powerlord

Well, 3rd light with the L-ultimate, and it would appear that my issues with focus are constrained to the 300mm canon lens. Certainly no sign of issues with the redcat. Pretty amazing that you can get results like this in a single night now isn't it ? 9 hours last night of 10 min subs with the asi2600 at gain 100 and L-ultimate. stacked in APP, then edited in affinity photo. starnet2++ used, and some denoising with NoiseXterminator. I'll try and update with some colour stars over weekend. stu

i dunno, emperors clothes syndrome maybe, but it does seem cleaner. and less halos. that's just two sessions though. tonight I'll try redcat and maybe altair 80ed - see if they have same red focus issue.

i did sadr last night - strong oiii there.

you did well to get the ellusive squid in 7.5 hours. very nice. a scattering of stars does wonders to hide noise and gradients. I use affinity photo and James Ritsons star eater macro at 1px usually 👍

So.. see other thread for my red/ha focus issues with this lens, but here is the result anyway. 8 hours of 10 min subs on a canon 300mm L USM, asi2600 and L-ultimate. Processed in APP, Siril and Affinity Photo. Due to above issue, less detail in Ha than I'd have liked tbh, but it still came out good I think ?

Second time I've used L-ultimate last night with a canon 300mm L USM. I often find the EAF on the asiair doesn't work with that as it overshoots at the start, hits the end stop and poos out. So I manually focused with the aid of the asiair focus page. I point this out, but I believe it to be irrelevant to the issue as you can see from the subs G and B are focused. all looked good on the subs at the time - but stacking today and looking at the result it's weird - G and B are tight and R is terrible. see attached. I've never seen that before with L-extreme. The first time I used L-ultimate was on my P200 and that was EAF focused. I've attached the stack from that too. You can see that that is fine. So it would appear that the L-ultimate does not play nicely with the F4 300mm. More than that I can't say, as that is the only 2 targets and configs I've shot so far, but it's worth thinking about if you were considering getting the L-ultimate. I have looked back through my library and compared this to the behaviour of the L-extreme with the same canon 300mm lens and it does not de-focus the red channel. I'll talk to FLO in case I have a duff one, but for now - heads up to folk. these attachments are named for what they are, so you'll have to mouse hover over to see what they are I think. red from 300mm F4: green from 300mm F4: l-ultimate.canon300mm.fits red from 1000mm 200pds: green from 1000mm 200pds: l-ultimate.200pds.fits red from 300mm F4 l-extreme: green from 300mm F4 l-extreme: l-extreme.canon300mm.fits

appologies if 3 posts appear, but I've posted twice from my mobile and they've not appeared.. anyhoo - setup for tonight. As you can see the big guns are out for a clear night of DSOs. what ? that AM5 is as big as a family car.. don't let those pics on ZWO site decieve you! targets: sii ic1396 with the redcat and asi1600 (yeh yeh...just guide scope fitted at the mo in a bid to get a better PA as I've been struggling to get it precise since I got the AM5..I suspect my other OTAs I've been mounting are not square, but really its a mystery other than the fact you need to be pretty precise with the AM5 or it can't guide well). ic417 and ic405 with the canon 300mm - and this has L-ultimate fitted.. so we'll see how it gets on with F4. And yes - that is my observatory made out of correx - still going strong, still water tight and ship shape and in it's 10th month of life! stu

Very very jealous. Was there a few years back. Awesome. Can only imagine what it's like with a clear night sky. 😍😍😍😍😍

The Shark Nebula. Lots of clouds, so most subs were useless. So only 145 mins of 5 min subs. asi2600, no filters. edited in APP and Affinity Photo. Maybe I'll come back next new moon if the weather is kind. I've done a video of the editing in case it helps beginners (says me, hardly an expert after 2 years!!)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoDaxznYUvc

any better ? photometric calibrated in Siril.

From last week, Lions head. Also finished last night with colour stars. Just ye olde L-extreme for this one. 600 second subs. 200pds, l-extreme and asi2600. About 7 hours of data. 15 mins of 30 sec subs for colour stars.

Updated with colour stars captured last night.

Here's the Cave Nebula in close up from a few nights ago. Finished with some colour stars from last night. 200PDS and asi2600, and one night of 9.5 hours of 600 second subs for the nebula, and 15 mins of 30 second subs for the colour stars. All using the new L-Ultimate fitler.

thanks both. Shot colour stars last night, so here's the final image with colour stars.

