LandyJon

Booked and looking forward to it ... Can confirm the awning fills with spiders. I have the same Omega 350 Damien mentioned, good tent but next time I'll be binning off the double airbed and double sleeping bag that turned out to be just 2 season rated ... Got a Go Outdoors shopping basket already filled for autumn with a proper camp bed and down sleeping bag, with some decent thermals so I'm not wearing 15 layers to come out and see what you visual guys are looking at.  I had a proper carpet down under the airbed, but it's just a big volume of air that doesn't warm up off the heater, second night I pulled my foil backed picnic blanket in from the awning and laid it over the airbed, was good enough for the rest of the week, perhaps just laying the carpet on top of the mattress would work too, but yeah airbeds don't warm up at all so insulate yourself from it with a topper of some sort.

Not sure how to fend off the micro spiders yet, but they didn't make it inside the inner, kept it closed after 1st night, short of bringing a cat I'm not sure what you can do, if I think of anything I'll let you know.

Thanks everyone for a fun weekend, even the cloudy nights in the games room.

Not too hot on the processing yet, but my attempts follow ...

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy:

NGC2024 Flame Nebula :

M101 Pinwheel Galaxy :

M82 Cigar Galaxy :

I'm happy with them and clearly there's some good data there, just need some more practice getting the best out of them.

Thanks to Lesley for her hospitality and maintenance of the field and facilities.

And Thanks to Peter and Derek for some pointers with my processing.

Looking forward to seeing you all again in the autumn.

I'll be there Monday, clear outside app is predicting as far as Wednesday and its looking good 👍 

Looking forward to meeting everyone and Stu will be joining us for the weekend.

Think I've got everything I need and a better understanding of settings so hopefully get some good data 🤞

Well after a fair bit of head scratching I've realised my debayer matrix was out, due to flipping the image on both axis' during capture to get the right orientation.  This had the consequence of flipping the RGGB to a BGGR which now applied in DSS has resulted in a much better starting image that I don't have to skew the colours to the extreme ... 

Welcome Peter, I'm still well entrenched in the newbie category, its a steep learning curve but its long too !

I've just about got to grips with capturing, since forgetting everything I learnt as a kid with a Practika SLR. Think I'm back on track now to start fine tuning those settings and get beyond basic levels and curves adjustments in post processing to bring out the colours where they should be without losing the fine detail.  Need a degree in photoshop !

Have fun, I tried to use my old Nikon 1J5 but no viable remote trigger so I just bit the bullet and found a 2nd hand ASI183MCpro on here.  Was a leap in to the deep end with a long focal length SCT but I'm getting there.

Look forward to your first images.

After a newbie season last year getting to grips with setting up everything I needed and building some knowledge of how to use it.

I started this season shortly before a pre-star camp weekend at Galloway mostly for a catch up with an old friend but having forgotten most of what I learnt last year and not much chance to practice before hand, I wasted most of the good breaks in cloud last Saturday trying to figure out what gain and exposure settings I should be using again.

Last night was as perfect as it could get post about 8pm through till sunrise and having since figured out the reason I wasn't getting any worthwhile data was a very low offset setting, I spent the bulk of an all nighter trying out various gain/exposure/offset settings on Triangulum Galaxy which has led to about 4 hours of random data I might be able to pull something out of once I've got darks and flats for all the different files, but it might be more effort than it's worth.

I did then as the sun was starting to break the dark, notice Orion was coming out behind the trees, reasonably high, so rather than packing up I thought I'd get a comparison on my 'first DSO' image posted last year.  A little under an hour later with the skies brightening up I had a good looking live stack with raw files saved.  What's baffled me now, probably due to lack of sleep, is now that I open the stacked file it's only 8 bit. I'm sure I was processing a 32 bit after packing up, but now I only seem to have the 8 bit one.  Anyway I think it's a good improvement on last years M42 and a vast improvement on the low offset value data I've been struggling with since then.

Here's looking forward to some decent images moving forward and a look at the 'not as good as it looked last night' M42 ... Processing is minimal, but having lost the 32 bit version I was never getting it back to the way it looked last night 🙁 

First DSO image from last year for comparison, processed by Stu and only about 15 mins data, but at least I'm back on track and as I said it looked much better in the 32 bit version.

Ahh I think I've sussed it, it's the stacked file it saved as 8 bit, the raw files I've managed to restack in 32 bit, now I need to work on my processing skills so I can get it looking like it did last night 🙂

8 hours ago, jamie56 said:

Well folks had a good nite last nite, Stu and Jon got some good images as well, they a are away now, however two more happy campers have arriver,  unfortunately Mr Rain isn't letting up tonite so looks as if a few wee aperitifs are in order, very strange not to see Mike coming out to greet you on arrival, somehow it just doesn't fell the same, you'll be missed this year m8, no skin of yer teeth mount repairs by candle lite inthe wee small hours.😧😧😧. Safe trip all all attending , 

P's wind has all but one now as well, just a bit of rain

Was nice to meet you, hope you get your fridge fixed.

