PeterC65

Can you post a shot of Jupiter from the S50? I'd be interested to see how it performs on planets.

The DSLR is giving you a nice wide field of view with the 10" Newtonian. Have you tried using SharpCap?

@Richard N I've tried using Aladin twice now without much success and wondered if you could point me in the right direction? I'm loading a FITS stack from SharpCap, the going to Image | Astronomical calculations to add the calibration via WCS. Is this the right thing to do? It doesn't get the calibration right, so when I click on an object in the image it says it isn't in Simbad. There seems to be an offset as the object marker in Simbad is located to the right of where it is in the image. Any suggestions? Can Aladin do plate solving and work this stuff out for itself? I'm finding it spectacularly unintuitive, and the manual is useless.

I can't see any CA in the image you posted. I don't get any better with my 72mm FPL53 refractor. I agree with @Ags that a UV / IR cut filter greatly improves colour rendition but it looks like you may already be using one from the image you posted. The SharpCap CA function creates and artificial green layer from the red and blue I believe, which may well reduce CA but to me it feels like I would be throwing away some of the data.

I'll keep my expectations low then, even with the 8". It's interesting that the Horsehead Nebula needs 12" for visual, yet I can see it via EAA with my 1.2".

I've tried to observe the Horsehead Nebula visually a few times and never seen it, nor the adjacent Flame Nebula. I think part of the problem may be the brightness of very nearby Alnitak which may be drowning out its much fainter neighbours. I must give it another go with my relatively new 8" Newtonian. On the other hand, I've never failed to observe the Horsehead Nebula via EAA. Here is one of my favourite snapshots, showing all three of the Orion Belt stars as well as the Horsehead and Flame Nebulae, and even the Lump Star ... This image has had a little post processing, but even on the night I could just make out the horses head. All taken in one frame with the tiny FMA135, 30mm aperture, really just a finderscope. I was very lucky to get the orientation just right. The following night I couldn't quite fit Mintaka into the field of view.

Yes I think you're correct. I'm not sure whether the horses head shape is just missing nebula (hydrogen gas) or something in the way blocking out that part of the nebula. I really should find out more about these things that I observe!

I think it's hard to know without doing a like for like comparison. I get much more detail than your images show in M65/66 and M82 for example, but you're using a 60mm refractor which is at the smaller end of my scopes. I would normally use the 6" or 8" for these objects. Here is M82 for instance with the 8" and x1.7 Barlow ... I was using darks and flats and the stack is 28 x 15s exposures. This is what I saw on the night, with no post processing. The question is what would this look like with a mono camera instead? I would loose the colour which I think is a problem for an object like M82, but not so much for the fainter galaxies of which there are plenty. I agree with your point about mono being more like visual. I occasionally wind the colour saturation down to zero with the colour camera to see what the object looks like in mono but that doesn't also give me the extra sensitivity that I should get from a mono camera.

Yes, I have that on my radar. I think that would be the ideal solution.

Maybe an L-eXtreme. I've just looked up the price of the L-Ultimate (expensive), and I think 3nm may be too narrow anyway, even for a mono camera, doing EAA.

No! But thanks for replying. There are only a few of us on SGL doing EAA so I wasn't expecting many replies. I keep posting about EAA in an attempt to increase our numbers. I did also post on CN where EAA is more popular and have had some replies there. What I've learned so far is that mono should show me more detail but I won't really know the difference until I try it. It's also been mentioned that the extra sensitivity of a mono camera could be "spent" on using a narrow band Halpha filter (or maybe an L-Ultimate) for better views of faint emission nebulae, which is something I hadn't considered. I find that with my colour camera I can't use really narrow band filters as they require much longer exposure times to get enough photons to the sensor.

