IDM

I was very excited when I first processed the image as I felt I was making some forward steps and I certainly appreciate all the feedback that will hopefully help me improve still further in the future. Though at times it feels like the more I learn the less I know 🙂 but I think its part of what makes this hobby so fascinating and possibly addictive, as there is always room for experimentation and improvement. Thanks, Ian

Thanks for the positive comments.

Thank you for the kind feedback. I am trying to be more subtle with my images. In planetary my enthusiasm used to get the better of me so I am trying to be cautious to achieve less = more. Ian

@ollypenrice Thank you so much for the comprehensive and really helpful feedback I will have to spend some time digesting and learning. Ian

Thank you for the kind words.

Last year I bought a C11 for planets which had a Celestron dew ring heater and it has been really successful in controlling dew. Indeed I have been using it without a dew shield with no problems. Just the other week I picked up a C8 with an F6.3 flattener/reducer for galaxies. I have only tried it once (I just posted my M51 image in the DSO imaging section). I haven’t sorted all its issues particularly with the reducer but it seems a good scope. I bought my C8 secondhand it was cheap and it’s quite light. cheers Ian

I recently acquired a Celestron C8 XLT with a Meade flattener and this image was taken on its first outing. I am not very confident about the Meade F6.3 reducer/flattener as the back spacing seems difficult and certainly I had very bad vignetting across the image that required a heavy crop prior to back ground extraction. Just to make my life more difficult the night I took the images I also decided to migrate from Sharpcap to Nina. Nina seems excellent but it didn't seem so intuitive as Sharpcap, though it handled the meridian flip with my Zwo AM5 perfectly (I followed Cuiv's settings from Youtube). So in the end I ended up with 217 90 second exposures using the C8 with Meade reducer and a Zwo ASI294 MC pro camera. Guiding was provided by Skywatcher finder-scope I converted to guidescope, focal length 185mm (approx.). It's not the best but I felt for a first outing I was pleased. Processing was done using a newly acquired Pixinsight license, so again I am at the bottom of the learning curve!!! Since taking the image I had a look at the Collimation and with a backspacing of 105mm I noticed good collimation at the centre but put poor round the edges. So I don't things are right. I have since reduced the backspace to about 75mm and the collimation looks better across the sensor. The weather hasn't been great since the change so I haven't been able to test it by imaging properly, though I did do a plate solve and Nina (ASTAP) reported a focal length of 1336mm which seems a little long. I would be grateful for all thoughts on the reducer and helpful feedback on the image

Whilst it will work it’s not great as you will be considerably over sampled. The easy way to check telescopes with different cameras is to use this online calculator: https://astronomy.tools/calculators/ccd_suitability It suggests the combination is not good also the lack of cooling doesn’t help. Though I do know some planetary camera are better than others with regard to long exposure DSO work, I am afraid I don’t know which would be best. Ian

I have currently set it at 105mm. Tomorrow I will try measuring the focal length as suggested by @michael8554

Rumour has it the the sun may come our here (briefly) tomorrow so I will try as you suggest. Thanks for the help. Ian

That's good to know as I guess the Meade is similar in design. I am just used to trying to be very precise with flatteners for refractors so it goes against the grain for approximate measurements!

I recently obtained a secondhand Celestron C8 and Meade focal reducer/flattener and am now searching around to try an find details on the back focus for the Meade reducer. There are many posts saying its not the greatest reducer on earth but little on back focus. One post on Cloudy nights suggested 105mm. I had a look on the Meade website and despite listing the reducer I could not fins any instructions or guidance documents. Does anybody know the correct answer or have any guidance? I am interested in trying the scope with reducer as a reasonably fast scope for galaxy astrophotography. Thanks, Ian

Just an update as I now have the firmware upgrade sorted. I contacted QHY and raised a ticket and I have to say they couldn't have been more helpful. They asked questions and I answered, there responses always being within 24 hours. Ultimately they couldn't see what I was doing wrong so they asked me to download Anydesk onto my PC and give them permission to do the update for me remotely which they did and it worked. Excellent support. It appears that for reasons I don't understand the Hex file needs to be on your desktop not in a folder. If it is in a folder, even it you navigate to it, the upload fails. Hope this information might help someone else trying to do the upgrade. Cheers Ian

My first attempt at the Rosette neubula with my new QHY268MM camera and using Astronomik narrow band filters. Image consists of: 19x 180S Ha 50x 180S O 50 x 180S S The images were captured on the 14th and 15th of January. Processing was me watching some videos on Youtube and 'just having a go' (much to learn) but its a a start!!

It’s a while since I downloaded it but yes I think that’s the site. The software doesn’t look like that when installed. I cannot recall warnings about safety but it was fine. I also know many people use it for planetary. Ian