The EQ3 DSO Challenge

[Allinthehead]

Just now, Peco4321 said:

Really clear, typical that it's so clear, on a weekend, but the moon is out. Hey ho, just laying back on a comfy chair, listening to the camera snap away (upped it to 45s as alignment was good) familiarising with the star hopping to my upcoming targets with my bins, Bodes Nebulae and double Cluster so I can compare to last years efforts.   Not tonight, but soon hopefully. 

Nice one, enjoy. Just started raining here in Cork when forecast was for clear sky earlier. Oh well.

[Nigel G]

1 hour ago, Allinthehead said:

Just remembered this thread. There're some great images taken with this humble mount. My first image on my Eq-3 for at least year. Dusted it down in anticipation of a 2 week trip to a dark sky reserve.

This is 2 hours in 30 second subs 

Sony A7s, Wo Star 71.

Richard.

 

 

 

Hi Richard. 

Excellent Andromeda,  

Thanks for showing. 

Nige 

[Allinthehead]

1 minute ago, mikey2000 said:

Nicely done!   Andromeda definitely looks better in a wider view such as this.

 

it seems you are untroubled by the Sony Star Eating issue...

Hi Mike. Thanks. If i keep it at 30 seconds or below it's fine.

[Allinthehead]

Just now, Nigel G said:

Hi Richard. 

Excellent Andromeda,  

Thanks for showing. 

Nige 

Thanks Nige. This was taken with quite a bit of lp so looking forward to some dark sky soon.

[Nigel G]

Richard,  I see your the owner of a Zwo  1600mm mono, I'm thinking of getting one. 

Reports seem very positive,  how would you rate it if you don't mind me asking. 

[Allinthehead]

3 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

Richard,  I see your the owner of a Zwo  1600mm mono, I'm thinking of getting one. 

Reports seem very positive,  how would you rate it if you don't mind me asking. 

I really like it. However i have no frame of reference. I bought it last september and only now am i getting the hang of it. It has it's issues, a strange diffraction pattern on very bright stars with certain setups. I had the issue with my ed 80, but when i changed to the Star 71 it vanished. I never did figure it out. All in all it's been a wonderful experience with it and a great intro into mono imaging, rgb, narrowband. My flickr account has some sample images. Hope this helps. Any other questions just ask.

Richard.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/144468801@N05/

[Nigel G]

6 minutes ago, Allinthehead said:

I really like it. However i have no frame of reference. I bought it last september and only now am i getting the hang of it. It has it's issues, a strange diffraction pattern on very bright stars with certain setups. I had the issue with my ed 80, but when i changed to the Star 71 it vanished. I never did figure it out. All in all it's been a wonderful experience with it and a great intro into mono imaging, rgb, narrowband. My flickr account has some sample images. Hope this helps. Any other questions just ask.

Richard.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/144468801@N05/

Thanks, very nice images, very fine detail,  it seems a very popular camera, to be honest I haven't heard a poor report. 

A few more months of saving penny's  I'm looking at getting the cooled mono with RGB and narrow band filter bundle.

I want to upgrade my camera before the mount, I want to see the full potential of the EQ3.

I have the Equinox 80 ED Hopefully it will be a good match. 

Thanks again 

Nige.

[Stub Mandrel]

10 hours ago, Allinthehead said:

Sony A7s, Wo Star 71.

Very sharp, do you use a flattener with the WO71?

[mikey2000]

I couldn't help but google that WO71 scope.  It looks very nice indeed and even mentioned the fact it is designed not to need a flattener.... 

[mikey2000]

OK, I have a clear night ahead (but need to get up for a long drive tomorrow morning, so I won't be up until 2am etc)

 

With the moon nearly full and nicely overhead, I don't think I'll bother with any DSO stuff (well, maybe a quick globular cluster )  But I've got a couple of things to look at.  Here's my plan...

 

1) Try to adjust my coma corrector a bit better - I still get stretched stars at the edges (a little bit).  I think I can unscrew my corrector a bit but I can't tighten it.  Seeing as my edge-stars become lines pointing to the centre, I think that adjustment may be worthwile and possible.

2) I'm going to experiment with uni-directional dec guiding (to try to counteract the effect of backlash)

3) I discovered 'pecprep.exe' and fed it a long PHD guide log.  I managed to generate an interesting looking EQMOD periodic error correction graph.  It has the long swooping 663s long 'worm curve' and a repeating 19s sawtooth.    I wonder how it will work....  When I first started guiding, the PHD support guys noted the 19s sawtooth and said it might be hard to guide out. 

I'm not displeased with my guiding, I'm just wondering if it can be improved further....

 

Wish me luck!

 

[Peco4321]

Pesky satellites. 

[Allinthehead]

10 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Very sharp, do you use a flattener with the WO71?

Hi Neil. Yes as Mikey2000 said flattener is built in i believe so no need for spacers.

 

2 hours ago, mikey2000 said:

I couldn't help but google that WO71 scope.  It looks very nice indeed and even mentioned the fact it is designed not to need a flattener.... 

Yes it's a wonderful little scope. They are known to have some problems so i bought mine from flo and they send it off to be tested and adjusted if needed.

