Budgie1

The editor is normally a What You See Is What You Get style but there is a Preview button at the top of the text window, last on the right.

There are Pros & Cons, even to dark sites. I'm also one of the those 0.01% who live in a Bortle 2 area and the skies are fantastic. On the flip side; I also live in one of the wettest parts of the UK, with only 5 rainless days through Jan & Feb this year (that's rainless, not clear!). Between mid-May and mid-August we have Twilight all night, so it's too light to trying any imaging. By the time it does get dark enough to image, we're well into the season of Clan MacMidge, and that can last into October! Would I change location? Nah! Oh, and if you haven't experienced Clan MacMidge, here's a wee video for you, see if you can watch it without scratching:

Not really helpful if you're using StarTools but, I ran your image through PixInsight to see that I could get with the data and here's the result.

I thought I would enter this one as well. This has NGC3718 as the main focus with NGC3729 above it and ARP322, a galaxy chain, to the left. Subs taken on the 31st March and I used 1h21m 180s subs, taken with ASI294MC Pro on an Evostar 100ED DS Pro with 0.85 FR/FF. Stacked in DSS & processed in PI.

I put your stacked image through my normal workflow in PixInsight and there is colour in there, but it needed dragging out. As Vlaiv has already said, there is something not right with the stars. I my processing they have a blue halo on the right of the nucleus and the focus seems to be a bit out. A UV/IR cut filter will help with the halos and I would advise going for a mid-range one. The cheaper ones don't always do what you expect them too. With DSS stacking, you don't need to ditch the subs with satellite trails (star trails yes). In the Settings > Stacking Settings > Lights > Set the Stacking Mode to Kappa-Sigma Clipping and leave the other settings at default. This will remove the satellite trails for you. If you want to remove the green cast, which is normal on OSC camera because the bayer pattern has 2x green to 1x red & 1x blue, then on the same setting page as above, look towards the bottom of the page and click on "RGB Channels Background Calibration" > make sure "RGB Channels Background Calibration" is ticked > click "Options" > on the new tab "Calibration Method" should be set to "Rational" and set "RGB Background Calibration Method" to Minimum. Here's what I managed to get using a quick process of your stack:

Thanks Dave, I think it's the advantage of no Moon and Bortle 2 skies. The only filter I used was a Astronomik L-2 UV+IR cut filter on the camera.

Had to do a bit of cloud dodging last night and I only had about 3 hours of imaging time. With it looking like the last clear night for a while (weather & work wise) I wanted to get a couple of targets done. I'm not normally one for target hopping, but needs must, so I didn't get the time on each target that I would have liked but here's what I got: First I had a go at NGC 3718, a new target for me and one I'll go back too later. I got 1h 21m of 180s exposures with the ASI294MC Pro at gain 200 & offset 30. I went for the 200 gain on this as a bit of an experiment, to see how it differed from my normal 120 gain, and it wasn't too back given the time on target. Second, I got 32 minutes on M3 at the same camera settings (only one set of flats required ) Both were stacked in DSS & processed with PI, with a final tweak with Topaz De-Noise AI. C's & C's welcomed, as always.

They are, naked eye Milky Way in detail is great. The downside is that at this latitude I have to stop imaging between May & August because we get Twilight All Night. I guess there's pros & cons wherever you live. Enjoy those skies!

The last time I imaged the Iris was with my astro modified DSLR and I used ISO 800 at 180s exposures and it came out fine, picking up lots of the black dust. With the sensitivity of your ASI2600MC, you should be fine using 180s and if the focus goes off or there's high cloud then you're loosing less exposure time for each sub.

A couple of things to check: When you switch the mount on, send it to the Home Position on the hand set and see if it moves from the scope up, counter weights down position. If it does move and does not stop in the normal Home Position, undo the RA & DEC clutches and manually move it to the correct position. This is just to make sure the mount knows where it's starting from. Make sure you tell the handset that we're now in BST/DST (assuming you're in the UK ).

If you've not had a go at it before, what about NGC2264 and take in the Cone & Fox Fur nebulas, with the Christmas Tree Cluster thrown in. I've just finished this target and it works well with a duel-band filter, although I'm in a Bortle 2 area.

Exposure wise, I haven't really reduced it after changing from gain 120/offset 8 to gain 200/offset 30. This past week I've been imaging with 240s & 300s exposures using the Askar Duo-band filter on the ASI294 MC and have got some good images out of it. As @Adam J mentioned, make sure the flats are the same gain & offset as the lights, I know on APT I sometimes forget that the Flats Assistant uses the Bulb gain setting, which I normally leave set to 300 because I use it for finding the target & plate solving. I also make sure the flats & flat-darks are shot at the same temps as the lights and I aim for ADU of 26,000 +/- 500.

I checked the linear version and there's no star trailing or back focus star stretch in any of the corners. Must be close stars. The stars in this image were removed, processed separately, reduced and sharpened before being added back in. So it may be a remnant of that.

