The "No EQ" DSO Challenge!

[jimbo747]

Can't get behind the scope to align by sight, need to use a combination of the dSLR to find a bright star, finder scope with webcam to get closer and then with APT and sharpcap try and get a star bang in the middle of the 224mc tp get goto spot on- not easy to do with a 2.5 Barlow on a slow scope when the 224mc, ps3 eye cam and 1100d don't exactly line up.

 

Decided to do what i normally do when i have a problem, chuck money at it.

Got a starsense and Bluetooth serial adapter arriving Monday, just in time for a fortnight of cloud. (They both on Amazon which swung it for me and massively cheaper than elsewhere, there's one starsense left in stock now @£269). Probably have to get skysafari now.

Edited April 8, 2017 by jimbo747

[SteveNickolls]

On 4/8/2017 at 21:40, jimbo747 said:

Seething. Raging even. 

Last night I decided to properly sort my scope out, focused the mak with barlow and 224mc ready for some jupiter shots, attached the IR and UV cut to my 1100d, perfect focus at 10-12 degrees, spot on alightment, set scope to park, connected via my remote intel nuc in my mini observatory ready for tonight.

 

Moon looks good, jupiter now above houses, will see orion, lovely calm night, best one this year. Turn on mount, get laptop and a glass of wine and boot up teamviewer... no connection. Try another laptop and same...

 

Just read as of 10 minutes ago teamviewer down for 8 hours of maintenance!!! Just my nonefamilyfriendlyword-ing luck!!!

Remote desktop not setup. None of the software setup on my laptop and I'd have to do another alignment which is a pain to do without line of sight (took an hour last night). I just wanted to use the 224mc and modified dslr for the first time, and the Gods are laughing at me. 

 

If something happens tomorrow night, theres a free keter max storage box, raspberry pi with linear actuator, SLT mount, 127 mak, 1100d, asi 224mc, intel NUC and a load of filters, web cameras and storage cases available for collection from derbyshire FOC.

Ahh, the more down the techhie slope you venture the more susceptable to outages you become.

Seriously I hope you have better luck next time out.

Cheers,
Steve

[Filroden]

On 08/04/2017 at 23:09, jimbo747 said:

Got a starsense and Bluetooth serial adapter arriving Monday,

The StarSense makes alignment so easy but I never got on with wireless control. My Evolution uses wifi but the combination of drop offs and the lack of tactile feedback on the screen pushed me back to the handset and, now, the laptop connected to the laptop.

I also tried a mini PC via TeamSpeak but I don't think it's wifi antenna was good enough. I think you were just unlucky with the maintenance so don't give up!

[DorsetBlue]

Had the Starsense equipped SW130P/Alt Az setup out last week and had a go at M51 and M81/82 - pretty happy with the results, although the tracking on M81/82 was a bit erratic, hence the short exposures:

M81/82 - Best 67 exposures of 10s - stacked in DSS and post-processed in StarTools.

M51 - Best 15 of 60s exposures (cloud came in and I lost a lot) - stacked in DSS and post processed in StarTools.

[rotatux]

Well if you can regularly achieve 60s subs like on this M51, your setup is very good and you're quickly going to obtain much better (depth, color), images

[Filroden]

3 hours ago, DorsetBlue said:

Had the Starsense equipped SW130P/Alt Az setup out last week and had a go at M51 and M81/82 - pretty happy with the results, although the tracking on M81/82 was a bit erratic, hence the short exposures:

M81/82 - Best 67 exposures of 10s - stacked in DSS and post-processed in StarTools.

M51 - Best 15 of 60s exposures (cloud came in and I lost a lot) - stacked in DSS and post processed in StarTools.

I'll bet M81/82 were close to the zenith? I'd guess alt az mounts will struggle close to the vertical. 

Nonetheless, it's nice to see the result. I found 60s exposures were more than enough. You just need to stack a few hundred to get really good quality images. 

Id take a look at your colour balance as the images look a little yellow/orange. Maybe check your red histogram. I'd expect all three to be reasonably close together for that area of sky. 

[Stub Mandrel]

Hi @DorsetBlue

You've got some nice data there, I took the liberty of stretching your M51. Just increased the gamma and then raised the black point, more sophisticated tweaks should work wonders!

<edit> after reading Ken's comment I slightly shifter the colour balance away from yellow

Edited April 24, 2017 by Stub Mandrel

[happy-kat]

I like m51. Must see where that is and whether worth trying with a 135mm lens. When I collimate my tiny C70 it will beg trying on targets like this even though f10 has to be worth a try.

Edited April 24, 2017 by happy-kat

[Stub Mandrel]

MN51 is fairly bright, up under the tail of the great bear so away from LP but I find it hard not to get trailing when pointed straight up.

[Victor Boesen]

2 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Must see where that is and whether worth trying with a 135mm lens

You should give it a go! I captured it with my 50mm lens with only 75 6sec lights.

