SyedT

Hi all, Switching back to refractor imaging for the winter, I'm not that happy with the FOV of my FSQ85 and Atik 490EX. I'm looking to go for a mono CMOS/CCD which will give a wider FOV, e.g. capture the full extent of M31 and some of the surrounding area. I do have a 1.01x EDP flattener which I can use to cover larger sensors, and use 7x36mm unmounted Chroma LRGB/NB filters. Would appreciate any pointers as to which direction to go towards. I've looked at some full-frame sensors, particularly the ZWO 6200MM and Atik 16200, but have been put off by the fact that the filters and imaging circle won't be large enough to cover these properly. Cheers

You only tend to learn that over time. You'll find that every time you back to an image, you'll want to change something. That's OK, but as vlaiv has said, you should only push it as far as it lets you. I find the community on here very helpful if you ask for specific feedback, and that will certainly help you to process images better. As for the guiding, my rule is that if the stars are tight and there's no significant drift across the frames, then it's probably fine! The graph at times doesn't tell the full story.

Guiding has been a frustration at times. The Avalon M-Uno is great in terms of requiring fewer counterweights/no meridian flip/no backlash etc, but that comes at the cost of being more susceptible to wind and even the slightest imbalance. I've been running 300s subs in luminance for M31 and that's lifting the histogram easily off to the right. For my NB subs, I'm just about getting the histogram off the left edge to avoid clipping, but 600s subs as a minimum would be ideal, particularly as my filters are 3 nm. Annoyingly enough, pretty much all of last night's subs came through fine (M31 Lum 300s) despite it being pretty windy!

Welcoming back an old friend... Despite the winds, the mount held its own and I've managed to use all of my subs from tonight! (some may go in the bin later, but let's not go there)

Thanks for the feedback! I was aiming for 600 second subs as a minimum since that's what I tend to go for in NB, but a combination of poor seeing and therefore bad guiding meant I couldn't do that and had to settle for 300 seconds. I guess the next step would be to take a bunch of longer subs and add them on.

I find the Wizard Nebula fascinating and have wanted to capture it for a long time. The shape is so well-defined, and the surrounding Ha nebulosity adds further to its eeriness. I was quite surprised by the amount of detail provided by the SII. As always, I welcome any advice from the experts on the forum! I tried to lay off the noise reduction to avoid losing detail, hopefully it worked. Some of the frames were taken under not so ideal skies, so I feel adding more integration time would help with noise reduction etc. For now, 26.5 hours is more than enough! Equipment: Atik 490EX Atik EFW2 Chroma NB filters Primaluce Lab Esatto 3” Robotic Focuser Takahashi FSQ85-EDX Takahashi EDP Flattener 1.01x Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 + Tecnosky 70 mm guidescope Avalon M-Uno QHYCCD PoleMaster Pegasus Ultimate Powerbox Intel NUC Mini PC Acquisition: Ha: 77 x 300s = 385 min = 6h25min OIII: 120 x 300s = 600 min = 10h SII: 120 x 300s = 600 min = 10h Processed in AstroPixelProcessor & Pixinsight Bortle 5/6 skies

When I was using a ZWO ASI 1600MM, I found that it was very sensitive to even slight changes in settings/stray light. You're doing the right thing by using flat darks, as the low exposure time for bias settings can cause the camera to behave unpredictably from my experiences. I would suggest you check your settings, and even if they're fine, to re-take the flats with the rest of the scope/camera covered up to ensure there's no stray light entering the imaging train.

What ADU/histogram value did you aim for when taking the flats? It looks like the flats are over-correcting.

Welcome to the rabbit hole, and be prepared to empty your bank account!

Thanks Ram, very kind of you to say so! Thank you Alan, appreciate it! Vibrant is exactly what I was going for, I'm happy you think so!

Thank you, appreciate it! I think I'm finally happy with it! (he says...) I did try and get some Ha but was having issues with tracking at the time, so couldn't manage long enough subs unfortunately. I've seen the Ha versions and they look stunning! I've switched to my refractor for now, but when the Edge comes out next I'll be sure to grab some Ha!

I had previously posted a completed version of M101, but had not been 100% happy with the background/contrast present within the image. I could finally be bothered to try again, and here is the result! I feel happier with it as I feel the dust lanes in the centre are more punchy and better saturated, and the overall contrast and background has improved. Would welcome any feedback from the experts, and hope everyone's skies are less cloudy than mine these days!

I do everything on my laptop with a GTX 970M, and this upgrade made a huge difference! The author has done an excellent job figuring this out.

A couple more things: 1. Starnet - Excellent for creating starless masks, and has a Pixinsight module. Download here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/starnet/ 2. Scripts - Custom scripts created by Herbert Walter, including some excellent sharpening and star mask tools. Download here: http://www.skypixels.at/pixinsight_scripts.html

I've seen that some users are using the Starnet module for Pixinsight for starless images/masks. I came across a way to dramatically increase Starnet's speed (from 3 minutes to 30 seconds in my case). This only works if you are on Windows 64-bit with an nVidia GPU on board. Here's the link: https://darkskies.space/pixinsight-starnet-cuda/ Hope someone finds it useful!

Star Alignment is a way for your telescope to determine where it is in the sky more accurately i.e. it's pointing where it should be. Platesolving is a much more robust alternative to this, but of course for this you need to plug the mount into a laptop and run a platesolving program. Star alignment on the other hand can be done from the hand controller or your PC.

https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software-drivers Install the Native ASI Cameras driver, that's the base driver needed to operate all ASI cameras. If you want to control the camera in a third-party program e.g. SGPro, then you'll need to install the ASI Cameras ASCOM driver further down the list, alongside the EFW ASCOM driver below that.

I imagine a powered port can handle devices requiring more current e.g. hard drives, phone charging etc.

I have a laptop from 2015 which doesn't have the colour-coding, but the USB 3.0 ports are definitely 3.0, confirmed by the faster hard drive transfer speeds etc. An easy way to test it would be to compare hard drive transfer speeds between the ports.

Absolutely. Got the binoculars out yesterday, and caught a glimpse of Jupiter and Saturn, plus got liveviews of Mars and the Moon using my scope. Just incredible!

Thanks! I wasn't a fan of that tinge to be honest, but I was imaging through haze/thin clouds, and my subs were getting washed out because of the moon. Plus the rising sun didn't help! Some days you just can't win, but I'm glad I managed to get a full set of LRGB at least!

Thanks!!

Quick and dirty LRGB process done! I have 50x5s luminance frames but only used 10 of these due to the whole comet alignment issue. 10 x 5 seconds RGB each. Will look more into comet registration etc later on and process it that way, but for now I just wanted to see a quick result.

First comet capture for me! Processing is going to be hilariously bad as I have no clue about it! Single 5 second luminance sub below:

You have no idea. Return it before you slide any further! To be honest if you've made your mind up to do AP then you're already 80% down the slope anyway. 🤣