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Atik 314L+Mono CCD & H-alpha 12nm filter


christiano

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Hiya,

I started my journey into imaging with a purchase of some second-hand stuff and before I spend any more I want to see what I can do with what I have.

So can you recommend any targets that would produce nice results with some mono and H-alpha exposures?

Thanks!

Christian.

 

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My mount is an HEQ5 Pro and the scope is a Voyager 114 from SCS Astro, bought at the end of last century!

I have a Orion Starshoot Autoguider on a 9x50 finderscope but it’s attached to my C925, not sure if I can mount it on the Voyager, I’ll have a look.

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The first thing to do is obtain a planetarium software which lets you put in your chip size and focal length so you can model your field of view on the sky. The one I use is no longer available but I think there are free alternatives, maybe Stellarium or Carte du Ciel.

Perhaps someone could come in with specifics?

Olly

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Remember to allow for the orientation of your camera relative to RA and Dec. It is best, by default, to have one side of your camera parallel with RA and, therefore, the other with Dec.  If the long side is parallel with Dec we informally call it 'portrait,' or 'Landscape if the long side is along RA.  It's easy to align the camera. Just take a 5 second sub and slew slowly during the capture. You'll get star trails showing your present camera angle.  There is no 'right way up' for our targets but it is easier to model the field of view on the sky if your camera's orthogonal with RA and Dec and, also, you can come back to a target on another night and replicate the framing easily. Replicating a random camera angle is a nightmare.

Olly

Edited by ollypenrice
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On 24/11/2022 at 12:40, cadoran said:

Hiya,

I started my journey into imaging with a purchase of some second-hand stuff and before I spend any more I want to see what I can do with what I have.

So can you recommend any targets that would produce nice results with some mono and H-alpha exposures?

Thanks!

Christian.

 

 

Telescopious telescope simulator is a great tool for putting your details into and cruising around the sky searching for targets that match your field of view. 

https://telescopius.com/telescope-simulator

You just need to know the sensor size in terms of pixels and pixel size and your focal length and it will do everything else for you. Select the Ha map and you are off.  You can even play with sensor orientation. 

Adam

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17 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

The first thing to do is obtain a planetarium software which lets you put in your chip size and focal length so you can model your field of view on the sky. The one I use is no longer available but I think there are free alternatives, maybe Stellarium or Carte du Ciel.

Perhaps someone could come in with specifics?

Olly

Indeed stellarium's framing tools are quite nice in my experience.

Screenshot_20221125_143741.png.7d224fcb5139ee20213c8433e4cb5869.pngScreenshot_20221125_143835.png.44715f08f4d9d45735c731f7d0d567e1.png

My equipment list (lenses contains the 0.79 reducer for my 130mm frac), and I use it for everything from curiosity to serious session planning.

Screenshot_20221125_144103.thumb.png.60648184cc5b2b3c6fc6f6020b72001c.pngScreenshot_20221125_144319.thumb.png.9b42b77e38578227bcc5aab1347f4601.png

And I like the live coordinate framing and frame dimensions in degrees, as well as pixel scale given live on the red square.

The only thing stellarium misses IMO is mosaic planning. Kstars can do this and auto-generate a capture sequence for you, however it is not a refined process (want to re-order the sequences it generates, or add your own custom one before/after it? Good luck!). Kstars also has a very basic planetarium by comparison to Stellarium.

 

Screenshot_20221125_144815.thumb.png.9ebe01214108df744f2061ba555ed445.png

No pictures by default, and as far as I can see no surveys to use in place of the blank sky, so it isn't as useful for framing as stellarium. Still, stellarium is only good on that front for better-known objects anyway I suppose!

Screenshot_20221125_145458.thumb.png.308072fbafa44b6251311b0f20026673.pngScreenshot_20221125_145552.thumb.png.dd74f4c24b4d47b0964bedce4619b541.png

It does have a pretty nice graphical representation of your expected field of view, lets you set grid overlap, and of course generates a whole automated program for capturing the mosaic, based on camera sequences you saved to file previously. However as I said before, if you use this feature, you have to commit to it all night because once this tool adds those operations, it will NOT allow you to add or move anything in that list!

 

Sorry that's a bit of a tangent, but hopefully it lays out some of the capabilities of the free software for imagers?

Screenshot_20221125_144213.png

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