AstroNebulee

Your correct happy kat, it'll be a case of making the halos less obvious with the CA in processing. Thank you for trying to help me too 👍

That's looks quite lovely indeed. I think I will have to accept some grey halo around the stars in this image. It's giving them a softness too. Sadly my version of photoshop camera raw cannot cope with this. I shall have to find a workaround somehow. Like I said if I could soften the edges of the halo would be good enough I think. Thank you for trying to help this baffoon 👍

I have tried this but they still have the grey halo around the star, something im missing here i think.

Thank you, I've tried in my version of photoshop it doesn't seem to do a great job on it to be fair. I'll attach the tiff file of the steps before I'd use the fringe killer in startools. Im completely at a loss for a moment and will have to step away for a few hours I think. Before fringe killer.tiff

Thank you I shall have a look at that. I can see what you mean with this, I have a shed load of stars with the purple fringing, it would be nice if there was a way of really tightening and the halo left behind. I find that the sv decon module tightens up the core and leaves a big halo no matter which decon mode I try. I will look at user notes in the forum. Edit..... now read the special instructions and will try it and see if it helps. 👍

Hi I am using star tools 1.8 and after using fringe killer in the filter module im left with a grey halo that i just cannot get rid of in any other module. Could someone please help me in bringing the halo tighter to the star core. My workflow to this point is: Autodev-Bin-Crop-Wipe-Autodev (with roi)-Contrast-HDR-Sharp-SV decon sv mode-Colour-Filter fringe killer. I have tried lots of combinations in the shrink module but cannot get rid of it. My setup is skywatcher 72ed az gti in eq mode, zwo 294 mcpro with 2 inch zwo ir uv cut filter, guiding with zwo f4 guidescope using an asiair pro. I shall add the full unstreched tif file when home from work. I have attached a screenshot of the issue and tif file of the process after using fringe killer. I should add I have used the astronomy tool reduce purple halos in photoshop cs4 version 11 and leaves a grey halo around the star making it look awful on nebulae. Startools after fringe killer.tiff

Sounds perfect 👍 I did mine like I have so to keep everything central and in line to the ota, which should keep balance better, in my way of thinking. So camera and guidecam wires stay in place along the ota. So only the eqdir cable and power cables are the ones needing to be carefully routed to stop snagging (if you see what I mean)

Mines not an asiair plus, but I mounted mine on the underside of the ota dovetail with an angled camera bracket.

Fantastic, can't wait to see the pics and your first light 👍

Yep true, better off in a osc setup I guess, not really looked into oag before.

With 0.8 rms on the oag sounds great if it can be tamed. At least it was a bright moony night, be much more frustrating with a new moon. Hopefully you can cure the disappearing stars with the oag 👍

Think it's back on in April as they always seem to have a break from Jan to Apr

Just an update on my tinkering now I've had two small sessions with my setup. The Dec behaves so much better now, after a calibration it soon snaps into place and the same goes for after a dither too. Now I shall have to do the same to the RA motor and mesh the brass gears tighter and maybe re-engage the spring loaded part, as the RA which before was great in comparison to the Dec is now needing a tinker. Had a go at imaging the owl nebula, very tiny and the moony not helping it.

55mm is the general rule of thumb for most zwo cameras, though mine is around 62mm for my set up. So hopefully 55mm will be the one for you and will sometimes be plus or minus 1 I've read before.

Keep the faith, it will get sorted for you. Like saud before the binding is a common issue and easily rectified, I'm sure flo will sort this for you and your az gti will perform admirably 👍

Is there supposed to be 55mm of back spacing between the FF and zwo 553 mc pro? I could be and probably wrong

I'd just send an email off to flo about it all if I were you and don't want to go tinkering with the mount. I had the binding issue and followed the video suggested by @ScouseSpaceCadetand mine was just the grub screw to tight rather than fitting a plastic washer. I just remembered on the leveling. I used to put a spirit level on my scope and get it level that way.

I used to get aot of that at high magnification, maybe to do with backlash or the gears and worms in the motor not meshing properly 🤔 superb view of moony 👌

I found the bubble levels to be out a fair bit too they aren't very well put in.

You can give flo an email anyway, they are very helpful and will do their best. When used to spin the mount around it would alter its level. After the az gti has done a good 2 or 3 star alignment it should get better and better after that with gotos.

Stunning image here! I know what you mean with the mojo thing but these images and times out under the stars make you forget it and enjoy astrophotography agsin, keep going your doing great 👍

Hi So just to be clear you are only connecting the laptop to the mount via the eq dir cable? And once using the synscan windows programme says no device found. Ignore this reply and use knobbys above 👍 Cheers Lee

Hi @DusknightbyFatma Hopefully someone will be along shortly who uses nina transferring from stellarmate. I use an asiair pro so cannot commernt to much. But I have seen this video before where he uses nina on his az gti mount, there maybe some nuggets of help in there. Cheers Lee

Ask away with your questions that's what this thread is for. I use the star adventurer mount and extension pillar that can be bought with the az gti. I use it in its unextended form to give me more stability and find its a good height when sitting down. Ideally I would like the skywatcher 3/8 inch stainless steel tripod to give even more stability to my set up. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-star-adventurer/sky-watcher-38-stainless-steel-tripod.html Portability is what I need living in a first floor flat and taking my set up outside but even the 3/8 tripod is doable for me. The type of scope depends on what you'd like to do with it be it visual or image and many threads on that in the forum. I used to do visual but went to the imaging side along with my wallet.

Hopefully the final update of my eggy star issue. I've added a 1mm T2 spacer to my imaging train and another slight adjust to the tilt adjuster and on this 3 min crudely stretched M51 the stars are much rounder now and I'm happy this has been mechanically sorted (it may need another thin spacer to be added in the future) Then whilst searching through my star tools software there's a heal function with warp or redistribute algorithm to help with any oval eggyness in images as long as it's not to bad, so tried this and wow. (I know it's cheating in the processing but mechanically it looks OK too) I'm so so happy now, after 2. 5 months of adjusting, purchasing parts, waiting for clear skies, stress, more adjustments and ballache I think I'm finally hopefully there. First image is the crudely stretched 3 min sub without the Startools heal function And the second is using the Startools repair module then redistribute algorithm. This thread is entwined with this thread about scope or sensor tilt Cheers Lee