ONIKKINEN

The diffraction pattern is primarily due to the edges of the individual hexagonal mirror segments. Visualization below:

Hmm, this got me thinking... If the period observed was about 33.36ms, could one take say maybe 33.36ms exposures or, a fraction of this like 11.12ms, to get a chain of exposures together and get the pulsating effect through? Maybe take 33.36ms exposures and stack a second of these together, should make a magnitude 16.5 object (as google suggests the crab pulsar is) visible in a modest sized scope. Then stack a number of frames as even and odd frames, ones where the pulsar should be visible, and ones where it should not be. Maybe an animation could come out of it? Getting the exposures synced to the pulsating rate will be nigh on impossible though... But maybe possible?

This uncropped version looks amazing! The cropped one was great already, but this one just feels easier to see with more of the background visible.

Some kind of nuclear propulsion sounds like the best bang for buck in terms of thrust, ISP, and available tech now or in the near future. But... Shooting a nuclear anything in to orbit is not a very popular option in the eyes of the public. After all, anything with enough nuclear matter to act as proper propulsion will also be a very convenient way to spread radiation over the entire Earth in case of an accident during launch. In paper, best choice, but not sure i want to see one of these make a debut any time soon. Ion thrusters, including the VASIMIR, all suffer from 2 major showstopper issues at the moment which are: power required per 1N of thrust (40 KILO watts per 1N for the VASIMIR...) and the difficulty of actually getting just that one newton of thrust. Solar power is hardly realistic for this kind of power requirement, because solar panels are also quite heavy which is terrible for an engine in the single digit newton thrust range and most places humans would want to travel to are further away from the sun, so it only gets worse as distance increases. Realistically any propulsion intended to accelerate humans to any speed in a timely manner will need to have more like a kilonewton of thrust, rather than just a single N. So nuclear reactors are still the only way for power, but again i am not sure i want a megawatt reactor doing an oopsie after a failed launch.

An observatory on my own property somewhere in rural Finland far from cities is often what i daydream about. But astro equipment is cheaper than property, so i would make do with a premium mount, maybe 10micron, and the biggest scope that is reasonably usable without an obsy, so maybe a 10-12" SCT/RC. Still dreaming with those prices, but maybe one day...

You need something to create a dummy wifi network that you can connect to with another device. Something like this will work: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/GL-iNet-GL-MT300N-V2-300Mbit-Repeater-Extender/dp/B073TSK26W/ref=sr_1_6?crid=85CR255JTJF7&keywords=mini+router&qid=1661460350&sprefix=mini+route%2Caps%2C107&sr=8-6 Its a mini router that connects to an ethernet port in your mini-pc and a USB port for power. You can set this up so that it always creates its own wifi network (without internet) when the mini-pc is powered on. Then you connect to that dummy wifi network with either your laptop, or a smart device. I use an android tablet and use RDP app with that to connect to my mini-pc out in the field. The range is pretty bad in this particular model (in the link) so i am not sure if another product would be better. But this one has trouble keeping up a connection if the distance is longer than maybe 5 and there are any obstacles in the way, like a car door that is shut.

This one looks quite nice 👍

As a compromise, a 27 inch 2560x1440p monitor is a great choice too. A bit more resolution to work with, but not overly so as with a 4K display. Its basically like a 24" 1080p monitor but with a little extra sharpness and screen real estate. Also getting to be big enough that you can comfortably have a few windows on one screen. I have 2 such monitors and its been great, but not cheap of course.

Stars and the galaxy look like they are from different images, in my opinion you have reduced the stars far too much (with starless processing, i guess) and pretty much removed stars from M31 itself which is one of the more interesting parts of M31. Not a huge fan of the forced magenta colourcast over the image either, i think the original version is easier on the eyes even if its clearly less detailed. Judging from the visible colour noise around every magenta and blue parts of the galaxy (Ha regions, young blue-white star clusters) you have selectively saturated/adjusted just these these parts quite heavily. It can work to pop out the H-alpha regions a bit more, but it has seeped into the entire galaxy with this process and nullified whatever method of colour calibration you chose to use in SiriL. The data looks like it would be quite nice though so that is definitely an improvement on the first one.

Curious, what is the Draco challenge? Google is not helpful here. Sad to hear about Saturn being a miss, but also somewhat ensuring to hear that my eyes are not wrong solely on this one, since a mess it what i usually see of Saturn at 14 degrees elevation 🙄.

Im getting a third party headache trying to figure out the cabling here, but if/when this thing works its going to be epic.

Warm welcome to SGL! You will find many like minded astronomers here and help with astrophotography should you want/need it! Its a deep rabbit hole when you dive into it fully, but one that will never cease to amaze you when the images come in.

