powerlord

Another successful night imaging at the powerlord observatory 😁 Stu

RA wise - nope it was all over the place. I've rebuilt it, but ran out of time setting up the worm screws tonight. Pity as looks likes nice seeing. But will just have to make do with one mount for tonight.

nobody ? 😞 that's a pity. I'm gonna do it today then. I'll post here anything useful so others might have an easier time.

SCNR! woohoo!! Downloading now.

I've had products before with 3d printed parts in them. can't think of them offhand. But there is a lot of nonsense talked about it. I'd put 3d printed food in that camp.. Also you get a lot of '3d printed gun/car/bike etc' - and it's total mince - maybe 10% is 3d printed - all the important stuff isn't. It's not that you can't - I mean SLM,SLS, etc can 'print' metal parts - but it is very expensive. I've had a few parts done myself and its awesome to see something you've designed in metal, but far far cheaper to cast or machine. same with plastic of course - 3d print the moulds maybe, but injection moulding is so cheap once you have the moulds, 3d printing can never compete other than for small runs of SLS parts. Thats what I planned to do when I did a kickstarter for a helmet camera gimbal back in 2013. And of course, the 1.25in to canon DSLR adapters I did a batch of and sold on here last year.

I use my 72ED on my az-gti for imaging in eq mode. great wee mount.

Never read anything but good things about the 72ED. Great starter scope for imaging imho. It was my first 'real' imaging scope.

Hi chaps, Some of you might remember my moaning about about buying a 'great condition' EQ6 off someone (not this forum), only to find it was royally humped. I eventually fitted the rowan belt kit it came with, as well as totally stripping and rebuilding it: Well, to be honest it's still far from right. I sits next to my 6 month old EQ6r-pro, and on the same target last night, with similar weights of kit the EQ6r-pro is ticking along getting 0.4rms, and this one is sometimes lucky to get 3rms. the RA is especially rubbish. I've fiddled with removing backlash, and I've tried ensuring belts are tight but not too tight.. and none of it is making a difference. So, my next plan before giving up and flogging it cheap as a doerupper to someone with full disclosure, is to disassemble it and rebuild it again - I'm wondering if I tightened something too much or put some of the teflon spacers in the wrong place or something. Though there are guides online, none are perfect, none show exactly where spacer go, etc - and maybe they depend on how many are required to bring something into line ? And at one point when I removed a shaft some of the teflon spacers fell off leaving me having to decide where they go back on again..maybe I've got that wrong. So before I go there, I thought I'd ask people for first hand experience ? Last time, I cleaned and stripped off all old grease, replacing with superlube (though next time I reckon I'll just use a simple lithium or moly tbh), and everything did seem in good condition other than the hacked up hex bolts, screw heads, etc from the last idiot owner (couldn't even MOVE the alt as he'd tighened the bolts on the axis so much it wouldn't move - then stripped the threads of the adjustment bolts trying to force it to move!!!!) . No scars on the barrels, damage to teeth, etc. So I see no reason why this shouldn't be able to guide at least in the 0.6rms area. Basically any tips , gotchas, things to watch for, etc greatly appreciated. IF someone has specific part numbers for replacement bearings that would also be great, as I imagine replacing the thrust bearing, etc with a decent quality one would be pretty cheap and I'm of the school of thought for jobs like this, if you are taking it all apart and can easily and cheapily replace bits, you should do it - same as if I'm working on an engine or hot tub, or boiler (to name the last 3 things I took apart of rebuilt). stu

Yeh, I kind of agree with that. But it is a big investment. I got my 6d from ebay for £250. A second hand asi533 is, what.. £700. And it's a one trick pony. From a beginners POV it is a difficult sell. Looking back, I don't regret buying the 6d. I later bought an asi533, asi1600, and rooms full of other stuff, but I still like using the 6d - that big lovely FF OSC sensor 🙂 But I think the logical thing would have been to jump straight to a used asi533.. and know that I could sell it for the same I bought it for, same as the 6d.. and hence wasn't really costing me more really. It's easier to use with L-extreme filters, etc and easier to control, possibly to temp control, etc etc. And I've certainly never bought into the 'buy a small motorbike before you buy what you actually want' philosophy.. if you know you want a 900cc fireblade, get one. This idea that you have to somehow 'apprentice' through the DSLR world is nonsense for sure. But if it's done for budgetary reasons I suppose it's still valid ? One thing for sure, if 2600MCs were 300 quid I'm sure we wouldn't be discussing DSLRs. stu

