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The EQ3 DSO Challenge


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Looking good Neil, liking the Ha filter ?

First go at wide field with my Ha filter.

Not bad considering the poor conditions.

Flaming star region.

22x300s ISO800 with darks, flats & bias.

135mm F3.5 lens.

Cheers.

Nige.

IC410-Ha-WF2_edited.thumb.jpg.ed5526348b49744bec4bfa0cb96c663e.jpg5a6b77a6589ad_IC410WFannotated.jpg.ce687756fdd002eb4b0a2fe82673d7bf.jpg

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Nice one nige, any plans to add some RGB?

Managed to get this shot last week... 39x1min subs ISO800 with flats and bias, and for the first time shooting in RAW and stacking in DSS thanks to a new laptop :)

I have been processing and reprocessing this one until I was fairly happy with it... The brightness of Alnitak was reflecting on the inside of the tube creating a light ring around the image... with a lot of careful gradient removal I was able to flatten it out enough to produce this image, which maybe looks like it has some vignetting but that doesn't bother me near as much as it did before!5a6c6599afab9_HHFlame_GradX.thumb.jpg.9d27e0ec42dd5dddec382ff7bf86a759.jpg

Obviously needs more data, but was good for learning to use the new software.

Art

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17 hours ago, Nigel G said:

Looking good Neil, liking the Ha filter ?

Jury is out, I think I need a few hours data to give it a fair chance.

There seem to be a lot of dark pixels in the image, as if some are not responding to Ha?

That said, I've been experimenting with processing using different sets of control frames in DSS. Results are ... interesting  ... but confusing as very different curves are needed to get similar (and therefore comparable) images from each approach.

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2 hours ago, Peco4321 said:

Lovely image. One of my favourite shots of mine is almost the exact composition, not as nice as yours but it's such a lovely target. 

Thanks Peter, I saw your picture of this target the other week and hoped I could get something similar... The night I got this had patchy cloud as well, when I got only 39mins out of 2 full hours worth of subs, lets say my fingers were hurting from crossing them so tightly!!

1 hour ago, jjosefsen said:

Good job Art - it looks like it has some stacking artifacts on the right hand and bottom sides, maybe crop those away?

They're not so much stacking artifacts as they are me trying to remove the mess caused by the starlight reflecting off the inside of the OTA... this is what it looks like without removing the glare...

HH&Flame_natural.jpg

Edit: Though there is a line running along the bottom that maybe due to stacking artifacts

Edited by Art Gecko
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Don't worry guys, I'll still come visit!! I'm just too lazy to strip down and calibrate the declination gearing on the eq3 for autoguiding... along with modding the handset for the st4 cable... I'm impressed with all your results but it's not for me!! 

New job.. new laptop.. may as well get a new upgraded mount as well.. it's the one I always wanted and I can afford it now! :)

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1 hour ago, Art Gecko said:

Don't worry guys, I'll still come visit!! I'm just too lazy to strip down and calibrate the declination gearing on the eq3 for autoguiding... along with modding the handset for the st4 cable... I'm impressed with all your results but it's not for me!! 

New job.. new laptop.. may as well get a new upgraded mount as well.. it's the one I always wanted and I can afford it now! :)

Good luck Art, go for it :) 

Nige.

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  • 2 weeks later...
20 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

How about this for a bit of EQ3 guiding ?

Don't know what I have done but this is great, never had anything like this before.

Nige.

5a7a1f85f1d43_bloodyhell3.thumb.jpg.5c0f14c7fb88805c9870afdfa3992517.jpg

Wow! Certainly not what im getting at the moment.. Did you sacrifice many goats to get such great guiding? ;)

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!!!! that's amazing!  Interesting that the Dark and Cal indicators (bottom left) are red and yellow.  What does that mean?

 

Seriously though, you have to work out what you did differently and tell everyone.  Are the scales on the graph and scattergram in arcseconds or pixels?

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20 minutes ago, jjosefsen said:

Wow! Certainly not what im getting at the moment.. Did you sacrifice many goats to get such great guiding? ;)

 

6 minutes ago, mikey2000 said:

!!!! that's amazing!  Interesting that the Dark and Cal indicators (bottom left) are red and yellow.  What does that mean?

 

Seriously though, you have to work out what you did differently and tell everyone.  Are the scales on the graph and scattergram in arcseconds or pixels?

I had connected the mount via EQmod to try pulse guiding but could not get the mount and EQmod to sync correctly so I went back to ST4, in PHD I only changed from EQ to on camera guiding. I am not currently using dark offsets in PHD, and have slewed the mount a bit since calibrating PHD which is probably why cal is yellow and dark is red.

Nige.

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18 minutes ago, Filroden said:

That's about 3 times better than I'm getting out of the AVX at its best!

:) Hi Ken.

Its all an elusion. 

I had setup a new profile in PHD2 for EQmod, just changing the mount from on camera to EQ and saved as new profile. 

I used that profile changing back to on camera last night. PHD had thought this to be a completely new profile and had not carried the guidecam and scope details over.

Once the clouds came I investigated the cause, switching back to my original profile the graph was normal, peaks to 4" but the guiding was the same regardless of which profile I used. So I might keep using the new one as it looks so good LOL.

Nige.

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Friday nights haul, NGC40 planetary Nebula, very small but a new one for me, IC340 galaxy, very faint, blocked by dust in our galaxy, and the Pinwheel galaxy. All ISO 1600, only bias frames added to 50 sec exposures , approx 60-80 for each target, stacked in DSS, stretched in GIMP.

IMG_6323.thumb.JPG.5afb9dae9b91343493b5d62543c45b76.JPG

IMG_6324.JPG.d5906ecb24967458459181d61ae363d9.JPG

IMG_6326.JPG.af6c410f55843a5638611f26c0146006.JPG 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Well seeing you can't post wedge mounted fork images in the no-EQ thread, I'll leave this here. The only reason I did it was I was repeatedly told that long exposure AP can't be done on anything short of an EQ-5. This is first light for a wooden wedge carrying an SLT Alt/Az. So yeah, orders of magnitude lower on the pecking order than even an EQ-3. This was also done with no polar scope, finder, index marks, or drift alignment.

 

220s single exposure @ 400ISO (NEX-3) 

62mm f/8 Houghton-Cass (AKA 2nd generation Sigma Ultratel 500/8)

The Sigma has some pretty bad astigmatism in it's original configuration, so those weird shaped stars are more the lens than anything else.

5aa0cd8ee04ea_M42edit.thumb.jpg.9a8206c5fb6de60832395b2fcc0ce38d.jpg

Edited by Lokifish
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Your rig seems to have great potential : at first I thought "both overexposed and not stretched enough in the darks" then I reread "220s single at 400iso". Nearly 4 minutes is a great result for a wedged Alt-Az tracking, as I can't see any obvious bad tracking artefacts in your image.

That leaves you with plenty room for improvement, both for capture such as stacking many shorter exp + higher iso subs, and for processing such as non-linear stretching or black point management or color balancing. Good luck !

BTW, I find your setup is pretty unusual for A.P. -> is it a DIY wedge ? would you post some images of it somewhere ?

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