powerlord

sorry if I'm being thick, but if you skip interpolation bebayering surely it'll just me a coloured mess ?

A SW 200 PDS. and a decent CC. jobs a good un. Or get greedy like I did when you see a 300PDS on ebay and end up with a monster. But tbh, I doubt I get much benefit over a 200 most of the time, unless the goal is to ensure I have a telescope large enough to fit into at all times. Not sure I'd bother with the SCT. I've got a C9.25 but tbh I've found my newts better for galaxies so far (750, 1000 and 1500mm). I do agree with not getting too bogged down with the theory (sorry Vlaiv) - also, as I think Olly mentioned - consider shooting mono - make every pixel count rather than losing resolution to a OSC camera ? stu

ah sorry. didn't get it at first. ha - now we just wait for @vlaiv to point out the dodgy looking star nasa has on one of the corners 🤣

is this 'telescope alignment evaluation image' a 'thing' ? if so - what is it ?

huh. though that sounds good, I don't see how it can be messed up. I mean it's an EQ6-R pro. it's just selecting lunar in asiair. what's to go wrong ? but everytime I've tried this is what i've found. if lunar didn't work I'm sure asiair would have fixed it. hmm.. maybe I do need to try faffing around with ascom and windows and sticking the mount onto the laptop as well as sharpcap when I'm doing the moon then - see if that sorts it. stu

thanks I will have a play, but though better than nothing it still isn't very helpful unless you have all round visibility. so galaxies over 30 say, ain't that useful without me still clicking through every one to find the ones in the NW I can see, etc. Now, if that plan affected the live view, filtering off everythinng else so it actually showed all that stuff it would be great - but afaik it doesn't.

hmm. ok good to know. I mighy try this tomorrow night, when it looks like being clear.

I keep finding this out when Im imaging then forgetting to ask until next time, and I have the same problem. Looks like possibly moon imaging thu night and by some miracle I have remembered this time..so here goes. asiair, eq6r, guiding, etc. Planning to try my 300pds.. maybe with 2x barlow, with asi1600 and asi224 too. And the issues I've had before when I've tried this with the moon, is that lunar tracking (vis sidreal) does not seem to keep moon in same position very well at all. If I'm shooting wider feild say, and fill the screen with the moon and start a capture - it'll have drifted to the edge in under a minute. Now, stating the obvious - but I'm PAed great, able to get 10+ min deep sky perfect. 5mins without even guiding. So .. is it just that lunar tracking rate is an approximation and always a bit rubbish or is there something I'm doing wrong ? And afaik there's no way I can actually guide with asiair. Maybe if I swap not only the camera over to sharpcap on a PC, but also mount, guide camera, etc then can sharpcap do it ? Would that solve the issue if it can guide on a surface feature ? feels like if its that bad on lunar tracking, guiding will be rubbish too ? stu

yeh, that same process, but with sky safari is where I am just now. ..does seem like there should be a better way 😕

Just to be clear Vlaiv, you are talking about doing all this visually/optically yes ? with eyepiece, etc. Not digitally via a camera ? That is what puts me off doing all this tbh - as I'm really all geared up for imaging only.

Anyone come across one ? Ideally I'd love a sort of A2 sized ,equirectangular format map with the main nebulas and galaxies on there - wee picture, approx size, approx brightness. say, over 5'x5' ? I find myself often zooming in and out, in and out of skysafari when something like that would be great. searching hasn't turned up anything. trying to find galaxies big enough to image and in areas of the sky I can see, etc is otherwise a bit of a pain. I did suggest to sky safari that it'd be great if as well as filtering my mag, you could filter by size, but that suggestion seems to have gone knowhere. Having a nice big print out would be good for 'crossing them off' or marking dates you imaged them too ? Oh, and I don't mean a star map. I'm not interested in stars ( 🤩 ). just an uncluttered 'target map' kinda thing, nebula, galaxies ? stu

asiair manual focus - just click on a star in focus mode. it will put a box around it. click the + and it will take you into the measurement screen where you can manually adjust eaf to minimise size.

