powerlord

Just got an email from them. Im going there next weekend (11th), but luckily I'm all self contained in the motorhome so plan to still go. http://www.hawwoodfarm.co.uk/

oh yeh sorry NEWBLUE. But watch Luke's tutorial - it's Siril - Siril is free. Once you go through it there, you can then reproduce it in PS, etc (though dunno how you blend two channels in PS as I'm an Affinity Photo guy) ah I see I forgot to link to the tutorial! here it is:

care to share ? with orion that should be plenty to get a decent pic. With heart nebula maybe not so much - it is a lot dimmer. though you do have the benefit that it's ALT is much higher so less light pollution - but I shot heart and soul the other night in NB with my asi1600 with 600s exposures and it was still rubbish.

yeh, you pretty much don't even have to stack - one 5 min sub gets you M42, or IC434, etc. It really is amazing.

I agree, the only thing to remember is, there's no such thing as a free lunch. my asi1600 is 12mp. My asi533 is 9mp, but heck lets just pretend it was 12mp.. when I shoot mono, every single one of those 12m pixels is capturing L, R,G, B. Or S H O depending on how I'm shooting. I get a resultant sub where every single one of those 12m pixels is a 'real' colour pixel. With the (imaginary 12mp for easy comparison) asi533 I have a 4 colour RGGB bayer mask. So I'm only capturing 3mp of R, 6mp of G, 3mp of B. Actually with an L-extreme you can pretty much forget about the B as it's usually trashed since it's just a noisy version of G. So I get 3mp of R and 6mp of G - which the camera/bayer mask interpolates up to be a 12mp colour image. i.e. once debayered, it appears that I have the same 12mp colour image I get when I composite my asi1600 subs into an LRGB or SHO image, in fact, the majority of the data for each pixel is 'made up'. Now my asi533 isn't 12mp, its 9mp. But the difference is still visible enough in lack of resolution on the same targets to see this affect isn't just a lack of 3mp - its the nature of an OSC. In reality something between 25% -50% of the resolution/detail from the same size mono camera. You could maybe argue that IF that OSC was 12x3 = 36 mp AND had an RGB only bayer mask, that they'd be the same... though of course since the pixels woul;d be a 3rd of the size it wouldn't be the same at all. Anyhoo - as I say - no such thing as a free lunch. I love shooting with the asi533 - I can get amazing results in a very short integration time, but the results I get with my asi1600 blows it away because of the above really. Horse for courses. stu

that's about 3 hours on my ancient Helios 200p. I don't have a field flattener, nor was it particularly well collimated at the time tbh (you're very kind to say it is 'a bit of coma' - it's a punctuation rave on there - but I'm not much of a pixel peeper and still thought it looked good) It was really just to show the SHO type look you can get with bicolour L-extreme images. basic process in a nutshell: - seperate out channels, throw away blue. lets call the remaining ones RED and GREEN. - make a synthetic new green out of say 60% red, 40% green (we'll call this NEWBLUE) Now you can do SHO kinda thing by merging with mapping: L = RED S = RED H = BLUE 0 = GREEN You can then play with the blues and reds to move the lower or higher luminance of each to a slightly different colour - in PI you'd do that with curves. In affinity photo you'd do it with a combination of masking, blurring and selective colour hue changing. Here's a link to @Luke Newboulds tutorial using Siril - which is free so available for anyone to try. stu

duplicate - deleted

Luke has some good videos on how to do it in Siril and PI. And tbh you could then apply that to APP easy enough or any other tool. https://www.youtube.com/c/lukomatico Here's one I did of Rosette that way (shot with asi533 OSC and L-extreme):

yeh I noticed that blue nebula for first time when I shot my 'foxy rosette' - I think I'll try and close up of it soon.

A late M42. I shot a similar wide view In November, but in NB with my asi1600. Same sort of view, but this time with the asi533 and L-extreme. Of course, colours a bit different, etc but still an interesting comparison? Far more detail in the asi1600 version, but then that's to be expected with 12mp of active pixels vs 1/4 of 9mp on the asi533 first is asi533/L-extreme, second is asi1600 and SHO.

sorry to hijack thread. here's the phd2 log, and also asiair log which shows what it thinks it's doing. PHD2_GuideLog_2022-02-27_183449.txtAutorun_Log_2022-02-27_183936.txt

well, it lost stars because by that time it was pointing who knows where. I was dithering dec/ra. blue is ra, so for some reason it seems dec continued and ra went slow or backwards. maybe something got caught on something, that would be the obvious thing, but as I say, seemed ok in morning,. where it said settling failed it was already 100s of degrees off. I dunno.. subs show one before perfect and clear, one after trailing mess. but remained clear all night (other mount setup was fine). As @Bluemoonjim so many things to keep just right, sometimes it goes like clockwork, other times it's like trying to juggle sand. tbh I'm glad its now cloudy for a few nights. need a break. 😣

pfft. be glad it didn't look like this (from last night). who knows what happened there, but as you can see it was guiding fine, and the decided to visit australia... and image startrails for the next 4 hours. and yeh - that's some 'scale out' there... lets zoom in to the start of the 'vacation' to prove it.. It's not the first time I've had this happen for no apparent reason in asiair... everything going well, clear skies, lots of stars for tracking, and then for some reason it stopped. I dunno maybe something got stuck, but it seemed ok this morning. sigh.

