powerlord

Yeh its amazing really. I got a bit dejected after failing to get the witch. But it's so low where I am, shark is right up there which helps.

Thanks, it was more orientation, size. But took second panel last night and got it all. Will post when processed.

yeh latest one installed.

oh yeh the bright ones look a bit funky - yeh it's starnet2++ that's made them weird. It's those big ones yes ? smaller ones are fine. I tried starX and same thing. So I pulled out the stars instead using levels, and added them back that way - a bit better ?

Hmm.. I struggled to find out the best pov for LDN1235... I figured 400mm with my asi2600 would be more than wide enough, but it wasn't clear what orientation it was in either from my asiair, and sky safari doesn't show a picture of it either. so.. I shot all last night - with a full moon so not exactly the best time, but I got half a shark!! yeh! maybe I can get the other half tonight. 300s subs at gain 0. 6 hours worth believe it or not - not bad for august... anyway, assuming I can orientate the thing to get the back half of it, that's tonight's plan. stu

45 mins is all I get a night, and I'm moving to a different OTA tonight, so that's all I got - 5 min subs with asi2600, l-extreme and SW 200PDS. Just above 20 degrees for me down here, so pleased with this, my 3rd attempt at M16.

SW 200PDS, asi2600 and L-extreme. 110 mins of 5 min subs. Regular colour palette for a change.Stacked in APP, edited in Affinity Photo with StarX and noiseX.

very nice, not one I knew about (it doesn't appear as an image in sky safari which is what I use to choose targets). I'll def add to my to do list. Usually prefer hubble palette, but both are very nice.

nice helix - also one my list but can't even see it from my garden 😞

Here is I think my final image - after capturing an hour of Ha for it last night with final colour balance

Here's a rework with better core details and removal of the newt shadows

thanks. it was a bit green, and last night I added more data and proper flats, bias, darks. So here is the final result. The best M33 I've taken so far for sure. 245 mins of 5 min subs, asi2600, sw 200p+baader mk3 CC. tbh, I prefer the one above with the green tint I think though. thoughts ? stu

Processed with fake flats so I could use bias and darks as the ones I took at the time were poor, and I'd taken camera off by then.. hence the off newt shadow. However, it's still light years better than any previous Iris I've taken, so I'll take it 🙂

Still struggling with reference frames for new asi2600 - I've taken 100 bias now to try and even out the horizontal banding I was getting, but now the flats I took this morning with my light pad which usually works a treat have a bright bit in the centre - not much, but enough that they are useless for stacking - I end up with a big white blob in the middle of my stacked image... so again, I've had to process this with lights only. I'll try again tonight and suppose I'll just have to not use this data as I doubt it'll stack well with another session if I do get tonights sessions flats right for it... but will try. anyway - here we are - 140 mins of 5 min subs at gain 100. no filters other than IR window. EQ6r-pro and SW 200pds with baader mk3 coma corrector. Considering no reference frames, it's promising for tonight. No sharpening or colour changing here - just a bit of noiseXterminator and some saturation.

Lovely seeing last night in Glevering campsite. Second night of imaging - this time The Veil Nebulas - same kit - redcat (now working flawlessly) and asi2600. Only shot this target once before, and with far more inferior a result. 280 mins of 3 min exposures. I shot with gain 0 this time rather than 100. individual sub looked cleaner as you'd expect. Maybe I should stick with 100, but 0 does seem to give good results too. And look at those stars - pin sharp edge to edge with the APS-C sensor now ES Reid has done his magic. ASIAIR was telling me my stars are <2 pixels so definitely no binning here with the resolution of the asi2600 being fully used. I've not touched the colour balance of this - it is 'as is' as shot with the 2" L-extreme. Still not got my dark library for the asi2600 so flats and bias only. I have notice horizontal banding on the bias frames which is coming through on the images -see attached example bias. is this typical ? example bias with banding.fit

Away in motorhome, 30 mins from my house this weekend at Glevering Estate (see my show us your setup at night post - great place to come for star gazing). All cloud last night apart from around polaris and heart and soul - so I PAed, and setup for heart and soul. I didn't guide, as experinece has tought me that when it loses stars with clouds it just goes mental and never recovers unless only for a bit - no idea why but whatever equipment I use it does it - so acturate PA and 180 sec subs. L-extreme fitted this time (see my north america nebula post). This is first light with my newly repaired Redcatv I got from @George Sinanis - having sent it off to ES Reid for repair. George - you said you'd like to see it working, and ideally on the Heart and Soul Nebula - so last night was for you! I had a small amount of star trailing at 180 secs with no guiding, but managed to get rid of that. Tonight looks clearer so maybe can guide tonight. Anyway, what it did show, is that the Redcat is definately working very nicely now - I got 306 mins of subs with my asi2600, redcat and 2" L-extreme - sitting on a 30 year old EQ5 with an astro-gadgets EQ5r pro belt goto servo kit fitted. Really pleased with the way Redcat is looking. A bit of banding from the asi2600 which I've never had on my asi1600 or asi533 - suppose it's just how it is. Two versions below - one straight out the stack, natural colours with just a bit of noiseXterminator. One the same, but with the blue's enhanced a bit. No sharpening at all, and just a bit of deconvolution on the stars and dimming them down a bit.

