powerlord

As one of those Apers who has spend a ridiculous amount of moola and hours on AP, I was one of the first to order an S50. So don't tar us all with the same brush 😁

I think even for us 'APers' Im thinking it will be a great wee portable thing to take with me on holiday, out and about in the motorhome, etc without the hassle of bringing some of my current kit with me. And I think it's a great way of introducing others to the hobby too - I'm looking forward to loaning it out to friends for them to play with.

Lets hope ZWO get thier finger out and start shipping them soon ready for the new season !!

stu

Just a quicky to say finally pi4s are back in stock in uk - the pi hut has 2,4 and 8s all in stock. one max per customer (of each type).

stu

When I had a 72ED, I used it with the regular OVL FF which worked well. No reducer. It was pretty rubbish without a FF with my cameras at the time - asi533, asi1600.

Wahee. Thanks again judges.

😁

Thank you judges !! 😊 This is the first time I've won anything since I started this great hobby.

2 1/2 years in now, It still amazes me everytime I manage to image something like this from my back garden. There were some really lovely images submitted, so I feel humbled and chuffed that you selected one of mine. And congratulations to tomatobro and minhlead too !👏

Stu

3 hours ago, petevasey said:

That's heck of a drone.  At a heck of a price!  Can the camera gimbal rotate upwards, and if so, how high?

Cheers,

Peter.

yeh 35 degrees up, much same as my wee mini.

I've never been convinced about the point tbh. I'm pretty much always oversampled - I'd much rather that than blocking stars. And these days with the AI tools available, it seems to me that deconvolution on an oversampled image gets better results than shooting with the 'correct' sampling to begin with.

Plus, certainly where I am, 1.5" seeing is pretty common so even when I'm using something like the 300pds and asi2600 giving me 0.5"/pixel, I don't feel I'm getting soft blurry results after spending time deconvoluting. I've found that when the seeing is rubbish, the results with the 300pds are no better than with my 200pds, but when it's good, they are a LOT better.

however, I am also not a pixel peeper, nor one who typically takes much notice of what I'm 'supposed' to be doing tbh. If I was you, stick to the 174mm unless the seeing is really good, then give the 183mm a try ? I use meteoblue for seeing forecasts and find it pretty accurate.

stu

On 22/05/2023 at 09:53, SamAndrew said:

You joke, I don't think it will be long before we see space rent-a-scopes appearing, the cost to put a satellite into space and the cost of a top armature setup have probably converged already. Would be an interesting Kickstarter project.

On 22/05/2023 at 09:53, SamAndrew said:

You joke, I don't think it will be long before we see space rent-a-scopes appearing, the cost to put a satellite into space and the cost of a top armature setup have probably converged already. Would be an interesting Kickstarter project.

You know, some of the best drones now have telephoto lenses - the DJI mavic 3 pro for example has a 166mm f3.4 lens on a 1/2" cmos sensor.

and its stability control, like all djis is incredible. It'd be interesting to see some long exposure shots taken with it of the sky at altitude.. and stack em up. dispense with maybe the most dirty lower 5k or so...

I've just got a new one myself after selling my old ones - a mini 3 pro. I'm going up to scotland next week and hope to try some night shots with it.

The tech is there to do stability now based on IMU and object recognition. I made a similar comment on here a year or so ago - there's no technical reason why someone couldn't do one of those 'balloons to 50-80k with a gopro' projects - but instead have an IMU stabilised + object detection stablised camera shooting at maybe 200mm or so. It'd be interesting to see how much more detail could be captured of some of the larger galaxies for example with such a setup - I'd have thought maybe 10 sec subs possible, and several hours at alti could be shot before return to earth...

I feel a kickstarter coming on.. give me your money 😄

1 hour ago, LDW1 said:

What I can't understand is the comments from all these experts regarding upgrading this and upgrading that, including this and including that to make the 50 that much better and all that stuff would just add ' pennies ' to the cost !  If so why hasn't ZWO thought of it  ?  After all its only negligable pennies or maybe ....... not !

😛 hope that wisnae directed at me.. because:

1. Im no expert !!! 🤪

2. i ordered one as soon as it was announced.

I stand by my comment - they have to protect their market to an extent - 2mp is fine for eev and stuff.. sticking a 12mp sensor in it might just make it 'too good' and drain other lines. at least that's my guess. If its sucessful, my guess is they will produce a 'pro' version (yeh yeh..not really pro but they'll call it that maybe) with a higher mp sensor, maybe additional features, etc. that's the way any market works at the end of day.

stu

2 hours ago, doublevodka said:

The only thing I'm confused about, why isn't the SeeStar red? 😂

 

ha! good point, though I imagine the answer is boringly that its injection molded plastic and I imagine you don't want the inside of the tube to be red.

I do sort of wish they'd have stuck a high res camera in there. I mean the difference in price from a 2mp sensor to a 16mp sensor is pennies. I reckon they were worried they'd lose some asi camera sales ? because one of the more modern phone sensors would have perhaps made a good choice - especially if they'd went with something like the imx586 - could have had the benefit of 48mp for moon and terrestrial, then 12mp for dso

I was hoping to get some more data on this, but weather is changing - so this is it. 60 mins of 3 min subs.

Well, I must be one card short of a full deck, but with a week of clear nights a week before the longest day is no excuse not to get out there - while I started with some narrowband targets, for the last few nights I set my sights on M94 - the double ring starburst galaxy. At least the moon is almost gone.

So shooting this when there is no proper darkness is not the brightest idea - and the proof of that is in how faint the outer ring is. However, to be honest I'm pleasantly surprised I got it at all. 