aye- very quick walkthrough - just go through buttons top to bottom, left to right. oh - and make sure you are using latest beta. unless i say otherwise, everything is default: autodev crop wipe autodev. and now, select box just covering m51. experiment till you get as above visible contrast HDR. this bit is important, [removed word] up the bottom left sliders a bit at a time until you have pulled back all the detail from the core sharp svdecon - left top two sliders here - move each up a wee bit at a time while highlighting a box around m51. keep moving up till it breaks up then back off a bit I usually find around 20/20 good color. play with this a bit shrink. as you wish usually at this point I save it out. and use topaz for denoise and sharpening. And I agree re: look, things can easily get a bit 'startoolsy' looking. Whether you think mine does above or not, dunno, but that's why i tend to drop out before denoise, and bring it into affinity photo for a bunch more work - starnet, yada yada

free trial available - and unlike pi trial you don't need to prove to the gestapo that you are genuine user. stu

great result. I think what you've got there is the spider shadow rather than the 'airy rings' yer meant to look for though. But it's probably good enough - others can comment, I can't having never done the airy rings thing. result pretty similar to what I got with my 12" newt (1500): I don't know how you process, but I've found startools gets me better results with galaxies than anything else I've tried. might be worth a go as I'm sure there must be a lot more data in that massive frame to eek out. stu

how far off was it ? I was hoping to avoid star tests - at least ones involving eye pieces and all that gubbins. Be interested in a quick write up of what worked for you as that looks very nice. I just did an ocal collimation with my 12" newt - and a single sub seems to show its pretty much spot on, but be good to know for my other scopes. So the 2600mc has a built in uv/ir does it ?

I didnt ask sorry. I think all info is on website. Cloudy just now. 😕

About 3 folk on the whole campsite! weather forecase rubbish, but up at 4am this morning for the dog - and wow! sky clear and I've never seen the stars so bright! only an hour or so from daylight, so no point setting up and imaging, but truly dark sky. against odds, some forecasts saying I might get some clear sky tonight early on - so everything setup and ready now. Hoping to try for sh2-129 and capture the illusive squid.

Let us know how u get on.

luvely jubbly - that looks perfect to me!

Oh , and as an imager I can't be bothered with star tests - too much hassle. collimated is collimated imho. I went through this and got it right on my 300 PDS, and first light showed lovely circular stars edge to edge with my CC - so that's good enough for me. Looking at your pic, something is out - whatever the green is highlighting.

manual is terrible. basic process: red ring on edge of focus tube. use camera focus to get sharp on edge, and get it right on edge. this is the important bit. get this wrong, rest will be wrong - use offset if you need to. now, your job is to make sure the secondary is centred and circular. use the green circle for this - don't continue until it's precisely aligned with green circle (adjusted for size). now, next is to get primary mirror centred in the secondary. only need small adjustments to secondary for this. get it bang in the centre and use the blue circle of this - zoom in if you need to. ignore the fact the camera might not be in the centre. it's the edge of primary just want concentric with edge of secondary. final step is cross hairs on, and adjust primary so camera lens is right under cross hairs - which should then be also colocated with the centre donut of the primary.

So you've got red on focus tube, blue on secondary edge, and green on ? was green centred on edge of primary until you adjusted to put camera on centre ? And just checking - are you using the focus on the ocal ? that can really help get the circles precisely over the relevant bit. I'm re-writing the Ocal Manual just now for Ocal, so interested in anything you found difficult/tricky. stu

It's all on the website. basically closed from April 1st. Maybe it's an april fool ? 😉 I suppose even most caravan/motorhomers actually expect toilets, etc. It's obviously not been an easy decision of them to make - to miss the whole of the high season. I head over there friday, but weather looks pants so doubt I'll even bother bringing astro gear. walking the dug, and editing pics and videos and book reading I think. I might bring a portable rig - I've had a plan to try mounting it on the roof... I've got scissor jacks to stablise the motorhome... and thought it'd be good if I'm wild camping somewhere as gear would be safe plus you'd get better visibility. I reckon for wide/medium view stuff it'd probably be steady enough with the scissor jacks... (I can get on roof through bedroom ceiling window) stu p.s. if anyone has a surefire sedative for a mental jackrussell so I can have some relaxing time in the van - please share. 😛

£25 a night. 😱