Yeh, very old eq5 with astro-gadget eq5r Pro belt goto, asiair, etc. Gets under 1" guiding. But lots of clouds last night and I've found guiding when clouds make it lose stars is worse than no guiding, so ran with no guiding 180s subs. Forecast better for tonight. This is a newish campsite: massive fields, no light pollution and full views of sky https://www.gleveringhall.com/caravansite https://www.gleveringhall.com/wild-camping

Forgot to snap a pic last night, but managed to get some good subs last night from campsite with redcat and asi2600

Hi all, I've just booked up for 3 nights over 23-25 Sept. I'm down in red t418. Doubt it's got great views, but I'm sure I can make do. Look out for a scotsman with a wee black and white jack Russell. 😁

Well, couldn't resist having a go. Here's my SHO with the data. Processed in Siril and Affinity Photo. I've attached the affinity photo (AP) file too if anyone wants to have a look (workings in disabled groups at the end). affinity photo free to trial if you don't use it. week oiii wise - this is usually just a sort of background shade in most stuff, so if you have week data, stretch and denoise it and guassian blur it - it then merges in better while still giving you the blue highlights where it's strong. process: process each channel is siril: histogram stretch, save as tifs. use starnet2 cli to remove stars in each. save as tifs. pull ha tif with and without stars into AP and subtract no stars from stars one. merge visible - name it stars layer. now use levels and curves on ha no stars. to pull it up and move black point to just below clipping, noiseX it. for sii, do the same thing for oiii, do the same thing, but then use levels to pull down until you get rid of most of outer noise by clipping a bit. Then gaussian blur it. save each layer (ha no stars, sii no stars, oiii no stars) as greyscale tifs. back in siril: do an rgb composition - no luminance, with R=sii, G=Ha, B=oiii do a green noise removal. save RGB as tif. open in affinity photo and copy layer into your composition with stars layer above it. switch stars layer to add blend mode. turn off stars for now, and use curves, levels, contrast, vibrance and a bit more noise X on nebula. when happy, turn on stars. finally crop a bit. jobs a good un 🙂 stu lobster.afphoto

So er... I thought at the time that the subs I was getting for the widefield with the asi2600 and 300mm looked weird - kinda of more starry and less nebula-y than I expected. Taking the kit apart today.. I found I had forgot to put the 2" L-extreme in. Duh. So all shot with only the IR filter window of the asi2600 !! So...on the plus side, I didn't know I had, so I just processed widband data as if it was narrowband data from an L-extreme (throwing B away, keeping G as B/oiii, creating a fake G with 60%xR+40%B, putting together as RRGB... and tbh honest it sort of worked ?? anyway - please feel free to send me my 'muppet of the week' mug. 🤪 stu

ha! that's what I thought when I first got a 200p.. then the 300p arrived! from left to right - 150p, 200p, 300p. would save a lot of space if they'd store inside each other like russian dolls! 😀

Shot last night - forecast said clouds from 12 - but it was clear all night. Seeing was exceptional - best I think I've ever had - I was getting under 2 FWHM with the 750mm FL newt, and also with my Canon F4 300mm. It's the first real light for my asi2600 after the first one was a bit of a disaster. I shot the same target at the same time, with 2 different setups: asi533, TS-Photon 150 F5 and L-extreme 285 minutes of 5 minute exposures gain 100 asi2600, Canon F4 L 300mm and L-extreme 130 minutes of 5 minute exposures gain 100 I screwed up flats on the TS150, and I ran out of time for bias and darks (not got a library yet). So.. believe it or not all of this is with no flats, darks or bias for either of them. Just lights. I went for a gold/light blue hubble as I think it really suited it. As always with this target trying to do something with the millions of stars in pelican nebula is an excercise in compromise - I got something I was happy with in affinity photo using James's amazing macros (star eater) I'm pretty happy with these tbh. NO topaz denoising or sharpening at all here - other than a bit of old school denoise, it's as it came out the camera. I am stoked with the asi2600 - look at those stars - they are like pin heads with my canon lens! And the newt performed amazingly with the asi533 (and it had a bite size chunk out the secondary mirror, and a big scratch on the primary!!) I thought it would be really interesting to shoot this target twice on same night and see just what extra detail the newt can bring out,

yeh, I think the ratings are mince. I had used a 25w 12 ohm resistor - so it's running at 12w - figured a 1 amp load was ok and running it at 1/2 its power rating. but still gets very hot and clearly typical chinese fantasy rating (aka 10000ah batteries, etc). so - I've just order a few 100w 12 ohm resisistors from amazon and will be replacing it with one of those - much much larger and maybe more realistic size to handle the 12W load.

Some of you might have read my diy observatory thread earlier in the year where I documented my use of a good quality PC PSU to provide 12v and 5v power to my whole observatory. 6 months in it has all been 100% reliable until about a week ago. In the hope of it being useful to others I'll just explain the issue. When using a PC PSU for power of lots of low current use things it was recommended in some articles I read to put a bit of a load across both the 12v and 5v lines. I thought this was a bit overkill, but did it anyway - putting a 10w resistor across the 5v and a 25w resistor across the 12v - these have big heat sinks and I screwed them to my main metal shelving to disapate heat (also gives me a warm shelf for putting stuff) About a week or two ago my asiairs started to randomly reset them selves. which of course stopped any autorun plans, etc and caused me to lose quite a few nights imaging. I had got a new asi2600 in the meantime and initially though since that was the only thing that had changed, it must have something to do with it - and I swapped it to pull powe from the PSU direct rather than through the asiair. However last night when it was doing it again, I had a hunch, and felt the power resistors - the 5v one was still fine, but the 12v one was cold. Removing it showed that it was open circuit. I've just replaced it with a new one for now, but will probably replace it with a number of power resistors to spread the load across more of them and keep them working longer. So - turns out a base load IS important - don't skip it. And make sure you chose good quality power resistors and give them a good sink for the heat. Now all running again and shooting darks.. though not sure how long that will keep up today as fan on asi2600 is already at 86% to keep it at -10 and it's only 9.45 !!