LandyJon

Just double checked my booking with Lesley and she's confirmed pitches are still available. Did you speak to Lesley and say you wanted to book for the Starcamp ? if you just ask for the dates she's closed to the public for us.

There you go, vlaiv is more knowledgeable than I and has explained better than I could, his list at the end a little vague though ... Lights - the data Darks - remove the sensor read noise Flats - remove any light anomalies or dust specs etc. Flat darks or dark flats (which ever is correct) that remove the sensor read noise from the flat frames As he explained -10 is about as low as you need to go, with a cooled camera you can generally reach that indoors, or at least somewhere away from central heating and as I said going lower has minimal benefit. I don't know siril so hopefully someone can chime in on that side.

You don't really need bias frames with astro cameras, darks, flats and maybe dark-flats are all you need. You also don't need to cool that low, the difference between -5 and -10 is very little, anything below that is negligible. There's a good video all about camera sensors, if you can get through it you'll understand a lot more about how they work and and what makes enough difference to be worth doing.

Sorry I thought we were talking about the heater ring Relative to a wrap around band they probably are, but as Elp said, it's the better option and relative to other asto gear it's not a fortune Just had a quick look, I know it says heater control but how it'd connect I don't know.

Just plug 12v in to the 1 lead, it'll run at full power but that's only an issue if you're trying to run on a battery pack, if you're on mains power it's no problem to leave it on max.

I've had very little practical time with my hyperstar since getting it collimated (more by fluke I think!). I was going to fit the guide scope but read it didn't need it, although the longer guided exposure makes sense I'd have come to that conclusion eventually I guess, need to figure out a detachable clamp so the OTA still fits in it's bag. Totally agree with you on the f6.3, I was exposing 3-5 mins with 200mm guiding. To be clear those pics were 4.5 hrs imaging time unfiltered OSC (one shot colour sensor if OP isn't sure as opposed to mono) it was at a dark sky site and 1 pic is about 3 hrs of the data, the other about 2 hrs ... and I'm sure I could process it better these days but I've still a lot to learn on that side, I enjoy the capturing and tinkering more than the learning how to use editing software lol, I'll get round to it !

I had a William Optics I got 2nd hand from a nearby members advert on here, but any 200mm would suffice, as long as it's fixed securely. There's a golden ratio between pixel scale of imaging to guiding, about 4 if I remember and I seem to remember with the tiny 183 and a 385 I had in the guide, I was about on the limits of recommended, but it worked, I got some good pics, I'll try find on the NAS and post a couple. Hyperstar is a whole different ball game, I'm only just getting in to. You don't need guiding, you don't even need an equatorial mount apparently, f2 is that quick you get good subs in seconds rather than minutes and at super wide FoV field rotation is negligible. I've wondered about putting the guide scope back on but the couple times I've had it out I'm not sure it's worth guiding at all. Yeah that was my point, stick with the DSLR for now but when you start thinking about a dedicated camera, bear in mind the tiny 183 I had just emphasised the problems you're already starting with with these long focal length optics. Personally I love them, the 3 scopes in 1, add in a Barlow and put the guide cam in, you've got a planetary imager you can try, again it's on my long list for few clear sky opportunities lol

I started out with a 6SE and the reducer is a must, don't remove it until you're up to speed on everything else, the narrower FoV is good for smaller targets but introduces much greater need for accuracy in pa, guiding etc. and needs much longer total exposure times. With the reducer I was happy with what I was getting after 4.5 hrs, at F10 it'd take days worth. On PA I can't fault Sharpcap, the routine is simple, expose at park position, rotate 90° and expose again, then it guides you to adjust the bolts. I can get down to 5 arcsec on the EQ6 in <2 mins provided the laptop is in view from the mount (often it's in the kitchen and going back n forth makes it harder). It's a premium feature on Sharpcap, but the £10 ish per year is a small price to pay for the PA alone. I find the software great for capture and the focus aids and calibration frame routines all work with ease. I had a guide scope on mine which worked fine, since upgrading to 9.25 the OAG is invaluable but more to learn and unnecessary at 6" I'd say especially starting out. The other thing I'd mention is look at the field of view differences the camera sensor size makes. I started with a very small 183 sensor which made things more difficult, stick with larger sensors if you can, to keep that FoV wide and minimise the headaches.

Are you using a filter of any kind ? I've had some patterns produced by reflections between the sensor and filter, it was mostly visible on bright stars and solved by adjusting the distance between sensor and filter. Try an image without the filter to see if that removes the pattern. Fault finding with astrophotography usually involves stripping back to basics, other things to try may be ensuring binning is 1x1 and as has been suggested the bayer matrix, have a look at the raw image before bayer pattern is applied or try the 4 different bayer patterns to see if the pattern is still there. Is it on the individual light frames or only after calibration frames (darks/flats) have been stacked.

Thanks Derek hope you're feeling better, shame people choose not to honour the deposit, perhaps it should be taken at booking and refunded if cancelled over a month before, but that could be more of a headache for Lesley I guess. Hope we get a better turn out this time, I'll be there for a break if nothing else, fingers crossed for clear skies, see you there.

Remember the corrector, primary and secondary are all matched at manufacture and oriented for best performance so try to use all 3 from the same scope and maintain their orientation through any dismantle and reassembly. Hope you get something that works well at the end, I liked mine, they're a good little scope.

I didnt think the secondary screwed in to a thread ? Is it held in place then ? I had a 6SE but don't recall removing the secondary, the Edge 9.25 has the same as pictured above, the secondary slots in with a peg to achieve correct rotation position, then the retaining ring screws down to hold it in place. A photo of what you've got would help, there may be earlier versions which were different to the above image, certainly fastar compatibility would have changed the way the secondary mounted if yours is pre-fastar. As for buying spares a quick Google found nothing, but a quick call to FLO or Rother Valley, one or other may help you find the part. Edit : Oh and collimation will need to be checked either way once you've sorted it, these SCTs hold collimation pretty well, I work on the idea mounting and dismounting and carefully packing away etc is all good but take it for a drive and you should check its still aligned. Also cleaning the corrector is easy enough, even if it needs removing, just be sure to mark the orientation so it goes back in exactly the way round it came out from.

Indeed, you need a finder scope of some sort ... Mine have cameras in there rather than eyepieces, but the small white scope (or a red dot) you'd use once aligned with the main scope to find the star you want, then looking through the main scope it shouldn't be too far out of your view, hopefully in it but if not you may see some glow that'll indicate which way you need to move. My main reason for comment tho ... Have you got your location set properly in the synscan handset ? using the right format, ie. decimal or deg:min:sec ... to be honest I forget, its been that long, software does it all for imaging so I haven't used the handset in a long time, but if your location is off your goto and star aligns will all be off. Just a thought.

Yes, I need to put some time in to learning the processing now I've got some good data collecting kit. Was at this point 2 years ago with the 6", now I've finally got everything I need for the 9.25 and got it working I can start concentrating on learning photoshop techniques.

Thanks Damien, something to work on, I'd forgot to remove the filter so should get something better next autumn, was thinking collimation would take all night but it went well, then I didnt fancy dismantling it all in the field to get the filter from inside the hyperstar. But happy with results 🙂