I wanted to do a shout out for the great service I've received from Player One in China. I always worry when buying Chinese made gear that doesn't have good UK support, but Player One have been excellent. They do now have a UK based distributor, but I bought my Uranus-C camera when their UK distributor was based in Canada, and in any case it's well out of warranty. A couple of months ago the central pin of the USB connector snapped. Not sure why, possibly the cable got snagged and pulled at it. I managed to superglue it back as a temporary fix but emailed support at Player One to see if there was anything that could be done (not wanting to buy a whole new camera). For $60 (carriage free) they offered to send me a replacement motherboard which carries the USB connector, plus the associated back plate for the camera. It duly arrived with a video showing how to make the replacement. It was a bit stressful dismantling the camera but all went well and it fixed the USB connector. Over the last few nights I've noticed more hot pixels than usual and it occurred to me that the hot pixel map that is used by the Dead Pixel Suppression (DPS) technology that Player One cameras have may have been stored in the now replaced motherboard. I emailed Player One support yesterday and overnight they replied with instructions to do a remote session to update the DPS map. First thing this morning (end of Friday in China) that is what we did, and their engineer spent an hour with their setup software recalibrating my camera. It was interesting to watch the process of DPS mapping and see the before and after. Before there were a few dozen hot pixels dotted across the sensor, afterwards not a single one. Very impressive. So now my camera is as good as new, thanks to the excellent support from Player One.

The first image does look better, but that is probably down to the longer total exposure, the background sky tends to darken the more frames you collect. Emission nebulae do really benefit from longer sub frame exposure times and the Horsehead is one of these. It's also one of my favourite targets as it's one of the few objects I knew about as a child. It does benefit from a little post processing. Here is my best image of it, taken with the Explorer 200 (no Barlow but with a UV / IR cut filter) and with a small amount of post processing ... With the x1.7 Barlow fitted the horses head fills the whole field of view and that is probably my next best image (using the L-eNhance filter also with a small amount of post processing ... I keep a list of targets to try, obtained from looking at what people post, from the Sky at Night magazine, and from checking Stellarium. I keep the list in a spreadsheet so that I can note what I've observed and when, but it's also in a Stellarium Observing List, actually several Observing Lists for different fields of view. On the night I load the most appropriate Observing List into Stellarium and get it to highlight all those objects so that I can see what's visible and be reminded of what's interesting. Stellarium also has some great tools for searching for objects (What's Up Tonight). I agree that EAA benefits from being viewed in the dark. I still switch off all the lights as even a dim house light can get picked up by the scope, and in the dark (with the laptop applications set to night mode) I can see much more on the second monitor that I use to show the image.

I’ve managed two EAA sessions over the last two nights, concentrating on smaller galaxies and PNs with the Explorer 200 fitted with a x1.7 Barlow. Since the AZ-EQ5 will carry two scopes I usually have a second for the widefield view, and on Tuesday that was the Explorer 150. The two reflectors together made for an impressive sight! The highlights of the evenings were NGC2403, a small galaxy but surprisingly beautiful, and seeing detail in the Eskimo Nebula (NGC2392). NGC2403 … NGC2393 … I also did a comparison test of darks and flats, which do seem to have their uses, even for EAA. There’s a full report here.

I’ve managed EAA sessions on both of the last two nights, with the Explorer 200 and x1.7 Barlow, last night paired with the Photoline 72 and the night before with the Explorer 150 (the first time I’ve had both reflectors on the AZ-EQ5 mount – quite a sight). I was planning to focus on galaxies and observed quite a few, IC2209, M82, M109, NGC2146, NGC2336, NGC2403, NGC2460, NGC2683, NGC2903, Leo Quartet, and Markarian’s Chain (well, part of it). I favour galaxies that show some structure, so face on spirals, edge on with some dust lanes, or the interacting galaxies. My favourites from the two nights are the Dusty Hand Galaxy (NGC2146) which has both an unusual overall shape and lots of dust lanes … and NGC2403 which is face on with some lovely spiral arm detail and perhaps a little colour … I know it’s galaxy season, but I sometimes get bored, especially when the galaxies are a little bland, so instead, since I was set up for high magnification, I turned my attention to Planetary Nebulae, M97, NGC1501, NGC2392, NGC3242, PK164+31.1, and PK339+88.1. The first four are all of the little blue / green disc variety, but I was pleased to see plenty of detail in the Eskimo Nebula (NGC2392) … and I managed to see the shape of the Headphone Nebula (PK164+31.1) which is very faint and looked better with the Explorer 150 … With one of the little blue / green discs, NGC1501, I decided to test the effect of using dark and flat frames which I’d captured for the Explorer 200. The dark frames removed all of the hot pixels, some of which the SharpCap hot pixel removal feature let through, and the flat frames calibrated out some vignetting which was lightening the background sky in the centre of the image. Here is NGC1501 with the darks and flats … and with just hot pixel removal … Taking the darks and flats is a bit of a faff, and the darks take a while, but I think they are worth using at high magnifications and with the clear or visible filter. I couldn’t get them to work with the L-eNhance.

