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When you combine SHO as a typical Hubble palette, you get magenta stars. There is a script in pixinsight which corrects magenta stars (I think it's called Correct Magenta Stars or words to that effect) which works as you explain. It inverts the image, runs SCNR then inverts the image back to normal. You can apply a star mask to protect the background and you can choose how aggressive the SCNR needs to be. This might work for your stars! When doing SPCC, you can include background neutralisation at the same time instead of performing as a separate step. Create a small preview window of your image which contains the background, then assign this preview to the "region of interest" box at the bottom of the SPCC dialog and then run. Also, when you complete SPCC your colour calibration charts should hopefully show a linear correlation between the colours. See below screenshot which I pulled from Google. Is this what you see when you run SPCC or do you see something different?
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Richard_ started following WiFi Connection Problem , IC443 in HOO , Rosette nebula - SHO and 3 others
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Lovely image, well done! I agree with the CC above regarding the purple-ish stars. What is your process flow for the RGB image? Did it include some form of colour calibration (cc/pcc/spcc)? Arcsinh stretch is meant to retain some colour hue during stretching, but I sometimes find this gives the cores of stars a pink hue and the stars kinda have a red and blue separation like you see with atmospheric dispersion. See below example from Cloudy Nights.
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NGC2264 - Christmas Tree Cluster and Friends
Richard_ replied to WolfieGlos's topic in Imaging - Deep Sky
Lovely images, especially the first from the DSLR. Is this an astro modded camera or not? -
Thanks Lee! I'd say go for it, I can see the title of your next review being "shooting a 4 panel mosaic from a high light pollution city centre, with full moon and fog" just to see how the purists react 😂 On a more serious note, with your OSC it's a bit more straight forward as you won't have to faff around with different filters. However, the big question is "should I evenly spread my time across multiple panels, or should I concentrate all my time on one panel" and I totally get that. I guess it depends on the target and your patience!
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Thanks for you kind comments. This is the beauty of doing a mosaic, you can zoom in and still keep good image quality. Thanks Adam! The NB Colour Map script is great, I'm looking forward to using it more in the future.
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It's been a while since I've posted an image, only because it's taken so long to get enough subs to process I couldn't quite fit the Rosette nebula into my field of view, so rather than swap from my FLT120 to my Redcat51, I decided it would be a good time to try out a mosaic. This image was a simple 1x2 mosaic captured with Antlia 4.5nm SHO narrowband filters and my QHY268M monochrome camera. There's an almost 50/50 split between panels for total imaging time: Panel 1 = 8h50m Panel 2 = 8h25m The OIII data was quite noisy, so it really helped waiting a month of rain and cloud until I could dedicate an entire night to capturing more. It was well worth the wait as the final OIII data was looking much better and the noise between panels was more balanced. I used the "PhotometricMosaic" script from John Murphy to assemble each monochrome panel which resulted in three master lights (S, H and O). I then created the SHO image using the "NB Colour Map" script within PixInsight using guidance per Adam Block's YouTube channel. Hue and intensity values were assigned to each monochrome channel and a histogram transformation applied to control the amount of blend between the SHO channels. After running colour calibration, the resulting imaging can be somewhat considered as colour accurate (well, more so compared with traditional narrowband palettes!), which is great as you can see more natural red (Hydrogen) and blue (Oxygen) hues from the Rosette nebula. Sulphur is shown as light orange, which can be seen on the tips of Hydrogen gas but is more visible towards the centre of the image around NGC 2244 and NGC 2246. I may have another play around with the process, but otherwise I'm really pleased with how this project has come out! Comments and constructive critcism are welcome Image acquisition details are on my astrobin per the link below: https://www.astrobin.com/z36geu/
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UK supplier of Touptek Astro cameras
Richard_ replied to Stuart1971's topic in Discussions - Cameras
Having access to competing products at better price points than the competition whilst offering UK point of contact for warranty/returns is very much welcomed. I can only see this as a gain for everyone. -
EQ6R - which way 'round' to mount the OTA ??
