mono CCD advice please

[Shibby]

On 02/03/2017 at 17:23, ollypenrice said:

If you have a mono CCD camera you will want to use a DSLR for colour like Jeremy Clarkson wants to tour the Dolomites in a Nissan Micra rather than a Ferrari F12. Your CCD will be way faster and way better.

Well maybe I should hire a Nissan Micra and get myself off to Italy!

This is forums for you - someone can argue with almost anything you say  But nah, if you already have some ready-cooked colour data from your DSLR there's no reason you can't get OK results by combining it with your CCD data. Obviously the results won't be as good as they could be, but is good fun for a quick fix. At least, you can improve your DSLR data a bit with your CCD.

 

 

[ollypenrice]

5 minutes ago, Shibby said:

Well maybe I should hire a Nissan Micra and get myself off to Italy!

This is forums for you - someone can argue with almost anything you say  But nah, if you already have some ready-cooked colour data from your DSLR there's no reason you can't get OK results by combining it with your CCD data. Obviously the results won't be as good as they could be, but is good fun for a quick fix. At least, you can improve your DSLR data a bit with your CCD.

 

 

Yes indeed, if you already have it, use it. I wouldn't take out a CCD to shoot colour in a DSLR though.

Olly

[glowingturnip]

i do love the colours I can get in the bright areas with my DSLR, but I am still prone to colour-mottle in the dark background areas - I'm guessing that will be completely gone.

Of course I'll have to redo all my old photos with the new kit - I can experiment with adding in the old DSLR colour i suppose

[iapa]

On 02/03/2017 at 19:28, ollypenrice said:

Sara!!!!!!!

lly

LOL

 

[glowingturnip]

starting to price all this up, and have a silly question...

for shooting Lum, do I need a Lum filter, or can I just leave an empty slot in the filter wheel ?  I see they're sold as UV-IR cut filters in sets, but don't I want the IR ? I assume an empty slot would give me horrid parfocal problems if i'm doing rotating LRGB shooting.

[Physopto]

On 02/03/2017 at 17:48, glowingturnip said:

Excellent advice all, thanks very much, I'll do my homework and check into all of those carefully.  I'm also shooting in Spain so the cooling is important I guess (I'm usually sitting outside in a deckchair, in shorts, with a beer at the time).  I like the sound of that QSI.

 

 

Hahaha, ok, point taken !   Makes sense nailing the Lum focus (and Ha I guess)  and being less fussy about RGB - good point, something to experiment with.

 

Are there any separate power supply needs or other incidentals I should be looking at ?  And does anyone happen to know if the bundled software runs on XP ?  My field laptop is a hardy old off-the-grid XP machine

The downside of all this of course is that my OTA will start looking distinctly cheap compared to the rest of it...

If you are in Spain, don't forget it is easilly possible to water cool the QSI, attaining -20 degree C will be easy. Also if your camera is permanently left attached to the scope the QSI with the internal filter wheel is less likely to allow in dust to the filters and ccd window. The 683 8/5 position filter wheel version can be cooled to about 5 degrees lower than the older 583 versions.

 Derek

[glowingturnip]

busy doing my homework at the moment.  So far I'm struggling to find any UK stockists for the QSI.

The Moravian is starting to look good, I think i can get the right CC back focus with both the internal filter wheel and the extra OAG.  It seems I can't use the Atik with an OAG and get the right backfocus.

a question - the Moravian internal filter wheel has 5 slots - I would certainly be doing a lot of HaLRGB so that's all 5 slots spoken for.  If I wanted to do any narrowband, is it possible or a good idea to swap out the filters for Sii and Oiii as and when I need, or should I treat it as a sealed unit and not touch it ?

[hughgilhespie]

Hi Stuart,

Ian King Imaging are UK QSI stockists. http://www.iankingimaging.com/show_products.php?category=113

Regards, Hugh

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, glowingturnip said:

busy doing my homework at the moment.  So far I'm struggling to find any UK stockists for the QSI.

The Moravian is starting to look good, I think i can get the right CC back focus with both the internal filter wheel and the extra OAG.  It seems I can't use the Atik with an OAG and get the right backfocus.

a question - the Moravian internal filter wheel has 5 slots - I would certainly be doing a lot of HaLRGB so that's all 5 slots spoken for.  If I wanted to do any narrowband, is it possible or a good idea to swap out the filters for Sii and Oiii as and when I need, or should I treat it as a sealed unit and not touch it ?

You can change filters. It's a mild palaver but no more than that.

Olly

[gnomus]

1 hour ago, glowingturnip said:

busy doing my homework at the moment.  So far I'm struggling to find any UK stockists for the QSI.

The Moravian is starting to look good, I think i can get the right CC back focus with both the internal filter wheel and the extra OAG.  It seems I can't use the Atik with an OAG and get the right backfocus.

a question - the Moravian internal filter wheel has 5 slots - I would certainly be doing a lot of HaLRGB so that's all 5 slots spoken for.  If I wanted to do any narrowband, is it possible or a good idea to swap out the filters for Sii and Oiii as and when I need, or should I treat it as a sealed unit and not touch it ?

Personally, I would find swapping out filters a bit more than a 'mild palaver'.  You can get a Moravian G2-8300 with more filter slots.  I have 10x36mm on my G2-8300, and I believe you can get a 7.  It's not an 'integrated' wheel, but my camera/wheel combo still uses just one power cable and one USB cable.  Speak to Zoltan at 365 and he will fix you up with whatever you want - indeed he will bolt it all together for you.

