Ouroboros

I was thinking of doing the same here given the beautiful blue skies this afternoon. Even the BBC website forecast clear for hours tonight. Then I checked the satellite and rain radar pictures and realised it was not gonna be like that. hey Ho!

Well, I don’t really know any of this either. I am aware though that there are Spider like gizmos that can calibrate the printer + computer by analysing a printed colour chart much like you use the spider to calibrate your screen.

Thanks @wimvb. Looks like there are several ways now to do it. Cheers.

@ollypenrice It must be nice to print at A3 size. I couldn’t really justify it. As I say, I am someone who regularly needs to print at A4 size and who happens to use the printer for the occasional photograph. Out of interest what paper do you use? I use Epson Premium Glossy I think it’s called, which is fine. Do you calibrate screen and printer? Do you print from PhotoShop?

Oh, sorry. I’ve obviously got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I’ll shut up and go away. Nice image. Nuff said.

If it’s a SkyWatcher 150P I’d guess it’s not too different to my 200P which I used to use with my 450D DSLR as shown here … The camera is attached to the T-ring which is connected to the 1.25” adapter ring that fits on the scope. I managed to get hold of a spare 1.25” adapter ring from FLO which means I don’t have to disassemble the scope each time.

Sure they’re not just winding you up? Sorry, I don’t “do” FB or X or any of the big anti-social media platforms. So, I am joyfully ignorant of what goes on.

Oh dear, I was just about to make the same joke. It’s a good image though. Interesting.

I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to use a x1.5 Barlow. And yes you will obtain a wider field of view, as you will if you attach the camera directly to the scope. Have you tried to do that? I assume by RA mount you have a an equatorial mount with a motor on the RA axis? That will limit your exposure durations to around 60s for deep sky targets, assuming you have good polar alignment. You’ll be fine though for lunar photography where the exposures are much shorter.

Hello, Adam. Mmm! What challenge! I’ll have to get thinking. I keep meaning to sign up for some of your video series. Trouble is I keep getting distracted by other stuff.

I have a standard Epsom Ecotank printer ET-7700. It’s perfectly adequate for prints for the office wall. I even have five frames up in the living room. I print and swap them around quite regularly. I only print to A4 size, but similar ink tank printers are available for A3. Ink tank printers are more expensive, but frankly worth it just to save the time, expense and hassle of buying and replacing cartridges. I print quite a lot for our local U3A group and I’ve not used all the ink that came with the printer when I bought it several years ago. It’s fantastically economical. I would recommend buying the printer manufacturer’s ink and photographic paper. I get better colour rendition that way, and the prints don’t fade as much if at all as with so-called compatible inks and paper. The cost difference is marginal with ink tank ink anyway, unlike with ink cartridges. I struggled initially getting even reasonably accurate and acceptable colour prints. OK, you can go to town by calibrating your screen and prints using various devices, but I reckon you can obtain perfectly adequate prints by paying attention to detail. What works for me is to save images processed in Pixinsight to 16 bit fits format, resized to 300dpi. I then open the image in Affinity Photo and print from there making sure I’ve selected the right paper and picture quality. Sometimes I adjust the brightness or contrast within Affinity Photo just to tweak the printed image. I usually practice on A6 size photo paper just to get the printed image looking right.

I was set for a bit of dual narrow band but … nope …… cloud.

I really thought it was going to be clear here tonight. I was about to set up when I looked at the satellite picture onky to see clouds closing in from the north west. Duh!

OK. Thanks. Just out of interest, have you tried setting it up as a hot spot for connection to by a tablet say? I’m guessing that range might be less than with a router though.

What do you reckon the range is?

Good. Glad you found it useful. I now understand there’s a more recent way to do this using BlurXTerminator. Maybe someone knows how this is done? I am familiar with and use BXT, but how is used to only de-emphasise smaller stars?

Having now installed and played with the star de-emphasis script written by Maxim Valenko it does indeed appear to do what I want. ie De-emphasise the small stars while leaving the bright ones alone. Result! Thanks for suggestions and thoughts.

Clear here in Oxfordshire until this evening. There’s now a mix of wispy cloud. Nice crescent moon though.

The only process I am aware of is the star de-emphasis script which brings together in one place a step of processes developed and described by Adam Block. I have not yet investigated it in detail, but as far as I can see it works by using the MLT process to differentiate between objects (in this case stars) on the basis of their size. Bright stars are bigger than small stars. So big stars can be masked and protected from being de-emphasised, whilst smaller stars less so. Even so the star de-emphasised script appears a bit clunky from my current position of ignorance. I am a bit surprised that in these days of AI driven processes someone hasn’t come up with a script or process to make this a simple one-step tool ie leave the top 10, 20, 30% of stars (user set) untouched and de-emphasise the rest.

Yes, that’s what I have done hitherto, but it leads to unsatisfactory results IMO. In fact to the artefacts I referred to in the left-hand picture above ie round bullet shaped bright stars with hard edges. The reason is obvious of course. Curves works on intensity. The Curves process is completely unselective of whether it attenuates the faint outer edge of bright stars or the fainter stars themselves. What we want is a process which says leave those bright stars completely alone and kill or at least de-emphasise the fainter stars.

I do use StarXTerminator. Unless I'm somehow missing it, I cannot see anything that allows fainter stars to be processed in a different way to brighter stars. This is the user interface I see. It's more of less press button and go. Maybe how it works in PS is different.

I’d be interested to know its range and WiFi reliability. Even the ASIair Plus is not that good, although better than the pro.

It has more outputs as I understand it. It is also not limited to ZWO kit. For me though the most important priority is reliability and useability.

It certainly looks maybe twice the size of an Air.

I watched the Lazy Geek’s vid the other day just after it was released. I thought it looked quite promising. I don’t think I’m ready to jump ship from the ASIair quite yet. But I’ve had some poor experiences with it recently which make me wonder whether ZWO have lost their edge with their product.