Ouroboros

Yes, you’ve encapsulated it well there. Perhaps the zeroth law of astrophotography is to enjoy it.

You’re probably on the right track there, @LindV. Rule of thumb is to have filters as close to the sensor as possible. I hope it works. Good luck.

I use the air too. I’ve only ever tried flats as short as about 1 second in duration, and they worked fine. I used to worry about this because there were some discussions of forums of them needing to be at least about three seconds long. I’ve never tried exposures as short as 330ms. As I say, 1 second has worked for me.

Is the image circle too big for the scope? This is a full frame camera isn’t it?

That looks decidedly odd. In fact if you’d have told me that was a photo of the underneath of the dog’s bowl I’d have believed you. How did you take them? I usually wait till morning, point the telescope at a uniform bit of sky, away from the sun, throw a piece of white cloth over the end of the telescope and fire off 60 shots of suitable exposure. I have a light panel too, which I use at night.

I’ve got the remnants of diffraction spikes on the StarXterminator starless version of an image I’m just working on of the crescent nebula. Below is a highly zoomed in crop to illustrate. Should I try and eliminate them or carry on processing regardless? The diffraction spikes in the stars only image will presumably overlay the remnant diffraction spikes when I add the stars back in at the end anyway.

Thanks, @Padraic M. That’s nice and clear. If I ever get round to doing that kind of thing I’ll have to work out how to do it with Pixinsight.

Interesting. Do you have to rescale/resize the images taken with different devices, or does the software do that automatically? And what about if there’s a difference in field curvature between different image sets? Is that taken into account too?

@Padraic M Well done! Sounds like that was hard work. I’m not quite sure what you’ve done exactly, because I only do OSC. Hoping to get into all that at some point. The crescent nebula has been a particular focus of mine recently. It’s certainly a fascinating object. Your stars have set off your Ha data very nicely. Just a thought but it might also be good if you could capture some RGB star data to combine with your Ha data at the same scale. You’ve picked up some nice Ha nebulosity in the larger Ha image.

Superb!

Nice. Yes, I agree. Double stars make good images. Nice colours, @astro mick. Where do the diffraction spikes in the second image come from?

Totally agree with the securing cables thing. In my pre-ASIair days I’m sure most of the problems when I ran cables from a computer to various devices was due to cable stress.

On the other hand …… I run my dew heaters from the ASIair with no problem, although I am aware of it being reported as a problem. I similarly run an ASI2600 and mini guide cam from the AIR, though no EAF. Something I’ve just remembered is having similar problems of 2600 disconnects when running the camera at low temperatures when the ambient temp is quite high. It’s fine on a cold winter’s night though. It has been warm at night recently. Could try running it with the cooling off. As others have said, dodgy USB cables is a possibility. Fortunately ZWO include two (long and short) so a swap might be easily tested depending on distances.

That’s quite a phew! things in your upgrade. 😀 Sorry if I’ve misunderstood your explanation, but did you try stripping right back to only running the ASI2600 from the ASIair - ie nothing else connected? See if that works. Then add other components one by one. You might also try running the guide camera as the main and only camera. I guess the thing to establish is whether this is an ASIair problem or a 2600 problem.

A sample of Saharan sand washed down in this morning’s rain on the glass surface of a table in the garden. Oh, and I found a camel behind a rose bush.

I agree. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Until recently (see below*) using the ASIair felt like coming home to something that simply works after years of flaffing around with control software/hardware that might work but often didn’t. * I do wonder now though whether ZWO have over reached themselves trying to make the AIR all things to all astronomers. It was fine until the recent updates. Let’s hope it’s just a glitch.

I’m almost relieved it’s cloudy tonight. I’ve had two nights out late under clear (ish) Cornish skies. It wasn’t good enough for imaging - too hazy and what with the Moon - but it’s been so warm it’s been a real pleasure just to observe. I set up my guide scope camera as the main scope and used my ASIair to act as my mount controller to do some visual with my 200p Newtonian. First time I’ve tried doing that. I usually just use the ASIair for imaging. It’s good using plate solving to make sure the scope is actually pointing at the right thing to observe. Saturn looked great, as did Jupiter. Uranus and Neptune both showed their characteristic blue. Looked at several globulars - M13, M92, M2, M15, M56 and a couple in Delphinus. Looked at some doubles too. The double double in Lyra, gamma 1 & 2 in Delphinus, Albireo, omicron 1 in Cygnus and a few others. M31 inevitably. Ring nebula. Triangulum Galaxy. Bit of a tour of the sky’s tourist spots really.

Welcome. I suppose it’s true to say we meet up in virtual space ie here! 😃

Exactly. This alone is the cause of much misunderstanding in the public imagination about science and the nature of scientific knowledge.

That’s a really interesting and eye catching image.

I prefer what to my eye looks the more natural colour in your image, @mightymonoped. It inspires me to have another go at the Triangulum this Autumn. I daren’t reduce my sub durations given I use a 9/10 year old MacBook. It can take over night now to run a full calibration and stacking in PI for 2 minute subs. Rather reluctantly I’m thinking of an upgrade to a new MacBook with M2 processor.

Picking up on some of your comments, @windjammer, I’ve had another go. I went right back to an earlier image just after stretching to non-linear. I applied some TGVDenoise to the starless image. Then used curves and colour saturation followed by a bit of local histogram equalisation. I combined the image with the stretched star image in pixelmath. Finally I used Bill Branshan’s star reduction script to dial back the stars. I could even apply a few more iterations of that I think. Anyway, I’m happier with the result. Cheers.

Good point. Both possibilities may present conceptual difficulties.

My goodness what a splendid image. You only get to appreciate the grandeur of the veil by seeing it an image on that scale. It’s not really very much data is it, if I understand your exposures properly. I guess this is down to the fast scope.

Are there any viable alternatives to the Big Bang theory? I am aware of the steady state theory for example. A perfectly reasonable theory, but one not confirmed by current observations of the universe. But are there any others?