What to do when you have no astro darkness for months

[900SL]

Plan. Try not to spend money. Build. Tinker.

My original plan for a dual rig was too heavy for my mount. Well, technically, not too heavy, but on the limit for the SXD2 at ~14 kg

So I swapped out one scope for a Redcat 51 widefield 533 OSC dual narrowband filter drawer set up on an adjustable L bracket, which allowed some adjustment for alignment (or not, depending on target)

But then I weighed that mounting plate and the various brackets. 2.6kg! Fight the power!

So Mk II here, with the Redcat directly above the 90mm. There's enough tolerance to get both scopes reasonably aligned, and the widefield view allows some slack. 

It's looking more and more like I am heading towards NINA based control, given ZWO's failure to implement a 'master and slave' set up (or adjustable offset, or fix the bug that causes random disconnects, or the updates that cause new issues like the screen controls disappearing at random etc etc)

My first astrodark target is going to be the Crescent nebula and surrounds. I have set the 90mm up with a 1.0 TS Flat2 so 540mm @ f6. The framing looks OK in Telescopius. I recently bought a set of RGB Astronomic filters from Auntie Flo, so I'll load the 5 x 1.25" EFW with Ha, Oiii, and RGB. I have a NBZ dual narrowband filter in the OSC Redcat 51 for a more widefield view, where appropriate

The difficult bit will be the PC based dual camera control. I have a Miele 2 mini PC set up. Time to try getting this to work with my home network and desktop PC. Keeps the brain active i suppose, and beats doing the navvie work in the yard

The rocks will be the death of me. Yet more drilling and slow dynamite

 

Edited July 7 by 900SL

[TiffsAndAstro]

If you struggle with the master slave thing in Nina Cuiv has a video with a solution. Rather out of my league so I wasn't paying attention except thinking stereoscopic won't work well at the distances involved ;(

No chance you can use the second scope as a counterweight?

Edited July 7 by TiffsAndAstro

[Gonariu]

You can always observe the sun, if the weather is good.

[900SL]

20 minutes ago, Gonariu said:

You can always observe the sun, if the weather is good.

Thanks for the suggestion Gon. I did that after getting a white light solar wedge in May, but it wasn't much of a challenge to be honest. We've had weeks of unbroken sunshine and clear skies. If only it got dark this far north, but that would take a cataclysmic axial shift

[900SL]

4 hours ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

If you struggle with the master slave thing in Nina Cuiv has a video with a solution. Rather out of my league so I wasn't paying attention except thinking stereoscopic won't work well at the distances involved ;(

No chance you can use the second scope as a counterweight?

Cheers Tiff, I'll look it up. The set up is coming in at around 9kg total, so no problem for the mount. Counterweights are at the top, so plenty in reserve

Parallax

[TiffsAndAstro]

8 minutes ago, 900SL said:

Cheers Tiff, I'll look it up. The set up is coming in at around 9kg total, so no problem for the mount. Counterweights are at the top, so plenty in reserve

Parallax

Best of luck. Seems tricky but not impossible.

[900SL]

5 minutes ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

Best of luck. Seems tricky but not impossible.

I might take the easy route and stick a DSLR on the Redcat, so I can use a intervalometer, and just accept one in ten dropped frames when the main scope dithers..

 

But that would be a cop out, right?

[TiffsAndAstro]

1 hour ago, 900SL said:

I might take the easy route and stick a DSLR on the Redcat, so I can use a intervalometer, and just accept one in ten dropped frames when the main scope dithers..

 

But that would be a cop out, right?

No harm in having a fallback option, but I think Cuiv worked out how to do it by talking to the Devs. At least you won't have to do that.

Now I have to go watch his video again

it's a plugin for Nina managed dither ?

I did think these setups are a bit silly and over the top, but doing RGB and dual narrowband at the same time is really appealing

Edited July 7 by TiffsAndAstro

[Elp]

1 hour ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

I did think these setups are a bit silly and over the top, but doing RGB and dual narrowband at the same time is really appealing

Once you've been imaging long enough and you have the means, you'll do anything to try to speed up rate of capture, especially when weather and opportunities are an issue.

[tomato]

11 minutes ago, Elp said:

Once you've been imaging long enough and you have the means, you'll do anything to try to speed up rate of capture, especially when weather and opportunities are an issue.

Yeah, setting up what seemed at the time a ridiculously ambitious dual rig was the best decision I made after getting a permanent observatory. It has enabled me to get to reasonable integration times on a whole host of targets, despite the UK weather. 

[ONIKKINEN]

That's a nice looking package, lots of gizmos and things going on yet it still looks tidy.

Saturn will be the first thing that you could maybe image, if you have visibility to the south and a scope to do planetary with. In about two weeks it will be dark enough for decent planetary imaging at the darkest hour of the night, and saturn will be almost 20 degrees up then. It's still very low, so its entirely dependent on how lucky you get with seeing of course.

I managed to stay detached from all things astro this summer, at least mostly. It was actually nice having a little break, like a mandatory astro mojo recharging period.

[TiffsAndAstro]

1 hour ago, Elp said:

Once you've been imaging long enough and you have the means, you'll do anything to try to speed up rate of capture, especially when weather and opportunities are an issue.

Two hours astro dark is useful for me. I can polar align at like 10:20. No idea how that works.

Going to try something ambitious purely for science next time it's clear. Definitely not tonight.

Edited July 7 by TiffsAndAstro

[900SL]

On 07/07/2024 at 22:50, ONIKKINEN said:

That's a nice looking package, lots of gizmos and things going on yet it still looks tidy.

Saturn will be the first thing that you could maybe image, if you have visibility to the south and a scope to do planetary with. In about two weeks it will be dark enough for decent planetary imaging at the darkest hour of the night, and saturn will be almost 20 degrees up then. It's still very low, so its entirely dependent on how lucky you get with seeing of course.

I managed to stay detached from all things astro this summer, at least mostly. It was actually nice having a little break, like a mandatory astro mojo recharging period.

Glad you have your mojo back, Oskari. You were responsible for convincing me that astroimaging in the Finnish winter was not suicidal, so keep at it 😀 

Best I can do for planetary is 540mm fl and 2- 3x barlow, with 2.4 micron pixels. OK for lunar but a bit short for Saturn. I'll be setting up in mid August to iron out the wrinkles with this double set up.

The main scope and mount are controlled via ASIAIR for long exposure NB,  I'm using a miniPC for the Redcat 51 as a dumb (not syncronised) slave doing short exposure widefield. I'll lose a frame when dithering but can live with that

[ollypenrice]

On both dual rigs with which I was involved we ran the cameras/FWs in separate PCs. We never tried in just one because there were too many conversations on the internet about running dual cameras to make the 2PC option appealing. It worked perfectly.

Olly

[900SL]

Final arrangement.  Gone back to using the Vixen XY adjustable bracket, so I can align both scopes. 

All up weight 11kg at 20 cm radius, comfortably inside the SXD2 rating of 14kg at 25cm

Manual everything on the Redcat. Using ASI Studio Deep Sky imaging for the OSC- Redcat, and EFW/EAF/ASIAIR on the mono 90mm TS CF.

Edited July 14 by 900SL

[Vroobel]

Nice dual rig, indeed. 🙂

 

[900SL]

1 hour ago, Vroobel said:

Nice dual rig, indeed. 🙂

 

Thanks V.

I wanted to find a use for my travel set up (533 OSC and Redcat 51). I won't be combining data from this rig, but can shoot widefield dual narrowband with it,  whilst I am imaging mono closer in with the 533MM