Grant93

7 Hours on the Sadr Region Flats and Bias no darks. 2 min exposures with the Lenhance. Stacked and processed in siril.

Taken over 3 nights due to the lack of night time, Moon lower on the horizon for most of the time.

Taken with the 600D + LEnhance, Samyang 135mm ontop of the Skyguider Pro.

7 hours of 2 minute exposures. 25 Flats and Bias. No Darks.

Really quite minimal processing in Siril only, also stacked in Siril. If anyone wants to try and stretch some more out of it feel free, ill attach the FIT.

Let me know what you think .

Grant

Sadr 7h.fit

5 hours ago, rnobleeddy said:

Friday was my first attempt at a dark nebula, from Bortle 5 too. Should have gone for one final galaxy for the year! 

 

Over-processed and the color isn't right, but the data isn't there to create anything I'm happy with!

Thats excellent you can tell theres a lot more of the dark nebula in that than mine.

5 hours ago, Keltoi said:

was this using the Z61 or the Samyang 135?

ZS61, Sorry forgot to put that!

4 hours ago, Elp said:

@Grant93 I feel your pain, been wanting to do this one for months on end and have finally started it, about seven hours in with mono setup and not any better than yours really. Probably best left for a dark site if it's possible.

Cant wait to see your attempt . But yes the difference is shocking when you see them imaged from dark sites.

4 hours ago, carastro said:

I wonder whether the surrounding dust can be brought out with more advanced processing techniques.   I managed to get the Iris from Bortle 4 which is not a lot different.  
 

What is your processing software.   Any chance of posting up a stacked and unprocessed Tiff?  Or failing that a tiff of your result?   I would like to have a try. 
 

Carole

 

l see you use Siril.   I am not familiar with that.   I use photoshop.

Hopefully a .fit file is sufficient, Siril converts and stacks FITs files. But please do share your attempt at processing, I'm interested to see what I'm missing . And anyone else reading this, please have a go .

result.fit

Hello everyone.

Life and weather as usual have been getting in the way of my astrophotography as usual. With the shorter nights this makes useable nights even fewer and far between also But hey ho, still got a night in. First time leaving it outside from dusk until dawn also, so got all 5 hours in one night . However this is a reminder to myself not to try dark nebula from a bortle 5 again. The iris itself is showing quite nice, but not the surrounding dark dust.

Had to choose a target which also didnt reach meridian during the night, so I wouldn't have to wake up to do any flips🥴, I've not set it up to be that automated just yet, plus I wouldnt trust any automated flips without myself there anyway, terrible cable management.

100 subs at 3 minutes each (5 hours) Dithered every 3 frames.

40 Flats

40 Bias

800d on the HEQ5

Stacked and processed in siril

Both cropped and uncropped image.

I haven't read through the answers, so this may already of been said. So sorry in advance if this has already been pointed out.

For the Skyguider pro and the 5kg weight limit, really you're limited to a few bigger galaxys here in the northern hemipshere, Andromeda and Triangulum, but also you can do widefield on the Pinwheel and Whirlpool for example, and you can do galaxy groups like the Leo Triplet and Markarians Chain. As far as telescopes go you could use a Redcat 51 or ZS61 With FF, although all in thats a little over budget, but you would be well within weight limits, and you would have seriously good quality glass.

Also if you happen to be in the southern hemisphere there is the LMC and SMC, and maybe other galaxys I am not aware of

I have some cheap dew heaters off Amazon. When I go to pack away after a night of imaging, I can feel the dew heaters are ever so slightly warm, all you need to prevent dew is to keep the glass above the nights dew point, even if its only a degree, so to my belief, these things don't need to be significantly warm, just enough to keep it hovering above the dew point. Still yet for it to fail me.

I assume this would be very different if you're using something with wide aperture, so need the heat to travel further. Could be wrong though, just a guess.

5 hours ago, rickwayne said:

Easiest way to diagnose it is to rotate the camera a bit and look at the results. The image inspector in the free program ASTAP is the go-to tool for this. 

Cheers! Ill try this

3 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

To me it looks like atmospheric dispersion is playing a not insignificant role in the elongation of your stars. Blues and reds are on the opposite side, as they refract through the atmosphere at different rates and so can land a few pixels apart on your sensor.

