Padraic M

Nice report @Bongo. Amazing how everyone's experience is similar! The Pleiades are always a joy to see. Galaxies and nebulae are challenging to see visually from other than dark skies. I searched for hours for M31 Andromeda, before I realised just how huge it is! Now I can make it out as a bright smudge in binoculars on a dark night. M42 Orion Nebula is always a great bet, by eye, binoculars or telescope. Without needing any additional equipment, star clusters are great visually. @wibblefish has already mentioned M36, M37 and M38 all close together in Auriga. Another favourite easily visible at the moment (even by eye) is the Beehive Cluster in Cancer. Double stars may interest you too. Albireo is the top dog here but won't be visible until mid Summer. At the moment, the Alcor/Mizar double in the Plough (middle star in the handle) is worth a view. July/August will be the next best time for Saturn and Jupiter, but obviously grab a look as soon as you can. Everyone on SGL will tell you that the first views of Jupiter's Galilean moons and Saturn's rings are special! If you haven't already, you should download and install Stellarium, the free planetarium software. It makes finding targets so easy.

@Messy Hair 101 Thanks, it just kind of 'popped' into place for me. The benefits of a very clear sky! If I get more time this week I'll look to getting more RGB data.

Like with a lot of other people, 2020 saw me spend more time and effort buying and tuning gear than actually using it...! I was stacking up learning curves waiting patiently for clear skies to get some actual deep-sky practice in. Over the New Year, I managed to get some time in Bortle 2, and the sky finally cleared for a few full nights last week. The first few nights were spent getting everything to work together, building on my Ha narrowband monochrome work during the last year, and adding RG and B to the processing mix. A new Sesto Senso arrived for Christmas, so that has made a massive difference to image quality. I'm happy to say that I've managed to get my first full-colour HaRGB shot. While there's still plenty of room for improvement, I'm delighted with the results. This is 4 hours of Ha, and 1 hr 9 mins in total of RGB. I still have some guiding problems with my mount that need to be sorted out, so some of the Green and many of the Blue frames were unusable. Channels stacked in DSS and processed in Gimp. Stars removed from the RGB composite in Starnet, but not from Ha Luminance. Finally, noise removed in Noise Ninja and the whole thing binned x2. Suggestions and criticism welcome! Full image on Astrobin: https://astrob.in/h3tmbl/0/ Padraic. SW Esprit 80 SWO ASI1600mm unbinned at -20C ZWO EFW Mini with Baader Ha 3.5nm and Baader RGB filters Primalucelabs Sesto Senso 2 electronic focuser Altair Astro 50mm guidescope with ZWO ASI290mm Mini guidecam HEQ5 Pro rowan-mod mount APT, PS2 and Stellarium. Processed with DSS, Gimp, Starnet and Noise Ninja 48x300 Ha | 15x150 Red | 10x150 Green | 3x150 Blue

Happy New Year from up the road in South Kerry. Lovely Bortle 2 skies the last few nights have given me a chance to practice some skills! Beautiful M45, well done!

Yes there is, but it tends to make it very unsteady in RA.

Is your question whether to buy broadband or narrowband first? Given that you've bought a colour camera, I'd suggest that the broadband filter will give you best value for money, allowing reasonable quality RGB lights with reduced light pollution. The Optolong L-Extreme dual band will give you the option of Ha and Oiii for HOO-style narrowband photos. Without a broadband filter, you will struggle to get good RGB data for HaRGB composites in Bortle 8/9 skies. The final decision is down to your personal choice, and what type of photography you want to do.

Haven't we all! It's been very enjoyable following this thread. Well done to both of you for persevering. I currently have 2 new HEQ5 boards - 1 in service and 1 spare (don't ask - a logistics error on my part!) and 1 broken with 'both axis no response'. I swapped out the capacitors to no avail, although it always puzzled me how two power smoothing capacitors could possibly cause that error. If I get some spare time in the new year, I'll try to replace the PICs and get it back in service.

Personally if I'm going to be viewing the moon for any period of time, I'd stick in a moon filter. I find it bright enough to dazzle but not too bright to hurt. Personal preference then as to whether you'd use a filter or not. But from a priority point of view though, if Maryland is cold and humid like where I am, then a dew heater is a much more important purchase for a SCT. Go without a dew strap for 15 minutes and you won't need any moon filter! 🙂 I was more than a little disappointed on my first night out with a new C8 (once I'd figured out why the image was so poor). Back to the focus/alignment issue - with long focal lengths like these, it's quite hard to line up the scope by hand. I like to find a roofline (in the city) or a mountain ridge (in the country) to reduce the problem to a single dimension; then move left or right along the line to find an identifiable point (a chimney or antenna in the city or a boulder, tree or fencepost on the mountain). Then it's a simple task to adjust the finderscope to align with that point. Once it's done, don't mess with the finder scope and you don't need to redo it every session. There's not much point trying to do this indoors but if you just want to play with your new scope then work away!

