The AZ GTI Forum

[rugged jackal]

120 seconds

[modest nebula]

hmm to me it still looks a bit bright, but tuning is part of the fun of learning new equipment. What I'd do now if I were you is get 30mins worth of subs & then stack them to see what results you get

[rugged jackal]

ok, i'll do that

i am willing to redo the bias and darks as long as i get the right settings

[azure solar]

I would still try for just a sub to lower the offset and see how the graph looks

[rugged jackal]

ok

[modest nebula]

the offset might look artificially high because the sky background is too bright. You should set your offset based on dark frames

[rugged jackal]

this was histogram when trying to workout the offset - this was at 20

[modest nebula]

yeh that looks good, you've got a small clearance at the bottom

20 is probably about right. don't go smaller

[rugged jackal]

1 sub just now at 16

[queen thicket]

GO SMASH it , Have fun

[rugged jackal]

back to 20

lol

feeling like a yo yo tonight

btw guys thanks for all the help

[modest nebula]

I reckon you've just got too much light pollution for long exposures without a filter

try 60 secs and see if the median comes down to 5 or 6k

in fact, anything below 10 will probably be fine

[rugged jackal]

60 seconds

below 10k

[modest nebula]

looks better to me. What do you think @azure solar ?

[azure solar]

seems ok

[rugged jackal]

looks better to me too

[modest nebula]

the cloud bank is almost starting to clear over my area. Perhaps I can start in an hour

[rugged jackal]

My target is getting too close to the moon, i seem to be losing stars and the mean is creeping up

[modest nebula]

time to switcht then

[rugged jackal]

right trying orion

[azure solar]

looking good but I'd change the framing a bit

[rugged jackal]

this is a 120 second exposure

[modest nebula]

way too bright again unless you're aiming to take a HDR composite

[rugged jackal]

reframing and reducing to 60 seconds

[modest nebula]

I guess this camera is a little more sensitive than your old one? 😛

[rugged jackal]

looool, just a tad, haha.

[lament lion]

Yup just fuming over here with jealousy waiting for my clear skies, but yeah when it gets that cold I physically cannot handle it, that year we got in the -50 degrees fahrenheit I was helping an older gentleman get unstuck in the snow and got the vary beginning of frost bite, and trying to warm up my hands from the heat from the car vent ended up burning my finger tips from the inside so my hands do not like cold what so ever

[modest nebula]

I'm at the bottom right, so I have another 30mins or so before I can see the sky. Zulu has had clear sky all evening though

[rugged jackal]

Wow, that is so unfortunate, esp for helping someone, i don't like the cold much, luckily i have a warmish shed i can nip into to keep warm. Currently -5oC outside.

this is why i was reluctant to image orion - selfish trees in the way.

[rugged jackal]

Nice to get some clear skies

[modest nebula]

does your histogram always show two peaks or only with this new camera?

[rugged jackal]

TBH I cannot remember

I think I normally have 2 peaks.

[modest nebula]

strange

[rugged jackal]

There is strong light from the moon ?

[modest nebula]

perhaps

[low mural]

Ive had clear skies sonce 9:30 have got 1.5 hours of data so far

[modest nebula]

yeh don't rub it in 😄

are you getting more horsehead?

[low mural]

Well you guys are rubbing in your fancy cameras! Youve got to give me something! 😂

[low mural]

Yup, not sure how much more i can improve on it though!

[modest nebula]

the noise looked pretty low when I processed it, but I think there's more nebulosity you can get from the darker areas with more integration

[low mural]

Yeah fingers crossed!

[modest nebula]

you should make this your next target https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/907334-spaghetti-nebula/?p=13201149

I tried a few subs on that recently, not even a sniff of anything

[low mural]

@rugged jackal what customs chatges did you pay with the uranus c pro?

[low mural]

Its quite a large target no?

[rugged jackal]

Nothing, not sure if i was lucky but many people reported no custom charges.

[modest nebula]

yeh massive

[low mural]

What?! Direct from player one?

[rugged jackal]

Yes, and delieverd with 10 days by fedex and no custom charges.

[modest nebula]

fedex are usually strict on collecting custom charges

lol nice 😄

(he removed the evidence)

you might get a few quid for the old camera

[low mural]

Well i was going to use the imx178 for guiding and sell the atik gp

[modest nebula]

I started to use my old planetary cam for guiding but went back to the mono GPCAM. Why? Well the planetary cam was no better at guiding & the GPCAM is blue which matches my Touptec 😛

[rugged jackal]

getting flats

[modest nebula]

woah, where's the dust motes?? 😮

[rugged jackal]

don't know but i did clean all the optics

or i have done the flats wrong?

[low mural]

I will sell the 178 if it doesnt make a difference tbf haha

[modest nebula]

lol no, you're doing it right. The sensor is clean do there's no dust. You can add a few though if you like? 🙂

[rugged jackal]

loooooooool right, perhaps next time.

[low mural]

Looking forwars to seeing your result! Especially as i just purchased the same camera

Thanks a lot for making spend money guys! Going to have to cut some guests off the wedding list 😂

[rugged jackal]

looks like i am done for the night, packing up, hopefully tomorrow will be clear too.

[rugged jackal]

did you just buy the camera ?

Brilliant,

[low mural]

Yaaa, but shhh

[rugged jackal]

Your secret is safe with me but that @modest nebula I wouldn't tell him...

[modest nebula]

yeh I screenshotted it. Just Facebook stalking his missus now

[low mural]

Right, i have some time left this evening to do some processing!

[low mural]

Its fine, shes asleep! I will get to any messages before she does 😂

And when the camera arrives, ill will tell her how much it "cost"

[modest nebula]

I expect she does that to you too

[low mural]

My banks conversion got the price down to £450, i couldnt say no

[low mural]

Yeah its a deal we have which we both do not know about 😂

At the end of the day 2023 i bought a new mount. 2024 surely had to have a camera purchase in it

2025 i will pay for the wedding i promise 😂

[modest nebula]

just tell her you'll never lie to her if she doesn't ask

[low mural]

https://tenor.com/view/tkt-smart-gif-20642718

5 hours and 45 mins of horsehead data, lets see what we get!

[modest nebula]

what do you use to stack these days?

[low mural]

Im lazy and stick sith dss. I know if i use siril properly i will probably get better images 😂

Is GraXpert better than Sirils DBE?

