Brutha

While using Pixinsight for a lot of initial steps, I also like Photoshop for anything after stretching. Mainly because the non destructive approach using layers is much nicer than PI. For example, with photoshop I can have separate adjustment layers for stars and starless images. If I want to tweak just the star image a little after looking at the final result it’s just a matter of dragging a slider and watching the effect directly on the final composited image. In Pixinsight you have to undo the compositing step and any subsequent changes, make your fix to the star image, then redo the steps again.

Ok! Had a bit of a play with various Photoshop layers, and got to something I like a bit more. The odd thing is that is looks slightly different on my two screens (slight green cast on my second monitor, but not on my iMac screen). Still, will print it out at some point, and no doubt will need adjusting then anyway!

Yep, definitely a bit more of an achievement! Although, the ASIAIR does make it easier than it used to be I’m sure - it’s a sort of Seestar on steroids in some ways!

Thanks all! Right, will have a little play with the colour, some good advice there!

Hi All, I'm another who's taken a step up from a Seestar - managed to get my first couple of nights imaging this week with my new AM5N, Zenithstar 73 with flattener and 533MC Pro (plus mini guide cam and Asiair Plus). Very happy with my first proper pic, a two panel mosaic of Andromeda: 3 minute subs, about 45 minutes per panel (I live somewhere with very dark skies, but very few clear ones!). Then processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop: One question though: after BlurX, the stars are nice and round, but if I pixel peep on the originals subs at 1:1, I can see they are slightly eccentric - pointing a little up to top right in this example: It seems to be consistent across the whole frame, it's not worse in the corners and on others subs I took of Pleiades where the camera has rotated, the eccentricity has moved too. I did read somewhere that it could be the fitting in the flattener I need to slightly loosen. The end result is still very nice, but I'm new to this game (at least with nice kit!), so not sure if it's something I should spend more time digging into - or should I expect some small degree of imperfection in the optics at this price level? Thanks for any thoughts! Brutha

I saw many strange uses of English when I was in Japan - one of my favourites was a cafe, I think in Kamakura, called “Ménage a Trois”, apparently it was just intended to convey a general impression of Frenchness!

Thanks! Maybe I am optimistic thinking I can just find the number on a database somewhere - more digging needed I think then!

Hi All, Quick question: at some point in the coming months I'll be having a play with a star analyser, and one of the things I'd like to achieve (eventually!) is to get the spectrum of a distant quasar. So, I've been playing with Python etc, with the idea of creating a list of viable targets: the first one would seem to be 3C273, which in Sky Safari and Wikipedia is shown as 12.9 apparent magnitude. However, when I query Simbad, I don't seem to see anything matching it - from what I understand, the V-band should be the closest match, but this gives 14.83, similar to many other fainter quasars. Does anyone know where the 12.9 might have come from? The full list of measurements in Simbad is shown below - thanks for any ideas! Cheers B 13.05 [~] D 2010A&A...518A..10V V 14.830 [0.022] D 2000A&A...355L..27H R 14.11 [~] D 2008ApJS..175...97H G 12.844090 [0.003505] C 2020yCat.1350....0G J 11.692 [0.023] C 2006AJ....131.1163S H 10.953 [0.023] C 2006AJ....131.1163S K 9.937 [0.020] C 2006AJ....131.1163S u (AB) 13.859 [0.005] C 2009ApJS..182..543A g (AB) 12.990 [0.002] C 2009ApJS..182..543A r (AB) 12.871 [0.002] C 2009ApJS..182..543A i (AB) 12.630 [0.002] C 2009ApJS..182..543A z (AB) 13.242 [0.006] C 2009ApJS..182..543A

I believe Pixinsight have recently removed the ability to save the platesolving solution to FITS: https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/fits-properties.23676/