Because the mono camera doesn't have a Bayer matrix it should capture three times as much light. That's the theory, but I'm not sure what that would look like in practice when observing a faint galaxy. The extra sensitivity of a mono camera could also be "used" to allow observation with a very narrow band filter. My colour camera probably wouldn't work well with anything narrower than 10um in front of it.

All nice clean and sharp images. I expect that's due to the 11" of aperture (my largest scope is 8") and the longer sub exposure time (I'm limited to 15s with the mount in AZ mode). Interesting that you're moving from mono to colour. I've been thinking about getting a mono camera to add to my existing colour camera for those faint galaxies, and maybe emission nebulae with a Halpha narrow band filter.

There's some very wispy cloud about here but I wouldn't say it's misty. I use the SharpCap brightness filter to deal with cloud drifting across objects. It looks like you may have a bit of dust somewhere in your optics. There's a dark spot about 20% of the way down each image and just to the right of centre. I've had some success with using flats to get rid of that sort of thing. Testing both darks and flats tonight, they do make a noticeable difference, at least at higher magnifications (Explorer 200 with x1.7 Barlow).

I used to use the Astronomik UHC filter for EAA but it is designed for visual use and passes IR which is detected by the IMX585 as it is sensitive to IR. Because of this I switched to the L-eNhance which cuts IR and gives less washed out images with less fringing around the stars. I don't have many snapshots of Jupiter using the new SharpCap planetary stacking tool as it hasn't been around for long and while I like observing the planets, they need a different EAA setup which isn't so good for DSO (Explorer 200 with x2.4 Barlow to give F12 rather than the F5 which is what I use for DSO). You will need to use the sharpening and image adjustments to get a good image, but that's no different to AP. I find that 80% of Fine sharpening on its own (no denoise, no wavelets) does a good job, with auto adjust of the brightness / colour and a bit of manual uplift on the saturation (to 2.000). Here's an example using the Explorer 200 and x2.4 Barlow ... I've recently been using dark and flat frames for EAA and for me the jury is still out. The SharpCap hot pixel removal and sigma clipping when stacking do almost as good a job as dark frames I think, and without messing up the position of the peak in the histogram. Flats seem to be useful when you are using high magnification and would otherwise see dust bunny's. But both take a while to capture I find, and that adds to an already lengthy setup time for EAA. These days I think of visual as my grab and go setup!

Your setup is similar to mine. I also do EAA with an Explorer 200PDS and an IMX585 camera (the Player One Uranus-C in my case). The images you posted are very good. I use a gain of 400 all the time for DSOs (my camera has a LCG/HCG switching point of 210) and I've been using 15s exposures of late (I started initially with 4s). When I first started doing EAA I did some tests with gains from 0 to 600 in steps of 50, same object, same night, same exposure, same number of frames, and concluded that 400 gave the best images. 15s exposures are a bit less real time than 4s but I find that for the same total exposure time I get more detail with 15s subs. The image does get better the more frames you capture but if you're doing EAA you won't want to stay on one target for more than 10 minutes unless it's something special. As I type this I'm capturing frames of the Eskimo Nebula which is looking good, hence the wait for frames. I use no filter (for faint broadband objects), a UV / IR cut filter (for brighter objects when I want to see their colour), and an Optolong L-eNhance dual narrowish band filter (for emission nebulae). All three have their uses. For observing the Moon and planets I'd recommend you try out the new planetary stacking feature in SharpCap. It is just as good as post processing captured frames I think, and gives you a close to real time experience. Now back to the Eskimo Nebulae ...