[alacant]

2 hours ago, mikey2000 said:

I'm just wondering if it can be improved further....

Hi. Have you tried PHD2's PPEC? Set it to begin at whatever pecprep indicated as the biggest -as in most intrusive- PE and allow it to home in over a worm cycle or two. HTH.

[mikey2000]

Yes, I use the PHD2 ppec.  Call me impatient maybe but waiting two full worm cycles is sometimes a bit frustrating. (22 minutes!). Then if you slew somewhere else, PHD2 needs to restart its ppec measurement again. Ouch.  I was hoping for something more permanent, that I can save from session to session.

patience/Astro photography.   Perhaps I need to practice being patient :-)

[Peco4321]

Right, I'm now getting a bit frustrated with imaging as I can't seem to get anything like what I would expect. With 1 hour 30 mins of 45 sec exposures, darks, bias and flats, stacked in DSS and stretched in GIMP, I am still getting this lighter patch in my images and I would have expected more details in M31. 

I have collimated, added the eyepiece cover to the camera, checked the camera is attached nice and tight but still getting this. I am going away later today so will not be able to try any suggestions till mid August, but then I will try just camera imaging on the mount, stack those and see what results I get. Process of elimination but something is not happening for me right now. Anyway, can't wait for some nice dark skies in the Dordogne for some Milky Way  widefield shots. ? 

[Art Gecko]

Hey Peter, that's coming on nicely! That light patch is in mine as well if you look carefully, I put it down to the new LED streetlight outside my house but it may just be the natural glare of trying to image the galaxy this close... your FOV is very similar to mine. Gradient removal with help lessen it though.

I'd say the data is in there, but M31 is quite tricky to process as the core is very very easy to blow out... what I did was stretch it a very small amount, duplicate the layer, then stretch that and mask off just the core with a soft brush so it shows the layer underneath with the pin-point core, then flatten and repeat.... it takes a while, but this way you can pull out the fainter details in the spiral arms without blowing out the core into a giant white blob.

HTH Art.

[Peco4321]

Thanks Art, maybe the near full moon played a part as well. 

[Art Gecko]

4 minutes ago, Peco4321 said:

Thanks Art, maybe the near full moon played a part as well. 

Yes indeed, I would imagine the near full moon would've been quite a hindrance last night... did you use a filter?

I would have been out imaging last night myself, but it was me and my girlfriend's anniversary, so I sacrificed the clear skies for the opportunity to give myself a hangover... A trade I'm now regretting!

[Peco4321]

16 minutes ago, Art Gecko said:

Yes indeed, I would imagine the near full moon would've been quite a hindrance last night... did you use a filter?

I would have been out imaging last night myself, but it was me and my girlfriend's anniversary, so I sacrificed the clear skies for the opportunity to give myself a hangover... A trade I'm now regretting!

It was from Friday night, super clear last night but I sacrificed it for a good nights sleep, going away today, down to Dover and then early ferry tomorrow on our hols. 

[Art Gecko]

16 minutes ago, Peco4321 said:

It was from Friday night, super clear last night but I sacrificed it for a good nights sleep, going away today, down to Dover and then early ferry tomorrow on our hols. 

Hope you have a great holiday! Got to wait a few more weeks for mine

[Stub Mandrel]

17 hours ago, mikey2000 said:

repeating 19s sawtooth

That could be related to the stepper motor.

[Stub Mandrel]

I won't recount last nights nightmare again, but:

 

[Nigel G]

Having not seen the stars for a week, I have been playing around with a WF Cygnus Crescent area I took on the monthly clear night early August.

I got about 1 hour of 2 minute subs, it wasn't that good at all, so I stacked a few different amounts.

100% looked very messy, so I tried 80% with a slight improvement, then I stacked 40% with a bit better image after processing. But still not totally happy with it.

Looking through the subs, they all look ok so not quite sure what's going on there.

There was a moon around which didn't help.

I'm tempted to try just 20% to see the result.

So this is around 24 minutes or so of 120s ISO 800. 135mm lens, modified 1200d, EQ3. With darks, flats & bias.

The colour was very difficult to process, I'm sure the moon is responsible for that.

Cheers

Nige.

[Stub Mandrel]

 

•   

@Nigel G

I had another fail last night, entirely down to DEC backlash.

I can't adjust the backlash out of my mount without stalling the stepper. I'm getting a minimum of about 10 seconds before a change in direction!

What do you do to prevent DEC problems with your EQ3? Do you put it out of balance and guide only in one direction? How do you adjust your PA to get eh direction you want?

[Nigel G]

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

What do you do to prevent DEC problems with your EQ3? Do you put it out of balance and guide only in one direction? How do you adjust your PA to get eh direction you want?

I have balanced the scope camera end heavy by a fraction.

My way to get guiding: Place pod on marks ( patio ) check and adjust legs to line up Polaris, mount scope and 2 star align and focus, change finder to guide scope. slew to target, PHD2 connected via ST4, manual guide N & W 3 clicks each,  PHD2, click guide tab to calibrate which removes or compensates the backlash, Start imaging.

That's it.

On a rare occasion PHD2 will drop out, probably due to backlash, once in 3 nights I'd say. 

PHD will adjust the mount in all 4 directions while guiding.

Nige.