Budgie1

Hopefully it'll help but I haven't tried it on the likes of M31, I've only use this method on nebula to date. You may have to do a careful stretch to try & control the core.

I'm not in front of my PixInsight PC at the moment, so details may not be completely correct. 1. Use PixelMath to add the images together is the basic way to combine them all. Although it's a bit rough & ready. 2. Use the Image Integration tool in PI. I think you'll need to make sure all the images are star aligned (and maybe cropped) for this but I think it gives a better result than PixelMath. 3. Restack all the subs using WBPP but use either a common filename (the proper name of this escapes me just now) or change the exposure limit setting to something like 300, so it stacks all of them into one master, instead of dividing them into individual masters based on the exposure length. Hopefully others will help to clarify the above in more detail.

When I adjusted the backlash on my EQ5, I removed the drive motors first and then adjusted the wormgear using the grub screw. Careful when you tighten up the wormdrive casing bolts because these can alter the backlash and usually tighten it. Once I thought I had the right backlash set, I would then manually rotate the axis through 360° using the gear on the end of the wormdrive and check for binding. If this was okay, then I;d put the drive motor back on and set the gear mesh between the motor and the drive gear. It's all about taking you time and making fine alterations. This video may help. start from 22 minutes in:

Now that I've tried the Askar Duo-band, L-eNhance & L-eXtreme, I think, for me in my Bortle 2 area, it would be the L-eNhance. There's nothing wrong with the other two, I just feel the L-eNhance gives me more of what I was looking for. Like you, I wanted something to allow me more imaging time when the Moon was dominating and the L-eNhance does that for a reasonable price. Note: This is my personal filter preference, other filter preferences are available!

I do see the halos occasionally, both with the Optolong & Askar filters, but I'm normally able to remove them. StarXTerminator tends to leave the halos on the background and I can use the CloneStamp tool in PI to remove them.

It is the £199 2" version I have. If it's just so you can image around the full Moon then you may be better off with the L-eNhance. It's cheaper than the Askar, works nearly as well around the full Moon (as long as you don't image too close to the Moon) and gives you little more Hb wave band. I tend to use the L-eNhance more than the Askar these days, still with the same gain & offset settings though.

If you mean THIS ONE, then I got one from FLO in one of their sales early last year. I got the 2" version to replace the 1.25" L-eXtreme I had when I started using a filter draw, instead of screwing the filter into the 11mm spacer on the front of my ASI294MC. Overall I'm happy with the results from the filter and think it's a good alternative to the L-eXtreme. It has the same 7nm pass band but does suffer from red halos around the odd star. Calibration is fine if you go with a gain of 200 and offset 30, these settings seems to sort out the issues with the Flats. Here's a couple of image taken with the Askar Duo-Band: 3h 32m on the Heart Nebula. 5h 12m on the Flaming Star Nebula.

Is the image file you've uploaded the stacked image, or have you already performed DBE, BackgroundExtraction, PhotometricColourCalibration and SCNR on the image before you uploaded it? I ask because it seems to be lacking some colour, mainly the red is very weak and I would expect more red to show from the centre of M82. If you have worked on the image before upload, could you upload the raw stacked image? The use of Curves with RGB selected and fine manipulation of the top right of the curve can make the centre of M81 more uniform, but the centre is very bright in your image and there's very little detail in there. If you remove the stars using StarNet2, you could create masks to isolate M81 & M82 to allow you to work them separately. This may help you control each galaxy better,

The halos are being caused by the filter. It's a common effect of the likes of the L-eNhance & L-eXtreme filters and I get the same halos with these filters on my ED80 DS Pro scope. Fortunately they're normally left behind when you do a star removal process with StarNet2 or StarXTerminator (if you have either of these), and you can remove the halos from the background image. As said above, using these OSC narrow band filters on galaxies and reflection nebula is generally not a good idea because you're blocking some of the main wavelengths you need for these targets. There's nothing wrong with combining data taken with & without the filter, to enhance some of the Ha in the likes of the Horsehead nebula. So try M45 & M31 again, but just use a UV/IR cut filter, and see what a difference it makes.

I followed the disc brake method using the same parts listed in THIS THREAD. My build thread is HERE and the only difference between my pier and the original is that I only used 3x 16mm threaded studs instead of 4. For drilling the holes, I used a neighbours pillar drill and it wasn't that difficult (as long as the drill is sharp!).

From what I could work out; the JPEG version is like a thumbnail & is used for the likes of the ASIAir app & ASIStudio for quick preview of the images, rather than opening the full FITS file.

I didn't have an issues with either of mine. One thing to mention with the upgraded Sky Watcher or Astro Essentials focuser is that there's no screw thread on the end of the focuser tube. So you can't just screw the FF/FR onto it like you can with the standard focuser. I got a push-fit adaptor from FLO, which screws onto the front of the FF/FR and then slides into the focuser.

Before I bought the upgraded focuser, I did some work on the original focus tube to flatten the friction surface. It may be worth trying to see if yours would work better from it. Here's a video to show you what to do, note the comment about not putting too much pressure on the tube with the vice!

That's some amount of Ha you've captured! Welcome back to the Deep Side.

