ONIKKINEN

If you have peripherals to spare - a monitor, mouse and keyboard, then a desktop built from parts you select yourself will be the best bang for buck. If not, not so sure as monitors cost an extra couple hundred on top. But for processing i think its worth it to go for a desktop as you can upgrade it at will later by expanding storage or buying extra sticks of RAM. Laptops dont do so well under high load for extended periods of time because of their limitations in getting rid of heat resulting in thermal throttling of the CPU. Not always the case, but often is.

Yes, for the RASA8 which is a much bigger scope and presumably quite a bit more expensive if we are to compare the pricing between a C6 and a C8 and assume a similar difference goes for a potential RASA6 vs RASA8 (pure guesswork of course). The C6 isn't too heavy though and i reckon the RASA 6 version could ride well on more affordable mounts like an EQ5 or Celestron's own AVX, which is why i too think it could be a pretty hot scope flying off the shelves if they sell just the OTA one day.

I think you could use Sirilic for that, but its been a few years since i used it so not so sure on exactly how to do that, might get convoluted with how many nights you have going on here. What i would do is first calibrate both sets from all the different nights first and save them to their own folders somewhere and then stack with Siril manually (also, i feel your pain, i have 3 hours on the horsehead from 3 nights. Sometimes i wonder why even bother with the hobby...). Since everything is calibrated its now as simple as importing all the data to a sequence using the Conversion tab in Siril (just drag and drop there) and then registering it all using global star alignment, inspecting the plot and making rejection choices if you wish, and finally stacking it all. The only choice you have to make here is what dataset you want to register to, and that is decided by the first image imported in to the sequence. So as an example have the first image be from the bigger scope - then when you do global star alignment in the registration tab all the following images in the sequence are transformed to fit that and get its pixel scale. Its important to not do the 2-pass method here, as that can choose some other image as the registration frame so only global alignment will work if you want to force Siril to stack to a specific frame. When stacking it all to one image you get a better and more accurate average of all the input subs - so in theory better signal to noise ratio. Stacking set 1 first and set 2 second and averaging those 2 will be less accurate than just forming one stack out of it all. But since you have rather significantly different scopes and data sets here, im not quite sure what is the best way forward in practice rather than theory. Try the one stack method and compare to the 2 stacks averaged and see if there is a difference. Might not be too noticeable, in which case you could do it either way but my money is on the 1 stack method providing a better result if only by a slight margin.

It sure is incredible. Technology has improved at mach 5 in the past few decades, which makes me wonder where the continued improvements will take us in the future.

I wonder who is the target audience for this thing? Since its a smart all-in-one package we can assume its targeted for complete beginners who want to see images with the least amount of hassle possible, but how many of those have 4k to spend on something like this? You could get a competent 'normal' setup with that kind of money, and be able to automate it with autofocusers/platesolving and all the other goods. I do wish they make just the scope available one day, could well see myself getting one as a widefield wind resistant (hopefully, just guessing) light bucket.

Siril will happily stack both datasets to one image if you want to do that. I think you could try that first before trying the stack the stacks method as there is a decent chance you get a better result integrating both sets to one stack. To force registration to one of the scopes you need to have the first input image as the one you want the registration frame to be.

It looks out of focus to me. You really ought to focus using the live view through the camera and not with another method using a flip mirror, and you should take out any bahtinov masks (the star shape thing?). Focus is very important with planetary imaging and there is no such thing as spending too much time focusing, only start the recording when you are absolutely sure the image cannot be focused any better and even then you should re-check focus after every recording or at the very least after every second one.

Like the contrast in the dust lanes, but colour calibration seems a bit off with an overpowering beige tone in the galaxy.

Perhaps the camera in the teaser image is also a new product then? Maybe a smaller diameter cooled camera of some sort to play well with RASA/Hyperstar type scopes which Celestron kind of has a monopoly on, they could cash in big time with that move.

RASA 6 sounds like a decent idea to me, as long as the pricing detaches it well enough from the bigger 8" one. Would be small enough to ride on most mounts i reckon, so might be a good budget light bucket with something like a 533. All guesswork until the announcement though.

With the USB plugged to the mount the hand controller was not communicating with the PC, or it might have not worked at all. Cant really remember, but the way i wanted to use the setup was for both my mini-PC and the handcontroller to be aware of where the mount was pointing, and so that both could issue commands and the other would know what is happening. USB plug to the hand controller was the way to go for that to work and that way i could issue a go-to from either NINA or the handset, and both would know where the scope is pointing. Never tried PC control in AZ mode, only ever used mine in AZ mode manually with the handset and even then only a couple of times.