[modest nebula]

Sirilic is the thing to use for multiple nights. It's a pre-processor that creates Siril scripts & then uses Siril for stacking. It's fantastic but there's a few gotchas.

Sirils DBE is Graxpert, but the new AI Graxpert is easier to use

[low mural]

I always let it automatically creat grid, i better off selecting my own background

[low mural]

Yeah i have read up on it, maybe i will give it a go one day haha

[modest nebula]

the AI one is even easier. Load image, crop it, hit the button, save it

[azure solar]

I found that the ai thingy makes the image much noisier but I'm not sure if it's just the autostretch that looks like that

[modest nebula]

does the Siril built-in work better for you?

[low mural]

I never get on with dbe in siril which is why i was open to explore other options. Let me give this GraXpert Ai a go

[modest nebula]

ok sky is clearing for me. I'm going to get my kit out

[rugged jackal]

That is not bad conversion, I think Paypal stiffed me a little.

[low mural]

Yeah paypal was £478 but I let my bank convert instead which was £451!

First processing attempt. Think I blew the stars out a bit... Maybe another go tomorrow haha

[modest nebula]

you're starting to get some nebulosity below the horse head

[low mural]

Yeah i noticed that. I may get some more sata on it tomorrow. Make it a farewell image to the imx178. Go out with a bang 😂

[modest nebula]

when you process it, try to stretch the blue & green channels a little more than red. That nebula on the left will show some nice colours

[modest nebula]

nice and clear now

just way too late really

trying HDR mode again

seems to be taming alnitak

[tough scaffold]

SV220 sells pretty cheap at thailand and phillipines. 70$ and 58$ accordingly for 1.25. Unfortunately no shipping outside region.

[rugged jackal]

Strange, I would have thought there would be plenty of pre-loved filters on the market but very few ebay listings.

[tough scaffold]

Sometimes there are good deals at ebay, but need some time to find. Bought my canon clip in l-enhance(used) for 110 GBP there.

Can check for filters here. https://www.astrobuysell.com/uk/propview.php?view=210020

[low mural]

Yeah I was thinking the same but could not find anything haha

I bought my 1.25 inch L enhance for about £100 i think

[low mural]

Looking good, how much data did you grab? Im not going to bother processing mine as I intend on getting a couple more hours tonight. I shouls have almost 8 hours of Horsehead data!

[modest nebula]

not sure exactly but I was at it a few hrs. I stopped when I saw tv antenna from neighbours roof in my pics

I got 40mins on Rosette just to see what HDR mode would do. A single sub was like this:-

[low mural]

I want to go for a messier target next, to keep up with my instagram streak and add to my catalog! Any suggestions?

[modest nebula]

I got just over an hour. I stacked it, did an autostretch, SCNR just to see how it's coming. The HDR mode seems to deal with the bright stars quite well. Didn't do anything else. I need much more data obviously 🙂

also need to get some more calibration data. I increased the offset last night so the ones I've got now have the wrong offset.

[low mural]

Aye thats looking nice though! The halo would annoy me but what you can do with a star like that!

Oh I have the joys of messing around eith offsets and camera settings when my uranus c arrives 🙄

I have gotten too comfortable with the. Imx178 haha

[modest nebula]

Yeh I don't like that, but it's small. I plan to take RGB stars & blow that star bigger than the halo and overlay it

that's the only star that's ever given me a halo. I can only assume it's the narrowband filter doing that, but perhaps not

[tough scaffold]

I thinks it's filter. I saw some tests and sv220 gave a halo at red channel and l-extreme gave halos at green and blue channels.

[low mural]

Yeah I think most people get Halos tbh. It was the reason I went for the optolong rather than any other brand because the forums said the halos were much less likely on the bigger stars.

[modest nebula]

red

[low mural]

The zwo dual band is the worst for halos apparantly

[modest nebula]

green

blue

[tough scaffold]

interesting

[low mural]

How annoying! Do you split the channels and remove the B channel and replace it with another G

I find it reduces noise

[modest nebula]

the L-Extreme is worth than most but the L-Enhance is ok

[low mural]

The B channel i find has a shed load of noise when shooting with the dualband

[modest nebula]

10:42:40: Noise standard deviation: calculating...
10:42:40: Background noise value (channel: #0): 1478.434 (2.256e-02)
10:42:40: Background noise value (channel: #1): 1578.106 (2.408e-02)
10:42:40: Background noise value (channel: #2): 1477.404 (2.254e-02)

0 is red, 1 is green 2 is blue

noise levels similar across channels

[low mural]

Is that calculated in siril? I just went off visual

[modest nebula]

yeh

[tough scaffold]

I checked test video. My bad. No halos was at red and halos was at green and blue was at sv220

[modest nebula]

red will usually look better because it puts off more Ha

[low mural]

Im going to run mine now

[modest nebula]

https://www.google.com/search?q=alnitak+narrowband+halo <-- it's quite the thing 😛

[tough scaffold]

red channel. Sv220 vs l-extreme

[low mural]

10:48:40: Noise standard deviation: calculating...
10:48:40: Background noise value (channel: #0): 2.632 (4.015e-05)
10:48:40: Background noise value (channel: #1): 4.920 (7.508e-05)
10:48:40: Background noise value (channel: #2): 3.515 (5.364e-05)

[rugged jackal]

There are a few but have trust issues, lol.

[low mural]

I have had nothing but good experiences from Astro buy and sell tbh! You could use Paypal seller protection? I think the seller would pay a 3% fee so they may ask for that ontop of the price

[modest nebula]

bbl running to catch a train

[rugged jackal]

Oh right - thanks for the info, good to know, I might try contacting one of them.

[tough scaffold]

Yeah, should be carefull there

[azure solar]

how do you do that?

found it

@modest nebula tried to compare w/ darks and without

top is without

[modest nebula]

You still want to ignore your darks?

[azure solar]

I'm trying to see if there's a difference visually but it just seems that without darks it has a bit more noise and with it's a little blurrier?

[modest nebula]

Less noise will make it much easier to process. You can always add sharpness in post

[azure solar]

I do have a darks library so I'll use them for the next process and see how it goes

difference is still less than 1e so Idk, we'll see

[modest nebula]

Even if it were 0.1e I'd still do it. The effort is zero for a net gain

[azure solar]

I do need to make a new master dark, I'm not sure if I did subtract biases from it

assuming I have to

seems like bias have to be subtracted only to flats?