It's done in EQMOD panel, but I suspect it is done with a restart too. 1. Press the Spanner icon for settings 2. In the Alignment/Sync section, clear the alignment data (or, open the notepad and clear each point)

All I can suggest is to clear everything back to basics - reboot the mount and software, clear alignment points in EQMod, start from Park and do a 1-star alignment. Goto++ shouldn't need any more than that to be accurate. I usually do a solve/sync at Polaris and then again on Vega or Caph/Shedar depending on what's visible and it usually works well. btw Ivo is indisposed at the moment so he mightn't respond at his usual speed.

Hi Brendan, I'm not an expert but I have had a similar experience with APT recently - not so much after a meridian flip, but doing a Goto++ to a new target close to the meridian. Out of interest, have you calculated the distance in degrees based on your imaging scale? Degrees = 319,091*scale/60/60. I'd guess that your scale is somewhere between 2"/px (180deg) and 4"/px (360deg). I had my mount slewing almost a full 360 degrees, doing a new plate solve, and then heading off again in the other direction. I could have been there all night! I didn't fix the problem, and as far as I can remember, I just picked a target farther from the meridian for a few minutes. I have Make Automatic Flip set to Off under Session Craft. I don't think that parking to Home position and then redoing Goto++ made any difference - it made the first slew and then stopped as you said. I'd be interested in how others manage this problem as it doesn't sound like this is 'working as designed'.

Very interesting subject - I love the dark nebulosity in the centre, and the detail in the upper loop. Here's my attempt, processed in StarTools using HaSHO palette. Put the stretched data through Starnet, then subtracted the starless image from the original to create a starfield. Overlaid this on top of the starless version, and blended with Lighten Only it at ~50%. Desaturated the magenta in both the nebula and the starfield, and used Gimp to bring out the contrast in the upper loop, and increase saturation in the cyan and yellow.

Yes, I've no doubt the scope/camera combination can do better. Those are great photographs. I particularly like Rudiger's final Ha version. Just waiting now for another clear night to try again, this time with more effort on focus and FWHM watching.

Hi @michael8554 @inFINNity Deck yes I'm imaging un-binned so the pixel scale is 1.9"/px. Here's the full Bubble Nebula stacked at full resolution. Only the worst 2 lights were excluded. Stars look approximately 12 pixels wide in the remaining 30 frames and in the stack. Bubble Nebula.tif

@inFINNity Deck, @ollypenrice and @andrew s thanks guys for the very informative commentary. I'm reassured that it's something that can be improved through more rigour and technique, rather than something I have to live with. On the next clear night I might pay more attention to the FWHM reading. Is it safe to say that FWHM should be in a standard range as long as I don't make material changes in the light-path, i.e. with experience I can say that I need to achieve FWHM of 1 or 0.5 or whatever, regardless of what (unsaturated) star I choose? So I can quantitatively say that I am near or in focus in every situation? I was happily tucked up in bed for the majority of this imaging session and unfortunately it looks like this may not be possible in future unless I move to automated focusing. That's a definite incentive for me to spend more money! Good idea. There is certainly a big difference in tension between "in" and "out", as there's a lot of weight on the camera end. The focus also does change as I lock it down, so I have to adjust the focus lock and the fine focus knob together in very small increments. I think for now I will treat focus performance and guiding performance as separate issues until I have got the basics right for focusing. Many thanks all, knowledgeable, helpful and generous as usual.

I spent the full night out last night and got 6 hours of Ha lights on the Bubble and the Horsehead. Reasonably pleased with the results, but even though I followed my usual process and got good focus statistics in APT, I am slightly out of focus with roundy stars and some are even slightly donutty. Samples are attached below. Problem: - After getting close to spot-on focus, the APT Bahtinov Aid showed a focus distance oscillating from -0.02 to +0.02. Seeing seemed good to the inexpert eye. Not so sure about transparency as there was some thin, wispy cloud throughout the night. So, I started the night's imaging with focus 'Close' rather than 'On' focus. - Different subs show different quality stars, ranging from small donuts to circles. Background information: - HEQ5 Pro Rowan; SW Esprit 80 with field flattener, SW stock manual Crayford focuser; ZWO EFW Mini; Baader 1.25" 3.5nm Ha filter; ZWO ASI1600MM Pro binned 1x1 @ -20c. - AA Starwave 50mm guidescope with ZWO ASI290mm Mini guidecam binned 2x2. - All subs are 300s, gain 139, offset 10. - Polar alignment with Sharpcap to 17 arcsec ("Excellent"); capture with APT; guiding with Phd2. Focus with Bahtinov mask and APT Bahtinov Aid. Stacked in DSS with Darks, Flats and Dark Flats. - Mount is well balanced in RA, but is very camera-heavy in Dec. - PHD2 guiding was around 2"/px. Imaging pixel scale is 1.9"/px. Questions: - Do I put the round stars down to seeing, given that the Bahtinov Aid focus distance was bouncing equally above and below zero? - Can poor seeing cause the donut stars? - Would an electronic auto-focuser do any better in this situation? - Would the Seeing Monitor in Sharpcap give useful information? I didn't think to use it last night. - Could my guiding performance, and possibly the Dec balance, have affected the image quality in this way? - What are my options in future - abandon imaging for the night? Bin all images in software 2x2 or 4x4 to sharpen the stars at the expense of lower resolution? - Other suggestions? Sample 1: Detail from a single 5-min sub of Bubble nebula at 100% showing round stars, and a blurred bubble. Sample 2: Detail from a different sub of the Bubble nebula at 400% showing donuts Sample 3: Detail from a 5-min sub of the Horsehead nebula at 100%, showing both round and donut stars Finally, both images stacked, calibrated and stretched, scaled to 4x4 in Gimp. 28x300s Ha on bubble, 22*300s Ha on horsehead.

