Anne S

On my main imaging laptop, one that was upgraded from W7 I found that W10 took a dislike to Ioptron Commander which is the Ascom driver for my mount. It kept quarantining in! My newer laptop wasn't bothered. There's nothing worse than setting up and then having to waste time trying to fix something that's always worked perfectly. I only upgraded to W10 because software vendors kept saying they wouldn't support W7. I think W7 was vastly better than W10. Several times the laptop has started upgrading itself outside active hours just because I turned it on before to check everything was working and it started downloading.... My husband had his laptop waste an hour imaging time waiting for it to turn on after an update! I begin to wonder who owns the laptops, me or Microsoft....

We're going. It's been good for clear skies several years. Let's hope.

Here's my rendition. DBE on separate channels, then combined in the Hubble palatte. Convert to non-linear. Remove violet star by inverting image and using SNCR. invert again to obtain blue/gold colour scheme. Starnet to create a starmask. Extract luminance and perform HDR on that. Saturate colour version then recombine with luminance. Morphology on Starmask image, then saturate stars a little. Use Pixelmath to add star to starless image. Slight MMT to reduce colour noise. Use star image as a mask to enable me to adjust the colours slight to strengthen the blue/gold effect. Remove mask. Crop to tidy up edges. Lovely data, I wish I could do as well.

I managed to polaralign and then it was cloudy! it's bound to be cloudy this time as I've a new camera! Though I did get a week of trying it out at home last month. My first CMOS, an ASI533 for starparties.

I'll be there in yellow field with a motorhome, awning and astronomy tent.

Like last night!

That's good to know. I don't like updating things when they work fine as they are. I'll update my observatory pc first though! I do fancy multi star guiding. That'll help with our wobbly seeing. I'm on the same version of Sgpro as you.

I'm being asked to update my version of PHD to the 2.6.10 version every time I open PHD2, I'm on v 2.5 and have been for several years. I'm running it through SGPro. Are there any problems I need to know about? I've got a trip to Kelling in just over a month and I my not have a chance to test it all out following the update, given the weather we normally have in Wales! I don't want to do it right now as I'm in the middle of an image using my new ASI533.

A couple of days ago I had my imaging laptop which runs Window 10 insist that Ioptron Commander, the Ascom driver for my CEM60 mount had to be quarantined as it allowed access to my computer. I've been using the programme for years! And that's what it's supposed to do. it was the previous to the current one available now but as it works fine I don't intend to update it until I have to. There have been several Windows updates over the summer..... I sometimes think I don't own my computers, Microsoft do.

I've got the Starwave 70EDT and I'm very happy with it. It's a lot cheaper than the WO ones and they're all made in China. Here's an image. I used a SX H694 with it to give over 2 degrees field of view.

I would start with Altaircapture, I think it's easier to get to grips with and it will make sure the camera is working. It will also live stack for fainter objects. Sharpcap is more versatile and has downloadable instructions. Such as focus measurement etc. I've not used that since 3.1 though as I've moved to Firecapture for my solar imaging. Not done planetary for a long time as I do deep sky imaging mostly.

Have you power going to the camera? You get black if you haven't.

I watched your video this morning and then reprocessed a close up of the centre of the Heart nebula. Imaged with an elderly Atik320e in April, so not much data even though it was over 3 nights. 900s subs with a L'enhance filter. I was never particularly happy with my original processing. The Hubble style version shows much more detail. I'll be looking at some of your other videos. Thank you for putting in the time to do them.

Have you tried the camera yet? I want to replace my starparty camera so I can do wider field imaging. The other option is one of the 533 chip cameras. Incidentally I'm not far from you and a member of Swansea Astronomy club.

I had a 8SE for quite a few years. In my garden I have seen the veil nebula without using any filters. Just a faint smudge but enough to know I was pointing at the correct place. An O3 filtered showed it clearly. The 8 inch was fine on the mount as long as it was balanced. There is a limit to the weight of eyepiece usable with it. I could use a 22mm Nagler but not my husband's 13mm Ethos. It was lovely for Saturn and the other planets. I've seen Uranus and Neptune though it, small dots though with a little colour. Vibrations can be an issue on hard ground but I always used vibration suppression feet with it. The 8 inch showed much more than our previous 105mm ETX but my husbands 10 inch LX90 showed even more but was too heavy for me. Aperture is everything for visual. Latterly I moved the 8 inch to a Celestron Cg5 which was much more stable. Still with goto though. Only sold the setup because I wanted to switch to astrophotograpy with refractors.

That explains why you reacted to my version! (My processing is still rather hit and miss)

My filterwheel is 22mm thick, 1 inch spacers are 25mm, just remove the relevant spacer. It'll work fine. That was why I switched the 2 inch for the 1 inch as I ran out of inward focus. The focuser has a long drawtube so remove more that you need. The focuser will just be further out.

If you have a reducer you need to be a bit closer. If you run out of focus just remove one tube. That's why I ended up switching the 2 inch out.

Lovely. I take it you're doublestacked.

I think he should have used the extension tubes with his dslr as per the chart. I certainly didn't have any problems getting focus with my 694. I recall having to switch from the 2 inch tube to the 1 inch when I tried it at night. My RC6 came with 2 x 1 inch and 1 two inch spacers. It's an Altairastro one, but the same scope is sold by various vendors.

It hasn't posted my image!

It hasn't posted my image!

Here's my version. All processed in Pixinsight. RGB image produced from original colour stacks then DBE and Photometric colour calibration. Luminance image just DBE. Both images permanently stretched then luminance had HDR at level 5 applied. RGB image colour saturated before combining with the luminance image. Light noise reduction using MMT. Finally check sncr and background colour, gentle curves applied to bring out the dust and brighten slightly.

Here's my version. All processed in Pixinsight. RGB image produced from original colour stacks then DBE and Photometric colour calibration. Luminance image just DBE. Both images permanently stretched then luminance had HDR at level 5 applied. RGB image colour saturated before combining with the luminance image. Light noise reduction using MMT. Finally check sncr and background colour, gentle curves applied to bring out the dust and brighten slightly.

Here is is. Look on page 4. OrionManual.pdf