This was early 2022, and have since put all USB troubles behind me and moved back to an EQMOD cable so im afraid i dont remember all the specifics. I do remember that once i got it working it could work from both USB plugs, and i was specifically interested in the hand controller route of running the mount so almost entirely went with that. I did download the Synscan ap but only ever really used the mount with NINA using the Skywatcher driver - which i dont think is the same as the ASCOM one. The chipset driver was the missing link and once sorted i could see the COM port in device manager and so any application could communicate with it.

The driver from the Skywatcher drivers page was not the correct one for my AZ-EQ6 and i had to do some digging to find the up to date one from the prolific site itself. So you might also need to investigate a bit to find the right one in case you tried the Skywatcher driver and had no luck.

I do this, except my kit is closer to 60kg and i am on the 6th floor 🙂. Not on a motorbike though, cant really see that happening. Unless you come up with some dodgy strap contraption to hold all the kit like extra luggage compartments on some travel bikes (depends on the bike how sane an idea it is). Is acquiring a second hand car of some sort a possibility? More costs of course, but at least you get to keep the kit you've built up over the years.

Thanks Olly, the core took a few attempts to get to where i liked it just because of its tricky brightness relative to the rest of the fairly dim galaxy. Its also curious in how it appears to 'hide' the top part of the galaxy behind it, almost like its a thick halo that extends maybe half the galaxy length but perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy. Anyway, BlurXterminator was absolutely essential for this image which in this form is around 0.85''/px from a stack that is only pretty good at 2.8'' fwhm.

Thanks both, actually have over 10 hours for this but a lot of it is completely ruined by high winds resulting in 2-3'' guiding. I think the total would be closer to 12-13h if i had kept all the data that i actually captured, but i delete the worst of the data then and there when i see the subs come in to save some time and effort later in transfering files and time it takes to calibrate and stack by not having obviously failed subs in the mix.

Reprocessed some NGC 7331/Stephan's quintet data with just NGC 7331 as the focus: Taken with the usual kit: 8'' f/4.4 newton + TeleVue Paracorr and a RisingCam IMX571 OSC camera. 200x 120s for a total of 6h40min taken across 2 nights a few months ago. -Oskari

Thats not really the thing here nor is there an 'effect' of some kind at play, youre overthinking this way too hard. Its just simply the fact that the Sun takes longer to cross from the horizon to -18 degrees where true darkness begins when the path that the Sun take across the sky is shallower, like further up north. I'll just drop it, this is going nowhere. To try and get back on topic: the past few months suck compared to previous years - agreed.

Just run the numbers yourself, you'll find that the further north you go the less dark it actually is year round. I just got the numbers from here: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/finland/helsinki Calculated the averages for my location close to Helsinki and Hastings 10 degrees further south. I simply took the stated "night" time from 1st day of a month and the 15th day of a month from every month, added together and divided by 24 to get an average length of night for an entire year. For Helsinki, the average is 6 hours. For Hastings the average is 7 hours. I could find a better average by counting all the days of a year but i just cant be bothered because the result will still be roughly the same.

Well now we have moved the goalposts quite a lot in favour of the equal darkness argument, and yes in that case obviously Norway would be darker for the winter months. Compare the full year between any location in Norway and any location in France, and France will be darker. The time it takes from sunset to sunrise is the same everywhere on Earth, if averaged over an entire year, but the time it takes from sunset to astronomical darkness is not the same, and the further we are from the equator the longer it takes just because the apparent arc that the Sun appears to move in is shallower.

Not sure how you came to this conclusion, because it simply is not true. Some rudimentary back of the napkin calculations point to the average amount of darkness per day (for a whole year) being 9,5h on the equator, 7 ish at 50 degrees and more like 6h for 60 degrees. Higher latitudes just get less darkness overall.

17h is with twilight included so not a useful estimate on usable night sky time, right now we have 13h of astro darkness according to Stellarium and Hastings has 12, so not that different.

I used the hose clamp method as shown above by @Captain Scarlet to stabilize my VX8 aluminium tube and it worked well enough to fix any immediately obvious issues. But then a bit later upgraded to a Helmerichs carbon tube which has been rock solid. Wasnt too expensive either at 380€ (if i recall that correctly), but the 10" version would probably be closer to twice that.

Not really the case, twilight is much longer at northern latitudes because of the Suns low altitude so the actual amount of darkness is not that big of a positive. Right now astro darkness is around 13h and a month from now an hour less. Then it rapidly decreases as spring progresses further with only 4-5h at the beginning of April and none at all from April 25th onwards (or thereabouts). Overall far north latitudes are a major downside in terms of imaging opportunities.

This season has been terrible, and doesnt look any better for the near future if the forecast is to be taken seriously. I managed 9 nights since August 13th, but 6 of these in 8-12m/s winds so really only 3 decent nights (and many of the nights quite short). Should probably get some wind resistant gear like a Samyang 135 to make use of every night that the skies give...