Craig a

Yes depends on the grade of stainless, the best stainless would be 316 marine grade I’ve got 316 fittings on my boat and saltwater is highly corrosive but 316 has no rust.whereas my work trowels (I’m a plasterer) are stainless but lower grade and I get specks of rust on them all the time

That is excellent Carole especially from the murk of London it’s a great achievement

I use this https://www.bristolcameras.co.uk/p-skywatcher-pillar-tripod-support-for-eq6-mount.htm so it’s semi permanent the bolts on the end screw down to level it and lift it off it’s wheels once the mount head and scope is on it weighs a ton, I’ve had no problems of it moving upto 100mph winds, I will post a picture of it with its cover on when I get chance, this pier is black in the link but they are now white

I did the same thing, and everything is kept on the pier, the scope and all the cables the only thing I take inside is my camera, I have the 533 also, I cover my setup with a telegizmos 365 cover and it’s excellent it’s really well made it’s been through some quite severe storms with bucket loads of rain and everything it’s kept nice and dry although I do take the cover off for a couple of hours on nice days to give everything an airing, but so far it’s performed flawlessly

Three glorious galaxy clusters there, images like this are right up my street the Hercules cluster looks interesting as it’s dominated by spiral galaxies rather than the usual ellipticals that we normally see, I’m putting this cluster on my top of my list of clusters to have a go at

Great set of pn’s, theses things are fascinating to me, a whole range of different shapes and colours

Yes hopefully it’s resolved just waiting for a clear night to test the conclusion we came too, but it’s looking dismal out there

That’s a belting image, i love you have the fireworks in there it shows just how large these dark nebulas are compared to the galaxy, great stuff

Thank you again for that, I shall have a test at 0 gain aswell to see if my usual 3 min subs get me to that mean adu Purely because of the space needed on the computer with 3 min subs compared to 3x the amount of subs for the same total integration if using 60second subs, I shall still test out the 1 min subs at 100 gain too though, if I can get that 2986 with 3-4 mins at 0 gain I will stick with that so I can use the max dynamic range and full well of 50,000, roll on test night😀 I carnt thank you enough working this out for me I thought I had a duff camera and was close to throwing it over the neighbours house

Right the ascom driver with the zwo presets are offset of 70 for all there modes so gain 0 is still 70 offset 🙂

Ok if I did use a different gain at some point it would be 0 gain and as maths isn’t my strongest point could you give me the new values please? I will check what the preset offset is for highest dynamic range mode that zwo have preset

Can I just ask would that sky background adu value you worked out for me work for any gain setting? For instance if I wanted to take advantage of the max dynamic range and full well of this camera?

Brilliant, thanks very much for taking time to go through all that info with me, I will try out 1min exposures on the next clear spell and report back, I shall make a bad pixel map from a stack of 1min exposures and see how that goes aswell 😀

The first was at unity gain and the zwo preset of 70 offset then increased the offset to 80 and 400 adu was added, so how do I get that 26 adu value above my dark mean to increase because judging my your reaction it’s low 😆

Ok I just did 2 bias frames and the first came out at 2796 than I increased by 10 and that was 3196 so you are correct a 10 increase in offset is 400 in adu

The 5000 adu is as it came came straight from the camera so before calibration, my dark frame stack has a mean value of 2797 with a min of 2750

Thanks again, regarding the min pixel value of 0, I didn’t get that reading until I calibrated and debayered, the raw subs Never had that value. I normally dither my images so is it really worth using dark frames with such a low noise camera? As sigma clipping would get rid of any hot or cold pixels I never took darks with my cannon I used a bad pixel map, also if I go down with my exposure to say 60 seconds and it was on my target I did last week I would hardily see the galaxy in the subs I could only see the core on a 3 min sub the spiral arms were hardily visible would that be due to lp levels starting to wash out the spiral arms? Sorry I I’m sounding abit thick here I’m just struggling to get my head around these new cmos cameras coming from an uncooled ancient in tech terms dslr being used to seing a much brighter sub frame from it. According to clear outside I’m in Bortle 5 sky’s, I just carnt wrap my head around how you get faint details showing on galaxys with subs of 60 seconds, I suppose I’m just going to have to try it out and see what happens

Thanks a lot for explaining this to me It has helped, so in other words I should increase my exposure time to say 5 mins and see how it goes? And maybe increase my offset some more? What impact would increasing my offset to 80 from 70 have on my subs? Thanks again for your help the pixel size didn’t even enter my head to be honest......doh! I normally use iso1600 on the cannon which is quite high really as that iso gives the lowest read noise

Nice one 👍, I’m struggling with my 533 see my deer lick image I’ve posted, my 3min subs at unity gain gives me a histogram that’s hardily moved off the left dunno what’s going on but I’m abit disappointed so far with this camera

I was using unity gain 100 and the offset was 70 as zwo have preset, I’m not sure nebulosity is working correctly with this cam because my 3min subs with no lp filter at f4.5 was yielding a mean pixel value of 5000ish I was expecting more than that to be honest, that seems low compared to my canon 1100d that yields 20000 mean pixel value, it’s either neb not working with the cam properly or it’s the camera itself my money is on the former to be honest, maybe I should ditch neb and get the demo version of apt to try with this cam and see if there’s any difference

Ok finally got my first image with my new cam, not sure what to make of it though, for just over 7 hours of data At unity gain I was expecting more from it, image was taken on the 130pds at f4.5. I took darks and flats but when nebulosity applied them I ended up with a min pixel value of 0, very strange. I didn’t use a uv/ir cut filter and it shows on the stars I do have one on its way to me. Anyway here is my first image with this camera I’m abit dissspointed with it to be honest I was expecting more from 7 hours of data and I don’t know why the stars are so red. The histrogram was way over to the left on each sub frame and when the darks were applied it went even more to the left, I really was expecting the histrogram to be at least 1/3 of the way across, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong with this camera but it’s driving me nuts.am I missing something? Is there something I need to do when setting it up?

Yes dss won’t even register the subs it just crashes, the subs don’t look dark in neb yet the min pixel value is 0, could a single black pixel cause neb to read the min value of 0?

Ok so for the last 4 nights I’ve been imaging the deer lick galaxy with the said camera, I was using 3 min subs and have a average pixel value of around 5000, now I have taken dark frames and flat frames and used them for calibration but after they were applied nebulosity says I now have a min pixel value of 0 yes 0? What the hell is going on?

It’s a good start but the second two look heavily black clipped, have you checked the histogram and made sure the black point isn’t cutting into the left of the start of the peak? Just some constructive criticism to help you don’t take it the wrong way 🙂

Very dusty image, nice work