[modest nebula]

yeh I think that's what Siril script does. Sirilic seems to extract bias from lights though

[azure solar]

I don't know what to believe in anymore lol

[modest nebula]

this thread suggests that bias are for flats. If you don't have flats, then don't use bias https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/535283-subtract-bias-frames-from-darks-flats-lights-or-just-one-of-these/

[azure solar]

aright, I've got it wrong all this time then

[modest nebula]

this is a good resource too https://free-astro.org/index.php/Siril:Tutorial_preprocessing

explains quite well

I think I need to examine the scripts that Sirilic creates to make sure it's doing it right

[azure solar]

seems like I needed to tweak the sigma high and low for the darks too when stacking

[low mural]

@modest nebula have you tried dark flats with the imx585?

[modest nebula]

yeh, I took flats + dark flats

[modest nebula]

Ok seems Sirilic does the right thing if you don't click the "bias extract" tickbox. It' off by default which is how it should be

[rugged jackal]

16 subs, 60s, 210 gain, 20 offset, uv/ir cut filter:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uKxvCAA2WN7o45fQ8p1TNW-9KeumbkX3/view?usp=sharing

Orion Nebula, no processing.

[low mural]

Cool, wanted to check whether people were using bias frames are dark flat frames!

[low mural]

This is great for 16 mins of data!

[rugged jackal]

By far the best image I have managed to get, lol. Also rem the moon was pretty bright and nearby.

Should I be setting Siril to 16 bit ?

[low mural]

No, you should work in 32 as much as you can. I have to convert to 16 bit when using photoshop though. You may have to do the same in GIMP or other software.

[low mural]

Yeah well here is my result with 3 hours of data the other month. Your camera has a lot more potential than mine if you increase the amount of subs! Obvioulsy my L-enhance is helping too haha

[rugged jackal]

Great image, now to improve my processing skills - so much to learn. lol.

This time next week you will be using the same camera and getting better results. lol.

[azure solar]

seems like sii filters aren't great? at least according to lmc #💬-general-chat message

[rugged jackal]

svbony?

[azure solar]

sulfur, like the color magic filter we were looking at

[rugged jackal]

Oh right sorry I thought that was a typo sii -sv, lol, right OK Sii filters - online reviews seem to like the Askar D1, D2 set, not much noise on the cheapo C1, C2.

[azure solar]

I'd like to see how the cheap version perform too

[rugged jackal]

Same here.

[low mural]

What temp are you guys cooling your cooled cameras to? Is there anything spefic I need to be aware of? I have heard of people damaging their sensors by cooling down too quickly

[rugged jackal]

The defualt setting for the Uranus-C is -10oC

[azure solar]

-10

[rugged jackal]

Now the unprocessed Tringulum stacked in Siril - 79 subs at 60 s, 210 gain,

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aJxs-9dHeoZArizIy9NKNXqJQMhWtoLJ/view?usp=sharing

[modest nebula]

-10. It will cool it at a rate that it's comfortable with. There's also a warmup process in NINA if you choose to use it

[rugged jackal]

what is the warm up and why would you use it, when?

[azure solar]

just at the end of the night, it slowly makes the temp rise

[modest nebula]

I don't bother too much when it's cold outside. I just shut down NINA. However, imagine a hot 30c summer evening, cooling to -10. The warm up makes more sense then to do it slowly to reduce heat stress

[potent turret]

I always wondered why you need to heat a camera

[low mural]

Ta! One more, do you take dark flats and bias with the 585? I have just been usinf dark flats with the 178

[modest nebula]

yeh why not. It's not like you have to do it every night

that's one benefit of a cooler - you're imaging under controlled circumstances, so your calibration frames are transferrable

[low mural]

Cool, so the plan is
Work out the offset for the common gain i will be using of 210
Create a bias frame libary
Create a dark from libary for 60,90,120,180,240 and 300s
Image
Take flats and dark flat
Hope for the best 😂

It is going to feel so weird going back to nina again after using apt for so long haha

[modest nebula]

surely you can use APT instead?

[low mural]

I could stick with using APT but i really want to use Nina again, just need to get my head round it haha

The reason I cant use nina at he moment is because my atik gp cam driver interferes with nina and it locks up

Another reason why i will probably use my imx178 as a guide cam

[modest nebula]

another clear evening. I was up until 3am this morning so I hoped tonight would be cloudy

[rugged jackal]

Please suggest a target preferably one that is not too close to the moon.

[rugged jackal]

today's session - pacman nebula, 120s, 210, 20 off, just realised dew heaters were not turned on

neverthless the mean is over 13k?

guiding is pants today

getting better

[low mural]

Sky is looking great! Lets go! (well after dinner and putting my kid to bed 😂)

[low mural]

Ooo nice! Looking forward to seeing the result!

[low mural]

I will have a look at this later too! Interested to see your Uranus C results!

[rugged jackal]

Great

getting a lot of satellite trails today!

[modest nebula]

mine's 0.9-1"

not as good as last night

[tough scaffold]

low SNR guiding

[rugged jackal]

The guiding is good, then decides to throw a wobble and back to below 1.

The pacman is certainly not as bright as the Orion which was astounding to see. Perhaps I have dived in too deep too early loool

[tough scaffold]

Tried pacman few days ago. It's about hour or two

[modest nebula]

guiding is better now at ~0.7"

[rugged jackal]

Nice, I am going for 200 60s subs

[low mural]

Naaah get a couple of hours on it!

Right my turn to set up, lets see how long ot takes today

[rugged jackal]

Your guiding has been very impressive

[modest nebula]

I was trying to think what makes it good & I dont think there's a single explanation just a combination of things

[rugged jackal]

For me the single most important things is to rem to turn on the dew heaters and don't let the optics fog up.

looool

[modest nebula]

yeh that's quite important

and now you have 1 more item to your checklist - turn on the camera cooler

[rugged jackal]

Oh yeah and in the summer heat the sensor back slowly.

[low mural]

Yeah you decent guiding pisses me off 😂 i couldnt get better than 2.5 on my az-gti and currently im guiding at 1.6 with the eqm35.. I am blaming my guide camera 😂

Camera sensor is at 5.5 degrees!