See, here CO xcweather and Meteoblue were all saying zero clouds! can't win em all. stu

Friday Night I made up a rig so I could use my asi1600 and filter wheel with my Canon 300mm F4 Lens. I've not tried this before, but I've had indications that it will be good. The tricky bit was trying to rig the ZWO EAF to work with the lens. Of course, the other issue is that being an autofocus unit, I'm stuck with full open aperture. So, I eventually managed to get a decent focus, but the ring is stiff and slippy at the same time, so it was not repeatable. I'll need to work on the rig. In the end I got a decent focus for Ha at least, and out of all the subs, I only had 9 300 second subs sharp. The good news I think is that (to my non-OCS mild peeping eyes they look very sharp all the way to the corners - and this is wide open at f4. So I think if I can get eaf to work well its a very very nice wide view setup. Anyhoo, this is what I managed to get out of the 45 mins. I thought I'd go for a bit of a different composition than the usual - since I can't fit both in, I framed something that seems to balance well. Being as it was only 45 mins I did have to lay a lot of noise reduction down And since I felt it was just an experiment I didn't take flats either. Affiniity Photo for Stacking, APP for LP removal, and Affinity Photo for processing. A few Topaz Denoises, but each with 'add back detail' set off, with careful examination to ensure not detail added that's not there. There's a bit of stacking artifact at the bottom, but hey - it's 45 mins of data, and didn't want to loose the bottom bit. 😋 Feel free to Critic.

Anyone else get caught last night ? All forcasts for great seeing, with no clouds all night.. reality - some very very high thin cloud all over the sky.. which with the addition of Mr Moon, meant the whole sky was sort of orange, and seeing was utter pants. 😞 I thought I might get the odd sneaky galaxy in even with the full moon, and setup the 200pds and C9.25... but all for nothing. humph. stu

that's nothing, just coincidentally, I got one of these 'lucky images' last night, and caught the spagetti monster mid leap, jumping off the rosette nebula onto the moon.

fine with me - I was just playing devil's advocate - I wasn't really being serious...😉 Just pointing out that the world 'natural' means different things to different people. One of dynamic range representation in a flat format so our eyes can make sense of it. @Bibabutzemann then clarified above saying that's not he was referring to anyway, so it was all a rather moot point.. though does seem to have stirred some strong feelings. For what it's worth - no devil's advocate..my 2c - I agree, we've never been in a better position with technology allowing us to see as much as possible in what is out there. It can be represented in different ways. Whether it's flattening that dynamic range so we can see it all in a 'photo', leaving it as we might see it via a regular long photo, shooting it in false colour, etc. And if one starts cutting galaxies and sticking them all together in front of the moon, with a spaceship, then probably don't claim you took it last night from your back garden. 🙂 stu

Shot last week with the new 200PDS. ASI1600, around 2 hours each of Ha, Sii and Oiii. Second time I've shot this, and still not happy with the orangey reds - coming out more brown and firey.. but I've played with it long enough so here it is.

