ONIKKINEN

It does take the same amount, i have hundreds or thousands of 50mb files per stack. Doing background extraction and cosmetic correction (not sure if necessary) will add another set of subs to be saved when stacking. Of course i can use DSS which is less hungry in terms of space but the results are worse. I dont think 16bit is enough, i am shooting short exposures and the difference in background and signal can be only 0.1 ADUs in the 32bit stack. This would drown in noise with 16bit, unless i am completely wrong on how it works.

For a comparison, the 550D on raw video movie crop mode will write at 21mb/s regardless of card (camera limitation), so i would assume your write speed is good enough. I do wonder why you have the need for increased resolution if this is the limiting factor? ADC bitrate also plays a large part in file size, you can lower this in many cameras to increase framerates. Really what concerns me is the capabilities of the laptop, it might not be able to handle high framerate video of really any resolution.

Cheap laser pointers like this are an extreme eye-hazard, be VERY careful when using laser pointers from sketchy sources! Very often these no-brand chinese lasers are nowhere near their rated safe(ish) power of 1-5mW and instead can be in the 50-100mW range. These are built to such a low price that there is probably no quality assurance of any kind. A typical 5mW laser pointer is still dangerous, mind you but not the instant irreparable eye-damage levels of the more powerful ones. Not a thing i would personally want to save any money on.

If this ToupTek manufactured camera follows the same logic as my RisingCam (ToupTek manufactured) the conversion factor would be a factor of 100. My model goes from 1-100 in ASCOM and 100-10 000 in the ToupTek driver. The 1-100 ASCOM value corresdponds directly to the relative gain value (not db).

Whether it was necessary or not to play with rice, all the gear appears to work as intended. The wire going from my power supply to the integrated cooling fan on the VX8 mirror assembly had blown a fuse but works after a new one, but other than that everything appears undamaged. Really quite surprised the PC boots up as i saw water dripping directly inside the case, and where i assume the motherboard to be. Opened up the case a bit to maybe improve air circulation (put it in front of a fan for a while) so i don't think anything is damaged. Speaking of desiccant sachets, buying some reusable silica gel and putting moist electronics in a box with it might be a good idea in the future if the weather forecast when the weather forecast does a 180 suddenly.

Only just recently started experimenting with starnet and StarXterminator but i would slightly favour the latter with my tries so far. Bright stars still have spikes, especially if the star is close to any nebulosity, but it looks like there are fewer remaining artifacts compared to starnet++.

Care to link somewhere that explains this?

Not for many years. No reason to upgrade from WIN10 and there are no guarantees the new version is any better. In my opinion the first few years after a new OS gets released is just unofficial beta testing from early adopters. Im in no rush as WIN10 will still be supported for 4 years. Also, the strangely strict hardware limitations will turn just about 90% of the existing desktop PC crowd away from the upgrade, including me. In 4 years i might retire my I7 6700K/GTX1080 combo, which is still top tier stuff after years of use. I find that hardware hasn't really improved all that much in the recent years, so why upgrade?

For me here, last winter was easier in terms of dew than current conditions. Relative humidity of 99% in -20 is still less water in the air than a humidity of 50% at +10. It will work out great.

Im not worried abot the telescope, being a newtonian its exposed to weather, dew and frost all the time. My mini-pc is what took a beating there, being made for normal inside use it is not designed to be in rained on. Ill have to come up with some sort of shield on it to prevent this kind of thing again.

Yeah, the mini-pc might have died as it rained directly inside it through the vent holes on top 😭. My tube orientation was such that the camera and the various usb and power ports were also exposed to rain for a bit... Well ill throw them in a rice bath and hope they didn't mind an unscheduled wash.

As the title suggests, i got caught mid imaging with a quick but strong shower. It took me a while to pull all electronics out and cover the scope. Is astro imaging gear sensitive to rain, and if so whats the next step?

A simple usb powered dew heater kept my guidescope clear at -20 last winter. Everything else was covered in frost though.

There is probably a "release shutter without lens" option in the settings that you have to enable.

Thought i would report that i am experiencing something pretty much exactly like this, a colour gradient across the image. Started noticing this after changing my usual imaging spot of B6-7 to a 6, maybe 5 on the best of days. On the new imaging spot there is an extreme gradient as most targets just skim the edge of a B8 light dome. Also, there is a baader UV/IR cut filter in front of my camera. I am wrestling with IFN at the moment and there is a fine line between fixing the gradient and nuking the nebulosity, but so far has worked out.

This sounds like the complete opposite of me. I always crank it all the way right, to 1000. Still the image looks mostly black with some of the brighter stars visible. Probably because all of my signal is within the first 200ADUs or so.

Didnt think about that at all. The flocking material is the exact opposite of a reflective glass mirror, so will probably be dryer than any metal/glass parts. Radiation of heat will probably have a lesser effect too when the insides are completely flocked all the way to the top of a dew shield.

