Quetzalcoatl72

5 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

By the way, I've started using one of these mini finder guiders a couple of years ago and consider it a darned nuisance. It de-focuses itself a couple or three times a year.

That's what I was going to buy because they're the cheapest and smallest, a lot of favourable reviews on FLO, to use for for FMA 180. ST80 would be quite a big guidescope for this, though I am looking to put weight on as i need to counter 5kg.

5 hours ago, carastro said:

I use the same finder guider mounted on my ED80 whether l have my Ed72 mounted on the ED80 for a dual rig or whether l have my Samyang set up mounted on the ED80.  
 

For some reason the FOV is slightly different with the Samyang lens.   I tried to adjust it once but it was such a nightmare adjusting it back for the dual rig l vowed never to do it again.   
 

Therefore my finderguider is not aligned with my Samyang rig.  Doesn’t seem to make any difference so l just live with it.  

The ED80's finder is useless to me as my camera makes it so that I have to remove the locking ring, making the lens wobble and go constantly out of focus especially when I wrap a dew heater around the thing. I'm trying to look for a solution, if not then mini finder from FLO it is!

I've seen a few finder scopes that just have a focuser, no rings or anything that you would adjust to star align... However, I don't even do star alignment anymore, It's just a quick polar alignment on sharp cap go to my target plate solve then I'm done. I could just have one guidescope for all 4 of my telescopes right?

12 hours ago, 900SL said:

Ignore that, I've just re-read your post and you are looking to mount a guidescope on the askar 180.. my mistake

no problem, I think the askar is too good for a guide scope imo

On 23/03/2023 at 08:37, Clarkey said:

I think you need to be more realistic about the integration times you are using. One or two hours will give you very little to work with in terms of signal, especially on dimmer targets. There are a few exceptions where minimal exposure will be enough, but for most this is not the case. As a rule, I would give a minimum of 6 hours to most targets I image and often much more. As you say, going from 1 to 2 hours made a large difference - take that to 8 hours and it will be even more. Obviously, it depends on what you are aiming for in terms of quality of image. If quantity is more important, then that is fine.

I would suggest you look at some of the images from bortle 8 skies and you will see what is possible. You might need to go 'un-natural' with NB (dual), but I think it would be worth it.

I settle with 4 hours now since this post. I hardly see nights that last 6 hours or more and I could splice sessions together but again I've only seen a couple of times where there were multiple clear nights in the week, I can't leave my scope outside so it's not a permanent setup. I've noticed you have a RC8, I did my longest exposure for that scope which was about almost 4 hours on M106. It's never been collimated and my NEQ6 struggles with this load as 3minutes is the max it can go guided and even then you've got eggy stars. I don't feel like spending hundreds to get a collimation kit for it but I really want it to perform at it's best as I prefer using my other scopes that have more success.

On 23/03/2023 at 11:21, tomato said:

+1 for increasing your integration times. When I started out I raced around the sky getting 45 mins to an hour on six different targets in one night but they were  nothing special after processing. Unless you have a RASA or something similar you need to collect the hours to have enough signal to process the channels and get a decent result.

That's exactly what I was doing, since this post I only settle for at least 60 240second subs. My sky is very limited being in the suburbs, pollution, obstructions and bad weather so I'm missing a lot of objects. At the moment I cannot see Saturn from my garden, any object below that is Impossible, I predict another 2 years and I may have a chance. Orion is the limit when it comes to that and even then I can only get maybe 3 hours of it before being obscured by neighbouring houses.

See image attached for my plan. I want a new guidescope attached to my Askar 180 which will be mounted on my neq6 but I'm not 100% sure it's going to work. I don't know how to put these items together as I'd probably need special screws. I have zero access to 3d printers or any other expensive high tech machinery, I just want easy access to things I can buy online on a budget. I already have the Arca swiss style plate, I just need the bracket and the Losmandy bar which are both 20cm long. There is a threaded hole on each end which I'm hoping I can fix together with longer screws which I don't have. If that doesn't work(OR) then I skip the swiss and just put both pieces together and hope that they are aligned.

