AndrewRrrrrr

6 hours ago, Ratlet said:

Have you tried a different power supply?  Could be it's not getting enough power.

hi there, thanks for the reply. yes I tried a different power supply, was the same. 

Hi,

I think something has gone awry with the cooling on my 183M pro tec camera.

The camera takes longer than usual to cool down to the set temp (-10 in my case)

The TEC light does not come on at all (and the SYS light is flashing slowly)

Usually as soon as I plug in the camera, the fan comes on, but the fan no longer seems to ever come on. 

I noticed this a couple of nights ago while re-doing my flats because the temperature starts to rise once the exposures on the camera start , and keeps rising. 

I stopped APT which I use to drive things and started up Altair capture to see if there's anything else I can look at to get the fan running. It shows the fan as 100% and the TEC cooling as on with power at about 75%. 

I quit altair capture and started APT back up which showed the camera sitting at about 38C! 

Anyone got any ideas or recommendations please?

thanks in advance

Andrew

interested to know what people's opinions are on what is an ideal modern camera that would be suited to the edge8HD? 

looking forward to this! 

8 hours ago, HollyHound said:

Arrived safely and superbly packed… thanks @AndrewRrrrrr 👍

Baader Heavy Duty T2 Quick Change System…. I’ve been after one of these sets for ages 😃

glad you're pleased, sorry for delay but got there in the end

1 hour ago, andrew s said:

Not quite even if one accepts this view on vacum energy. Hawking's radiation creates real particles with the energy for them taken from the gravitational energy of the black hole.

Regards Andrew 

isn't it that a pair of particles is created, one inside the event horizon and the other outside. they cannot get back together so the one on the outside "becomes" real and the mass of the BH becomes smaller. anyway we digress.  I don't know what nothing looks like although I did watch a certain ex-PMs speech in the USA yesterday which was very close to nothing.  

7 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Where does this energy come from?

isn't this the vacuum energy that is everywhere in the Universe? spontaneous creation and subsequent anihilation of particle/antiparticle pairs results in no net change to the vacuum energy. and it's what allows Hawkings theory that black holes evaporate 

M42 in LRGBHa. Only 3 mins each for the RGB and Ha. 27 mins for the L. Weather has been terrible for ages, and just managed this short time......

was quite chuffed with the colour from such a short amount of time, but it is a bright object I suppose. 

altair wave 80 with 0.8x, Altair 183MM pro tec

I'm quite enjoying "The Observatory" - http://www.multivax.de/obsmag/

1 hour ago, newbie alert said:

How fast are you cooling? Take it you're using a capture software, ie Nina or Apt or something ? You can control how slow or fast you cool, too fast and it can cause frosting 

using APT, not sure what the cool down settings are , I think they are the defaults. will have a look at slowing things down and seeing how that goes. cheers!

4 hours ago, symmetal said:

Look down the scope with a torch and see on what surface the dew is forming. In my experience, dew or ice on the sensor itself tends to form from one edge and progress across the sensor. I would get these circular dew patterns forming on the rear of the field flattener with my FLT98 when used with the Atik One CCD camera with the in-built filter wheel. On cooling the camera below zero, the sensor cover and filters would be fine but the field flattener would start dewing up from the centre outwards. When this happened, removing the camera and warming the FF rear with a hair dryer until the dew was gone would then keep it clear for the rest of the night with the cooled camera re-attached.

Tried a dew band around the FF, or putting desiccant sachets behind the FF when not being used, but neither of these had any effect.

When I used newer cooled CMOS cameras though the problem never occurred. 🤔

Alan 

will take it apart next time it happens and see what's going on. thanks Symmetal

12 hours ago, Grant Fribbens said:

I have had this with an ASI2600MC equivalent the Altair 26C. This was taking the camera down do -15 and I had the dew heater turned on on the camera  as well as a dew strap around the lens of the scope but I got a fog that appeared during imaging which got larger and larger. Some say that you have to do the cooling down slower which can help or that you may need to insulate the area between the camera and the scope or even include a dew heater at this point on a very LOW setting so as not to introduce nasty thermals in the system. Even though it has been clear the last couple of nights I have not bothered as everything is covered in dew.

thanks Grant, think taking the cooling a bit slower and not as cold a target temp. 

