IC1396 two-pane mosaic

[SteveL]

Why cant we have this run of clear skies in the winter, when the wide field objects are high in the sky and its dark? eh? Pah!

Had a few "issues" over the weekend while out.... nothing serious, just annoying little things.

Bad things:

Its nowhere near dark.... couldnt believe how bright the sky really was, and I believe my subs reflect that poor condition. The lack of time also didnt help, not enough subs to smooth out the noise. May have to look at GRAS for the summer months, and/or invest in a 6nm/7nm Ha filter.

PAM played silly buggers on me using the FLT98... took me nearly 2 hours on Friday night to work out that it needs to look for 1 pixel stars with widefield images, or it may not solve it.

Couldnt get Maxim to guide... it just refused to "see" a guide star until I was doing 5 second subs with the SX Lodestar. Meanwhile, PHD was finding stars all over the place at 0.5 seconds with the same camera in the same OTA. Go figure...

Had some flexure, couldnt work it out for a while. Both nights I had flex due to the FLT98 focuser (which can rotate) was a bit floppy. Saturday night I had some flex because I thought I had tightened the ADM dovetail into the puck after some lateral balance adjustments.... but apparently not as tight as I thought! When I stripped it down on Sunday, I could rock the ADM Side-By-Side plate backwards and forwards in the puck. That could have been horribly expensive!

Good things:

CCD Commander is fantastic, and would be near perfect if I could get Maxim to blumming guide! Two frame IC1396, one half per night, perfect alignment for both bits!

Registar made short work of aligning the two parts, I just had to fiddle the curves/levels on both segments (2 separate layers to start with) in CS2 to get it somewhere near usable.

It only takes me 20 minutes to set up if the mount and scopes are already out

The Televue flattener (TRF-2008) appears to be doing its job nicely.

More bad things:

Something I do when out with the kit really screws my back up. I have to be really careful to watch how I lift things. No wonder its been getting better recently, I havent been outside since Kelling(!!)

So, anyway, lets get to the image:

Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD, plus CCD Commander

OTA: WO FLT98CF + Televue 0.8x flattener (@ f/5)

Guiding: ED80 + SX Lodestar + PHD

Imaging: M25C + MaximDL, 8×600s + 16x600s, Astronomik 13nm Ha (100 bias, 100 flats)

Stacked: DeepSkyStacker

Post Process: ImagesPlus, Registar, PSCS2

Notes: Need far more time on this to be able to process it as far as I would like. I will return to this in August/Septmber.

(Click on image for larger version... sorry, its a bit noisy!)

[Psychobilly]

[MartinB]

Streuth, and this is what we do for fun. But worth all the effort with this spectacular image Steve, there's so much to look at.

Interested to hear about CCD commander, are you planning to use it to automate mosaics? Is is easy to use (your idea of easy might not be the same as mine!)

[SteveL]

Is is easy to use (your idea of easy might not be the same as mine!)

I think I`ll take that as a compliment

CCDC is very simple to use, but requires other applications to to the real work for it. It just orchestrates it all in a simple to use user interface.

CCD Commander - Complete automatic astronomical imaging

For example, in the above shot, I used TheSky6 to build a mosaic of the region, then got CCD to pull the location of "mosaic a1" and "mosaic a2" into the CCD script. When CCD slews to target, you can then do a plate solve and reslew to ensure that you are REALLY on target.

45 day fully working eval (starts the day you first use it, not the day you install it). I used it in simulator mode in EQMOD and Maxim, set up a complex script of multiple targets, and let it run. Worked perfectly. Hooked it up to the mount (indoors), it did the same thing.

I did briefly try it at Kelling, and it couldnt find a guide star... then on the other hand, neithr could PHD! The weekend was the first time I had time to use it for an extended period. Due to the issue with finding a guide star, I kind of cheated. CCDC moved to location, plate solved, reslewed... I then got PHD trained, paused, CCDC reslew, PHD guiding again, and let CCD take the images until the sun came up through -13 degrees

Worth a try if you are interested, and a very helpful Yahoo group as well.

[Psychobilly]

I think you might have given me a clue on how to solve my mosaic issues... but theres going to be 20+ panes in that one...

So did your register in Registar... then adjust in CS and then combine in Registar?

Just read the CCD Commander Blurb... where the fun in all that technology .... the hours spent at the scope and laptop , the pain, the sleep deprevation... the heartache when things go arwy....

Peter....

[SteveL]

Registered the lower part against the upper part, save out the lower part.

Loaded them both into PSCS2, created a new large canvas and loaded each pane into a seperate layer

set the lower section to 50% transparent and shifted it so it aligned with the upper section.

some careful curves and levels on each layer until they "matched".

some layer mask (show all) to eliminate some black edges on the upper section image

combined the two, some noise reduction, some more levels and curves.

[SteveL]

oh, i agree that CCDC automates everything, and until recently I did think it was kind of "cheating"... but again the UK weather affects the way I do things. I know that I can do all the steps along the way to to obtain the raw data/images, and so using as much of the clear sky is a priority. If that involves using some software to do all that for me, then fine. I still have to prepare, set up the mount and scopes and cameras, polar align, so its not really cheating as such... no more than using PHD for guiding versus manually guiding

And I still wont trust it to operate all night by itself, I will sit and nursemaid it along, scanning the sky with my binos. Unless of course its the 5th clear night in a row in the middle of winter over the xmas / new year break (fantasy land!) and I really REALLY need to get some sleep.

[Psychobilly]

Cheers Steve... I have to work out how to blend multiple "edges" I suppose staring in one corner and work my way out...from that... I am leaving this till I have captured all the data though.

Thats not cheating - not like remote scope cheating anyway - note sarcy smiles in this and previous replies...

I think its wonderful... and amazing the technology thats heading down into our hands...

Hope i can get to sleep fairly soon after getting home ... "sleeping" 30 mins an hour hasn't been enough i'm out of practice..

Peter....

[Beyond_Vision]

Great job Steve lots going on it that image. Have you ever tried the free EQMosiac?

Regards

Kevin

[SteveL]

I havent, will have to look into that.

[MartinB]

Thanks for the info Steve, I wish I had the sort of brain that can suss out technology as quickly as you! I was even wondering about automating slewing to different targets through the night until it dawned on me that might not be a good idea when I have my new dome sorted! Still, I like the idea of being able to perform an automated meridian flip and reset on the target.

[MikeD]

Great result steve:headbang:, looking forward to the re visit.

Mike.

[George]

Great image Steve, these mosaics are starting to tempt me

[narrowbandpaul]

fantastic image steve, and using software to help makes perfect sense....especially as from now until august dark skies dont actually exist (at from central scotland)

super image....impressed

[RobH]

Fine image Steve.

I was a bit against automation etc when I first started, but have changed my mind as I've begun to realise just how useful it can be for making the best of the time we have.

I built a warm room a while ago, but now I can control many aspects from the house, once everything's up and running, so the warm room has become the storeroom really

Cheers

Rob

[steppenwolf]

Worth the grief (I think!), Steve - this is a cool image