Also I am in need of another guiderscope as I don't want to have to keep changing the calibration since I have 3 telescopes I use and It would be better if each one had their own guidescope, however I only have one guide camera so I still have to swap over. A lightweight one would be best to fit on the shoe on top of the silver bracket, OR a new bracket for the Askar which would line up with the other one then I can put a new or existing guidescope on as I use the one from my Evostar ED which is terrible. Another thing is trying to balance all of this with a 5kg weight on the EQ6 as well as balancing on the other axis, but I can't see that being a problem honestly.

So can anyone tell me how or if I can mount this all together with screws etc and recommend a guiderscope for my Askar 180 as I take 4min subs usually.

On 08/03/2023 at 09:44, Elp said:

The lenhance or lextreme are completely different from the Lpro and you'll see a massive difference on emission nebulae rich in hydrogen and oxygen, note only on certain emission nebulae, you can't use it on everything it won't work on the iris nebula for example which is a reflection nebula.

I've went though all my sessions and found that they all habit the same colours, became a little tedious, however these are my first attemps on these objects and the detail is nice for what I can get from my backyard and limited exposures. Here is some of them, It feels like I'm having issues with flats and the light pollution removal tool, not sure. Looks like I will invest in a new filter though.

2 hours ago, Rallemikken said:

You don't say which camera you use. I assume it's a stock DSLR or a dedicated astro color camera. They present the images as is, that means they show you what you would see if your own eyes was super-sensitive. Or as close to that as possible. Trust that color rendition, and use it as a baseline. Make subtle changes in hue and chroma, but dont be tempted to make them anything else than what they are.  Use the background as a dipstick when you finetune the colors. Different things gives different color deviations: Light pollution often gives an overall white/yellow tint, while moonshine most often gives a blue tint. Have you astromodded your DSLR camera you will have a red tint. Learn to deal with it in post processing before you start adding filters in your light train. Many of the images you see around are shot in mono, and blended and composed with false colors in post-processing. Some are true to the original colors, and try to get their composed images as near the original colors as possible, while others process their images in a more "artistic" way, to get dramatic effects or conform to a specific  palette.   I.e. the Hubble palette - almost a standard today, not even close to the real colors.

I've used both camera types, dlsr was modded but I don't use that now, the ASI533-MC is my end game camera, so I wont be changing unless I move to a much dark area for it to be worth the investments. I prefer natural as best I can so no 'artistic' edits for me, I only want to increase my experience, speed and efficiency now . Can't see investing much more money, besides maybe a new filter, some ease of life and probably collimation for my RC8, the nebulas on that 8" are pretty bad, blurry etc.

1 hour ago, Elp said:

You need those specific filters to capture those band passes and then apply them respectively in software to represent r, g and b. Most of the time such captures are also done with mono cameras as each pixel is utilised, it's possible with colour cameras but the quality won't be as good (but very close), with colour cameras you have filters like the optolong lenhance, extreme, and ultimate which cut out most light other than that of hydrogen and oxygen (so useful in light polluted zones) but the image will still be in RGB colour. Software trickery can also get you the SHO pallette from colour data.

Note the Lpro filter is a general light pollution filter and will cut out a lot of signal on broadband targets like Pleiades or galaxies.

Attached is my first real attempt in January this year of the christmas tree cluster.
I was impressed with the blue and red contrast, being an amateur I only do short exposures this was about 2 hours ish, i used to do only 1 because I wanted as many objects on my capture list as possible, but seeing what an extra hour can do I had to change. I have wasted precious time by trying to image other obscure ones as a test but either they don't show up or are really poor in single lights, for example Iris, catseye, owl, spider&the fly and elephant are a struggle for me, I can make them out but I'd probably need 3 hours+. I'd like to avoid buying a mono with filter wheels but do you think it is worth my time investing in one of those optlong filters you mentioned, as they are probably more expensive than my current one with was over £100. Different story if I lived in bortle 4-5 however, I also don't have much access to the sky due to north garden and internet cables ahead.(for reference the seagull nebula is never in reach). To get the blue from this image it became apparent during the star colour calibrations in APP. You also mentioned reduction in galaxy detail, would make sense since my m31 images are very underwhelming compared to my m42's which I never understood, with it being the largest galaxy. Thanks guys

I've been processing my images from January, managed to capture a lot, California, Orion, horsehead, monkeys head, bubble etc etc. Some of them come out great and just about the right colour to what I match on stellarium. But there's some that don't, for example the monkeys head, all the pictures i've seen of that is blue with orange/yellow around the edge of it, weird, because it's just red and uh lighter red for me. meanwhile I captured orion the same as everyone else does, I even tried the jellyfish and that came out brown as it should be. Do I need special filters for those? or is it all in the editing? I'm using an optlong ccd L-Pro i think, I don't use filter wheels etc I don't find it worth the money living in a bortle 8 zone. I've heard that certain nebulae produce certain glasses or something, I don't quite understand it all. Oh yeah I captured the blue from Christmas tree cluster and Pleiades. 