How high was Leo when shooting? I find this issue just about perceptible at somewhere around 50 degrees and increasingly distracting at lower altitudes. Anything lower than 40 and i find colour channel alignment after stacking a necessity rather than a bonus.

Im not a refractor owner myself so couldnt tell if chromatic aberration from the optics could separate colours like this but the atmosphere definitely will.

Uhm it was around its meridian, about 40/50 degrees. But this has been happening a while on many of my captures on many different targets using the ZS61, I've been aware of it, just blissfully ignoring it 😅 Now wanting to perfect things I wanted to figure out the issue..

2 minutes ago, Clarkey said:

I'm not sure with the ZS61 whether the focuser is adjustable though,

Not sure either, Just gotta hope its coming from the T ring.. if not then I'll have to look at the focuser 😆

12 hours ago, Clarkey said:

I must confess it does not look too bad to me. However, I am using a laptop with a rubbish screen. From what I can see, all the stars seem to elongated the same way (top left to bottom right). If they are all the same this certainly suggests tilt. If you are seeing it on more than one camera it may be the focuser is slightly misaligned? Always worth checking. Alternately, if you are using the same T-ring for both camera's it could be this?

Sounds like it could be the T ring, Has only been happening continuously when swapping out cameras but leaving T ring on there, rather than keeping the T ring together with the camera, if you know what I mean. So that will be the first one to test. If it isnt the issue, how would you test / fix the focuser?

Cheers

Hello everyone,

A bit disapointed on my 3 hour Leo triplet. Although don't know what else I expected to be fair haha, probably a bit to small a target for a ZS61, heavily cropped due to a dust bunny that didnt get caliberated out from flats, must of moved before I did the flats. But yeah on all my photos from the ZS61, whether using the 800d or 600d, I notice I have some oblong shaped stars, regardless of exposure or guiding accuracy from that day. Is this some sort of tilt? Where abouts could the issue lie if it occurs on both cameras?

Let me know your thoughts.

But the image is 3 hours at 150 second exposures.

30 flats and bias.

ZS61 & HEQ5, guided and dithered.

Cheers

Grant

Dont think we can venture this far south in the uk 10 degrees above the horizon at max for us here

2 hours ago, Clarkey said:

If I was to go down this route again I would buy the F5 or something completely different. (I did - I got a Stellamira 90mm ED triplet).

I have decided on the f5.. hopefully I don't come across too many problems. 

1 hour ago, alacant said:

Hi

With a non reducing cc, no. There are however other modifications which are necessary/recommended.

What modifications would you recommend?

3 minutes ago, alacant said:

Yes. Apart from the 63mm secondary, that's it. Check to see if that is a misprint. That's the one fitted to the 8" f5 and even there it's oversized. Well, unless you're 36x24 full frame I suppose.

HTH

Would that have any negative effects even if it is oversized?

9 minutes ago, Ed Addis said:

@AstroNebulee - I arrived there about 8.30pm and spent around half an hour there.  I chose what I thought would be the darkest time, and before moonrise which I assumed would generate too much background light.

@vlaiv, @Rustang - Ah OK, I hadn't realised I was going to have to do all that multiple stacked exposure, and post-processing stuff.  It was all that malarkey that decided me to sell my telescope a couple of years ago - I just can't be bothered with all that stuff.  For me it takes away the fun and interest out of it - I spend more than enough time already in front of a PC!  I guess I'll probably not bother with the milky way photography then, if it's not going to be possible just to go and take some simple shots.

Download Stellarium or similar on your phone, and you can add in your location and fast foward the time on the bar along the bottom, this way you can see where objects are and at what time, this includes the milkyway. Just by a quick look at my phone now, I can see at 8:30 the only portion of the milkyway that is visible, is the winter milkyway, next to orion and arching over the western sky, which is less dramatic as the summer core which is often photographed. If I scroll along the time bar, as other have said here, you can see it rises with Cygnus at around 3am, with the full core not being visible until 7:30am (at which time it is light then, obviously )

So yes, this is more of a summer object to photograph really, Just wait a little longer!

1 minute ago, alacant said:

We'd choose the gso over the SW. TS and omegon resell them. Better focuser, build quality...

But remember that at this end of the market, both would need -albeit simple- modifications  to bring them up to reliable imaging standard. 

HTH

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescopes-in-stock/ts-photon-6-f5-advanced-newtonian-telescope-with-metal-tube.html This I assume?