[modest nebula]

that's gotta be good for low noise 🙂

[low mural]

Going to have to run guding assist, its creeping above 2 now, perhaps I rush pa

[modest nebula]

you should get an az-gti

[rugged jackal]

Keep getting these warnings, any suggestions how I can get PHD2 to settle ?

[modest nebula]

equipment/guider screen

these are my settings

[rugged jackal]

sorry where exactly is that page?

[modest nebula]

equipment button at top left

then click "guider"

settings are at the top right

[rugged jackal]

sorry i was looking in phd2

ok now i match your settings

thanks

[low mural]

Some tweaks and I am guiding at 0.9

Thatll do

[modest nebula]

I just had to change guide star. The one I was using went poop

[low mural]

Yeah the stars around the horsehead for me are a bit shoddy

[modest nebula]

I'm also at about 0.9 now

but my last image was 2.07 HFR which is pretty sharp so I'm happy

@low mural I leant some thought to what I'd replace the az-gti with when I want to upgrade to a bigger scope. I figure it'll be an EQ5 type mount but not Skywatcher version. Probably a Messier EXOS-2 or a Meade LX70. and then I'd mount a Terrans Industry Onstep kit. It'll be like a SW EQ5 Pro but better

[modest nebula]

my guiding gone pants so I went outside to find out why. It's looking over my neighbours roof again. I bet they're losing a lot of heat & it's wibbling the air above their house

[low mural]

Hahaha my patience is too thin to onstep 😂 but sounds like a good choice!

[low mural]

Yeah lots of boiler flues spewing out too

[modest nebula]

well, this Terrans kit is just bolt on

[low mural]

Including my own 😂😂

[low mural]

Send a link 😊

[modest nebula]

https://www.terransindustry.com/en-gb/collections/onstep-v4-kit/products/exos2?variant=42227641385153

https://www.terransindustry.com/en-gb/collections/onstep-v4-kit <-- they do a kit for all variations of the EQ5

their "pro" control box looks quite useful too. USB hub, DC outputs & focus controller built in

ok meridian flip time brb

[rugged jackal]

clouds!!!

can i use the flats i did last night?

[low mural]

I usually do tbh haha

[modest nebula]

yes, use them forever until you remove the camera from your scope & get dust on it

[low mural]

Interesting, wilp have a read up on them

[modest nebula]

ok I think my guiding was cable drag

flipped sop now anyway

[rugged jackal]

great, so will i

[low mural]

Im guiding at 0.6 but my target is about to go over my house 😔

[modest nebula]

remember to reframe after meridian flip like I didn't 😄

[low mural]

Hahaha yes, apt reminded me 😂

[low mural]

8.5 hour stack. Noise level est has greatly dropped.

22:41:05: Background noise value (channel: #0): 1.659 (2.532e-05)
22:41:05: Background noise value (channel: #1): 1.998 (3.048e-05)
22:41:05: Background noise value (channel: #2): 1.901 (2.901e-05)

lol not 8.5 hour stack. I have duplicated some. I thought that was a lot more than I had. Let me try again haha

7.5 hours thats more like it 😂

Probablt going to wrap it. This could have been my last session with the imx178!

[modest nebula]

I think I've got something like 5hrs so far

all in HDR mode!

[low mural]

A quick screenshot of the autostretched data. Time to pack away and I have about an hour to play around with the data before I crash ahah!

[modest nebula]

it's looking less noisy already!

[low mural]

Yeah with the auto stretch lack of noise, I almost don't want to touch it haha

[low mural]

Anyone still Imaging?

[modest nebula]

just packed in

guiding went crappy

I think it's slightly breezy now

[low mural]

Not bad, its been a decent week for clear skies I must say! I could get used to this 😂

[modest nebula]

I will get some new darks tomorrow and process that horse nebula thing

[low mural]

I cant say im not happy with it!

The colours are better for sure. Maybe some more tweaks tomorrow 👍

[potent turret]

I’m thinking to get some guiding for my az-gti eq, i use nina. will a 4 core atom processor and 4 gigs of ddr3 ram lattepanda v1 support phd2? and can I use a usb 2 port for the guide camera? also what guiding setup should I get from astroshop? I use a roki 135mm

[tough scaffold]

Yes, usb 2.0 is okay. A am using sv305 camera with svbony guider. SV305 is usb 2.0 camera. so no difference 2.0 or 3.0 port i think. Can't say about lattepanda. i have Celeron N5095 CPU with 8gb ram mini pc. No problem with phd2, but nina sometimes lags.

[rugged jackal]

I use the svbony 305 too, with a N5095 based, 12gb mini PC running PHD2, NINA for my guiding & acquisitions and it works fine for me. Hope this helps you decide, I think faster is always better but then the costs always shoot up too.

[tough scaffold]

my dslr died tonight

[low mural]

I think 4gb ram is nearing the end of its days, even running a chrome tab would eat most of the memory. I use a 8gb ram mini pc for my imaging set up

[modest nebula]

Impressive!

[rugged jackal]

My mirrorless was also showing signs of 'distress'- perhaps that was the USB hub not the camera causing the freezing and lagging, Anyhow it forced me to get the astro cam and there is a big difference.

[rugged jackal]

oh wow, that is great!!!! Love it. I wish I had your skills, cannot wait to see whay you do with the Uranus!

Cometh the WE, cometh the clouds!!!

[modest nebula]

oh damn, I've got clear sky again tonight. I feel compelled to stay up late again. If I don't, I won't see another star for 6 weeks

[rugged jackal]

poor you, mut be so hard, no such issues for us Northerners - clouds as soon as it gets dark. loooool

[low mural]

Yep, thin layer of cloud for me. I think I will hibernate until the new cam comes

A good time to dismantle and clean my scope etc

[rugged jackal]

I bought a bottle of Baader Wonder Fluid, I nearly passed out at the size of the bottle, needed a forklift to pick it up ---- seriously for the money it was a tiny bottle but it did clean the optics really well but still fuming at the rip off prices picking on us sky nuts 😆 .

I was surprised by the amount of grime it lifted from each lens I cleaned. I did use the recommended tissue - Kleenex, it worked well.

[low mural]

Wow £12 for 100ml! Im tempted though. People highly rate it!