Like has been already mentioned, it can be used to bridge a PC and the mount the same way as an EQMOD cable does. One thing though, I received my AZ-EQ6 fresh off the press in January of 2022 and the drivers in the Skywatcher downloads section did not work with mine. I had to download newer prolific drivers from the prolific site itself to get it to work (here: https://www.prolific.com.tw/US/ShowProduct.aspx?p_id=225&pcid=41 ). The Skywatcher downloads section still has the old driver from 2018, so its possible they have been incredibly lazy and still not updated the download link to a more current driver while also using newer prolific chips on newer mounts. There was no way to get my mount to work with the Skywatcher driver at all, it just wouldn't come up as a COM port. Downloaded the prolific drivers from the link above and works right away, so keep that in mind if you try to run things off the USB port.

Ah, i have not done any narrowband with mine. But at the darksite of 20.8 sqm i frequent i suspect narrowband would still require at least 30 minutes to swamp x5. I was swamping read noise x5 with a 350nm bandpass UV/IR filter in less than 30 seconds, so a narrowband filter with 100th the bandpass would require 100x longer exposures. So silly length still. It would probably be wise to aim for x2 or if possible x3 read noise swamping with narrowband. Swamping x3 with 0.9e read noise requires only 7,3e of median background signal. That should be doable, but would probably still be 10 minutes.

The ToupTek made cameras differ significantly in specs with ZWO and QHY versions, so the numbers dont really translate between the 3 all that well. All versions of the camera perform well, but for some reason the ToupTek ones really do have lower readnoise than the others. Its not a big difference for most imagers in most common conditions, but with narrowband it could be a big deal whether one has to expose for 20 or 50 electrons to swamp read noise. Especially important if one has trouble managing the very long exposures needed and has to throw out subs because of it. Here is an actual sensor analysis from mine, which is the same as OPs camera but just OSC, with HCG mode and low noise mode on: Actually i remembered a bit wrong, the read noise without the low noise thing is apparently 1e instead of 1,2e. Here is an analysis (Not mine, from a CN thread) with the low noise mode disabled: I did do this analysis run myself too, but seem to have lost the file/screenshot for it and cant be bothered to do it now. For some reason i thought it was 1,2e, but this claims otherwise. Framerates in sharpcap are abysmal and the analysis takes well over an hour so take whichever number you want to believe, both are low. With 1e of read noise an exposure swamps it 5x with just 25 electrons, or 100ADUs (above offset, from background). With 0.89e just 80 ADUs above offset is enough. I am suspicious of the low noise thing though, as when its enabled the framerate drops to exactly half of what it is without the mode. That leads me to think that perhaps there is some kind of internal calibration going on that does some dark current/hot pixel subtraction for every frame which is not really that helpful for astrophotographers that will calibrate their data anyway. That feature would have to turn off with long exposures so that the user is not left with 10 minutes of extra waiting time after a 10 minute sub and internal calibration with the low noise mode. This would not be apparent in sharpcap sensor analysis as all the data it gathers is with quite short exposures so it could very well turn itself off after a certain length of exposure is reached. Not a camera or software engineer so not going to try and figure out more what is going on there, but i am wary of the low noise thing as long as i dont see a real explanation for it.

@pipnina If you are imaging with Gain 100 and HCG mode on you have either 0.9e or 1.2e of read noise, depending on if the obscure "low noise mode" is on. Lets assume its not as some software dont have a toggle for this and i have no idea what it does anyway. In order to swamp read noise x5 your median signal for the background needs to be read noise x5 squared in electrons. So (1,2x5)^2 which comes out to 36e. The e/ADU conversion rate at 100 gain and HCG mode is 0.25e/ADU so you need 36x4=144 ADUs of median signal to swamp read noise x5. Youll find that under most conditions this is fulfilled easily with your fast newtonian.

Imaging with a Newtonian under usually a bit of wind i try to keep exposures as short as possible. 60s will do for OSC just fine under SQM 20.8 skies, but its quite close to where i would want to increase the exposure. I have switched comacorrectors from F/4.2 to F/5 so probably will have to aim maybe for 120s subs from now on. If the Moon is out then 60s will still be enough with the Rising Cam 571.

Hmm, maybe its just a numbers thing. NINA reports orientation from 0 to 360, but maybe PI reports orientation from 0 to 180 and 0 to -180 to the other direction. Isnt this the same orientation in that case? 15 degrees over 180 would in that case maybe be reported as -15?

Did you actually check that your camera had the right orientation on the night of shooting? Unless you have an automatic rotator to rotate the camera to the desired orientation you have to manually do that before starting a run. Especially so with mosaics, as im sure you have just found out with the corners being out of place.

