Adam1234

You could try the colour mask script

I usually dither every frame for narrowband, every 3 frames for R,G,B filters, and every 5 frames for luminance. Though the reason I dither every 3 and 5 for RGB and L is because of the larger number of frames I take compared to NB (owing to shorter exposure), and wanting to save back from imaging time

Nice effort considering 5s subs and untracked. Out of the 2 lenses, I'd go with the samyang 135mm so you get a narrower field of view. I haven't got one myself but I've seen people get incredible images with this. There is a huge thread on imaging with this lens I'd also recommend tracking so that you get get longer exposures and increase your signal-to-noise. A simple star tracker such as the SkyWatcher Star Adventurer or ioptron skyguider pro should be more than sufficient for imaging with a camera and lens

First Milky Way of the season, practicing for my holiday to the Maldives Canon R6, Star Adventurer 2i, Samyang 14mm f2.8. Separate untracked foreground and tracked sky images, stacked in sequator, and blended in photoshop. Foreground: 5 x 120s, f3.2, ISO1600 Sky: 26 x 60s, f3.2, ISO1600 Foreground: 5 x 120s, f3.2, ISO1600 Sky: 20 x 60s, f3.2, ISO1600

Is it possible it's some effect of light pollution? It probably isn't, but I do have at least 3 streetlights facing into my garden. I'll try and investigate the raw the images tomorrow and see if it's present in those

I'm a bit unsure what you mean by dual pixels, how does this work?

No I've not tried to remove it - I'm not entirely sure where it's come from, I need to investigate that. I calibrated with bias and flats (flats done an amazing job at getting rid of heavy vignetting which was present without the flats).

That's reassuring, thanks

My first test run on the Redcat51 (with Canon R6, Optolong L-Pro and EQ6-R Pro). Certainly nothing to write home about by a long shot. Only about half hour of 60s images. I did have about 2 hours, but culled half hours worth because of tracking issues (no guiding), and another hour because of the local power lines through the image. At 250mm, I don't think I'll be using this in my garden, way too much light pollution (bortle 8-ish + street lights as my garden faces out into the road), and the short focal length means I can't escape the power lines like I can with my deep sky set up. With my usual deep sky gear, the pixel rejection during stacking sorts out the shadows from the power lines, but I had them in most of the images in this case so it simply didn't work well. This is one scope I shall be reserving as a travel scope for darker skies. That was always the plan anyway, but I had to test it out at home before going out in the field. Luckily I live close to the New Forest national park anyway. With 6.58um pixel size, the Canon R6 probably isn't the ideal camera either as I'm under sampling by quite a bit at about 5.43"/pixel according to astronomy tools so I drizzled 2x which did seem to help with the blocky stars. I do plan on getting another dedicated astro cam with smaller pixel size sometime in the future. I do think I need to nail the focus, as stars were more or less ok in the centre but looked a bit pointy around the corners. The direction of the stars I think indicates the back focus wasn't quite right, but I've read that due to the design of the optics, as long as you are in focus, you have the correct back focus, which suggests my focus is slightly off. I find it reasonably difficult to get exact focus with very small movements of the focuser making a huge difference to the focus. Anyway. here is said test image, of the Sadr region, with a quick process in PI. At least I can make out a bit of nebulosity, can even see the crescent nebula in the lower right. Adam

Excellent images! Well done, very pleasing to look at

@davies07that's great, thank you for the explanation. Just need to wait for the next clear night now. Cloudy tonight but I'm sure there will be some more clear nights soon.

Thank you! I will try a star test when I get the chance. I tried a star test the other week after using the cheshire, and made a few minor adjustments but then it didn't agree with the cheshire. By the sound of it, I defocused to much! Out of interest, why make corrections to the primary only when doing the star test? I've seen other people mention this, but others have said seconddary only, and others have said both?

