggested:

    1) needs to be manually focussed to be somewhere close first - can be done several ways but I found taking a quick image of stars and zooming in on the stars in the resultant image and if looked blurry moved focusser one direction and another quick (3 sec) image - if less bloated then continue in that direction or change directions until best image is seen. Sounds faffy but unless you are miles away then really doesn't take long and saves going out fitting the Bahtinov . I now also put the focusser lock on whenever I finish a session and power down to prevent the focuser getting moved when no power to motor, Just remember to unlock it at start of next session - becomes 2nd nature after a couple of sessions. It then always focusses and sometimes moves a little but not much.

    2) Average over at least 2 images.

    3) Keep guiding enabled.

    4) if any issues use longer exposures. 2 to 3 seconds seems to be common.

    Steve

    That's interesting advise Steve. I haven't really got to grips with EKOS auto focusing finding it hunts around never really stopping and me randomly setting a few parameters to no avail. I will have a look at your suggestions thanks.

    I am using Lakeside focusers on my William Optics scopes and somebody suggested using a dial indicator to find out how much backlash I may have in the focuser (which I still have to do). I can then dial that into EKOS. Once I have autofocusing nailed I think I should be good to go.  

  6. Not sure about the transmission lines of that filter but normally you would assign the sulphur II line to red, hydrogen alpha to green and oxygen III to blue to get the "traditional" SHO Hubble pallet. Have a look at the graph of how that filter works probably on the Optolong website and it might help you determine which wavelengths it passes and then you can assign it accordingly.

  7. ScopeNights I have found the best. The developer is working on an update as recently a weather provider he used stopped providing updates but that just affects non UK and USA users. It comes up with an error when starting but still uses other providers for UK/USA forecasts.

    I still find it reliable. Only works on Apple devices as far as I know. I don’t use Android so not sure if it in that store.

  8. i’m having a problem with meridian flip with Ekos. I’ve raised an issue on the INDI forum https://indilib.org/forum/ekos/9344-meridian-flip-not-working-consistently.html#69711

     It may be an issue with double summer time as configured with the latest version of Kstars. Essentially the symptoms are it hits the meridian and says “waiting for flip”. Nothings happens no matter how long you wait. The image capture is suspended at this point but the mount carries on without guiding.

     

     

    The first time I noticed it was 29/03/2021 just after BST had happened. I was imaging the sun and it hit the meridian but didn’t flip. I forced it and it carried on. The following night I was doing a mozaic in Cepheus and again when it hit the flip point it decided to wait and wait.

     

    Has anybody else noticed an issue?

  9. You would be better using AstoPhotograpyTool and utilize plate solving. Then to guide add a small guidescope and guide camera. Again more expense but you can add the free software PHD2 to guide.

    APT has a fully fuctional free version but I don’t think it costs that much to activate. £6 per year rigs a bell. Just use Stellarium to choose your target. I think you can still use Stellarium via Ascom to show where your mount is others can chip in to concur.

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