I just use a blower, micro fibre cloth and a mild Lens wipe

[modest nebula]

I use a blower. Not cleaned my lens since I got it. It looks tricky to do with the non-removable shroud

[azure solar]

@rugged jackal cuiv just posted a video about the color magic filters, good timing

[rugged jackal]

Great, thanks for the heads up

My version of the Horsehead/Flame - 33 subs, 120s, 210g, unprocessed:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FW6_rldmSuNYrCUAFjn_B4t1SN8jHFP-/view?usp=sharing

The Pacman - 118 subs, 60s, 210g, unprocessed:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I0qfe3Suop9OAoEQt3otNo3sdKzqa3s7/view?usp=sharing

[rugged jackal]

He really likes them, esp for the price, what do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUATcoIbRBU

[azure solar]

I had to leave before I could watch the video, I'll get to it in a couple of hours

[low mural]

So there are some Halos when shooting horsehead but they seem pretty goood tbh

[modest nebula]

horsehead seems particularly challenging

I might get some RGB tonight

[rugged jackal]

What do you say - looks interesting esp at the cost.

[low mural]

Just had a look at your data @rugged jackal , Sure is looking good. Horsehead probably could have done with rotating your camera to get a better view. But its decent. Noticed some walking/running noise on it. Are you dithering enough?

Pacman nebula is looking good, You should get some more data on that!

[low mural]

Yeah for 2 inch that is a good price

[rugged jackal]

Would you get a set?

[low mural]

It would be useful especially for SHO pallette. But most of us use the Ha/Oiii dual band filter (Which is the Colour magic C1)

[rugged jackal]

my processed Horsehead, lol

Comments and advice welcome. lol.

[modest nebula]

wow that's much better than anything you've done before

only advice - stretch it a bit more which would expose noise which is solved by more integration time

[rugged jackal]

Thank you, the right tool apparently does make a difference, haha.

[modest nebula]

yeh but you still have to know how to use it

[rugged jackal]

Right ok, this is done with 33 subs so - lots of noise...

[modest nebula]

it'll be easier once you get your filters

[rugged jackal]

True, which is I am always here getting help, looool,

[rugged jackal]

What do you think of the Askar colourmagic set - Cuiv likes them and he got a rather garish SHO, but still the detail and colours were present.

[modest nebula]

I think they'd be nice to have. However, remember that you'd have to image each target twice, once for OIII + Ha and one for OIII + SII. That's not necessarily a bad thing because often you have plenty of Ha but not enough OIII and if you have to image for longer to get more OIII, why not do it with SII instead of Ha (which you already have enough of)

[rugged jackal]

You are not making it easy it for me not to spend any more money, since I met you guys, I have been rather light in my wallet!!

[modest nebula]

well, now you got a good camera, may as well make good use of it. Do you want to be taking superb pictures of light pollution or superb pictures of nebula? 🙂

[rugged jackal]

Brilliant reply, hahahaha, love it.

[rugged jackal]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4MX547MUEY This blogger is really good and uses the same 585 based camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i9SzSrgqdE

[modest nebula]

cool I think I can do all of that in Siril & Gimp

[low mural]

Hmm gnna need a bigger and wider dovetail when i get this new cam. It just doesnt end haha

Unless i attach my. Mini pic to the mount, but then that means more dangling cables 😂

[modest nebula]

yeh I had to do that otherwise it wouldn't balance

I'll try to find the one I got. It was cheap as chips

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325659913133

btw I've stacked my Horsehead & done a basic stretch on it. It's quite low noise already but now I've got to do some exciting processing on it. I might get a bit more this evening plus some RGB stars

[low mural]

I was thinking going for the 350mm version and sticking my mini pc on it 😂 i cant think of any other way

[modest nebula]

my pc is too large for that. I mean, it's not large but too big for the dovetail

[low mural]

Damnnnn that is low noise!

[modest nebula]

@rugged jackal I've just got my polar alignment more or less bang on inside 5mins 😄

[low mural]

Was thinking if i get a 350mm dovetail, i can just adhesive strip the mini pc 😂

[azure solar]

doesn't it have a 3/8" thread at the bottom? you could just screw it in on the front

[low mural]

What the pc?

[azure solar]

yes

[low mural]

Nah sadly not

[modest nebula]

that guide cam mount looks fragile. If it wobbles around, that will spoil the guiding. Perhaps you can put the old Skywatcher vixen rail on the guide & mount it more securely?

in fact that's what I did on mine 🙂

[low mural]

What put the rail in the shoe and fix the guide mount to the rail?

[modest nebula]

I have that same 3d printed bracket as you too

[low mural]

I need to try and find it lol

[modest nebula]

yeh, get some guide mount rings

so you have 2 mounts on the guider so it can't flap around

[low mural]

Yeah that might be a shout

Did that neewer dove tail come with any screws?

[modest nebula]

if I remember correctly, it came with a bag of assorted screws

[rugged jackal]

I did mine yesterday within 15 mins - I believe the lag caused by my previous setup caused me to over adjust hence the constant overlapping errors.

[modest nebula]

getting horrible background gradient on this RGB image. I think the moon is spoiling it. I only want the stars so perhaps I can salvage it https://astro.wheep.co.uk/livestack/

[low mural]

Yeah those stara look fresh, hopefully the gradient doesnt mess it up

[low mural]

Yes I always found lag with a dslr!

[modest nebula]

I think I've found a way to get rid of those halos too using pixelmath \o/

[low mural]

Oooo share your wisdom!

The evoguides rings actually work for the guidescope...

[modest nebula]

that's better!

I bet your guiding will improve

[low mural]

Just need to make a home for this guy

[low mural]

I could stick it here but I feel like I am playing a game of Jenga! Perhaps and dovetail would be best, especially as the Uranus C is on its way! Fedex estimated delibery date is the 24th Jan 😁

[low mural]

Damn you still have clear skies?!

Any of you UK guys going to PAS in March?

[modest nebula]

I've just packed it in. However, sky is still crystal clear

[modest nebula]

What is PAS?

[low mural]

2.5 hours is decent enough

[low mural]

Practical astronomy show

In Kettering

O was gnna go last year but didnt get round to it

[modest nebula]

probably not. I'll spend too much money 😄

[low mural]

But will be goijg this year

[low mural]

Thats why you go without your wallet 😂

[rugged jackal]

My attempt on 30mins of data on the Orion:

[modest nebula]

wow

I bet you're well pleased with that one 🙂

[rugged jackal]

Yeah I am surprised at the difference between the sony mirrorless and this camera, but I think I did the right thing to learn this complex hobby, understand some of the fundamentals and then invest in a good astro cam.