Hi All, Having bought a Seestar S50 last year, my enthusiasm for astronomy has returned quite a bit, so I am thinking of putting together a proper imaging setup, that would also work to some extent for visual. I would need to buy a suitable mount, and a refractor and camera. Apart from the S80 I currently have the following: A Nexstar 8SE, which I like for visual, but the mount is a bit shaky and I would like something more solid . A Skyshed pier which I haven't got round to installing yet for various reasons - but this will be step 1! I am thinking of getting the AM5N mount (plus the extension), which would be more than I need now, but will last me a long time I think. I can use this in EQ mode with my 8SE for visual or planetary stuff as well then. I live in a pretty stormy part of the UK, so I can't leave the mount on the pier all winter. Even if I could do that for some days at a time, I'm still going to be carrying it back and forth to the pier fairly regularly, hence me looking for a reasonably light weight mount. For the refractor and camera, I am looking for something around 70mm for now I think, and a reasonable OSC camera to go with it - so, something that will be a nice step up from the Seestar. I will get a smaller guidescope and camera that I guess I can use for both guiding and aligning the mount via plate solving (also when using the 8SE for visual in EQ mode). In terms of operating it, I would be looking to get something like an AsiAir or similar. Then I would want to do the initial setup like polar aligning outside near the scope using e.g. a phone or iPad ideally, then if I'm imaging retreat inside and run things from my iMac over the network. Any thoughts / suggestions? Especially anything I've failed to think about, or experiences from people who have done similar would be interesting! Thanks,

Regarding the AI comment, I’ve found ChatGPT very handy for Astropy. It’s best used in small amounts; don’t ask it to write the whole program. And keep in mind it won’t necessarily be right, or give efficient code - but I still found it much faster to get to the end result than googling or reading astropy docs.

Hi All, I'm using Autostakkert and waveSharp to create images of the Sun from my Seestar avi movies. I'm very happy with what I can get in the interior part of the Sun, but there seems to be an abrupt change to quite a blurry image as we get near to the edge. I've included two images, the one with red/green shows the parts I'm happy with / not happy with. I'm not totally sure where this is starting - but I have a suspicion it's Autostakkert - any ideas about how to troubleshoot? Thanks for any thoughts! EDIT: would like to resize these pics a bit smaller, but not sure how!

Ok, managed to sneak out for 5 minutes during lunch! Sun a bit livelier today - still some way to go to get the best out of the software, but happy with this one!

Thanks! Will play further!

Hi All, Have only had one clear day / night since I got my Seestar, so am now playing around with processing - all the astro programs are quite new to me so finding my feet a bit! This comes from a one minute AVI taken the other day through the provided solar filter: Stacked in Autostakkert Sharpened in waveSharp (bilateral filter which avoids bright lines at edge of sun) Colour adjusted and cropped in Photoshop What I'm wondering is if I've oversharpened it - it looks like the grain of the Sun is showing nicely (since I can also see detail around the sunspots in the top left). But maybe I am just sharpening noise in the image! Any thoughts? Thanks! EDIT: Oops, I think I used the wrong forum and it should have gone in "Imaging - Solar" - is it possible for some kind mod to move this? Thanks!

Received, thank you very much! No worries at all, about the wait, wasn't long at all!

One interesting note, is that there are many brands selling what appears to be exactly the same thing, for prices between about £20 and £50! Look for “LP-64” to see the range!

Perfect thanks! Not too worried, either is fine - something that doesn’t need huge numbers of subs would be a good start, M42, something like that!

Hi all, well my Seestar has arrived, and of course so has the bad weather! So, in the meantime I thought I'd have a go at learning the basics of Siril for stacking and image processing. Does anyone know of a set of Seestar subs shared on the web somewhere that I might use as an example to work on? Doesn't need to be 100s of frames, just enough to learn the process!

Thanks! Will do!

Will do, just wondered if there was a reasoning behind it! Actually I realised i hijacked the wrong thread, meant to put it in the main Seestar thread!

Hi All, have ordered my Seestar and looking forward to it arriving! One question in the meantime: I'm aware it has a "light pollution" filter which can be switched on or off. However, I live somewhere where we don't really have light pollution (nominally Bortle 1): are there still cases where I should leave the filter on? For example emission nebulae? Thanks!

Hehe, I have long wanted to do something similar as I’m also close to the sea, but in the UK the government guards the harmonic constants you need very jealously (because the tides depend a lot on the local seabed shape and have to be empirically measured)…. And I didn’t figure out an easy way to reverse engineer them from the short predictions they give for free!

Ah thanks for that! Yes, I am thinking of using a small stepper (maybe a 28-BYJ48, since as it has gears I can switch it off after moving it, and not use much power). Currently I am thinking of something like the pic show - I will rotate the whole bit in the middle over the course of the day (with the notch showing local solar time), then update the hands maybe once a day. But I haven't figured what to use to move the hands in the middle! Cheers

Yes, I read a lot of Gina’s posts, they were always interesting, and I was very sad to hear she had passed away, The picture you posted is very interesting - rather than just one large clock with lots of hands, probably a large clock with various small dials is the way to go - time for a ponder!