Oh no, don't get me wrong I thought I was clear. sorry. I'm sort of playing devils advocate on the natural vs HDR is unnatural view. So in your example, sure all the wee galaxies should be there, but so should all the detail in the core rather than it just being a white blob - that's all I was trying to say. So you prefer the white blob rather than flattening the dynamic range into an HDR of the galaxy - I'm fine with that - it's a preference. Just not more natural than seeing the HDR view is all I am saying. I'm happy to sit outside of that when I start removing things, etc. I don't think I've ever removed any galaxies though. I just like to tidy up dust, maybe a bit of light pollution in the background. Whereas for a Nebula I'd be doing the opposite and really pulling every bit of data out the background. To be honest I'm really playing devil's advocate there too, as I can't remember removing much ever. But for example, the M106 I posted recently had lots of nasty noise in the background which I just couldn't get rid off. There were some other wee galaxies in there and I didn't want to lose them, but you couldn't see them well because of all that noise either. So for that one I went far more extreme that I would usually and had to paint out the noise. https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/393074-m106-and-friends/#comment-4230034 Now maybe I was a bit heavy handed with it, but it took a terribly noisy picture and made it decent imho. I didn't paint in galaxies, or draw stars where there are none, but .. well let me dig out what it looked like before: I had stacking stuff I didn't want to crop, artifacts because some of the subs didn't have flats, and nasty blobs where starnet2++ had done it's thing. Trying to get rid of that with curves/levels was cropping into the data I wanted to keep, so instead I painted out of the noise. That sits fine with me. But I know there are folk who it wouldn't. But is it astro-art ? I'd argue no.

exactly. 'HDR' if you like. thats all I'm saying. 👍

But that's just it isn't it - it isn't. Any more than a photograph of a street is. The human eye auto exposes whatever you look at. There is a good argument that an HDR picture is the best most accurate way of representing what the human eye sees for that reason. So in your example, our space man would look at the core, their eyes would adjust and they would see the detail of the core (and out the corner of their eyes they'd see the rest of the galaxy go a lot dimmer. Then they might look at the arms of the galaxy, and they'd see in the corner of their eyes, the core whiting out. The only truly 'natural' way to represent that in an image would be some sort of exposure layered image with an eye tracker, that change the exposure wherever your eyes were looking. I know I'm being a bit silly, but hopefully you get my point - I think a better definition for what you like is 'my picture shows what a gigantic telescope outside of earth would show if you took a single image with a roll of amazing super sensitive film where it was exposed for general centre weighted exposure'.

I'm with you on most of that, but the white bit - what I was saying is the data is there (in the core). you could choose to bring it out or not. One is no more natural than the other. And I'm afraid the world has changed its definition of photograph in the last 30 years. Even 20 years ago, I was seem as someone who didn't really do real photography because I used photoshop. In the photography community, local clubs, etc. Now it is rare to find a photographer who does not use it, and thinks nothing of object removal, etc. I doubt you have laid eyes on a real 'photograph' in the last 10 years at least if that is your definition I'm afraid. There is, imho nothing 'realistic' about taking 100s of photos with massively long exposures, using software to stack them stretch them and saturate them. If you want to go down that rabbit hole - I'd accept nothing other than a single exposure on celluloid film for an astrophotography 'photograph'. Are Hubble's pictures astro-art ? I think they meet all your definitions for being so ? I like the way this hobby has people who take it in different directions. I don't feel the need to label one way 'not astrophotography'. I don't think that is helpful. It reminds me of the sort of (sorry) snide remarks you used to get in hifi shops when they still existed when you went in to buy a turntable, but didn't have the budget for a 3000 quid thing.. you were somehow not worthy, or doing something which was 'not hifi'. Let's please not go there ? We have folk on here doing NB in weird colours, starless images, heavily cartoony processed images (some of which seem to win competitions), and all sorts. They are all equally worthy of being called astrophotography in my eyes. And I hope most members ?

yup, correct. Same with starnet2++. As you say, each to their own. But even if you stick to working with the data you have got - I would slightly moan about the use of the word 'natural' - as I don't really think it has any meaning here. 'natural' is that you don't see it at all after all ! There is a heck of a lot of data in there you are not using, especially in the core.I don't think the argument that it's natural to not show that detail stands up any more than it being natural TO show it. Both are equally wrong/right. Is it 'natural' if you take a photo inside looking out of a window that all you see is a white square ? that's what you recorded, but it's not 'natural'.. it's just what you recorded... your eyes see out the window fine. so maybe you HDR the image. It's just as much 'natural' then as before, because the word isn't really meanful imho. The definition of natural is yours alone really. So, in the end I'd argue your processing 'suffers' just as much of an artistic input as someone who tries to bring out every piece of data in their processing. One is no more 'natural' than the other imho. However it does seem to be a prevalent belief that it is the case for some reason in the astrophotography community. stu