Now to improve and get seveal hours of data, I am still not sure how to determine the correct exposure time for each target.

Now the Triangulum Galaxy:

[modest nebula]

that's actually pretty good to be honest

much better than my first attempt

it's a harder target than you would think

[rugged jackal]

Thanks dude, appreciate all the help from everyone here, the encouragement and 'forcing' me to spend money that should be used for better things like having a life lol. But yeah improving bit by bit.

[modest nebula]

yeh we all twisted your arm behind your back until you gave up

[rugged jackal]

Lol, yeah exactly, if anyone asks, it was you bad people that made me do it.

[modest nebula]

ok, deal 😄

it's good to learn any hobby before you invest a lot of cash

[rugged jackal]

Hahaha, thanks 🤣

[potent turret]

How is the guiding with the az-gti?

Bc I’m getting a guiding setup

And how well it recovers from dithering

[low mural]

Each az-gti seems to vary a bit. But it does handling guiding and thering quite well from my experience and most others here

My Uranus C has arrived into the UK already! Est delivery 24th. Here comes the clouds!

[rugged jackal]

that was quick

cannot wait too see your results

[low mural]

Your M33 image looks great btw. Im going to have a go with your data on it this afternoon 😊

[low mural]

And I am done. Final process of my horsehead. I restacked in Siril and removed 1 hours worth of dodgey frames. 7 hours data in total 🙂

Kept the Ha wuite stretched as the G and B channels were too noisy to play with haha

[rugged jackal]

would be great to get an expert to deal with the data.

[rugged jackal]

Stunning, love it. Great work dude.

[modest nebula]

you know, I called it "final" but we all know I'll fiddle with it a lot more 😄

[azure solar]

the classic final1.png, final2.png and so on

[modest nebula]

yep 😄

[low mural]

Nice! Yeah my final attempt was version 7 or 8 😂

[modest nebula]

What's your first target with your new camera?

[low mural]

Not 100% decided yet

Need to have a browse 😂

[modest nebula]

I'd recommend that you do something that you've done before so you can compare

[low mural]

Yeah i am thinking heart nebula. Seems to just squeeze in 😂

[modest nebula]

Already done a final2. Brought out some more orange in the Flame nebula. I can keep this up all month, especially if we don't get any more sky 😄

[modest nebula]

Yeh, you should be able to get most of Heart in except for the fish head bit. You should also get Soul Nebula in too (but not at the same time!)

[low mural]

Had a go with your M33 data @rugged jackal - Its good! You could really get some more detail if you take some more data on it!

[modest nebula]

Yeh, get more data for sure! That's a hard target and you could get REAL good results here. Also, once you get your filter, do it again and merge in the Ha data.

[rugged jackal]

Thank you guys much appreciated

[rugged jackal]

Might be clear tonight but perhaps too windy and 3/4 full moon.

[low mural]

Yeah looks on amd off for me but my gear has been dismantled 😂

[rugged jackal]

too windy for me

ground is also sodden after the rain

[low mural]

Yeah there is risk of rain tonight too

@modest nebula When you did your dark libary, do you have to do a separate one for the dual band filter? I am guessing the offset changes with dual band filter?

Just thinking, with Galaxy season coming up, I am going to be doing a lot of broadband data too

M44 will be my "getting used to the camera target" (Plus i need to add some messier target to my catalogue haha) IC1805 will be my "what is this camera capable of" target hahaha.
But first I want to do my own sensor analysis, work out the offset and build a dark library (So in a way I am hoping for some cloudy nights...sorry!)

[modest nebula]

no, filters don't affect darks. Offset will remain the same for different filters, and you probably want to keep your gain the same too. The only thing that will differ will be sub length

[low mural]

I now realize that of course they dont effect darks lol 😂 overthinking things haha

Yeah im going from 60s, 90s, 120s up to 300s

[modest nebula]

600 too

you can do 10mins with narrowband on dark nights with good guiding.

[rugged jackal]

have you received your camera already?

[low mural]

Nah the Stansted scan was a fake scan and it never made it on the flight by the looks of it. There is a Shanghai cargo floght due to land tomorrow morning, hopefully its on there!

My messier catelog is looking a little bare. Need to fill in some if the clusters!

[azure solar]

to fill the clusters spaces I was considering planning a night and shoot like 1-2hrs max of each

they're just stars in the end

[low mural]

Yeah I will probably just shoot enough to bring the colours out 😂

[modest nebula]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JkrnhTDk7w

[low mural]

The new eovetail arrived but I still could not find anywhere convenient to put the mini pc, so I have attached it to the tripod stand. Hopefully i can learn how to do some cable management 😭

[rugged jackal]

I have my pc strapped to the leg of my tripod too, And my setup looks like a spaghetti monster, BTW where is the cam now?

[modest nebula]

Would it get in the way if you hung it underneath the dovetail at the front?

[low mural]

Yeah I ak going to give that ago one I have the Uranus C pro and everything is corrently balanced.

Incase i need to move the dovetail

[low mural]

The cam is being processed at arrived at my local FedEx facility and estimated delivery is the 25th. Knowing my luck I will get a customs notice 😂

[modest nebula]

they would have emailed you by now

they won't deliver until they get paid

[tough scaffold]

Received my amazon parcel with sv405cc. Will see how it works. Cheers to @modest nebula for link with good price)

[lament lion]

I see as of right now I’ll have 2 days to image at night but more than likely it will change by then but please be stay I’m dying over here

[lament lion]

Hey congratulations on the new camera, cannot wait to see the images you get from it

[tough scaffold]

Thanks!

The camera does not have UV-IR cut filter. So looks like I will have to wait for filters to get good shots)

[rugged jackal]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0744D3D91?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

[rugged jackal]

Congratulations, clear skies buddy - cannot wait to see the results.

[tough scaffold]

Thanks, I have already ordered uv-ir and sv220, but shipping was delayed a bit due to chinese new year, i think.

I am looking at CCD Suitability Calculator. Does anyone knows how to determine seeing?

[low mural]

Yes now!

