Betton

All sorted. Thank you Peter 

Hi everyone. 
 

So I have a HEQ5 with a broken saddle and I can’t seem to find a like for like replacement, only upgrades. Does anyone know if there is such a thing? 
 

thanks ,

Dan

1 hour ago, happy-kat said:

The option now let's you choose to use no white balance so you truly get the two green pixels one red one blue. It's under raw/fits ddp settings.

This worked. Thank you   knew it would be simple 

6 minutes ago, Atreta said:

Did you align the rgb channels?  You can use levels in photoshop to do that. 

I didn’t. I’ll have another go today. 

4 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

If using the latest version of DSS you might have selected to completely disable white balance this meaning you get the true output of two green pixels, one red and one blue. Startools for example can then work with this truly raw stacked FITS out put from DSS, assuming you also did not align RGB channels.

I didn’t change any settings when stacking, but I will go through and check. Does white balance need to enabled in DSS? 

2 minutes ago, wxsatuser said:

I would set it to daylight, LP may be upsetting auto white balance.

You can follow Jerry Lodriguss here on how to set DSS with a dslr.

 

Ok, I’ll give that a go next time I get a clear sky. Thanks 

5 minutes ago, wxsatuser said:

Are you shooting RAW and daylight white balance?

Shooting RAW, but I believe white balance is set to auto. 

Just now, Robny said:

Re: Photoshop.

Could it be that the three you ate seeing is for individual RGB levels, and the ones you have been watching is for either overall brightness or mono?

Just a thought....

I did think that, but when I watch the videos, or read tutorials, the dialogue box shows RGB, same as mine. It is probably something really simple that is really obvious to most. But I always told there is no such thing as stupid question

Hi everyone. 
 

Not new to Astronomy,  but new to astrophotography and especially the processing process. 
 

So the past few months I’ve been getting data on some targets, no filters. The single exposure images looks good, once they are all stacked in DSS, the whole image comes with a green tint. I have tried the HLVG, plugin in photoshop, but this ca sometimes kill off any detail, or make the whole image look blue and washed out. Has anyone encountered this issue before, are there some settings I’m missing when stacking? I leave everything as default. 
 

My second issue I have is in photoshop. I have been following tutorials, YouTube videos etc to try and get this right. But the one thing I notice is, when I go to adjust the levels, I have 3 curves in the dialogue box, on all tutorials I see there is only one. 
 

Any help here would be appreciated. I am using a DSLR, unmodified. I live in around a bortle 5 are. 
 

thanks. 

Can it not work as a stand-alone guider through a finder scope, and then images are taken with a DSLR? I will have to have a read into it. Getting information overload again 😂

5 minutes ago, DaveS said:

If you want something that's "plug and play" then the ASI Air might do it.

And AP can be a horribly slippery slope into a financial black hole. When I took up astronomy again in '09 I was just going to get an EQ3 to put my DSLR on. That turned into an HEQ5 and Megrez 90, and now I have kit worth a nice car .

This looks very useful. Is my understanding of these setups correct? Can you use this just to guide and not take images, and use a DSLR to take the images. Because these only work with the ZWO type cameras, right? Sorry for all the questions, there is just so much information it’s quite overwhelming. 

And yeah, I can see this happening already. Which is why I want to make the right decision, it’s so stressful 😂

2 minutes ago, wimvb said:

You cab control your entire setup from a RPi, and control that with Remote Desktop from your house. That's how I do it. Cost is a RPi, housing, sd card and eqdir cable. Plus investment in time to set it up. Phd also runs on a Raspberry Pi. 

I will look into this. I have a few spare Raspberry Pis. This would be ideal. Thanks

22 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Not for long, I'm afraid. It all depends on your budget, but I've said it before, and I maintain that the eq3 (pro) is a very nice mount for a light weight, short focal length setup. Since your imaging scale (how much of the night sky each pixel covers, measured in arcseconds/pixel) is probably quite large with your intended scope, it may make sense to go for the smaller mount and add a guiding package (eg finder guider + zwo asi120) now, with the knowledge that you won't be able to chase the smaller galaxies. For that , you will later need to replace your entire setup. But you will get better results on wide field targets sooner. And you can keep the light weight setup as a grab and go solution to take with you to star parties and on vacation.

With guiding also comes the need for a computer next to the mount. 

Auto guiding is a subject I need to research more as I’ve always seen it as something I can add later, but the more and more I delve into this hobby, the more I realise how important guiding can be. My problem is I have a new, quite expensive desktop pc, so definitely cannot warrant a laptop. Is it possible to get guiding software on a tablet and run a raspberry pi on the mount and guide over WiFi from the tablet? Or would this bring latency? 

14 minutes ago, Captain Magenta said:

I have the EQ35-M, and I really like it. The model is fairly new, and because it's designated EQ3-something, I think people assume it has the same load capacity as all the EQ3s, which is not the case. I think SW have got their marketing wrong here, I'm sure people have been put off by the nomenclature.

The EQ3-2 has a stated load capacity of 5kg, whereas the EQ35-M has a stated capacity of twice that: 10kg. It has no problems at all handling my 7.5kg APM-LZOS plus bits.

M

Thanks for the feedback, mate. What exposure times do you get with your set up?

25 minutes ago, baggywrinkle said:

The EQ5 would offer more future proofing with its higher payload than the EQ3 versions. But that depends on how far down the slippery rad of astro photography you intend to go.

Along with a heavier payload it does mean a heavier mount if you intend to move it around or take it to dark sky sites.

I have had both Celestron and Skywatcher over the years and both are well supported for technical advice and user experience for apps like EQMOD. I mention Celestron as they come from the same maker but operate in a slightly different way for alignment. They too have the equivalent of the SW EQ5.

Both Brands often come up for sales on second hand sites.

Thanks for the response. I can already see this being a slippery slope with the bank account, I can’t believe I’ve got my wife to agree to these new purchases. 

Predominantly my set up will just be used for the back garden. As of right now I will only be using a redcat on the mount, so not much payload, but without auto-guiding, I’m not sure how long the EQ 3 will track for before you start seeing star trails. So it’s a toss up between what’s overkill and what is necessary. I suppose I can always get an auto guiding system in the future with any of those mounts

Hi everyone, long time lurker here. I have given up and resorted in asking for help, I usually try to struggle on my own, but it’s not working  

As of today, I use a celestron 130 SLT, which I’ve had for a few years and I’ve loved it. But as time has gone on, I’ve wanted to get more and more into Astrophotography, rather than just viewing. So I have been using this scope to practice, but as I am wanting to do deepsky stuff have been struggling, the mount and scope haven’t really got what it takes, albeit with some persistence some good images can be taken.

So it’s upgrade time (scope and mount) I have been looking at the Redcat 51 or the z61. But in terms of mount, I’m unsure what is necessary and what is overkill and also not regretting I spent that little bit Moreno in a years time. So my options are; the EQ3 pro, EQM-35 and the EQ5 Pro. Any advice or experience with any of these mounts would be much appreciate. 

Thanks,

Dan