Richard_ replied to Mr_Cat's topic in Getting Started Equipment Help and Advice
Nice one, glad it's sorted! Thinking about the handset, I remember having a similar problem a while back which was quickly sorted. When you power the controller up, it will ask for the date in US format (MM/DD/YYYY) instead of rest of the world format (DD/MM//YYYY). I forgot about this at the time (as I mostly do astrophotography and do not use the controller) so when I told the mount 03-09-2023 (ie 03-Sep-2023), it would think I meant 09-Mar-2023. So you can imagine that things were off quite a bit! -
EQ6R - which way 'round' to mount the OTA ??
Richard_ replied to Mr_Cat's topic in Getting Started Equipment Help and Advice
I'm not sure how far out you are, but you could double check the coordinate system is the same between EQMOD and Stellarium as that may have a small impact. You can choose options such as J2000 or JNow, but they have to match between EQMOD and Stellarium. Daft question, are both software indicating that you are in the Northern hemisphere? -
I didn't come here to brag, but I don't have any scope or mount regrets 🙂 This can be a very expensive hobby so I try to do as much research before each purchase. I have two of each: Mounts Skywatcher Star Adventurer 2i Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro Telescopes WO Redcat51 WO FLT120 Despite my Star Adventurer now sitting in a cupboard and not being used, this mount/tracker got me interested in the hobby for a low price (compared to how much I've now spent lol). I don't think it would have been a good idea to "buy once, cry once" when starting a new hobby so this mount/tracker was perfect for learning the basics. A similar thing can be said about the Redcat. It was the first telescope I bought and was an upgrade from the 200mm DSLR lens I was using. I wanted an easy to use telescope (no flattener, reducer or collimation to worry about) and something lightweight the Star Adventurer could handle. The Redcat was a perfect, albeit expensive choice, and I still use it to this day as my wide field imaging scope. Later on, I wanted to upgrade to a 100-120mm aperture telescope and stick to a refractor for ease of use. Due to covid, there were a number of supply issues so my choices were limited. The FLT120 had just been released and it ticked all the boxes for me. Just like the Redcat, this was probably the more expensive telescope from my choices, but that doesn't mean that it's bad. Both telescopes have provided me with excellent images, don't require an awful lot of work to set up and don't need any tweaks for collibation etc. On the other hand, there are a few accessories which I regret buying but that's outside the scope of this thread 🙂
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New telescope - Founder Optics Draco 62mm refractor
Richard_ replied to Elp's topic in Discussions - Scopes / Whole setups
Is that also with a dew shield fitted or not? I imagine having heat from the camera mounted on the lens helps a lot! Whilst I don't disagree with what you're saying regarding the RASA being faster, I imagine you need a lot more mount (eg EQ6-R pro) for the RASA unlike these lighter, 60-70mm aperture refractors. Plus, you need specific narrowband filters for very fast optics right? My Antlia filters are good down to around f/3, so that's one less thing I'd have to consider upgrading if I moved to one of these fast* refractors. *I mean fast by refractor standards 🙂 -
New telescope - Founder Optics Draco 62mm refractor
Richard_ replied to Elp's topic in Discussions - Scopes / Whole setups
When fitted with the reducer, this looks like a much more affordable alternative to the WO Pleiades telescope! https://www.firstlightoptics.com/william-optics/william-optics-pleiades-68-f38-astrograph.html I wonder what grade of glass is used as it just says ED. Regarding water proofness, I would guess that the nitrogen purging and coatings on the lens elements inside the telescope would be to prevent/stop fungus growing inside the telescope. I think it would still be a good idea to use dew heaters to prevent dew from forming on the outer surface of the lens. -
WiFi Connection Problem
Richard_ replied to Telescopist's topic in Getting Started Equipment Help and Advice
On your phone, you will need to disconnect from your home WiFi and connect to the Skywatcher Synscan WiFi network broadcasted by your mount. Once you're connected, you should be able to open your app and control the mount. Below is the screenshot from the manual, which I've also attached. Give this a try and see if this works sagti_manual_rev8c.pdf -
WiFi Connection Problem
Richard_ replied to Telescopist's topic in Getting Started Equipment Help and Advice
If you're connecting to a WiFi which does not have Internet access (eg Skywatcher hot-spot) your phone can disconnect after a short time. There is an option on Android phones to keep a WiFi connection even if there's no Internet, I think it pops up the first time you pair and connect to a new device. If you don't see this option, you can always unpair from the mount and re-pair to see if you can enable this. Start with that, and see if you can connect through the SysnScan app.