powerlord

yeh, but you can't enter 0 for the guide camera. doesn't let you. who knows why. so you have to faff about like i did and pretend it's the main camera, set it to 0, take a preview and plate solve, remember the value, flip the camera back to be the guide camera and then enter it. why in the love of all that is good do I need to do that ? why can't it just plate solve the guide camera pic ? i can't believe its not been suggested as a feature enhancement.

New ota, everything else the same, but stuck a sw50mm finder I'd converted to use as a guidescope on there. The Internet told me it was 180mm. After guiding setup the graph was WEIRD. totally symmetrical : I couldn't understand what was wrong. In an effort to eliminate anything I could think of, I told asiair to use the 120mm as main camera with FL 0, and plate solved. It told me FL was 162mm. I recalibrate guiding, and now I'm getting what I expect, and 0.4rms. So just a tip really - make sure that FL you enter is accurate. Why it doesn't just plate solve it anyway I've no idea...

I think it looks good. Maybe could pull more blue out in the nebula under the head. If u want more rusty colour, take some green out. Don't use PI, but I think it's call SCNR process? And don't be afraid to play with curves on individual colours (rgb or cym) to get the colour you want.

Very nice. What's this photo database in siril u mention? Sounds interesting.

The old 200p was rack and pinion but OK with it. This seems OK too but more chance of everything hanging from it than the Crayford on the 72ed for example. And with filter wheel, and asi1600 thats a fair amount. But I've tighened it as much as seems reasonable and moved freely with wheel and now no play with EAF connected so hopefully OK. Will give it a go in daylight tomorrow to find focal point so I'm in roughly right ballpark for first light. As the back mirror is open might be worth attaching a fan, but can do that later. Not checked collimation yet as waiting for a Cheshire (got an svbony laser but as its really wobbly fit it's pretty useless). Generally though feels nicely put together for 260 quid. Weird they didn't put knobs on secondary but did put em on primary, but easy to change them when I collimate it. Unlike my celestron I imagine stardard metric I'll have in my spares box.

Got today. Was hoping for first light tonight but forecast has changed. Yes it's a Crayford. Had to bodge to fit an EAF to it, one bolt and a cable tie to hold on.. Not ideal but best I could think of. Looks nice. Heck of a lot smaller than the 200p. Im not a star peeper, so unless there's massive star coma I doubt I'll be bothered. Here my heath Robinson eaf mount

I've no problem with slew speed. About same as my eq6-r. I've just had a replacement Controller from alex. He fixed the home position issue but my controller was too old for firmware. I sent mine back to him for board replacement but got lost in post. Alexander offered me a new replacement at discount, so bought that and got yesterday. Not used in anger yet. Alexander is a top bloke, and if the home issue is sorted, it should be excellent. I never had over 1" rms guiding with the old unit, and that is with a tatty eq5 that has seen better days.

Look into car heaters. They are all 12v, cheap as chips and tend to be around 120w. Or fan only.

Sorry, yeh my point here (if i had one) is that there will be differences with topaz - it's using ai stuff to remove noise, sharpen things, even make things up, etc depending on how far you take the options. But it uses that original data to 'make it up'. I suppose I could apply exactly the same settings to your 50% reduced and enlarged one and see if result is the same ? But dunno what I'd be trying to prove really. I suppose only, Topaz is black magic - and a lot cheaper than buying another OTA or camera 😉

And here's the M33 one shrunk to 50% with gigapixel, then standard resize up just for comparison.

just a note, that absolutely Vlaiv is correct here, but at least in my experience, the improvement gigapixel can make with its AI/sharpening/etc it does when 50% binning is far more pleasing to my eye than the very basic PI/startools/etc binning algorithms, even though you don't get the SNR benefit. But I understand that's definately a person thing - If your aim is maximum scientific accurancy then it's not the way to go. For me, it's all about something that looks nice to hang on the wall 😁

So, I talked to FLO and they reckoned the ts-optics 150 probably has the edge over the SW. And at 260 quid seems a steal. Focuser a lot higher quality, which sounds good as the 200p one is pretty agricultural. They reckon I might not need a coma corrector with the asi1600/533 so I'll try it first and see. Looks nice too in red and black - will go with my zwo stuff 🤪 So another newt it is.. but a lot smaller one. Will get around to seeing if i can flog the 200p locally in the new year, since this will mean I have 5 OTAs.. which is far too many. Not counting the multitude of DSLR lenses, etc. thanks for the advice chaps, and I'll post my results of course! stu

huh. that I did not know. so it's a squiz basically. you've got sort of 9mp luminance, but only 1/4 of the res for R and B, 1/2 for green. so in regular photography too.. i just always thought a 10mp sensor was 10 mps, each with 4 subs. sneaky. which does somewhat explain that the results i get with my asi1600 seem massively better than my asi533 sometimes - 12mp real vs sort of 2.2mp. understanding that now makes things clearer, thanks.