This looks pretty nice too. I do wonder whether the fibers would attract dew/frost and just bring it closer to the mirror. The backside of my secondary is sometimes wet/frozen, but so far the mirror side has been mostly dry. I have 2 rolls of flocking and some paint coming soon so plenty of extra material to test and play with.

I use siril, i like the simplicity and user interface. I tend to do background extraction, photometric colour calibration (a blessing, works every time) and a stretch with SIRIL and then move on to photoshop for the nonlinear part of processing. The background extraction tool works well for most projects, especially if all the data was taken on the same night. Stretching with asinh transformation first and them the histogram transformation nicely retains colour and i find that sometimes only a minor saturation boost is needed. Recently switched stacking from DSS to siril with sirilic too. Sirilic stacking allows a background exraction per sub in the stacking process, which is proving to be a necessity for me. Only problem with stacking in sirilic is that it takes about 1gb per sub taken for stacking from my harddrive, so a dedicated SSD is needed. Hard to beat for the price of free.

I dont think focus is all that important as long as its roughly same. Check this video out, Cuiv makes a few fair points. I will say that i took flats for a while only after getting back home and sometimes on the next day. I had marked the camera-focuser point with tape to recreate the same rotation and left the focuser as it was when shooting. Currently i take flats every time since it is pretty easy with a light panel. The dedicated astro light panels are hilariously expensive so i bought a 20 euro tracing tablet from amazon. Works just as well with 10% of the price.

I dont have issues in visual use with an 8 inch newtonian and an EQM35-PRO. The only hassle is making sure the eyepiece is in a usable angle. Different parts of the sky have different tube orientations so the tube rings must be adjustable. Focusing will take some effort, i will slightly move the reduced 1:10 knob and wait for the shakes to settle over 2 or so seconds and adjust again until in ideal focus. I cannot touch the telescope in any way (including with my eye) or it shakes. But honestly its not a problem at all. I think the mount ratings are very much accurate for visual use.

I am imaging with an EQM35-PRO (basically an EQ3 with extra marketing and an extra counterweight) and an 8 inch newtonian that weighs in at around 9kg with guiding and cameras on top. While it is painful sometimes and windy days are by default no-go it is far from impossible. Shorter subs and leaving DEC unguided are proving to be effective measures for me. I can get around 2/3rds of my subs under 1 arcsec RMS (generally regarded as good) if the conditions are average. The payload and mount capability conversation has gotten really out of hand IMO. What do you suppose is "good performance" for the payload? Eternal sub arcsec guiding, no effects from wind, never loses a single sub? Looking at 10k mounts there. A more reasonable approach would be: More than half of the subs are good or usable and this you can already achieve unguided, so adding guiding will improve things drastically. In my opinion don't stress about this, its easy to get into a spiral of spending because of general opinions. The EQ5, especially when guided will be quite capable of handling your 150PDS. Wind will keep ruining your exposures but that is a problem that newtonian users just have to live with, regardless of mount used. The "mount limited" concept is also in my opinion outdated and not quite true. Really there is no such thing as being mount limited, the system is being photon count limited and a better mount allowing longer subs will bring in more photons per exposure. But why not go the other way around and make sure that all photons count? Using modern dedicated CMOS astrocameras you can use exposures as short as 10s and stack 6 of them to get a result that is pretty much exactly the same as a single 60s exposure. I was in the same boat as you, looking for a mount replacement because i thought i had to take longer subs, but changing to a dedicated astro cam changed this completely. I am now looking for more storage space for my computer to allow processing thousands of subs. This applies to DSLRs as well, but you probably cant get quite as short in the exposures, but IMO 30s should be just fine. Now having said all that i do agree that cheap mass produced mounts should probably not go over 50% of their rated payloads to get consistently good results, but since money is limited for a lot of people i just choose not to follow this argument.

Lots of praise for the FLO flocking material, ill give that a go and see how it turns out. The "ridge" from the crimped part of the aluminum tube sticks out quite a bit and could cause problems, but if the adhesive is as strong as it seems then no problems, or ill just align the seams to the steepest part of the crimp.

I was looking at these velour rolls, but i wonder how well these handle extreme temperature ranges in terms of frosting and the adhesive? When winter rolls in properly i will have an up to 45 degree difference between inside and outside every time i take the scope out.

Cloudy october has rolled in and i thought why not tinker with equipment in the meanwhile? I noticed 2 potential issues with my VX8, the blackness of the inner surface of my OTA across the focuser (or anywhere else, if it matters) and the rough secondary mirror edge (the marked bit). How much of an effect do these have for imaging/visual, but mostly imaging. While the paint is very matte and doesn't look all that reflective, it is also very much not quite what i would call black. The secondary mirror edge while not coated, will probably reflect at least some unwanted light somewhere towards the camera, potentially creating extra noise. I am thinking of just painting these black with something like TS-black or another very low reflection paint. Although im not quite sure how to paint the mirror edge without ruining the mirror itself. Maybe using a marker or a very small brush?