[modest nebula]

Siril can show this. If you open an unstretched sub, then go to Image Information / Dynamic PSF, then select all stars it will show you the fwhm. Also, if you load all your subs into a sequence and register them, the plot tab will show you a graph

Here's a graph from one of my recent sessions

FWHM 2.5-3 except when it went shitty at the end

Siril also has a neat feature when stacking to weight the subs according to FWHM, or noise, or number of stars in the sub. This lets it take more data from your best images & not be so affected by the crappy ones

[tough scaffold]

Is it done with OSC_preprocess script? or it's separate

[modest nebula]

what? the graph?

[tough scaffold]

no, stacking to weight the subs according to FWHM

[lament lion]

Hey let’s go!!!!!!

[modest nebula]

I don't think the script does it, but you can use Sirilic. The idea of that tool is that it's a GUI that creates custom scripts that it then feeds to Siril for execution.

https://siril.org/docs/sirilic/

[tough scaffold]

thanks will check it

[modest nebula]

btw don't tick "optim dark" like I have. That was for a specific problem I was having

[azure solar]

When you register the subs it will create that plot, if you do manual stacking you can exclude subs based on that graph

[rugged jackal]

Does anyone use a filter wheel? I am considering this as an option in the future because I have a UV/IR filter, and I will be looking to get some dual band filters such as the Askar duos and I think that a filter wheel will be more convenient compared to my current process of removing the image train and screw in the filter on the reducer.

So I am hoping you guys can advise on the best option re - quality, price, brand etc. Thanks.

[azure solar]

I bought a filter drawer, makes swapping easier and isn't as expensive as a wheel

also hold value better, unless you get an efw but it's way too expensive

[rugged jackal]

I considered getting an EFW - I saw the prices and then rapidly unconsidered the option, the prices are ouch, ridiculous to say the least.

[rugged jackal]

Which one did you buy?

[azure solar]

the zwo m42 drawer

the naming is a bit misleading, it's m42 on the camera side and m48 with a stepdown ring to make it m42

[rugged jackal]

Ok, I'll have a look.

[low mural]

@modest nebula what did you do eith yours re spacing? I cant seem to get the spacers and adaptors workijg with the starizone field flattnet. Using the 40mm extender the evoguide comes with, gives me at 57.5mm

I have the m42 to m48 adaptor to use the spacers it comes with but it just keeps threading.. (its too thin)

Inwas brain farting. Just had to flip the spacers around 😂

[modest nebula]

I have the Risingcam remember? Mine worked ok fine with the provided spacers. Remember to measure total length not including the threads on the end

and once you get what you think might be right, take a pic of some stars & use the aberation inspector in Siril

[low mural]

Yeah I have got the 17.5 spacer, 20 spacer and 17.5 camera

[modest nebula]

in fact, it's the tilt inspector you want. Bring up console & type "tilt"

[modest nebula]

looks phat 😛

now you've got to make an auto-focus

[low mural]

If only of I were that techy 😂

[rugged jackal]

Congratulations dude, looking good and welcome to the 585 club, if only you had az-gti, looool.

[modest nebula]

perhaps he'll upgrade

[tough scaffold]

can't reach focus with barlow without mirror

[modest nebula]

needs some more extension tubes

[tough scaffold]

wanted to shoot moon with high magnification but clouds destroyed my plans

[low mural]

Well its cooling. Time too work out the offset!

[azure solar]

that sure looks stable

[rugged jackal]

I use 20 offset - if that helps at gain 210.

[tough scaffold]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCYQoVSuEaI

I used this manual

[low mural]

Same haha. This is at offset 30

He mentioned that the median should matxh the off set

Mine doesnt...

[azure solar]

I forgot to set my offset using that method, I might have to check again

panic averted, it's set correctly

[low mural]

Yeah I am not sure why my median does not match the offset but perhaps its to do with the bit depth or something. I am running a sharpcap sensor anaylisis atm

[rugged jackal]

I used but I got help from @azure solar to figure out the offset (thanks).

[low mural]

Sensor anaylisis seems to match player ones resulta

[modest nebula]

Did you doubt them? 😛

[azure solar]

are you sure offset and median need to match?

they don't on my cam either

[modest nebula]

I don't think they should

I'd believe offset & min could match

or at least min should not be zero

[low mural]

Maybe i watche cuivs video incorrectly. Im settling on 30 offset though

I was getting the odd 0 but i think thats just a cmos issue as I know cmos cameras do not like really ahort expoaures

Then again 30 is looking high in sharpcap..

[modest nebula]

don't sweat on it too much 😄

btw thx to you, we have no clear sky within forecast range

[low mural]

Inknow ive just closed it down and reopend and now the results are complelty different. Suggesting 15 offset. Might just settle with 20. Should have just gone with what you said @rugged jackal 😂

[rugged jackal]

woohoo finally I was somewhat useful.

[rugged jackal]

Friday was supposed to be clear.

[low mural]

Its so nice to see 0 amp glow 😂

Running my 4 hours dark libary now. Should have probably found a better spot to shoot in darkness, because now i have to cook dinner in the dark!

Oh these cables. I. Loterally dont know what to with them. Only 2 are dangling down to be fair. The rest is wrapped around the rig

[azure solar]

I bought some cable management velcro on aliexpress a while back, came in handy

[modest nebula]

Do you have power into that camera?

[low mural]

Yeah! I took this picture before i plugged it in 😂

[modest nebula]

I see you found a home for your PC? 🙂

[low mural]

Yeah! Held by velcro and cable ties at the moment but itll do the job for now 😂

I have the joys of refocusing and recalibrating phd and everything now

So i need a clear sky with a fullish moon so I am not wasting a completly dark night 😂

[modest nebula]

what you really need now is auto-focus 😛

[low mural]

I heard someone called @modest nebula is going to make me one and sell it for mates rates 😉

Show me your rigs again everyone. I need to get some cable inspo 😂

[modest nebula]

yeh I'm ok with that, but the focuser consists of 3 parts - the motor, the mounting & belts, and the controller

the motor is cheap, the mount you'll need to make yourself, and the controller has many options, only one of which is build-it-yourself

[modest nebula]

https://astro.wheep.co.uk/about/

[modest nebula]

your cam probably has a USB hub built in, right?

[low mural]

Is your guide cam going into the main

Haha thinking the same thing

[modest nebula]

yeh

my guide cam is only USB2 anyway

[low mural]

My guide cam os USB3 but im not fussed with running it at that. I may try thay, the brings one cable down 😂

[modest nebula]

1 frame every 0.5secs will be fine with USB2

[low mural]

Got some hazy but clear skiesm enough for focusing the guide scope and main scope to a degree. I am not attempting calibration!