On 29/11/2020 at 15:45, TerryMcK said:

The only thing I had to do is remove the locking ring from the focuser to enable it to focus better. I use plumbers PTFE tape wrapped around the threads to lock the focuser. Once set you do not need to refocus.

Been looking for a solution to keep that locking ring, the ring I use to attach my asi120 is different from the one provided at FLO would there be a better focus if the camera was moved further or is that the opposite?, mine is very thin and the thread isn't great, takes many attempt to screw the guider since I have to keep swapping it with both my scopes back and forth.

In the picture is my current setup for using the Askar180, It is mounted to an ED80 I use the finderscope from that, it works but annoying and unnecessary, I also hate taking the ballhead from my tripod everytime since I use the tripod for my other photography. Looking for a solution to not have to take out my ED just to use the askar, but instead a mount that just takes the Askar and a finderscope for guiding. Also I want to keep using the standard finder for when I setup the ED so I would like a recommendation for a new one to use for the Askar. The setup would also have to counterweigh the 5kg weight from the NEQ6 mount, I do have a small weight which attached to both dovetail types. I hope you can help me save setup time, thanks!

21 minutes ago, Rallemikken said:

Maybe caused by the reference to the target. Seen this a couple of times in Ekos. If I tell Ekos to go to, say M45, it platesolves and starts tracking. If I start the session and leave it there, the meridian flip wil be spot on. But if I do adjustmentes to frame the target before starting capture it will be off, as you said. My solution is to create a referance sub, which can be used over several sessions. Have a small library already. Then I use the "Load image  -> Solve -> Slew" function. New coordinates are registred, and the flip will solve to these before restarting capture.

I use a custom marker because the little green square is not always in the middle of the nebulas on stellarium

I always use N.I.N.A and I get a meridian flipped failed message, but technically it didn't, but the image was not centered. I like to stay in the house when ive setup and only check on it now and then. All the time I have missed when the mount does the flip because I don't really know how it works, I look at my output and I can see that the images flipped but didn't exactly center them, I use a platesolver to do that. I'm imaging the california nebula at this very second and i've wasted 6 images because I didn't know when it was going to happen. It cut off a small portion of the nebula so I'm not sure what will happen when I come to stack the images, I'm hoping there's no weird artifacts, hopefully just that it's less exposed on the bits that were cut off. Is there a way I can fix this error or work out when it's about to happen so i can do it manually. It's been a problem for a long time now, sometimes theres a cable snag I'm not aware of, I just don't want to sit outside all the time.

3 hours ago, symmetal said:

The darks are purely related to the camera. As you have the cap on, the scope can't have any effect on the darks. Darks are often taken with the camera sitting on its own indoors, in the fridge. 🙂So use the same darks with any scope. As you say just the temperature, (and exposure) needs to match.

Your previous darks will be fine if they were at the same temperature and exposure. Usually it's common practice to take new darks every six months or a year just to take into account slight changes in the camera performance over time.

Flats are the only calibration frames which are specific to each scope setup.

Edit: You can use darks with exposures which don't match your subs if you enable dark scaling in your stacking program and have a master bias available, but as new darks are only taken very occasionally, you may as well have a set of darks which match the exposures you use for your subs. They should always be better than scaled darks.

Alan

Wow, thanks! I had a feeling I was doing something unnecessary, I still have to take my scope indoors to do the flats though. I have my askar attached to my ed80, it's the only way to mount it with what i have so I should do my lights with that first then the ED80 later depending on what's in the sky atm, like doing pleiades first then triangulum for instance. I only seem to get a few clear nights in the first 3 months of the year and nothing till maybe early fall anyway so maybe necessary to take them just at those times.

I would take to take pictures with 2 different scopes in one night but using one camera. My question is do I have to do darks for both setups or can i just do them with the cap on the camera later with the cooler at the same temp? Also I already have darks took with both scopes from last week, can I just use those?