It is in the top right corner.

[The Admiral]

You've done well with that DorsetBlue, but as is so often the case more can be found in images by being more assertive in the processing . It does no harm to push things hard just to see what is there, and with StarTools I find that the initial images often don't look so good but are reined back as processing proceeds (some may argue they don't look so good when I've finished, either ).

3 hours ago, Filroden said:

I'll bet M81/82 were close to the zenith? I'd guess alt az mounts will struggle close to the vertical.

Probably above 65° going by Stellarium, but not only that, field rotation demands a much shorter exposure the higher the altitude and the closer to North/South.

Ian

[DorsetBlue]

3 hours ago, Filroden said:

I'll bet M81/82 were close to the zenith? I'd guess alt az mounts will struggle close to the vertical. 

Nonetheless, it's nice to see the result. I found 60s exposures were more than enough. You just need to stack a few hundred to get really good quality images. 

Id take a look at your colour balance as the images look a little yellow/orange. Maybe check your red histogram. I'd expect all three to be reasonably close together for that area of sky. 

Yes, I think it was.  The tracking improved towards the end of the capture run, where I suspect it moved away from the zenith slightly.

I suspect I might have been a bit viscous with the colour module in StarTools.

[Nigel G]

Very nice DorsetBlue. Great M51, I think M81-82 could do with longer exposures 30s or so if your mount is tracking good on the night, as Ken said you shouldn't need to go above 60s with a lot of DSO's

Good work, keep it up  

Nige.

[nightfisher]

Looks like i might be taking part in this thread, i now have a Star discovery AZ mount for my 102 Maksutov, clearly i wont be doing deep sky imaging as in galaxies and nebula but might be able to contribute with some globs and double star images

[SteveNickolls]

On 4/24/2017 at 16:58, Victor Boesen said:

You should give it a go! I captured it with my 50mm lens with only 75 6sec lights.

It is in the top right corner.

And don't forget you also captured M101!

Cheers,

Steve

[The Admiral]

9 minutes ago, nightfisher said:

...clearly i wont be doing deep sky imaging as in galaxies and nebula but might be able to contribute with some globs and double star images

Welcome! You'll find that experimentation forms a large component of this thread, so I'd recommend that you do try galaxies and nebulae.

Ian

[happy-kat]

I'm going to be trying M51 with my 135mm lens when the weather improves though not on a work night.

[DorsetBlue]

On 29/04/2017 at 20:40, nightfisher said:

Looks like i might be taking part in this thread, i now have a Star discovery AZ mount for my 102 Maksutov, clearly i wont be doing deep sky imaging as in galaxies and nebula but might be able to contribute with some globs and double star images

There is always the option of piggy-backing a DSLR on the Mak.

[jimbo747]

Apologies to anyone in Derbyshire. Since my starsense arrived 2 weeks ago there hasn't been a single clear night, it's still on the box in fact.

I'm off out Friday, so of course it's forecast to be crystal 

[Nigel G]

17 hours ago, jimbo747 said:

Apologies to anyone in Derbyshire. Since my starsense arrived 2 weeks ago there hasn't been a single clear night, it's still on the box in fact.

I'm off out Friday, so of course it's forecast to be crystal 

Your not the only one, its been over a month for me.

2 nights ago Essex had a clear spell so I setup the mount and started to align, I had a little trouble aligning, it took about 40 minutes.

I got one 4 minute sub and the clouds rolled in, I left it for an hour to see if it would start to clear but it didn't so I packed away.

Would you believe it, soon as I had packed everything away---yes it cleared up.

Now the moon is getting bright so that's another 10 days of no DSO's  

 

[Filroden]

30 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

Now the moon is getting bright so that's another 10 days of no DSO's  

By which time, for me, I have zero astronomical darkness! I've only got 90 minutes a night now. Not that I'd know because of clouds.

[SteveNickolls]

2 hours ago, Nigel G said:

Now the moon is getting bright so that's another 10 days of no DSO's  

Yes, the season is about ending for me, chalk it mostly down to experience with such poor weather of late. I'm hoping come the autumn we will get much more favorable weather conditions.

Good luck anyone trying to image into May-June.

Cheers,
Steve

Edited May 3, 2017 by SteveNickolls

[happy-kat]

Just as there is another imaging challenge we can do

[Stub Mandrel]

22 hours ago, jimbo747 said:

Apologies to anyone in Derbyshire. Since my starsense arrived 2 weeks ago there hasn't been a single clear night, it's still on the box in fact.

I'm off out Friday, so of course it's forecast to be crystal 

I think your influence has spread to Staffordshire...

[SteveNickolls]

16 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Just as there is another imaging challenge we can do

Yes, and a lot of Alt-Az work can be done at 30 second exposures too. Good luck anyone though having a try.

Cheers,
Steve

Edited May 4, 2017 by SteveNickolls