rnobleeddy

Where does it say that? In fact, I'd suggest these filters are perfect for DSLRs!

+1 for -20

2/3 is a decent ball park, but if the seller thinks its an easy sale and/or it's in super good condition, 80% isn't crazy.

I haven't used a camera lens in the cold, but have managed to get away with a (homemade) few shield and no heater on my guidescope this winter.

The problem I have is that the focusing algorithm on Ekos is pretty weak - it works well maybe 50% of the time, but has loads of ways of going wrong - so it's not that the scheduling is an issue, rather I don't trust it to focus well. Otherwise I'm actually been very pleasantly surprised how well it works - and the focus issue could probably be solved by experimenting more with the settings - I haven't, because it's not like we have an excess of clear nights!

I got a similar but worse noise from my older EQ6. Mine went away by adjusting the motors so the gears meshed more closely. I'd guess this just sounds like resonance - I don't imagine it's going to cause any long term issues.

I think you have to find a way to minimise setup time. I've decided just to leave my mount under a cover in the garden. It doesn't appear to suffer too much, but even if it does, I'd rather get more use out of it. I built a platform that I mounted to my OTA that holds a Raspberry pi and accessories and all the cables. So it takes maybe 5 minutes to attach the scope and balance it, 5 minutes to get the power setup, and an optional 5 minutes to tweak the PA. A decent focus motor helps - so usually I can be imaging about 15 minutes after it's dark enough to PA. I also think you have to be a little bit optimistic about the weather. At least where I live, my recommendation is to uninstall Clear Out because it's insanely pessimistic. The met office app is much better.

Does the handset has a ST4 port guide port? If it's red, your're OK. If it's black, you'll need a red one or to get the soldering iron out! That's probably the easiest route - as far as I know, there's no way to connect the handset/mount you have to a PC directly. Is there any reason to choose that camera specifically? For example, the ZWO planetary cams all have guide ports and are well reviewed for planetary imaging too.

+1 for no issues. Haven't bought a lot of telescope other than some svbony bits and bobs, but I've bought the odd electronic item or bike accessories and they've generally been fine. On the flip side, I'm sure some things are too good to be true!

My EQ6 has lived under a cover in the garden for over a month now and doesn't appear to suffer too much. The counter weights are clearly going to end up rusty and the (already battered) tripod probably won't last forever, but the mount head is pretty well protected and presumably full of grease where it matters!

Good point. I'm not sure. I was under the impression we had tariff free trade with the EU but once again, my definition must be wrong!

I'd hope that in future there'll be some more options to include the fees upfront - especially as I **think** VAT only kicks in at £39 and so many astroboot items would be fine.

Just in case any one ends up here in the future - baader state (https://www.baader-planetarium.com/en/filters/filter-sets/baader-full-frame-ccd-narrowband-filterset-i-(h-alpha-7--oiii--sii).html?___SID=U) The filters I have do have the directional arrow on them, but with them swapped, the flats still look like this. Albeit they're stretched - the difference is not as big as it looks, but the abrupt nature of the circle does lead to issues processing as whilst this does largely calibrate out, it's not perfect. Anyway, mainly to help the next person who has this issue, I have 3 possible things to try next: - change the CCD to filter spacing - I can do this by a few mm by changing the way the camera mounts to the filterwheel, but I'll need another adapter to get the right backfocus, so I'll try the others first - try changing filter/coma corrector - make a small mask to cover the filter edge - https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/582053-problem-with-narrow-band-filter-reflections/ Edit - the paper mask did not fix the issue!

The only thing I'd have to add is that there are things you can do with a mono camera that you can't do with a OSC. Having tried a dual band filter + OSC for a number of targets this year, it's fair to say that you get some good bi-colour results (like the veil) and lots of high contrast red nebula, but it doesn't come close to what can be achieved with the false color narrowband images (if you like that kind of thing). So I'd probably take the convenience of OSC if I was imaging a galaxy or a cluster or reflection nebula, but mono for emission nebula. I've chopped and changed, but I do think it's worth asking yourself how useful that 30 minutes of OSC data really is - it certainly feels better on the night, but in my experience, those aren't making the cut when I choose my top X targets of the year.