12 hours ago, Elp said:

You shouldn't need a dew heater for the 183, it's designed so heat from the tec radiates through the camera. Ive used mine throughout the year and its never misted or frozen over whereas the telescope or camera lenses do very quickly. I do not however keep it outside when not in use which could be a factor.

The pattern in the image is similar to a mist formation where it's greyed out but I find it starts from the centre and radiates out like a radial blur, it will end up looking like there's cloud covering the stars over the whole frame. Did you use a filter at all?

hi there, yes a plain old L filter for my mono camera. i don't keep my camera outside either. will take the camera off to take a closer look next time it happens......

14 hours ago, Stefan73 said:

Certainly looks like the subs with my ZWO 2600 last night.  Cambridge was pretty damp too. 

You could see the mist gathering on the front of the camera glass almost immediately after I cleared it.  Did you have a look at the little window on the front of the camera?  Should be obvious if it's mist or ice.

I've ordered a heater for it but I'm not massively optimistic it would have solved last night's problem.  Trying cooling to a higher temperature is worth a go too.

My DSLR seemed to manage OK though but then it clouded over so I gave up!

thanks Stefan, next time i will take the camera off and have a look and yes will try at zero degrees also

Evening All,

Just got a new pegasus power box and moved to "proper" dew control. Also got a heater for the front of the AA 183M camera. Have the camera cooled to -10C.  (also got a new 0.8 reducer as well - haven't done my flats yet.)

The scope is an AA Wave 80. 

This is a 15% stretch of one of the lights. 

I have the dew heaters on maximum  and there is no dew at all on the front of the objective lens.

The humidity is really high at the moment down here in West Sussex (powerbox says 99%), everything is dripping! Does it ever get too bad and just not worth bothering trying to take subs?

Any ideas what this is? Ice on the sensor? 

Any handy tips on troubleshooting would be welcomed. 

yours Andrew

agree the oresentation was terrible, but the image - holy smoley it's amazing. just 12.5 hours, wait until they zero in with a couple of weeks long exposure! 

thinking of doing this myself. reason being is that I have recently added a pegasus focuscube and i'm no longer able to use the rotator on the focuser for more than ~45 degrees as it fouls the guidescope one way and the dovetail the other way.  i'm 99% decided to get a Baader T2 heavy duty quick change unit and place that in front of the FW. 

picture should explain it........

(budget won't stretch to an electronic rotator! )

looks right. sometimes you need to slightly lenghten the hole in the pcb

https://groups.io/g/vixen-ss2k/photo/245750/2906954?p=Created%2C%2C%2C20%2C2%2C0%2C0

2 hours ago, rickwayne said:

Actually with an 0.6X reducer you're more in the "slightly oversampled" region of 0.39"/pixel.

With its teeny-tiny pixels, the 183's sweet spot is really more in widefield. The 294 will give you a bigger field of view and won't undersample too much with the short scope. Full disclosure, I got a 183 for a short scope precisely because I wanted finer-grained detail in my images, e.g. I "felt" undersampled with my DSLR, which had pixels about the same size as the 294's.

I'm sure not going to attempt to dissuade you from turning to the Mono Side, I really enjoy it but like you, I revel in nerdliness. However if you can only afford either filters or a wheel at first, may I counsel you to get the filters? All the wheel does is make it simpler to use multiple filters in a session. Personally I've had a lot of fun doing Ha-only imaging, and you can always use successive nights to collect data at the other wavelengths (or just resign yourself to a lot of unscrewing).

thanks Rickwayne, I like your point about nothing wrong with just doing Ha to start and building up. Makes sense! 

thanks again discardeastro, yes am currently guiding: with a ZWO 120MM mini in a guidescope on the wave 80 and an OAG on the C8, seems to work well enough. I have a 1X flattener on the 80. Am getting 0.5" RMS.  Using APT which looks like it will cope OK with the new kit. pixinsight - i can see it happening at some point for sure. good shout about the autofocuser, best put one on the shopping list!!! 