huh, maybe I'm just less picky about quality, but I print at 120mm/s for pretty much everything with a standard 0.4mm nozzle. But of course, you'll be laying a heck of a lot more plastic down at a time with a 1.5mm so I imagine you need less shells and infills ? stu

ah - that's an important bit I think. I don't want to be constained by physics or sound signal processing practices. I'm happy to do whatever I feel like. Not a criticism, but I do think that hits the nail on the head for why I usually use Affinity Photo for at least some processing. Just like when I'm editing my landscape photos, I'm quite happy removing someone from the background, changing the colour of the sky, or making a foreground object bigger than it is. The same rules apply to astrophotography for me - what we do (well what I like to think I do) is create art - it's not science. So I'm fine with sometimes startools doing a bit, then moving it into affinity photo to take out the stars and replace them, add Ha, do whatever I feel like. It's not that I expect Startools to do that - it is constained by the requirements you've imposed on it - which is 100% ok. 😁👍

All good stuff. All I'd say is that all my screens are calibrated with Spider 3s and denoise in ST always leaves fuzzy backgrounds for me. Just prefer other methods to denoise. I'd love to see a lot more youtube tutorials on startools. Like many people, I learn far better from watching someone do stuff that reading a manual. There are a fair few on there, but not as many as I'd like to see, and too many using wonderful data that most of us just don't have. And yup. Topaz can be taken too far. Sometimes that might be what you want, sometimes not. It's not a bad thing it makes stuff up - you just need to watch for it and decide if you want that or not. Some folk don't, some do. No one is right except the person doing the processing - we're not shooting images for nasa* Any plans to include starnet2++ support ? stu *well unless you are trying for APOD, then probably a good idea to lay off the AI created detail I grant you...

keep your eye out for deals. they have one out just now, but it's just average. I got the whole suite at xmas for I think 60 quid. It's definately the best bit of software I've gotten myself in the last year. I don't use sharpen much, mainly the denoise (which also can sharpen) and gigapixel - which is great for enlarging or reducing. Oh, and they just updated gigapixel to mac M1 - it is now screaminly fast wheras it used to take maybe 30 seconds to preview an image on my Intel i9 8 core/16 thread system, it now takes about 5 seconds on my wee apple mac mini. gotta love M1s - even those mac haters surely... 😛 Can't say I've ever been a fan of gimp I'm afraid - using it feels like I've time travelled back to the late 90s. stu

I've never heard that about PLA ? I'd always heard it was good outside. But that was a very good experiment for sure. Though for our stuff you are doing something wrong if you are using it in the daytime 🙂 I'd never use ABS these days as I've said before. PLA is a great all rounder for sure. And I agree, the best for astro parts nearly always. When I need something with a bit more give, PC. And when I need something massively strong, some sort of PA6. But I have a cupboard full or reels of all sorts, so PETG, etc or whatever is in the printer might get used just to avoid faffing. I agree with previous comment made about thingiverse stuff too - a lot of it is rubbish. but sometimes you find a gem that saves you time building it yourself. I used to share my parts there, but got sick of the stupid comments I'd get (which cannot be deleted) telling me I should have done this or that, or this bit is rubbish, etc. I used to have tons on there with 100s of downloads but deleted my account because if the comments tbh. Print times wise - if you find them long, do check you have tuned your profile as I've said before. Out the box profiles are usually slow as treacle. Unless you are printing out starwars toys, you can tune things to speed up massively. - try print speed of 120mm/s+ - push the movement speeds even higher - tweak the heating, extrusion, etc to compensate as you go until you can't go any faster. - print .3mm layer size .most of the time it's all you need. - pull that infill right down. 10-20% is enough for mounts, etc for our stuff - add an extra external shell with low infills - it's quick - don't use rafts From a default profile you could find a 2 hour print, goes down to 20 mins easy. And Not only does that make it quicker to get a print, but more importantly, if you are designing your own stuff, it allows you to quickly prototype again and again without it being a PITA. stu