Currently using my skywatcher ed80 just to mount the Askar using a ballhead from a tripod screwed into the ed's ring bracket(which is a bit dodgy getting the balance right), it's obviously a ridiculous and an unnecessary thing to do as I'm not using the ED.
I need some set up to put the finderscope from the ED and Askar 4.5 on one simple bracket, so I have a much lighter load as I don't have a smaller mount to use besides my neq6. It needs to be easy for me to align the finder with such a small scope.
Could anyone list the items I would need to make this possible, thanks, I'm hoping the setup wont be too light for the counter weight as well which i think is 10kg.

10 hours ago, Elp said:

You can still image above houses as I'm also surrounded by them but you'll have to take more frames so you increase the chances of capturing good seeing. I have however only attempted it usually late summer/autumn onward. I've never attempted the other gas giants other than Jupiter and Saturn, the further ones will become increasingly difficult and will usually only resolve as coloured dots. The outer planets will also appear at their largest when they're in opposition.

00_48_38_pipp_g4_ap13_crop.bmpwell here's my first attempt at the very wobbly neptune anyways. Am i right in saying that although neptune is a brighter blue than uranus it's further away so it appears duller because I had to ramp up the exposure, think it was 1.9seconds, uranus was 300ms i think. What do you mean by opposition so i can catch them at their closest distance. The moon was out as well so idk how much that effects it

I still don't know if i recorded neptune or uranus it's my first time tried again tonight, on neptune that is or i recorded a star since it's very difficult to find at that magnification, it's just a blurry bluish image, slightly spherical. I made sure the finder and scope were central and the closest 'star' i find in PHD2 to the crosshair is what i think could be the planet. I'll post once i process the many gb of footage

2 hours ago, Gfamily said:

The planets will be highest above the horizon at night during the winter months. So you shouldn't get a lot of distortion due to heat rising from the sun-warmed rooftiles at least.   A good reason for making sure that your loft is well insulated, I guess.  

I still don't know if i recorded neptune or uranus it's my first time, on neptune that is or i recorded a star since it's very difficult to find at that magnification. I want to try pluto, i know I will just get a dot that looks like any old star, but to say i have done it would be great, it's never been in the right place in the sky for me every time i checked on stellarium.

3 minutes ago, Elp said:

Generally yes as there's less atmosphere for the light the travel through so gets distorted less. Also try not imaging them above buildings if possible, especially after a warm day as the heat rising also does the same thing.

Oh dear that's a shame I image in a north facing garden so I'm always facing above my house 😕 I've been waiting for saturn to appear above my house which I estimated another 2 years but even then I guess it's pointless because of the heat.

I'm trying to image jupiter, uranus, mars and neptune at the moment with my rc8 and 2x barlow, the images are extremely distorted especially the further away planets can barely make them out as a static circle. they're quite low in the horizon as I'm in the UK. Does the image have less of a ripple and warping effect the higher they are in the sky? seems my jupiter image improved an hour later when I tried again.

59 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

If your using compression ring adaptors with more then one screw, be consistent with how you tighten the screws up so that the accessory is always clamped (and thus shifted) in the same way.

My focuser has a compression ring and three thumbscrews which is overkill. I removed two and just use the one so that whatever goes in the focuser is clamped the same way each time. My imaging train is nice and solid with even with just the one thumbscrew. 

I'm using this astro essentials scope, when you pick it up it's guaranteed that you knock it out of alignment, I also have troubles focussing with this setup, there's always a blurry ring around the stars, difficult for phd2 etc, not sure if it's the scope or the old asi120 camera(the one that doesn't have a window over the chip to protect it)

2 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Not a bad result at all, well done. I often have trouble finding targets too especially the dimmer ones.  One way is to whack up the gain and gamma to max and increase the exposure up to 0.5sec or something like that, you might then see a glow off to one side which you can then follow to the now very bright target.

Another way is to just take out the barlow, find and centre the target then replace the barlow, doesn't always work this as the act of removing/replacing the barlow can shift the image.

Thanks, I still don't think it's as good as my old one with the orange scope, plus having the red spot is a bonus. Glad I'm not the only one, going out tonight to see if I can fix this dec backlash, and try your method without the barlow, just have to be slow and careful putting it in.