18 hours ago, discardedastro said:

What are you trying to image, though? The C8 would do well for planetary/lunar with a fast camera, whereas the wave 80 is better suited to DSOs and wider field with a cooled slow camera.

Thanks for the reply, DSOs primarily. If I have to choose a scope to be the one that the camera is best suited for, it would be the wave 80.  I was hoping I'd be able to image "smaller" objects (M13, M1, galaxies etc) successfully using the C8, maybe using 2x2 binning on the camera if necessary?

Hi there,

I did the rowan belt mod to my neq6 about 3 months ago. Before the mod I was getting about 0.7-0.8" total RMS and after the mod regularly get 0.5" or better. It's a bit hit and miss tbh depending on how carefully I balance things and polar align. I also installed new bearings on the worms.

I would say I found the post-mod tuning was incredibly difficult (for me) to get right and I spent weeks fiddling around, at one point I nearly gave up and was going to try and find professional help!!!! but got there in the end.

There's some great walk throughs on youtube so you can see what you think about doing it before giving it a go. 

ps I do sometimes wonder what improvement I could have made by simply tuning it up - regrease, new bearings for the dec and ra worms, fiddling with the backlash. 

good luck with whichever way you go. 

Hi All,

I've been using my modded Canon 40D for a year or so now and really enjoying the whole astroimaging thing after being visual only for many years.

I have a C8 with a 6.3 FR and also an Altair Astro Wave 80, with an NEQ6 mount.

I'm looking to upgrade my camera and have been given war office clearance to invest about a £1000 plus whatever I can get for selling my Canon plus the bits and bobs (l-enhance clip-in, lens etc) I have with it. 

I'll be happy to get just the camera and a wheel initially and then get the filters as I can save up for them - will get there in the end.

I think I would like to go mono as I love the techy side of it all and this seems to be more down that rabbit hole......

I'm looking at a QHY294M Mono which is on offer at Astrograph for 874 (with the wheel for 207) or maybe a Altair hypercam 183M pro tec or the equivalent ZWO 183 which is almost the same price.

I'm also not averse to buying 2nd hand at all, just doesn't seem to be a lot out there at the moment.

Both cameras look reasonably well matched on the CCD suitability calculator web tool.

Would be really interested to hear people's opinions please?

thanks

Andrew

Hi there

The risingcam 571 looks really tempting.

Currently showing as £967.04 on the AliExpress store. I'm trying to work out if this is the final price or will there be VAT added on once it arrives at UK customs? 

What has been the final price paid by UK buyers over the last couple of months please?

thanks in advance

AR

Hi All,

Looking for some ideas/help as to what might have gone on here please.....

Set up for M33 a couple of nights ago. Took approx 100x 3min subs with a flip in the middle.

When I put all the lights into APP, I got a very unsatisfactory stacked picture (never had this before), loads of banding.

I've never had to separately stack the 2 sets of lights before but on a hunch tried stacking the pre and post flip sets of lights separately.

The stacked picture on the pre-flip lights is fine but the post-flip one is weird. Have attached the two stacks. 

The camera is modded Canon 40D. Flats, bias. No darks, but dithered. 

I used the same master flat, master bias and bad pixel map for both stacks. 

Haven't done processing in particular with the 2 pictures.

I seemingly have developed a dodgy usb connection to the camera and it did unplug/plug itself quite a few times during the flip, and I had to reset things to carry on with the imaging run.

Am aware of the good ol canon banding thing, but a bit weird appearing like this. Maybe the camera went on the fritz after being connected/reconnected multiple times. If thats the case, I hope it's a temporary thing!

thanks in advance for any comments

Andrew