Yeah I removed all the extension rings and only had the focuser attached. According to FLO website that collimator doesn't work with the stella lyra rc8

I've been revisiting collimation of my Stella Lyra RC8 now that Jupiter is on it's way back, and I think (hope) I have got it more of less there. I was really struggling at first, spending days doing lots of research, reading all the websites, watching youtube videos. I refuse to buy a howie glatter as they seem to be nearly as much as the scope, and I'm also convinced that a lot of the instructions out there are either completely or partially wrong (or at least rely on various assumptions being correct for the method to work), or incomplete. For example one video on youtube instructed you to align the secondary using cheshire eyepiece - fine. And then to align the primary using a standard laser collimator, adjusting the primary until the laser hit the centre of the target on the laser. Correct me if I'm wrong but this method makes a massive assumption that the focuser is completely square...which was not mentioned at all in the video. As a result I took my primary WAY of out of whack, to the point where one of the screws was completely loose. Anyway, I decided to settle on the good old cheshire eyepiece method, i.e. 1st - align the secondary by getting the dot made by the cheshire eyepiece hole into the donut on the secondary mirror, 2nd -align the primary by adjusting the mirror to get the thin strip of light (optical axis) even around the edge (some also say you should see concentric circles within the shadow of the secondary). Sounded easy enough, but I couldn't seen the centre dot properly because the crosshair of the cheshire was in the way, and I couldn't see the thin line of white around the edge or concentric circles. I ended up removing the crosshair from the cheshire and find it much easier to the centre dot/donut. I also discovered that if I shined a torch directly into the 45 reflective surface of the chesshire I could indeed see the concentric circles., so here is what I did: 1) I lined my camera up a best as possible to the chesshire with 10x zoom, and used the adjustable circles in the collimation aid in Astrophotography Tool while adjusting the secondary to get the centre dot right in the middle of the donut 2) shined the torch into the chesshire to light up the concentric rings, and again used to the collimation aid circles while adjusting the primary to get all rings concentric 3) Repeating 1 & 2 again until I was happy. Here are my final results of steps 1 and 2 after the final check, (with and without the collimation aid active to ease of viewing). How does my collimation look? Was this a good approach to make and am I interpreted the views correctly? Centre dot/donut Concentric circles Thanks Adam

After an evenings deliberation, I think I will go with the L-Pro.

I'm thinking of buying a filter to pair with the Redcat51 and the Canon R6 mirrorless to cut out the light pollution. in my area I was originally thinking of either the Optolong L-eNhance dual narrowband filter, or the L-eXtreme, but then I thought would they work or provide any benefit with the R6 since it is not astromodded? Would I be better off with the Optolong L-Pro Broadband Filter (or similar? Suggestions on what would work or what others use would be appreciated!! Thanks! Adam

If you look up "perfection" in the dictionary, it will show this image!

That's great thank you!

Is the dark current a value you need to measure, or can this be taken from the graph of dark current vs sensory temp displayed in the camera specs? For example, for the ASI1600mm pro at -20 the graph gives 0.0062e/s/pix. If the former, how do you measure it? Or if the latter, how do you convert to adu?

Is it possible to use this calculation for an uncalibrated sub? Or is there an alternative method for uncalibrated subs, so you can easily and quickly determine if you're swamping the RN while out in the field?

Still on the camera at the moment! I'll try and post them up soon Think of it as an investment 😀 or think of it as buy now and sell something else to make up the money later 😀

Redcat51 v2 arrived yesterday. What a beauty! Great for imaging the sparrows in the garden with the Canon R6, incredible quality! Can't wait to aim it at the cosmos

This is M51 the Whirlpool Galaxy in HaLRGB, imaged throughout May Ha = 41 x 180s (2.05hr) L= 362 x 45s (4.53hr) R, G, B = 45 x 120s each R, G, B (1.5hr each, total 4.5hr) Total = 11.1hr Adam

Also worth checking that the equipment details (focal length of guide scope, focal length of main scope etc) are correct in the equipment profile

I was having these error messages with PCC earlier today as well. Tried a different database, tried manually selecting my object from the search function, acquiring metadata from the image, ticked force platesolve, checked the coordinates etc were correct, nothing worked. Then I ran the platesolver script, it came up with the same metadata entered into PCC (coordinates, observation date etc) then all of sudden PCC worked, so not entirely sure what that was about