Clarkey

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

And think of this: a luminance filter passes R, G and B simultaneously ,with no way of focusing separately between wavelengths,  yet it gives us our most resolved layer all the same.

Very good point - I'd never thought of it like that.

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

I'm using well colour-corrected optics (Tak FSQ106N and TEC140)

Or you do what us poor people do and use mirrors😂. 

I try to do similar, particularly if the forecast is a bit iffy. With the Baader Steeltrack focuser I am pretty confident of not needing to refocus on a filter change - just use the offsets and refocus on FWHM. Usually this is a set of about 3 sequences over a night.

7 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

I'm enjoying using the CMOS-OSC-RASA combination

A RASA is on my (long) AP shopping list. The trouble is that the wife has nicked the list! 🤣

11 minutes ago, abmwinnoch said:

Sorry where is that USB setting? I meant to try that and forgot.

I have not done anything with this setting, but looking at a post on Cloudy Nights it would appear that there are problems with some kits using USB3. However, this was an other thread so may no longer be relevant.

From the 'smeared' look of the star shapes - almost like coma - I would suggest something in the image train is out of alignment. It may also be a focus issue too. I assume the whole image looks like this? It is a bit odd that an ED80 is giving a red colour.

I would suggest setting everything up in daylight and check it then. Much easier than fault finding at night.

The only time I have had any problems with NINA and the camera is due to a dodgy connection somewhere. So an intermittent USB fault. In some cases I have had the camera stuck in the 'idle' state but will not do anything. Sometime just disconnecting and reconnecting the camera cable has worked. Other times I have had to restart everything from scratch which is a real pain. Sometimes you can connect one of the simulated cameras then disconnect and reconnect the real camera and it seems to restart. Also, try going from live view to imaging can work.

This camera issue is the only real negative I have found with NINA (along with the meaningless error messages). However, once working the benefits do outweigh the drawbacks.

5 hours ago, Jamgood said:

Cloudsville!

Pahh! I live in 'sideways rain and floodsville'🤣

I think the worse thing about Penrith is that it is in the shadow of multiple hills (lakes, pennines and Scottish highlands) so the weather is so hard to predict.

Given the limited carrying capacity of the az gti why not look at a dobsonian? At the 5kg limit I do not think you will get much better than you already have for visual. You can always use the goto mount as a guide to where to point the dob.

1 hour ago, CloudMagnet said:

a couple of weeks

This would be better than my current run of clear nights. Autumn tends to be once per month at best!

10 hours ago, scotty38 said:

I assumed the OP meant a move to OSC full stop. The RGB filters just being more info to what they used on the mono camera rather than what they will use on OSC.

OK I understand now.

I currently image in mono, but due to the poor weather I am seriously considering OSC. I currently have a 600D which is OK, but I am thinking of a new astro OSC. I have not done it yet - but it is certainly in the back of my mind.

On 13/11/2021 at 14:30, iwols said:

what their thoughts were thanks

Why would you want to do this? I can understand narrowband filters, but limiting to RGB on a Bayer matrix does not really make sense. You loose all the advantages of OSC and mono. If you want to limit the data just process the RGB channels separately.

Or am I missing something?

As suggested the James Ritson ones are a good start. I would also suggest the Astroflat Pro plugin for AF as well. Good for noise reduction and colour balancing.

23 hours ago, CloudMagnet said:

could look at doing some star reduction

This has been star reduced quite a bit - both with Starnet and a star mask. I did try to reduce them further but it looked too unnatural. It is one of the problems I find with wide field images - I need to find a better way of managing the star density.

This is my first attempt with a recently purchased FMA180. It should have been a slightly wider field than shown but dew to a failed plate solve the other half of the 'spider' got chopped. This is a total of about 120 x 3 minute subs using a Canon 600D, guided and dithered. Conditions were not too good with quite a bit of thin high cloud so it is a bit hazy. This is first try with a OSC camera for quite some time and it is also the first true widefield image I have done. (Most of my recent imaging has been mono). I need to work on my star masking and colours - but as a 'first' attempt I am not too displeased. The processing was done in APP, Starnet and Affinity.

From various reviews I was concerned about CA and poor star shapes with this small scope, but from what I can tell the results are pretty good. The stars are good shapes to the edge of field (albeit on an APS-C sensor) and there was no real evidence of blue fringing.

Any guidance on OSC and very widefield image processing gratefully received.

Thanks for looking.

On 06/11/2021 at 14:10, ONIKKINEN said:

was looking at the Baader diamond steeltrack

Another vote for the steeltrack. I have two and can't fault them. Both used for AP.

As stated above, the TS mono rail is very poor. Slips like skates on ice.

15 minutes ago, bottletopburly said:

sometimes you need patience and self control

And therein lies the problem 🤣

1 hour ago, Jimmy Rocket said:

Yes I do primarily but hoping there may be a few DSO's I could have a go at. 

The 224 is a great planetary camera but due to the small chip size is limited for DSO's. Also for longer exposures with a mak you would really need guiding and a good equatorial mount.

I use NINA as it has a very good framing tool where you can set you exact framing and rotation. It is the main reason I use NINA over APT. I also prefer the interface. It will also platesolve to the location you have framed and tell you how much to turn the camera.

Personally if it was me I would go for the greater aperture. The Omegon will collect much more light than the skywatcher given they are both the same focal length. I don't know much about the quality of Omegon kit, but as a dobsonian there is not much to go wrong and the mirrors are probably made in the same factory anyway.

I am not a visual observer - so you might be better waiting for someone more knowledgeable to give their opinion.

15 hours ago, jock1958 said:

Also do they cause warm air currents in front of the lens?

I guess that technically the answer is 'yes'. Always seems a bit odd to cool everything down before use, just to warm it up again! As long as the dew heater is set as low as possible to prevent dew but not so high to create significant air currents, the effect is minimal and better than dew.

WRT location, I put mine adjacent to the lens.

On 01/11/2021 at 17:42, powerlord said:

and got 7 1/2 hours of NB on IC1396!

It's great when the weather plays nice😃

Great image. FWIW I prefer the first one - not quite so colourful and more 'natural'. I have done the elephants trunk in RGB but this will encourage me to try it in NB.

I was hoping to image this last year but due to poor weather from October until January it never happened. Eventually I set up on Wednesday night and managed to get a few hours data between clouds. Unfortunately the meridian flip failed to plate solve so the total integration was pretty low at around 3.5 hours.

First image taken with a TS Photon 6" F4 and ZWO 1600mm. Narrowband with ZWO filters - hence the nice blue halo's... Not quite sure of the colours, but I'm struggling to get a version I like.

Constructive comment welcome as always.

FWIW, if you are still struggling there is still the option of making a small secondary heater from resistors or nichrome (or you could buy one). I made one for my 200p and it works fine.

As for glue the suggestion above is good - I used a very sharp knife and made butted joint with superglue. So far so good.

I think the answer to 1 and 3 is 'yes'. At least prevent dew. In terms of length I think a guide tends to be about 1.5 times the aperture. I made one from a very cheap foil backed camping mat for my smaller newtonian and it has worked fine, even on pretty damp nights.

Is there are 'jealous' emoji?

Just to agree with some of the earlier comments. I would say a 150 rather than 200mm. I have both and the smaller one is much better for moving about. I started with a 200p and an HEQ5. The HEQ5 is great for the money - especially once belt driven and tuned a bit. Using the 200p for visual was a pain in the backside. I was permanently between and ladder and my knees to see anything! I would also suggest 150mm is a better size for the HEQ5 when imaging.