Here is another 3 planet composite with my 8'' F/4.4 barlowed to ~F/10 or so. This time with the new ASI 678MC: Processing Jupiter was quite difficult, i really have no clue on what sliders to pull and how much and in what software. So its a mix of a bit of everything in AS!3, RegiStax, imppg, Photoshop, but quite happy on the level of detail i teased out of it in the end! I hope i can figure out a workflow for planetary stuff as i get more time in with the new camera. Saturn in this shot is benefiting from some trickery with filters, its not actually just an RGB shot with the OSC camera. I used a Celestron #25 "Mars" filter as a budget IR filter to pass everything above 600nm and used that as a luminance layer. Judging from the fact that i had plenty of signal in the blue channel and looking at the spectral response graph from ZWO it looks like the cheap Celestron filter will let at least some IR through all the way to what the camera can see. The trickery produced a slightly less soft image than with just the OSC data, but its still not great. Will probably get an ADC once my wallet recovers from the previous astronomy purchases. For comparison i got this one 2 weeks ago with an IMX571 camera at ~F/13 Saturn is only getting lower in the sky for the remainder of the year, but the 2 others i will have plenty of opportunities to try and improve further along the year. Very excited for Mars to creep up a bit closer!

I found an instruction manual for the camera on the omegon.eu page: https://nimax-img.de/Produktdownloads/61031_11_Anleitung_veLOX_veTEC_GUIDE.pdf From the pdf: But there is a slight issue with that. The Rising Cam model, which is also made by ToupTek (as is the omegon, altair, TS, perhaps even others) has a weak heater on the sensor window that in extreme humidity and cooler power usage will be insufficient to prevent dewing of the sensor window. My own Rising Cam has not suffered from this, but generally i dont cool down more than a few degrees below ambient, if at all (if the ambient is already -15, i dont bother). If i recall correctly @tomato had the dewing sensor window issue on his Rising Cam and fitted a ZWO camera heater: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-accessories/zwo-anti-dew-heater-strip-for-asi-cooled-cameras.html To get rid of the issue. I have one as well just as a precaution, but so far have not needed to use it. Even if they are all made by ToupTek, it is of course possible that some models have a beefier sensor window heater than others so the Omegon one could be Ireland proof where as the Rising Cam is not. But the ziptied heater band is not exactly a bank breaking addition so probably not something that needs worrying about.

My IMX571 APS-C cooled DSO camera has the exact same framerate in 8-bit mode 640x480 resolution capture as the 678MC with the same resolution and bit depth. Both are limited by USB3 bandwith at first and SSD write speed second soon after the memory buffer fills up and the computer cant keep up. So looking at speed is rather useless when both operate under the same limitations. The real difference between the 571 and 678 is in pixel size and bulk. Smaller pixels means a shorter barlow will get you to critical sampling than with the bigger pixel camera. Using a long barlow with a big and bulky camera has a higher risk to cause miscollimation due to tilt somewhere in the imaging train, whereas the very light planetary camera has little to no risk of tilt with a decent focuser.

This is basically the same camera as the 2600MC, and the Altair but much cheaper: https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p13286_Omegon-Camera-veTEC-571-C-Color-cooled--Sensor-D-28-3-mm.html By the way the altair one and this Omegon one are both made by the same manufacturer, ToupTek so differences are minor.

Did you take darks and bias/darkflat frames? (just bias or darkflat, not both at the same time) Overcorrection of flats happens when you omit some or all of the above.

Seeing was pretty good, but the Moon was still quite low in the sky at 20-25 degrees. Full disk shot is with an 8'' F/4.4 newtonian + paracorr at around F/5 and the 678MC. 6 panels of 700 frames each, of which the best 50 was stacked for each one. Composite in microsoft ICE, lucy richardson deconvolution and unsharp mask in imppg. Full disk: resized to 75% of original (still an enormous size...): Next up is a closeup of 2 prominent craters. I think these are Hercules and Atlas, but dont quote me on that, my lunar knowledge is quite thin. Shot with 2.5x barlow and a budget IR filter, aka the Celestron #25 Mars filter that passes everything redder than 600nm. The field of view here is bigger than the diffraction limited field of an F/4.4 newtonian with a 2.5x barlow, so the edges show some softness, especially on the first one. Best 2% from 10k frames: Then finally a closeup of Mare crisium under sunset, same capture details as previous: The 2 closeups are pretty much untouched from what AS!3 spit out with the sharpened, blend 30% raw option ticked. Tried processing further from both the sharpened and soft files AS!3 spits out but this is where its at. Very happy with these last 2 in particular, they are by far and not with a close margin, the sharpest images i have yet to take through my scope. Almost couldn't believe my eyes when i saw the stacked image for the first time! I have no idea what went right this time, or what went wrong on previous times i tried (and failed, miserably) lunar closeups.