[Shibby]

On 10/03/2017 at 16:01, glowingturnip said:

starting to price all this up, and have a silly question...

for shooting Lum, do I need a Lum filter, or can I just leave an empty slot in the filter wheel ?  I see they're sold as UV-IR cut filters in sets, but don't I want the IR ? I assume an empty slot would give me horrid parfocal problems if i'm doing rotating LRGB shooting.

Will you be using a refractor - or is there any glass in your imaging train? If so, you'll want to use at least an IR cut filter because this light won't be brought to the same focus as the visible light. For luminance, I use a light pollution filter with UV/IR cut.

[glowingturnip]

5 hours ago, gnomus said:

Personally, I would find swapping out filters a bit more than a 'mild palaver'.  You can get a Moravian G2-8300 with more filter slots.  I have 10x36mm on my G2-8300, and I believe you can get a 7.  It's not an 'integrated' wheel, but my camera/wheel combo still uses just one power cable and one USB cable.  Speak to Zoltan at 365 and he will fix you up with whatever you want - indeed he will bolt it all together for you.

thanks, I'll look at that.  Determining factor might be back-focus - I can get the OAG and camera with internal wheel into the 55mm for the CC, but will need to look at whether I can get the same spacing with an external wheel.  And yep, I'm already talking to Zoltan !

 

4 hours ago, Shibby said:

Will you be using a refractor - or is there any glass in your imaging train? If so, you'll want to use at least an IR cut filter because this light won't be brought to the same focus as the visible light. For luminance, I use a light pollution filter with UV/IR cut.

ahh, that makes sense.  No, I'm using a newtonian reflector (well for now anyway, until I decide it's the weak link in the chain and upgrade it), so I probably don't need the cut filter, but I guess it wouldn't do any harm.  I'd assume, I hope, that's it's not the particular Ha band that it's cutting, more the rest of the IR spectrum.

[gnomus]

One advantage of the Moravian combo is that it is designed to give the 55mm spacing.  I think you'll be fine.  

[MrsGnomus]

There are two different versions of the Moravian OAG, either a T2 thread version or a M48 thread version. We went for the M48 as this connected straight onto the supplied spacer for the field flattener for our Esprit 120. We were lucky and didn't need to do any further fine adjustments of spacing when the camera was on that telescope. 

The M48 version also connects straight onto the camera angle adjuster of our WO Star 71 without the need for an additional M48 to T2 adapter ring.

If you do go down the Moravian route I would consider ordering the version of the OAG that fits directly onto your existing field flattener.

[glowingturnip]

yep, thanks - my CC takes both M48 and T2 so either should fit, I'm being told the M48 will give a very slightly wider fov to avoid vignetting.  And if i can get it all to the 55m spacing then that's great - I can feel a purchase starting to come together...

 

[MrsGnomus]

58 minutes ago, glowingturnip said:

yep, thanks - my CC takes both M48 and T2 so either should fit, I'm being told the M48 will give a very slightly wider fov to avoid vignetting.  And if i can get it all to the 55m spacing then that's great - I can feel a purchase starting to come together...

With the external filter wheel there is a spacer which needs to be removed to get the 55mm spacing. Ours came completely assembled from 365 Astro with the spacer already removed and all the components fastened together.

The potential pitfalls with the Moravian are that you may need to tell the camera which size filter wheel you are using, our camera thought it had a 12 position external wheel and not the 10 position external wheel.  This caused chaos initially as we couldn't understand why sometimes we were shooting through an empty filter hole. The instructions for setting that up are in the manual which we hadn't bothered to read fully! The other thing is that the DC power plug is 5.5 by 2.5 mm and not the more common 5.5 by 2.1 mm. This is only an issue if you need an extension for the lead or are planning to make up a lead to use a power pack rather than the supplied mains lead.

[gorann]

On 3/13/2017 at 20:59, glowingturnip said:

thanks, I'll look at that.  Determining factor might be back-focus - I can get the OAG and camera with internal wheel into the 55mm for the CC, but will need to look at whether I can get the same spacing with an external wheel.  And yep, I'm already talking to Zoltan !

 

ahh, that makes sense.  No, I'm using a newtonian reflector (well for now anyway, until I decide it's the weak link in the chain and upgrade it), so I probably don't need the cut filter, but I guess it wouldn't do any harm.  I'd assume, I hope, that's it's not the particular Ha band that it's cutting, more the rest of the IR spectrum.

Don't forget the glass you have in the CC, so IR cut is probably a good idea.

[glowingturnip]

ahh yes, that's true.

I did have a quick look at the filter spectrum graphs, and it looks like the regular IR cut and Red both let through the full Ha spectrum, but I'll make sure I double-check that before I pull the trigger

 

cheers

 

[gorann]

4 hours ago, glowingturnip said:

ahh yes, that's true.

I did have a quick look at the filter spectrum graphs, and it looks like the regular IR cut and Red both let through the full Ha spectrum, but I'll make sure I double-check that before I pull the trigger

 

cheers

 

They certainly do since Ha is not a spectrum but a very narrow spike at 656.28 nm which is in the visible red, so it will for sure let through. If you have some light pollution, a really good filter that you could consider for Lum and that will take out IR and UV as well as light pollution is Hutech IDAS Light Pollution Suppression (LPS) Filters - P2. It is widely used in AP:

http://www.sciencecenter.net/hutech/idas/lps.htm