A fair point. And if I had less morals I might have tbh. but a deal is a deal. even if it does mean I need to drive 400 miles next saturday to get it.

An ancient 200mm Newt, asi1600. LRGB with some Ha About an hour of each. Shot last night in Ipswich. Definitely by best M51 so far. Edited in Startools, starnet2 and affinity photo. And just for fun, here's the first pic I took of M51, last April:

I'd imagine white balance red and blue. I wouldn't worry about it, you can easily correct in final edit.

3rd night with new obsy. Last night, 200 newt and 135mm. Another 20 hours of imaging. That's 60 in just over a week so far, and tonight clear too!

Just bought a sky watcher 300 PDS. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Hoping when in use I can cram it into the new observatory... Anyone got one? Figured it'd be great for galaxy season photography. I think I'd better start lifting some weights 😜

strange. can't say I've noticed difference across colours from same manufacturer myself. stu

I've read the same. But its not something I've ever found to actually happen. And thats with all 4 printers I've owned. And most of my printing used to be higher than that on my flashforge. With my mega I've mostly been printing PLA over the last year or so tbh, with occasional nylon, etc up to 280 so can't vouch for long term there. But I have never once had an issue from the PTFE tube, never once had a clog and never once had to replace a hot end. That seems to much luck to be luck, but I suppose IF you intended to print at those sorts of temps all the time it would make sense to buy an all metal hot end, it's not like they are expensive. But my experience has been that they are not necessary at all.

nope, and the only thing I've ever printed that hot is nylon. PC i print around 260. this is my favourite https://shop.3dfilaprint.com/polymaker-polymax-tough-pc--175mm-white-polycarbonate-3d-printer-filament-without-buildtak-10736-p.asp never had a problem not having an all metal hot end in the mega S, or my old flashforge - which is still on the original heads after 10 years.

Unless I'm really really being picky - say designing parts for my paramotor, etc. the answer is 'the cheapest'. But I really like Polymaker stuff - it's very good quality. But it costs. So just use it for that picky stuff. Otherwise, what ever is on sale at 3dfilaprint !

that is mad! a good printer costs 150 quid ! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224823321772?hash=item345883a4ac:g:pgAAAOSwyHhh~asz

Nobody much uses ABS there days if they can avoid it- there are better alternatives that are stronger, don't stink and don't warp as much. abs's one benefit is it sticks to beds well. that's about it. A good all rounder is PC - and that's my goto really. I would not use ABS for astro parts - you want rigidity - PLA or PC. not abs or petg or nylon. I used to use ASA as my first substitute for ABS before the PC stuff came along, but I don't really use it now. The nylon ones are awesome - but only suitable for parts that can bend a bit. but for stength they are amazing - I've printed bits that I can pull a car with. For structural, lowish strength, but high rigidity parts - which is exactly what you want for astro - vixen mounts, samyang focusers, etc - PLA or PC is ideal. If your complaining that PLA is cracking either you've not printed it right, or you are tightening something too much - it's not aluminium or deformable plastic - tighten to a bit more than finger tight and that's all you need with bolted parts. PLA is also cheap, easy to print, good bed adhesion and easy to print quickly (a point worth noting is that most printers come with setups that are slower than the second coming - ramp the speed up until it becomes unacceptable quality and back it off a bit). tips: - print at 0.3mm always. It's all you need for structural parts - tune the profile for speed with acceptable quality. I can print something in 1 hour that out the box took 6 hours. - settle on PLA or PC to start with and get your settings tuned in and get to know it. worry about other stuff like PETG only if you really need it later. Also, as a beginner don't get a self build or an old design unless tinkering with a 3d printer is what you want your new hobby to me, not actually designing and printing stuff. The days of having to swap hot ends, and reflash firmware are gone unless you want them. that anycubic mega S I got and now use as my main printer works out the box with no modifications. I leveled the bed, and it works. done. get some uhu sticks for printing non PLA and you are rocking. I've printed rubber braclets, nylon, PC, PETG, ASA, ABS, PC, Nylon all with no problems at all - and quick too. Some as hot as 280 degrees and 110 bed. But yeh, to repeat: - get yerself an anycubic mega s. it's good, cheap, and 'just works'. - get a few rolls of PLA (I use there guys - https://shop.3dfilaprint.com/) - print fast, at 0.3mm. quick fast prints lets you do lots of prototype interations easily - do some tutorials on your cad tool of choice. and remember to design for printability (less supports, flat surfaces, flatter rather than higher when on bed for speed, etc) - don't be afraid to split parts for pritability and glue them together after - this stuff is awesome: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174624696075?hash=item28a871670b:g:edsAAOSw~plgHCNR - try to get parts from places like gradcad rather than thingiverse. you'll then have the actual part design and not just the STL - so much easier to edit and modify yourself in parametric CAD - ping me a message if stuck. I've been printing 12 years - which must put me amongst the old guard experience wise, and happy to help if I can 🙂 stu

yup. when i started astro last year, it was also an excuse to start some new 3d printed projects. first was to design and build a focuser for my skymax, then later modify and print a 135mm focuser design from internet. As has been said before - those alone (3d printed versions) sell for 150 quid - so it pretty much pays for itself after one print (and a rare of example where it IS worth printing something you can buy - since it's just a 3d print being sold)