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IC1805 interupted (again!)

SteveL

By SteveL
in Imaging - Deep Sky

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SteveL

SteveL

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Just cant seem to get a good long clear spell recently... oh well

What was due to be a 6 hour imaging session before the clouds rolled in turned into a 2 hour session and early clouds. The plan was to get 2 x 3 hours and make it into a mosaic, but it appears I`ll have to go back for the other target. As the session was due to run into moon/sky glow issues later, I thought I`d sidestep the whole background colour matching problems of a mosaic by doing this in Ha again.

OTA: William Optics ZenithStar 66 SD + 0.8 FR/FF

Guiding: NS8GPS @ f/10 + DSI-C + PHD

Imaging: QHY8 + MaximDL, 8 x 900s, Astronomik Ha 13nm

Stacked: DeepSkyStacker

Post Process: ImagesPlus + PSCS2 + Noel Carboni’s AstroTools

(Click on image for larger version)

ic1805_ha_20071129.jpg

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SteveL

SteveL

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I am using the William Optics 0.8x Focal Reducer/Field Flattener for the 66, and it has helped immensely. Still getting a slight north south guiding issue (you cant see it in the image), but I think it could be that my setup is *TOO* well balanced, and its rocking backwards and forward in any slight breeze. Which would be best, nose heavy or tail heavy?

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MartinB

MartinB

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Superb Steve. The QHY8 has performed wonders in Ha in your capable hands. That's decent s/n off 2 hours. Your processing has really come on as well. Did you use DDP in ImagesPlus or did you do all the stretching in PS?

With the GPDX I just left it heavy one way or the other. I guess if you want to be really clever you offset the polar alignment a tiny amount and determine which way to offset the weight so that the gears are always pushing against the scope. Trouble was I could never get my ahead around working out which way that was! Worth a thought though if you have a problem.

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SteveL

SteveL

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ImagesPlus was just used for the bayer red channel split from the raw FITS files, stacked in DeepSkyStacker (2xdrizzle), binning (2x) post-stacking in ImagesPlus, and the rest was done in PSCS2.

I keep the East fork slightly heavy so as it moves across the RA, the gears are always in contact, but the North/South thing has only recently started happening. Will look into this soon.

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MartinB

MartinB

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I keep the East fork slightly heavy so as it moves across the RA, the gears are always in contact, but the North/South thing has only recently started happening. Will look into this soon.

But you can do the same thing in dec if you do a small polar offset and can work out which way the guiding will be having to push the scope. so long as it's very small field rotation's not going to be an issue with the ZS66, might be different at 2000ml f/l

What tracking errors are you getting in Dec?

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barkis

barkis

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I am using the William Optics 0.8x Focal Reducer/Field Flattener for the 66, and it has helped immensely. Still getting a slight north south guiding issue (you cant see it in the image), but I think it could be that my setup is *TOO* well balanced, and its rocking backwards and forward in any slight breeze. Which would be best, nose heavy or tail heavy?

Simple, An Observatory. Yeah, I know you say, get off my back. :icon_jokercolor:
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