Looks more fancy too

Cheers

1 hour ago, Zermelo said:

Co-incidentally ...

 

Haha yes I saw that too! Also I think there is a returned coma corrector I assume buying from a shop like FLO I'm not gonna get bitten in the ass by buying a return, I assume they check them rigorously when they come back.

59 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hence, reluctantly, of the two, we have to recommend the f5. The GSO f5, which has a far more reasonable focal plane around 7cm from the mouth of the focuser, even better.

Is that recommendation the same as the SW150PDS F/5?

Cheers

8 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

I'd go with 150PDS for number of reasons.

It will be better for planetary with somewhat smaller secondary obstruction. x3 barlow and ASI224 will be excellent match with that scope.

(ideally, if you want best planetary performance - I'd look at 6" F/8 newtonian for that role with x2 barlow - or getting a larger aperture scope - but that is probably not your primary interest).

Yes DSO is the primary interest, Lunar/Planetary for them short June/July nights

Thank you for the answer, makes it a lot easier to make a decision

Grant

Hello everyone,

I'll try to keep it short and sweet, often get carried away and write essays when trying to ask a question. Just trying to decide on which one between these two to purchase, as I understand these are about the biggest scopes possible for imaging on a HEQ5, I hear some people get away with an 8" imaging on a HEQ5, but I heard its not recommended, as by the time the camera is attatched with guidescope and guidecam, you would be very close to hitting the 11kg max payload for imaging, and by how I understand it, its recommended against. If most people think this is a non issue, let me know, because I could be tempted to get the 8" versions instead.

Anyhow I'm looking at one of these as I want a bit more reach, both for DSO imaging and moon/planetry. Would both these scopes be able to handle planetry with my ASI224mc + a 3x barlow?

Conclusion - StellaLyra for that little less reach of 600mm, but the faster optics of F/4. Or the 150PDS for that extra 150mm of reach, and slower (but still nice and fast) optics of F/5.

If theres anything else I need to think about, let me know Also let me know if you would recommend any other scopes

Cheers

Grant

21 hours ago, inFINNity Deck said:

An alternative is using Stellarium for that. There it also is possible to define scopes, cameras and reducers/barlows. It directly shows you a nice red window over the heavens (here is SkyWatcher Esprit 80ED @ native focal length with ZWO ASI1600MM Pro Cool):

It also provides information like pixel scale and actual FOV. Here is a way too short exposed image using that same scope/camera combination:

Appears to be spot-on. 🙂

Nicolàs

Oh nice! Everyday is a school day. 🤓😃

Whilst I'm back here that stellarium suggestion also reminded me of https://telescopius.com/

Another good website for FOVs

5 minutes ago, callisto said:

Don't beat yourself up about it Grant... great image 

 

Mark.

Thank you 😁

Should of framed this one up better, in retrospective I don't know why I didnt frame up the flaming star with it. I was expecting just to centre crop the tadpoles into it, but then when I saw how well it picked up part of the flaming star I wanted to include that aswell.. poor planning!

Taking under the full moon of last weekend, but I pointed it as far away from the full moon as possible. Using the L-Enhance filter to help resist the moonglow. A bit lackluster for 9 hours I think, let me know what you think.

140 Exposures x 240 seconds

40 flats and bias.

ZS61 With the 600d and L enhance on the HEQ5

Guided and dithered every 3 frames.

Stacked and processed in Siril, a bit of defringing and noise reduction in StarTools.

Thanks for looking & Hit me with some constructive criticism 😁

Grant

Fantastic image!

Is that the variable nebula (Not sure of the name) in the top right of the image?

Edit: Just read sorry, you said in the post it is hubbles variable nebula 😁 Very nice!

17 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

Thank you. It can be very tempting to spoil a good Ha with some dodgy OIII taken with the Moon dominating the heavens!

Haha, I guess thats why my L-enhance isn't totally resistant to moon glow🥶. Although seems to be a lot better than nothing, Image from the weekend to come soon when I can be bothered to process and keep reprocessing until happy 😅. Investing in mono at some point in the year I think, seems to be the way to go to get the most out of our lack of clear nights in the UK. 🤓

Very nice images!

And yes, the time we get all 3 nights clear on a weekend.. its a full moon! Still, clear nights can't be wasted can they