Rubbish weather last night, but forecast had an hour at 2am clear - so figured I'd set up and grap some RGB stars for my 3 latest NB images. Just in case it stayed clear, I setup M31 for a close view with the 200pds and asi2600. I forgot the turn the dew heater on the asi2600, so list 100 of the 150 subs to dew/fog on lens (for the third time.. MUST REMEMBER TO TURN DEW HEATER ON!!!). So.. only 141 mins of 3 min subs in the end. But it turned out ok - and a bit different from the wide views you usually see of our nearest neighbour. As usual, APP to stack, affinity photo for the rest of it.

deal with the historgram - is the stretching bit. i.e. stretching the histogram. yeh, usually you'd stack, stretch aka deal with histogram a bit, and save as a 16 bit tiff file. you can then use startnet2++ (there is a windows gui now), and remove stars. you can get the stars back later in PS by subtracting (layer blend mode) the starless image from the one with stars in it. you can then edit your starless image wherever and should find it much easier to see any nebulosity and tweak details out of it. you might wanna have a look at my quick tutorial I did last week - it's for APP and affinity, but it will show the stars process, etc. -its pretty rough but you'll get the idea

I thought this target would make a good first light for my just arrived L-ultimate 3nm dual band filter. 50% moon up, and some weak oiii to capture - could it do it ? 200PDS and asi2600, and one night of 9.5 hours (!! it's getting dark early now - woohoo) of 600 second subs. Only a few wasted - forecasts of lots of cloud 1/2 way through the night unfounded ! Well, I am pretty impressed with its performance tbh. I've never shot this target before as it seemed a bit boring, but wow has this filter brought it to light. nice strong oiii and ha, and some merging and stretching in affinity photo and this is the result. I think I'll add RGB stars next clear night, but for now - mono ones. What I also find weird in this target, is that there are sooo many more stars on the blue side than the Ha side.. So, I assume the Hydrogen gas is blocking stars whereas the oiii isn't ? pretty weird. Sorry about the slight band along the top - the asiair screwed up the meridian flip and 1/2 the subs were 10% lower, so had to blend that bit a fair bit as didn't want to loose the data.

Hi chaps, I'm considering starting some videos on astro stuff - mainly editing/processing. This is a sort of beta of a beta. sounds bad, minimum video editing, mistakes left in. Using APP, Siril, Affinity Photo and plugin. NOT PI. the main goals from my vids I want are for folk beginning to see it's not so hard and get stuck in, while at the same time not skipping steps, having it 'as is' and not some sort of straight through process with nothing being tried and reverted - this is a biggy to me as all videos show a person doing a,b,c,d and voila! Not a,b,c, undo c. try d. nope, try d again with different setting, etc. I think that's a more natural way we all process. Certainly the way I do. And, no speaking slowly and going though stuff at a snail's pace - real time. So - that's the goals I don't want to change. I'm interested in feedback really to decide if there is an interest and what I can do (keeping goals in mind) to make it better before launching the channel. any feedback greatly appreciated. Is this something you'd subscribe to and watch?

I've pretty much stopped using topaz now, just use noisex. It depends on image. If there are edges that feel they could be sharpened ill put detail up, but I often use it with it set to 0 too. I also sometimes use it twice, once early on, then once at the end. This is in affinity photo - I don't use PI. I usually duplicate a layer, try some settings and compare. If too much or too little, undo and adjust. I've never used detail more that 50, but I've used noise removal as high as 80 before. The only other noise reduction I now still use is denoise in affinity, colour only. It does a good job of removing colour noise without changing structures.

Liked some of the lions posted over the last few weeks, so here's my attempt from last night. 600 second subs. 200pds, l-extreme and asi2600. About 7 hours of data. Processed in APP and Affinity Photo. Like many of these names, trying to actually SEE the thing it's named after is an effort in imagination, however I got there in the end, and in case others are also struggling to see it, I commissioned a professional artist to do the lion head outline... cough.

yeh but it's just a motor. itll run fine at 12v. it will run fast.. and maybe too fast and get hot or vibrate, but I doubt it - they are pretty well balanced these days, and brushless. you can always still a wee resistor in series with fan to slow it down.

as it's just a peltier and fan, it'd be interesting to whip that usb plug off it, and attach it to 12v. obviously fan might blow up, but of not, you may be a heck of a lot more cooling.

Another go at the shark as last time I had some weird artifacts from poor flats. Lots of clouds last night, so about 60% of subs no use. Left with 145 mins of 5 min subs. asi2600, no filters. edited in APP and Affinity Photo. I've done a video of the editing - thought it might be useful to others - will update this thread later with link to video. stu brighter:

From last night - asi2600 and redcat. Two versions, one with stars 'as they come', and one with some of them eaten up a bit so that dusty dirt is more visible. I planned to add some Ha, but there doesn't seem to be much around there, so left it as is. A shade under 8 hours of 5 minute subs on another night meteoblue said would be 50% cloud and which ended up clearing by 10pm, so glad I made the effort and setup the kit !