I've managed to observe the supernova three times now via EAA, on the 18/1, 11/2 and 2/3. It's clearly fading in brightness as you can see below. From 18/1/24 From 11/2/24 From 2/3/24 The second image from the 11/2/24 is my favourite. Taken with the Explorer 200 and x1.7 Barlow, with flats to combat the dust bunnies.

An AZ mount is fine for EAA, and for visual. I do both and have recently upgraded from a Sky-Watcher SynScan AZ GOTO mount to the AZ EQ5. I did a lot of research during this process and seriously considered the iOptron AZ Pro. There are a few AZ GOTO mounts in the sub £500 bracket that will handle payloads of up to 5kg, but to handle scopes heavier than this there is a big jump in price to £1000+. If you can afford it I would recommend going for a 15kg payload mount as it will be much more stable and futureproof (I found my first mount greatly limited my choice of scopes). I really like my AZ-EQ5 but it is not easily transportable. I think the iOptron would be a better choice in this respect. The Starwave 152 has a wide aperture but it is an achromat and so you will see chromatic aberration when doing EAA, and it has quite a long focal length making it better suited to smaller objects. For about the same money you could get a 6" Newtonian which would be good for visual and for EAA on smaller objects, plus a smaller apochromatic refractor which would still be useful for visual and would be a good scope for EAA. I have a 72mm apochromatic refractor for example which is my EAA workhorse and is also useful for widefield visual.

I missed the Forest of Dean Astronomy Group meet last night as we had visitors, but the sky was clear and they were keen to see what I get up to so we did an EAA session with the Photoline 72 and the Explorer 200. We stuck with more impressive objects, M42, The Running Man and Horsehead Nebulae in Orion, just before they dipped down below next doors roof, then M35 followed by a bunch of galaxies, M81 & M82, the Leo Triplet, and M51. Then for something different I showed them NGC4216 with its now fading but still clearly visible supernova. I didn't capture darks and flats this time, and spent less time tweaking the histogram than usual, but the sky seemed very clear and we had some excellent views of these objects. Because we were talking about the objects we spent longer on each one than usual and it was a really nice shared experience. On the back of it I may have sold another S50! The Running Man Nebula was the best I've ever seen it. Here it is with the Explorer 200 ...

I currently use an IMX585 OSC camera for EAA. I’m considering getting a mono camera to compliment it and wanted some feedback on my reasoning and possible mono camera choice. A mono camera will be three times more sensitive than the equivalent colour camera due to the absence of a Bayer Matrix, so I would be exchanging colour for more detail. The objects that would benefit most, and suffer least, will be those that are faint and don’t exhibit much colour. I’m thinking galaxies, reflection nebulae, and maybe planetary nebulae, not so much larger emission nebulae. So mostly smaller fainter objects for which I would be using a longer focal length, wider aperture scope, an 8” F5 Newtonian in my case. I don’t want to spend any more that I did on the IMX585 camera. Camera price is strongly correlated with sensor size, and mono cameras are more expensive than their colour equivalent. So I’m looking for a mono camera with a sensor that is a little smaller than the IMX585, but not so small that plate solving starts to fail with the 8” Newtonian. Sensitivity also increases with pixel size, but I can make bigger pixels by binning smaller ones, both to increase sensitivity and to match the scope. So for a given sensor size it would be best to choose a camera with small pixels so that binning allows a range of larger pixel sizes (2µm, 4µm, 6µm, 8µm being better than just 4µm and 8µm for example). With all this in mind I’m thinking that an IMX678 mono camera would be a good choice, such as the QHY5III678M. It has an 8.8mm diagonal sensor (12.9mm for the IMX585), 2µm pixels, 4K resolution (so enough pixels to bin without too much pixelation), and no amp glow. Does this make sense? Am I missing anything? Are there other cameras worth considering? What do owners of IMX678 mono cameras think of them?

You might just have persuaded me to give this a try. So collecting some EAA snapshots for the express purpose of post processing. I think I could do that alongside my normal EAA practice by saving some snapshots without doing the histogram stretch in SharpCap.