The last few clear nights I've switched from the Evostar 80ED DS Pro to my Evostar 100ED DS Pro for Galaxy Season but I've still got a few nebula in view. This is the centre of IC1805, Heart Nebula, taken on the 26th March using 3h32m of 4 minutes subs. The kit was the 100ED with 0.85 RF/FF with my ASI294 MC Pro fitted with a 2" Askar Duo-Band filter. The camera was cooled to -10°C and I used a gain 200 and offset 30. Stacked in DSS using Darks, Flats & Flat-Darks then processed in PI, with final noise reduction using Topaz De-Noise on the starless background. I'm really pleased with the way this one has come out, with good detail and a nice colour contrast. C's & C's welcomed.

Previously when I've been imaging M101, I've always stuck with that galaxy. But last night I noticed NGC5474 on the edge of the frame and repositioned to get that one in the image as well, mainly so I had something to enter in the Galaxy Clusters competition , but also for something different to the usual M101. This is 3h35m of 5 minute subs, stacked in DSS and processed in PI, with final noise reduction in Topaz De-Noise. The kit was: Evostar 100ED DS Pro with 0.85 FR/FF HEQ5 ASI294MC Pro cooled to -10°C, gain 120, offset 8 and UV/IR cut filter. Captured with APT and guiding with PHD2 C's & C's welcomed, as always.

When I've imaged M101 in the past, I've just concentrated on the main galaxy. Last night (25th March) I went further afield to capture M101, NGC5474 & NGC5477 in the same frame. Taken with Evostar 100ED DS Pro, 085 FR/FF and ASI294MC Pro. This is 3h35m of 300s exposures at gain 120 and offset 8. I've added an annotated version for completeness.

I tried the same thing and it didn't work, so I can only assume the USB ports are like an un-powered USB hub. I already had a 3-pin USB charger hub, so used that for powering the bands. Alternatively, Dew Control will make 12v bands to the size you want and fit them with a 2.1mm plug so you can power them off the 12v outlets on the ASIAir Plus.

I added some more data to the Cone Nebula last night, only this time it was standard OSC with only the UV/IR cut filter, to get some RGB stars. I stacked the NB & RGB versions separately in PI and took them both through the workflow to the get them non-linier (stretched) stage. I then removed the stars using StarNet2, keeping the RGB stars for adding in later and combined them with PixelMath using 60% NB & 40% RGB. Then went on to use Curves etc. The final thing was to take the Luminance from the NB version and add that as a luminance layer to add detail. This added a bit of noise so I put the image through Topaz AI De-Noise before adding the RGB stars back in. I'm not sure this is the correct way to combine NB & RGB versions from a OSC camera, but it seemed to work okay and I'm going to have a play with some other combinations to see what I can come up with. Here's the result, with a close-up of the main nebulosity.

I did 4h52m on this target at the start of the month using the Askar Duo-Band filter (similar to the L-eXtreme). Tonight is clear here and the Moon doesn't rise until around midnight, so I've started capturing broadband data to add to the previous data to get the RGB stars and more colour to the nebulosity around the Christmas Tree Cluster. I may just use the Ha data from the first two nights, if tonight goes well. Where I'm using the ASI 294MC Pro, I don't quite have the FOV to get Hubbles Variable Nebula in the frame.

Yep.

Hi and Welcome to SGL. Firstly, I assume when you say you have the EQ5 upgrade kit, it's the one with the Synscan Pro kit? If so, could you describe what steps you take when doing the star alignment? Also, when you send the mount to the Home Position using the hand controller, does it go to the correct location (scope towards Polaris and counter weights down)? As @malc-c mentioned above, a common mistake with the Synscan controller is inputting the date incorrectly, because it uses MM/DD/YYYY format.

The last flats I took with Askar Duo-Band filter were done with 4 or 5 layers of a white T-shirt over the end of the scope. I then put my Samsung Tab on top using an App called LightBox, which gives a uniform white screen with adjustable brightness. Using APT's Auto Flats tool, I set it to use 26000 ADU as a target, which gave an exposure of 1.28125s and I took 20 Flats & 20 Flat-Darks. These were stacked in PI to create the Master Flat & Master Flat-Dark.

The Canon/ASI adaptor you have will accept 2" filters into the spacer but is not designed to be used with a filter wheel because the spacer forms part of the back focus distance for the ASI cameras. If you want to use a filter wheel you need this one: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-accessories/zwo-eos-lens-adapter-for-efw-asi-cooled-cameras.html

Looking at the documentation, the Evoguide field flattener does have a back focus of 17.5mm. This means that the light coming through the field flattener is focused on a point 17.5mm behind the last lens in the field flattener. This is where you want your camera sensor to be. As you're using the ASI533MC, this has the sensor 6.5mm from the front face of the camera, so adding the 11mm spacer will bring this to the 17.5mm spacing required. If you want to add anything between the camera sensor and the field flattener, like a UV/IR cut filter, then it has to go into the 11mm spacer . You should have got a filter holder with the camera that looks like THIS, which screws inside the 11mm spacer and will accept a 1.25" filter.

Okay, I'm sold on the new version! I completely reprocessed an image from last weekend of the Cone Nebula region and the only real change was the use of GHS V2, instead of the PI Histogram Transformation for the stretch. Although the colours have changed quite a bit by leaving out the ColourCalibration & PhotometricColourCalibration, which were both used on the original processing, but made it very red. I have been able to control the centre of the Christmas Tree Custer a lot better and it's no longer blown out, with added colour & detail. This is only my first attempt with the script and I'm sure things will improve further with more practice. Top is the GHS version & below is the original.