can I ask a really dumb question vlaiv - my asi1600 and my asi533 have the same pixel size. one is colour, one is mono. so.. 4656*3520 3.8um on the asi1600 3008x3008 3.8um on the asi533 so, i get that the asi1600 being mono, every pixel is that size and mono output. on the asi533, being colour, there is a bayer mask, and each pixel is actually 4 subpixels right ? each a 1/4 of the area. And must be able to be read out seperately as 4 values ? So, if by some magic you took the bayer mask off the asi533, would you have a 4 x 9mp = 36mp sensor ? And my asi1600s effective pixel size if I'm shooting, say Ha vs the asi533 with an L-extreme is gonna be 4x area on asi1600 as on the asi533, 3 out of the 4 subpixels are picking up no Ha at all ? I'm kinda hoping I've not got all the wrong, but as they say - there's no such thing is a stupid question* stu *only a stupid person asking it

I just bin when I shoot with my asi533/asi1600 and the C9.25x0.67 and I mean, you don't need to bin when stacking - you can bin later when editing. If I'm using startools, I tend to bin as it really only works well if you can get the noise down. But if I'm editing in APP/affinity/topaz I tend to not bother binning till the end. Then I use gigapixel to bin to 50%. stu

primary mirror open on both surely ? I'm probably not understanding you, but they both look pretty much identical. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescopes-in-stock/ts-photon-6-f5-advanced-newtonian-telescope-with-metal-tube.html https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescopes-in-stock/skywatcher-explorer-150p-ds-ota.html

well..still a newt, but not a terrible idea. I see FLO do 2: the sw 150p, and the ts-photon 6" F5. Any experiences with which is best ? both seem very similar. As it'd be getting fitted with an EAF the DS of the SW isn't any use... I see the secondary mirror size is in spec for the ts-photon but not the SW. A smaller newt would certainly do it.. and cheaper too (even with coma corrector). A good 3kg lighter than the 200p, and a good deal shorter. still don't like open end, but compromises needed somewhere. stu

The svbony 120f7 though.. I throw blue away 9x out of 10 and use the green and red as I am shooting with the L-extreme. Has anyone got experience of what its like with that ? I was wondering if the FL51 might be good enough for that basically. And as you say, NB. I don't really shoot any RGB stuff tbh, so it would be no great loss ? I do like the simplicity of refractors - my 72ED is great. @iantaylor2uk as olly says, it would among other things be just waay to slow with a barlow. fine for planetary, but not for DSO. The MNs are just a bit much, and also big things too - prefer something slightly more compact that the massive newts - I've struggled to get guiding under 1" rms with the newt however I balance it (mental RA spikes now and again 8" or so for some reason).. but with the 9.25 for example I easily get 0.3-0.5 rms with those occasional spikes being 2" or so max)

Hi chaps - equipment in my sig. So I'm sick of the 200p newtonian - it's a big unweildy beast. So I've got wide up to 430mm covered, then I've got my 9.25x6.7 giving me around 1300mm. What I don't have is anything in between, other than the newt at 1000mm. Ideally I'd like something in the 700-900 range, flattened and ready for imaging. Using with my asi533 and asi1600 Seems to me, looking around I've found two possibilities: 1. a 6" RC and flattener: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescopes-in-stock/stellalyra-6-f9-m-crf-ritchey-chrtien-telescope-ota.html with a .75 flattener that gives me 1027mmF6.7.. a bit more than I want, but maybe there is a flatter flattener ? 0.6 woudl be ideal ? coming to 550 quid OR 1. an svbony 120f7 and https://www.amazon.co.uk/Svbony-Telescope-Achromatic-Dispersion-Astrophotography/dp/B08ZS8PRFX/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=svbony&qid=1639403106&rnid=1642204031&s=electronics&sr=1-6 and 0.8 fattener giving me 672mm.. but maybe there is a flattener that doesn't reduce ? coming to around 660 quid. Or are there some other options ? around that sort of money ? I'm not sure how keen I am on the RC, as it's still open at the front, and I've found that a right pain to keep clean. However I suspect I'd get clearer imaging with the RC than the svbony with its FL51 glass - though it's all gonna be either NB or OSC+L extreme. IF I could get a 0.6 flattener for the RC, that would bring it to 822mm, and F5.4 which feels to me ideal. While the svbony is around the same speed, but 672mm.. but it does have the benefit of less need for collimation, and not open at the front... thoughts ?

thanks to the awesome tutorial by Luke on his channel about Sirl, I've had another go at processing my Rosette that I took and posted a few days ago. here's the results

A truly abysmal christmas tree cluster - as mentioned in other posts - mount not behaving at all, terrible guiding, terrible framing.. but it's christmas - so here's a tree

Not really that happy with this one - as per rosette post - mount with p200 was just terrible guiding - spikes at 8". just very very weird. hoping it is just some sort of thing with the P200, as with my 9.25 I get 0.3 rms usually with no big spikes. Anyway, binned x2 because of that, and still isn't great frankly - one to try the 9.25 on next clear night. anyway, asi533, l-extreme, p200 and eq6r-pro.

shot last night with p200, asi533. mount was not playing ball, and my guiding rms was 0.8, so not the sharpest. Struggling to get a nice SHO palette with bicolour, so going for a HOO job. 3 hours of subs. I think I'm gonna stick with my 9.25 with .67 from now on, its soooo much easier to use than the big p200. yes.. it gets less light, but other than that its all positives imho.

I was gonna suggest he had enable 'negative mode' by mistake. 🤪

quite. update from last night... got no clear skies.. clouds everywhere, then clear.. just get on target.. clouds everywhere again. then mount got twisted in cables at 2am so had to go out and sort that out.. finally gave in and turned everything off at 3.30am. patience is also required with our weather. sigh. ☹️