It is a very colourful galaxy (hence the name), but there doesn't appear to be any consensus on its colours if you look at images - with some having it a bright magenta (even a recent apod from this month), some showing it as a reasonably colourless yellow or blue blob, whereas hubble clearly shows a yellow core, surrounded by blue the an outer red/bue type palette.

So - that's what I tried too eek out colour wise. Stacking in APP, some deconvolving in Siril, and then affinity photo, starX and noiseX.

4 hours of 3 min subs with my iraqi supergun 300pds and asi2600.

A target I'd definitely fancy another go at when we have longer nights.

stu

I think the L-ultimate helps with it's 3nm bands. And of course noiseX helps there days in being able to use even that very faint data and make it presentable. And the bit depth of the asi2600 let me take 300 sec subs without blowing out the core.

I also took a hybrid approach to integration - basically I went through the subs and only deleted the truly rubbish ones. If there was just minor doubling of stars or smear but the nebulosity looked ok (since its much dimmer it would need to be off for a long time to matter), I kept them.

I then did 2 integrations - one chosing only the very best subs, and one from everything.

I could then use the best subs for the stars and the core, while using the everything integration to get as much of the faint detail as possible (after removing the rubbish stars and core)

I used luminosity masks in affinity photo to then blend in the best of each. So the core 'best' stack is about 5 hours of subs, whereas the outer shells are from the 'everything' stack of about 10 hours of subs.

And obviously using the Iraqi supergun 300pds helps suck as many of those photons in as possible 🙂

stu

Taken over the last week - 3 sessions with my 300pds, asi2600 and EQ6r with L-ultimate filter (3nm Ha/Oiii)

processed in siril and affinity photo as usual in the natural palette. Each year I have a go at this target. I've got more outer shells this time than I've ever had before.

to be fair, they do updates the right way - they release alphas and betas to the users who want them, they are very good at listening to issues and fixing them, and then finally when all is 'good' they release it. I don't really think you could ask for any better.

Yes - even so, there are always issues, like the ones you've had, but really I think they do a sterling job imho - I can't think of many companies who do better. They are certainly up there with what in my experience are the best of the lot - DJI, apple, insta360 etc. With traditional companies - canon, sony, etc all waay down the bottom.

just my 2c. ✌️

stu

Last night I got a mate round with his Canon R5 and RP to let him try the observatory with a clear night forecase. For some reason the R5 refused to recognised usb - from asiair or even from a pc we later checked which was a pity, so instead we used his RP - sticking it on the end of my Stellmira 90ED with  a FF and L-ultimate. Some of the stars turned out a bit weird, so I think for whatever reason the back focus was a bit off, even though we just used a standard EF 48mm mount and his RP adapter.

I figured even with it being a regular canon, they'd be plenty Ha that would still get through, and that turned out to be the case.

With 21 x 5 min subs, it still out ok - and I think he's hooked enough now to go buy himself a star tracker (or I'll flog him one of my AZ GTIs) - so success.

quote: "I can't believe my wee camera came up with that!" - astrophotographer to be 🙂

stu

There's a comment in Randall Munroe's What If book:

Questions: Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina:

- A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or

- The detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball?

A: the supernova by NINE ORDERS OF MAGINTUDE

I can't help think about all the poor aliens. However... is it a coincidence that it was 21 million light years away - precisely the same time ago as our ancestors mysteriously appeared ? Or did they all escape to earth on a planet wide speed of light evacuation ? I think I know which I believe*

*er..coincidence.

Or just get a sheet of 0.1mm a4 abs or petg. And just cut your own out.

Stu

Just got an email from ZWO saying delays -shipping now end August. 😩

For those not following the latest gadgets:

https://www.apple.com/apple-vision-pro/

they demoed a planetarium app during the presentation which looked like it would be pretty amazing.

Not out till next year.. and it'll have to be pretty amazingly amazing for 3500 quid.

Still, it'll be interesting if we see any other astro focused AR apps coming in with it. I can imagine asiair being able to make use of it for example to start ARing the sky with your images, maybe extending the social side by augenting the sky with images others are imaging in the same area or groups or whatever as you are, etc ot even extending real time collaboration of stacking across the VRverse ?.

Like any new tech the price will come down. I must admit I was watching it thinking.. this'll be about 1k.. The market was as shocked as me I think with price and delay in availability.

I should say, I'm a long term VR/AR designer/adopter- haveing got my first set in the 90s and built my first mobile phone based set years before oculus. These do look like they could really be good - other than the elephant in the roof - or more accurately the muppet in the room with a massive pair of ski goggles on..  to be seen walking down the street and in front of your car next year!

stu

All my dew heaters are cheap usb ones. Work perfectly.usually I have on low setting. However they pulse. Ie low is just on off at certain frequency. As each pulls 2.5a using asiair/camera/pc usb sockets will not work.

My solution in the obsy is that I have dedicated 5v power supply for them.

Alternatives - cheap usb power packs work well but some will only be able to cope with one plugged in (each of my rigs has 2- one for ota, one for guider).

Another alternative (not tested) is to wire 2 in series (chop usb plugs off AND the wee controller). You could then power off asiair 12v direct and make use of its variable voltage dew heater controller. A bit of a faff to make but you'd get 2 quality dew heaters for 30 quid, and no need for extra power supplies.👍

thats the best m51 ive ever seen on here. awesome job. 16" newt - wow. sounds like a beast. I have a 300pds and that is a monster.

oops. I've done it again havn't I - and posted in oberserving instead of imaging. sorry chaps. @admin any chance of moving to imaging please ?