Agreed Peter. I always have to remove the polar scope cap to align, and increasing altitude requires a significant amount of torque on the lower bolt. I'm at 53N. Is there any suggested way to loosen/lubricate the pivot so that less force is required? Possibly it's also affected by the weight of the mount head. I assume that if both altitude adjustment bolts are tightened, there should be no movement in the pivot. On a related but separate point, I don't like that I have to loosen the spreader bolt slightly to adjust the azimuth bolts. There is always a slight movement when it's re-tightened. My solution here is to tighten the spreader and adjust azimuth in increasingly smaller increments until everything is both tight and in alignment.

I did some research on the multiple-star systems in M42, using the Washington Double Star Catalog (WDSC). Apart from the obvious Trapezium and Theta 1 & 2 Orionis, there's a specific little blob of nebulosity around Iota Orionis due south of the Trapezium that contains four systems, three of which can be split with my equipment. I've annotated them in an enlarged section of the M42 Ha image (also available here https://astrob.in/uc0bos/0/).

@david_taurus83 Teleskop-Express had them in Germany. I've also ordered a new set of Baader LRGB filters from them to replace the cheap Celestron set I currently have. I'm going to leave the OIII and SII ones for the moment! Enough toys for now.

From Italy (where else?) comes a natty little astronomy man-bag, and a replacement puck and clamp for the HEQ5 that will stop it chomping on my dovetails. I didn't realise how BIG that dovetail clamp is - maybe I should have read the label?

Thanks @ollypenriceit really does - I didn't need to do anything to them, the 3.5nm does the trick. I'm still playing with Startools but haven't managed to integrate it into the workflow yet. @ebdonssome slight artificial manipulation here! Blended some 30-sec exposures into the core area and highlighted the trapezium and the Theta Orionis stars slightly. It's great to be able to reference so many other photos of this area on the forums to understand what's important, and in this nebula definitely the Trapezium has to show through. It is phenomenally bright.

Thanks @Chefgage and @vineyard. I think I should be able to bring out more detail with expanded contrast, but I'm fighting with noise grain at this stage. I've tried bringing it through Noise Ninja but first results actually made it worse so it will need more work.

My Baader 3.5nm Ha filter arrived last week, so I took the first available opportunity to use it, on the first available target. Also very glad to see Orion clearing the trees for the first time this year! Lovely to see him back. Actually woke up at 4am last Sunday morning to clear skies, so I set up and took 1.5 hours of lights before dawn broke. I'm like a kid in a sweetshop with the amount of detail I can get with that filter in my Bortle 8 skies, even though I know there's more that can be done in processing. There's a lot of nebulosity up there! All feedback gratefully received! SW Esprit 80 on a HEQ5 pro ASI1600MM Pro cooled to -20c 17*300s Ha (one frame took a wobble when I kicked the tripod) 12*30s Ha to get some unsaturated core Full sets of darks, flats and dark flats applied. Stacked in DSS and processed in Gimp.

That's progress! Yes you need to format the injected timestamp, which according to the node help is: a timestamp of the current time in millisecs since January 1st, 1970. This thread on the topic is useful - looks like they recommend the Moment contributed node, which you will need to install. I haven't used it myself but if Nick O'Leary recommends it it must be good. https://discourse.nodered.org/t/date-time-formatting/1138 I don't like formatting date strings in javascript generally so I must take a look at this myself.

Yes - there's a free version that will probably do the trick for you. Makes for a warm and toasty imaging session! I use my Samsung tablet indoors, with the laptop outside. Also fwiw, most people use one of those plastic storage boxes to protect the outdoor laptop from mist, dew and any rain that might fall. Just drill a hole in the side to allow power and USB cables to enter. Where I'm from, dew can be a real problem, so I wouldn't dream of doing much without dew straps and a box for the laptop. See this thread here, but there are simpler solutions.