I've got the Sky Watcher version of THIS focuser on my 80ED DS Pro & 100ED DS Pro. The Astro Essentials version is the same thing but a little cheaper. I forgot to add that they both have ZWO EAF fitted.

My Canon EOS 1300D also uses the USB Mini as well.

It's only the M33 image I'm not that taken with. Thanks to Wim's suggestions, I know how I may improve it next time and thinking about it, some of the issue may be with the cheap ZWO LRGB filter set I got, so I'm on the lookout for a better quality set. The issue with the integration time was mainly weather related and rushing to get something in the bag. M33 was an experiment to see what to do with mono LRGB data but it took much longer than intended to get any data. Dodging clouds and nights when I get 3 or 4 images and then it clouds over gets frustrating and I wanted to move on to another NB target when I did have the chance of a good session. So this one wasn't taken seriously and was rushed. Taking 3 minute subs meant I wasn't throwing away too many due to clouds for the LRGB image. On the Ha image, I was using 5 minute subs because the sky was clearer, I just didn't have enough time on the target before the trees go in the way. I will got more on this one, now I know I can see it better. I'll also have to try using 10 minute subs and see how I get on with it. Thanks for the tips.

Thanks Wim, I knew about making the luminance about double the RGB, but not about using bin 2x2 for teh RGB, so everything was captured at bin 1x1. But now I know for next time. I had a go with the synthetic Lum and trying to boost the RGB. There's a green hue right of centre but it looks a little better. This was my first LRGB image, so I learn a little each time.

Since getting an Atik 428EX camera & SHO filters from a fellow SGL member + filter wheel and LRGB filters to go with it, I haven't had many clear nights to work with. So practice with the mono setup has been limited. I started with an SHO image of the centre of the Heart Nebula, so I decided my second project would be a broadband target and chose M33. I started this on the 15th December and managed a good set of Luminance subs (20x 180s), then the 25th December I got 20x 180s Red filter and 4x 180s Green. On the 31st December I managed another 9x 180s Green, with 4 more on the 17th January and finally finished the project on the 18th Jan with 3 more green and 10x blue. None of the nights was perfect, with passing clouds or thin high cloud, but this is what I ended up with and I may add more blue data to it, just even things up. It's alright, but I'm not overly impressed. Next was NGC7635, The Bubble Nebula, where I went back to SHO and managed to get three hours in total over a couple of nights. I'm still working on this one but I'm pleased with what I've got to date. Finally, IC434, The Horsehead. Now that I have the observatory to image from, it's also meant that I get a better view of Orion at this time of year. Before I was lucky to get a couple of hours between trees on the South side of the garden. With the pier in the observatory, the scope is higher and slightly further West, so I get about 3.5 hours per night now. Sadly, I've only managed 50 minutes of Ha data so far, but I went ahead and processed it anyway. These were all using the Atik 428EX connected to a Sky Watcher 80ED DS Pro with 0.85 FF/FR on the HEQ5. Stacked & processed in PI. C's & C's welcomed, as always.

SH2-136 The Ghost Nebula. Taken over two nights, 18th October & 13th November 2022. A total of 5h 30m of 180s exposures with Evostar 100ED DS Pro with 0.85 FF/FR and ASI294MC Pro set to -10°C, gain 200 & offset 30. Processing with PI.

ENS Optical is a good link to keep hold of for second hand astro kit. They currently have a HEQ5 in stock for £850 delivered or £800 if you collect it.

You can make your own, either out of something like card or using a 3D printer. If you Google "bahtinov mask generator" there are a lot of resources available, including video tutorials and the Bahtinov Mask generator will allow you to produce a mask to your own size specifications.

I used to de-noise right before the stretch but I found that the later processes introduced a little more noise into the image, so it really needed another de-noise later on. So, before BXT came out, I started leaving the de-noise process until last and that removed all the noise I wanted. NXT just makes the process easier.

+1 for the above approach. I run BTX right before the stretch and NTX after everything else, so that it takes care of any noise introduced by processes after the stretch.

This is sort of a final/New Year update because most of the fettling has been done and now it's just the odd tweak that I'm doing. I'd been threatening for months to get the hinged weather boards on the rear wall of the roof and I finally got around to this in November. These stop any driving wind or rain from entering the obsy, while still allowing the rear of the roof to clear the wall, so here's the weather boards in the closed & open positions. With the expansion of the wood during the winter months, I was getting issues with the rear of the roof catching on the aluminium runners, so I raised the roof another 10mm. This allows enough clearance over the runners, back wall and the scope when it's in the Park position. For safety on cold frosty nights, I've installed some anti-slip decking strips in front of the door. These work really well and I have no slips during the ice & snow in December. I think that's about it. I've decided not to install mains power into the obsy, the current extension lead from the house is working well and saves the expense of getting a Sparky to install it. I've been using it, when the skies are clear, and currently have the SkyWatcher 80ED DS Pro on the mount with my newly acquired Atik 428EX & filter wheel, my first exploration into Mono imaging. The obsy is a great asset when it comes to setup times and I'm not so worried if I only get an hour or two of imaging in an evening because I haven't spent 3/4 of an hour setting up. I hope this has been a useful and interesting thread and I hope it helps others in the future. Finally, here's the obsy in use today and thanks for reading the thread.