Stu had better luck than me, I wasted most of the clearer skies trying to figure out gain settings 😖  Shame Stu had to get back for work or we could have stayed a few more nights if the pitch was still available

Hopefully we'll get up for the next party and I'll be up to speed and starting to get some good images by then.

Have a good week.

44 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

What camera?

An astro-modded DSLR may well have had it's sensor reinstalled with tilt.

Michael

No, its a ZWO ASI183C Pro

Am I correct in thinking it's the corrector or sensor, could it be the other side, inside the OTA ? could it still be either of the mirrors misaligned ?

Ok, I have a 1000 px wide jpg.

Ahh that works thanks,

Had a look at the image train and can't figure how it's out of alignment.  Could it be the corrector lens is tilted inside its housing, or the sensor misaligned in the camera ?  Any way to tell which is more likely ? both were 2nd hand, the camera from Daz on here and the corrector came with the scope from a local marketplace on facebook, it has a couple marks on the lens and theres a securing ring holding the lens in, is it worth trying to remove it and see if theres anything stopping it seating correctly ... it would be miniscule as it 'appears' well seated against the lip.

Thanks Michael, that does make sense, I'll have a look but I'm sure it's all screwed in properly, there must be something either in the corrector itself or the camera.

Can't get the image to display in that op ... does it need to be jpg to display it or is there a different way of attaching it to have it display ?

I've just finished setting up the back focus for the reducer/corrector on my Nexstar 6SE and I can't seem to get a decent image out of it.  I'm getting a strange smudge on stars at the top of my image seeming to radiate out from towards the bottom of the frame.  The lower left and right corners the smudge is near horizontal towards the edge and the upper corners it smudges at 45 deg toward the corners.

Is it collimation ? or does it look like a problem with the back focus, or something I haven't considered ?

Thanks for looking ...

Edit: Added unprocessed tif ... should be easier to view ... jpg added.

M 82_00009.fits Autosave.tif

Hi, I'm still fairly new to imaging but I've recently gone through setting up and tuning Astrotortilla to plate solve quickly.  Not sure if it does no.2, but Sharpcap rapidly solves and re-centers to Stellariums initial slew to command pretty accurately and I believe a second solve and goto can give more precision.

https://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorial-setting-up-and-using-astrotortilla-for-plate-solving.html

This guide was very thorough and easy to follow for its setup, It seems everyone has their preferences for software, we all find our own and what works with other software we're using, just offering another option to consider.

I've recently posted it in the welcome thread, but I'll post my 1st DSO here for posterity.

Just 5x 3min subs with 3x darks kindly processed by a more experienced friend since I'm just getting started on this next learning curve 🙄

In my brief experience so far, trying to get handset to offer me a star I could actually see, never mind being below horizon ! and trying (yet failing) to avoid spending big chunks of money.  I was trying to use what I had camera wise, however it turned out the high Mp little Nikon 1J5 was unable to tether and the Canon 350D I could have on permanent loan from my Dad was too old to tether without a special cable that adapts the shutter release to USB.

So the main barrier to putting a laptop in seems to be whether your DSLR is modern enough to allow remote shutter and image transfer via USB.  My options couldn't so I ended up finding a good 2nd hand dedicated cam on here instead.

Also a good USB hub and a long (powered) USB extension so you can sit in the warm kitchen watching your images pile up on those particularly frosty nights 🙂

Jon here in Runcorn, UK, been setting myself up over the last 9 months or so to get some good deep sky images and with a lot of help and advice from my mate Stu and the very helpful Steve @ENS Optical, on top of information gleaned from your very knowledgeable discussions here on the forum, I've got myself up and running with a Celestron Nexstar 6SE with F6.3 Reducer/Corrector, ZWO ASI183MC, Altair GPCAM3 385C3 and a William Optics guidescope mounted on a NEQ6PRO.

It's been a long journey from first buying the OTA on its Goto mount, through having the main board catch fire on the mount which Steve had replaced without hesitation despite being sold as used (many thanks) and plenty of other headaches and head scratchers with adapting the way Stu does his imaging to fit with my quite different rig and eventually figuring out how to get mine working, I finally have something to show for it.

So Friday came with a couple of hrs of clear sky after Thursdays entire evening and early morning being spent getting back in focus after adjusting the back focus to the correctors requirement and struggling with camera connection dropouts and catching the mounts off switch while polar aligning with Sharpcaps, impressive so far, Polar alignment feature.  Fridays brief window was enough to get setup, aligned synced, focused, guiding and about 15 mins of data on M42 and 9 mins of darks in the library 🙂

Since I'm just getting to grips with the processing and it's a limited amount of data, Stu kindly processed it for me to see what I'd got and I'm impressed, as are most people with less knowledge than me haha.  I'm sure I'll look back see it's not that great, but right now it looks amazing from where I'm sitting !

Thanks again for your community input into my knowledge and hope I can start to contribute what I've learnt to help others and fine tune what I'm doing with more advice from you folks.