The Lazy Astronomer

Just scrolling through the page on your website, then I see this at the bottom - get many takers for that? 🤣

Important thing to note: the L3 is a broadband filter; it allows all wavelengths of light between approx 420 - 680 nm to pass through. The l-enhance is a dual narrowband filter (albeit a fairly we wide one) - it blocks around 80 - 90% of wavelengths and allows a small section around 500nm (Oiii & Hb emissions), and 656 nm (Ha emission). The L-enhance, as all narrowband filters, greatly improves contrast on emission nebulae by virtue of blocking most of the rest of the light spectrum.

To further what onikkinen said, my eq6r consistently guides in the range of 0.5 - 0.7 rms. In good conditions, and when pointing high in the sky, I've seen as low as 0.4 rms. One thing to note is it didn't guide this reliably out of the box - dec especially suffered from quite significant backlash, which would often see me guiding more in the range of 0.8 - 1 rms. Fortunately it was possible to tune most of the backlash out, plus I took the opportunity to give the gears and bearings a bit of a clean and regrease, which probably helped some too.

I have to say I disagree with this part of your post. I think a luminance filter still serves a purpose if (1) you're using a scope which doesn't have perfect colour correction (i.e. most non-premium refractors), and, (2) you choose one of the more restrictive lum filters, which cut the extreme ends of blue and red.

Any change to the capture software or camera driver? If not then maybe gain or offset has been changed accidentally?

As far as I can tell, BBC weather doesn't factor in thin and/or high cloud into its forecast. I find it plenty accurate enough for a general forecast, but pretty useless for astronomy purposes. Edit: And sure enough, in what I shall now refer to as @Ouroboros's rule, I have a perfect forecast for a night in which I have other engagements... No choice but to hold out hope that Tuesday's prediction comes to pass 🤞

Hmm, well I decided I quite liked PI's layout and structure - maybe that says more about me than anything else 😅

I'm a classicist when it comes to iconic hubble images: deep blues, greens, and reddish-orangy/yellows with full magenta stars. I'm aware I'm in a minority with that opinion though.... Still, it's the first one for me!

I usually plonk my setup outside, with all lens caps on, around 30 - 60 mins before I want to use it; then plug everything in and power up when I go to polar align just before starting. Not had an issue with dew on the optics so far!

My, oh my! That's it, I've no other words!

I downloaded your whole light frame dataset and fiddled with StarAlignment in Pixinsight for a short while. It mostly kept trying to align on the hot pixels, but eventually found settings to get some to align (34/60). This was the result after a basic stack with no rejection algorithms: The galaxy cores are clearly there, and there are hints of the dust lanes in m31, but you can also see all the multicoloured streaks of hot pixels - these are what DSS would have been mistaking for stars and trying to align on. You can also see how the frames are slowly rotating throughout the course of the session, because an alt-az mount cannot properly follow the motion of the stars. Tracking has been mentioned above, and just to confirm that, the stars in a single sub are all elongated: Unfortunately, I would say this data is not salvageable, but as you say, you can chalk it up as a learning experience. A piece of advice though: trying to do DSO imaging at 1.3 metres of focal length on a non-premium mount, without guiding, is likely to be a recipe for disappointment.

A point to note is halos are not necessarily solely the fault of filter, but can be the result of interactions between flatteners/reducers, filters, and camera cover windows. But I'd say there's nothing wrong with that, those halos should be relatively easy to deal with in post processing.

I normally struggle to see the likenesses to things in DSOs, but I can absolutely see what you've described there Rodd. I vote you rename and redefine them all.

It really felt like a long time since I'd done any imaging (in reality, I think it was only like 4 - 5 months over the summer), but the skies cleared for a few (moonless!!!) nights earlier this month and I was able to finish off a project started last year: NGC6888 in HOO. I added 9 hours of OIII and 1 hour of Ha to an existing 8 hours of Ha taken about this time last year, for a total of 18 hours. Unfortunately I had rotated my camera since taking the 2022 data, and all the OIII data was rotated about 90 degrees compared to the Ha, so a fairly heavy crop was needed, but one thing I was pleased about was I've still managed to get the soap bubble (just on the edge of the frame), so that was a bonus. Pretty much a straightforward HOO composition, with just a hint of Ha added to the green channel. I did a separate composition with more Ha added to green for the stars. I keep looking at this thinking I may have somewhat overcooked the OIII, but the signal was actually surprisingly strong and I've already toned it down twice! Comments welcome, so let me know your thoughts.

Bear in mind that as the heart nebula is an emission nebula, a large proportion of the signal will be coming from Ha emission, which is severely attenuated by a stock DSLR. The example below shows the difference between a stock DSLR and a typical astro UV/IR filter, with the Ha emission line highlighted. Short of modding your camera, or upgrading to a dedicated astro cam (there are much cheaper options than a 2600mc!), there's not a whole lot you can do.

Full suite of Astronomiks - deep sky RGB and L3. I like them because they cut more of the extreme ends of the blue and red (moreso than most other brands), which reduces star bloat. My stars are tighter compared to the ZWO filters I used to use which had wider bandpasses.

[Request at the bottom of the post for people uninterested in the backstory] ******************************** Backstory: After a couple of years of doing (mostly) narrowband, I've pretty much realised I don't really like processing it 😅. What I do enjoy though, is regular ol' rgb (maybe sometimes with narrowband enhancement), so that's what I'm looking to do more of now. At the same time, I'm looking to double up on my imaging time by running dual scopes - a thought I've been having for a while - but current economic situation dictates it must be relatively inexpensive, and because I don't have a permanent setup and I'm far too lazy to make multiple trips from the house and faff about assembling things every clear night, the whole kit must be movable in one go. My current kit weighs around 34kg and is already very near my comfortable carrying capacity. Realistically, this limits me to something light enough so as not to require another counterweight on the mount. I think the redcat 51 would fit this bill nicely. My intention is to capture rgb data on the redcat with a OSC (probably a 533), and combine with L from my Esprit 100 & 294MM. But before committing to any purchases, I'd like to have a 'try before you buy' with some redcat 51 data to make some visual comparisons to my existing images. Here endeth the backstory. ********************************** My request: If anyone has some rgb data of any of the targets listed below from a redcat 51 that they'd be happy to share with me, I'd very much appreciate it. -M27 -M31 -M42 -M101 -M106 -Horsehead nebula A linear FITS or XISF file of the stack is all want, orientation and framing don't matter, as long as the target is somewhere in the frame. If anyone has anything taken with a 533mc, that would be a bonus too. Many thanks in advance!

Aside from what's been mentioned above, the other consideration to make is storage space and stacking time. Probably not such an issue with the relatively small files from the 533 though, unless you end up going really short.

I like to see the stars generally, but in situations where they obscure too much of the nebulous areas, some reduction is beneficial. For my taste, I think somewhere between the 2 above would hit that sweet spot.

Wow - this is astounding! I'm not sure how you've managed to keep it so starry and yet they're not distracting away from the dusty areas.

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I don't think it even clears the tree line for me, so it's one I'll never to be able to capture from home.

I do love m20, probably one of my favourite objects, and that rendition is looking very nice

Have you tried: additional equipment is required to make the fullest possible use out of each cloudless opportunity 😁