I understand the frustration. It's been fine this last year because there's not much else going on, but I do worry about how often I'll get the gear out if/when some form of socialising resumes! That said, I don't know if I live in a good spot or am lucky or less fussy, but there's been at least two clear nights here in January that I've made it out and at least another 1.5 that I've missed. When people say it's been cloudy for a month, is that literally no clear skies?

Interesting! I can barely find documentation on the mark ii. Either way, once the scope is outside I'll refocus without the cc and see if the reflection dissaappears. It's only present on Ha/S filters and calibrated out fine on the Ha data, so presumably could be very setup dependent. There's a thread on another popular forum where similar kit produced the same odd circle. The only thing I really have control over is the filter direction - apparently some baader filters are intended to be used in a specific direction and it can be worth flipping them to see if reflections improve.

Thanks and sorry, should have been more specific! I'm running in to the strange circle on flats issue that is visible above. Not using a 383 but the same sized sensor, with 36mm unmounted filters Based on research it looks like it's probably an issue with the older baader mpcc 2 lacking a reflective coating, but only shows up when using it with narrowband filters. There's a couple of other threads on the internet that seem to have the same issue, but no resolution. It's probably easieat if I try to either change the filters or the cc.

No idea if you're still here but I've run in to exactly the same problem so wondering if you ever found a solution?

Despite finding a massive finger mark on the coma corrector, cleaning did nothing. I realized I can't easily remove the CC as I won't be able to refocus in the house. However, I did discover I don't see the issue on luminance/colour flats. Some additional screen grabs are below - looks like it's only a serious issue on Ha and S filters, but it's slightly offset for S. I've also attached the final processed image - it's my first attempt at narrowband so whilst I'm sure there's a lot to improve, I'm generally happy. Perhaps I can just live with it calibrating it out? Luminance Red Ha O S

Filters are 36mm unmounted. It's 25mm from the sensor to the front of the EFW body - I'd guess the filters may be around 15mm or so. AFAIK the only control I have over this is by changing the way the camera connects to the EFW - it appears to come with 2 different adapters.

Just a quick bump to see if anyone made any progress with this? I'm familiar enough with the underlying technology, so the barrier is just going to be data. I'll have a go at a couple, but I haven't found any tool that does a good job of picking out stars + diffraction spikes, so it's going to be slow going!

Got a mono camera + filter wheel + filters and just about happy with it - except I appear to have introduced some weird reflection or stray light source that's bright enough to show up on the lights if they're stretched in just the right way. Fortunately(?) it's also present on the flats and so calibrates out to some extent, but does lead to noticeable residual noise in the S data which prevents the S data being pushed too strongly when processing. I've got some time later so I'll try attacking the problem systematically, but wondering if anyone has seen something similar before? Kit is, from OTA on : 130PDS, Baader MPCC v2, varilock spacer, baader filters in a QHYCFW2-M-UltraSlim, QHY163M. Flats are taken with an old samsung table - has worked well in the past. My hypothesis is that this must be caused by light (as the dark is clean), and is happening before the filter, because it appears to be present on all the filters, but is much stronger on Ha. It looks pretty central so I'm betting against dirt? I haven't necessarily got the CC spacing correctly yet but I don't expect that should cause this kind of issue? Ha flat O flat S flat Stretched single dark frame (300s) Stretched single light (not sure if this will be easy to see - but the circle is there) Stretched stacked/calibrated S data (the H data calibrate well, the O data somewhere in-between)

Using a similar setup, I found M33 didn't really work until I had at least 3 hours of 5 minute subs, with relatively little moon. On the star bloat - if the astro mod removed both filters, did you use a IR cut filter?

I'm not aware that it's possible for the sensor to get so hot that it's damaged. It's just that the hotter it is, the noisier it is.

If your gear works well on Linux then that'll be fine, so it's personal preference. If I was starting from scratch then if I wanted the value/portability of the raspberry pi I'd make sure I bought gear that worked with Indi. If I was going to use a proper laptop anyway, I'd probably choose Windows and so not have to worry about compatibility.