AstroMuni

On 23/09/2023 at 08:36, michael8554 said:

Have you only just joined ?

Many forums don't allow responses until you have been "cleared" by the moderator.

Michael

I have been a member for several years now...It seems flaky as one day its working and the next it wasnt. Now it seems to have fixed itself. Thanks Michael(s) as I notice both members who responded are Michaels 🙂

19 hours ago, HarryM6234 said:

Hello , my dad has recently purchased a used 12 Inch Skywatcher Go-To Flex Tube and we’re struggling to get it aligned properly / setting it up . we’ve read through the instructions (and trying to get him to read instructions is a battle in its own right) and can’t seem to find where we are going wrong! first we tried the Hand control unit . we got it level -or as level as we could in our garden that’s practically all on a slope - and pointed it north. went through the co ordinates steps etc etc and all the other alignment steps and whenever we told it to go to X it just went in the complete wrong direction and orientation each time. So then we ordered a WIFI dongle and tried using the SynScan app , and more of the same happened . we tried all alignment methods and nothing worked!!! Any help is much appreciated as we’d love to get it up and running asap. 

Welcome to SGL. As others have said its best if someone is near you to help (local astro club should help).

If you can post the steps you took one by one (with details of what you entered), perhaps someone can spot where you went wrong. eg: does it think you are in Southern hemisphere?

From the manual I can see that it has 2 modes - Autotracking or AZ Goto mode so we need to know which one you followed etc.

Any ideas what 3rd party packages are bundled with Stellarmate OS - eg. PHD2, Firecapture etc. I posted on the INDI forum but no response 😞 hence trying here.

The website only mentions:
The following packages are included in addition to the base OS:

INDI
KStars/Ekos
Astrometry.net with index files.
StellarMate Web Manager.
StellarMate Network Manager.
StellarMate Serial Port Assistant.

On 25/09/2023 at 15:10, Bluesboystig said:

Fourth DSO captured ever, this time I tried M33 from my garden in Bortle 6. I managed to get 104x100" subs for a total of almost 3h of integration time,

Great image 👍

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

I do like finding out unexpected relationships between well-know objects and also seeing their relative sizes.

Its a lovely view of our galaxy and its interesting to see that at this scale its dominated with reds and browns interjected with blues. Hats off to you & your friends for compiling this.

1 hour ago, Moonshed said:

centre it on Polaris and do a long enough exposure to capture concentric star trail arcs.

This should help https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/astrophotography/astrophoto-tips/how-to-create-a-24-hour-star-trails-image

and

https://www.naturettl.com/how-to-shoot-and-process-star-trails/

Good luck and look forward to seeing your images

I can think of a couple of options - move the whole assembly further up the dovetail or attach the ASIAir towards the front to balance the weight. If your dovetail is long, you could even attach few items below (under the dovetail)

2 hours ago, labtech1122 said:

I've seen this before, love his videos, he's taught me everything I know about siril haha. I've been using sirilic but there isn't a section for separate darks

If you split the different exposures into its own set, you can attach the different dark sets accordingly in SIrilic. i.e S1 could be (say) 30s lights, 30s darks, master flat, S2 60s lights, 60s darks, master flat etc. If you have taken the exposures on different days with changes to optical train then instead of master flats it would be flats taken on that day instead of a master. Hope this makes sense?

9 hours ago, saturn30 said:

I really do not know what I am looking at in the night sky.

Welcome to the forum. It would help us if you can provide a bit more information about this image - eg. where are you located, what time did you take this image and in which direction did you take this image (ie. East, West...)

I have a strange problem on the forum at indilib.org. I am able to log in and view and click Thank you button etc. But when I respond to a post, the submit button doesn't work (does nothing), and it doesn't give any warning messages either. I assumed it was some browser issue so tried with various browsers and on different devices. No luck 😞

Does anyone else have this problem or know the solution to it?

2 hours ago, AstroNebulee said:

Thank you. That's good of you. I may lighten it up a touch.

Looking much better. Previously I could barely see your signature 🙂

20 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

You don't think the image is a bit dark as I'm having trouble on various devices?

It does appear a bit dark on my Mac but thats easily rectified. Love the detail and faint colours.

18 hours ago, carastro said:

For your benefit the version with the zillions of stars:

Wow, I love this version. I would have preferred if stars did not have halos around them but that doesnt lessen its beauty. Thanks for sharing @carastro

On 15/09/2023 at 11:43, Bluesboystig said:

This is my first m31 (heavily messed up), but just wanted to share.

Thats a great image and you can even make out NGC206 in it. You should be proud of what you have achieved 👍

12 hours ago, carastro said:

I don't have all the fancy star removal tools that some use and the Samyang lens coupled with a lum filter yields zillions.  Some moderate star reduction done with Straton. 

Lovely image. As you say, with the right star tools you could probably enhance it more. I would love to see the version without the star reduction - I know the recent trend seems to be all about star reduction but I somehow feel the beauty lies in the veritable treasure trove of starfields.

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Edit. I think this has more to say and is much nicer to look at.

I think this is now talking more about aesthetics & subjective matters rather than what could be applied to a 'rule', is it not?

I like your image as it showcases the sheer number of stars & nebulosity.

The main thing that I have done wrong is possibly choosing to pick up this hobby in a country plagued by clouds all the time. And now with Global warming its getting worse 😞 So wrong time, wrong place.

1 hour ago, Swoop1 said:

1st Law of Astrophotography- if you have a full head of lustrously natural hair- don't start.

Applies only to gents 😉

Hi all, here is my attempt at this faint group of galaxies most of which are around 300mly away. Around 100 x 120s subs with the ASI533MC pro mounted on SW130PDS / HEQ5 Pro. All equipment managed with Kstars/Ekos and processing done on Siril. Needs more data to reduce the noise & bring out the fainter details and the IFN around NGC7331 but this is a start that I am happy with.

Thanks for looking and comments/ suggestions are welcome.

I took the liberty of applying the following to your jpeg image using Siril

- Increased saturation

- applied contrast limited adaptive histogram enhancement (CLAHE)

- Noise reduction

- changed black point

15 hours ago, Bluesboystig said:

So for my third project since getting my imaging setup I decided to give a go at the Heart Nebula.

Nebulae such as Heart are quite faint, so suggest practicing with brigher objects first - atm you could try Ring, Dumbell nebulae to name a few prominent ones that are in our skies. It will give you the confidence and help configure settings for such objects

1 minute ago, Mandy D said:

Yes! Yes! Yes! That was one of the things I was looking at. That and the awesome landscape it is set in. I' almost tempted to make my observatory to that same design, only a touch smaller.

I still want the Planewave, but the observatory is droolworthy, too.

3 things droolworthy in that picture - planewave equipment, rollback obsy and the lovely skies. We could get the first two here but definitely not the last 🙂

Lovely shot. It also tells me that I am going to need a lot more data & skills to get anywhere near your image quality 🙂

6 hours ago, Gabrielwiklund said:

8" f/5 Sky-Watcher Explorer 200PDS 
ES HR Coma Corrector
Sky-Watcher HEQ5 Pro
50/200mm Guidescope
ZWO ASI120MM Mini
ZWO EAF

Thats a great image. I didnt think the HEQ5 Pro could handle the 200PDS + the rest of kit. Its good to know that it can. How are you finding its ability to manage this load?

Thats a great shot of M31. Love it.

EDIT: realised that your equipment list has grown now, so my previous comments were out of date 🙂