Nope. Clouds beat me to calibration 😂 everything else done though!

[low mural]

Hey @modest nebula, Have you tried stacking your images without Bias frames? There are a few forums going around about CMOS sensors and Bias frames and that you are better off without. (Provided you are using darkflats) Something to do with the really short exposure..

[tough scaffold]

Tried to shoot moon with sharpcap, but have this pattern when stacking. Any ideas what's wrong?

[rugged jackal]

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/897690-square-grid-on-moon-image/

Might be helpful.

[tough scaffold]

tried different debayer settings. Does not helped

[modest nebula]

I had that when I tried moon pics. In the end, I debayered all my subs in Siril before I put them in PIPP and Autostakkert

[modest nebula]

Yeh I often skip bias & flats and only stack with darks. I keep meaning to do another set of flats. Mine are a little out of date. I also ran a test the other day using Siril's noise estimation and the lowest noise image was the one with all calibration frames (2.234e), second place was just darks (2.335e), and last place was just bias by telling Siril to subtract bias from lights when stacking (2.411e). It'll probably be worth you running your own tests.

[low mural]

Cool, thank you! yeah I have taken a bias set so I will take a look. The bias frames I took did not have any noise banding and looked as clean as darks tbh. I will probably stick with lights, darks, flats and dark flats and I collect flats and dark flats for each imaging session as I would forget to remember what oreintation the camera was in etc 😂

[modest nebula]

I bet you're itching to get out and use it?

[low mural]

Definitely, even just taken some snaps of betelgeuse the images looked great! I have kept my L-enhance off for now as we approach the galaxy season, I will probably only be using it for Ha data

[rugged jackal]

When you start please show me your settings - such as exposure times, dithering etc, and image train components - like the filters used so I can use it to make comparisons with my settings, thanks.

[rugged jackal]

I see a lot vbloggers using pixinsight - it looks very impressive, so I was wondering if anyone here use pixinsight or are we all Siril/Gimp/PS users?

[tough scaffold]

I use graxpert, siril and PS

[modest nebula]

I'm too tight to pay for pixinsight

I can do everything I need in Siril & Gimp

[azure solar]

I prefere to get good equipment and data first and then I'll buy pix

[rugged jackal]

yeah good point, though you can try for 45 days free.

[azure solar]

I used the trial when I was still shooting untracked with a dslr , didn't really think it was a dumb idea

I heard that you can try to email the guy and ask for another trial so I might try that

[rugged jackal]

Looks like great software but so expensive - 300 Euros! Sheezus.

[azure solar]

it's amazing but so expensive

[low mural]

Yeah i did that 😂 2nd time i tried it was fab, but i also had blur x and noise x trials which were important to the whole experience. Including those, you are looking at £400. I could not justify it..

[modest nebula]

I do feel that blur-x and noise-x are cheating though

[azure solar]

yeah they're more on the machine learning/ai side

[tough scaffold]

solved problem with moon grid. Looks like some issue at autostakkert. Converted video with pipp and then it was good at autostakkert.

The seeing was bad. So not very good result. It's with sv405

Got better result with sv305. It was recorded with better seeing. Sv305 has also smaller pixel size

[rugged jackal]

my moon effort:

lol

[modest nebula]

looking good tonight until about 10 or 11pm
I bet @low mural will be out as soon as it gets dark enough for polar alignment 😄

[rugged jackal]

I did exactly that, I had setup and polar aligned by 5:30pm, so I don't blame him. I should be out tonight so please advise what I should be doing to get better and which targets to do considering that the moon is high in the East. Thanks.

[modest nebula]

I might just do Orion again, for the first time with this HDR mode

[low mural]

I will be setting uo tonight, not sure how much data i will gst with the small time frame, as I am bot able to set up right now 😂

[modest nebula]

mine's aligned & ready

seeing is good tonight

[low mural]

Currently dping calibration

My mini pc dc cable seems to short for its new position, have to be careful it does not unplug! Will have to get a longer cable for it!

[low mural]

Still not 100% happy with my guiding even with the imx178 but so fat so good.

[modest nebula]

my wifes calls that the cocken bulls nebula

had to type it like that because of the profanity filter 😄

[low mural]

Probably more accurate than a heart 😂

Ran guiding assistant and im below 0. 9 now. Think i need to take the ir cut window off the imx178 perhaps. The snr is very poor

Not bad fot 15 mins!!

[rugged jackal]

mixed seeing for me, had a great period then loads of clouds, then got better but more on the way.

[modest nebula]

are you on triangulum again?

[rugged jackal]

also pointing west - where the city centre and it's insidious light pollution.

[rugged jackal]

Yes I am, I am hoping to add to my previous data.

currently with the moon in the east and the lights in the west, it feels like bortle 999, 😆 😥

and now with high clouds

interesting video by cuiv today, he suggests quadrupling the dataset to get a doubling of the SNR.

interesting triple peak histogram.

[low mural]

Then moon gradient is probably not helping with that!

[rugged jackal]

nope, the moon is not, how is it going for you?

[modest nebula]

I too am trying Triangulum. I was only going to do it for a few hrs whilst Orion rises, but I might as well stay there because guiding is good. However, results are not great https://astro.wheep.co.uk/livestack/

[rugged jackal]

I seem to be getting swamped by the light pollution as it goes down. Gonna see how it goes for another 20 mins.

[low mural]

Its going okay, focus is shifting and I dont know if I can be arsed to refocus 😂

[rugged jackal]

hahaha, I hear you, lol.

keep getting phd2 warningd - timed out waiting for guider to settle???

[low mural]

Are you dithering?

[rugged jackal]

yes I am

[low mural]

And what is your dither pixels?

Mine was doing it earlier when I had dither pixels to 10

I had to bring it down to 5

[rugged jackal]

mine is 5

[low mural]

How often are you dithering?

And what is the settle timeout set to?

[rugged jackal]

every 4

[low mural]

I had to change my pulse guiding speed from 0.5 to 0.3 but I am not sure what the recommendations are for az-gti

[modest nebula]

I've been keeping my kit in the garage for the last few weeks and I have zero temperature related focus issues at the moment. Mind you, I have the focuser so it doesn't matter anyway 🙂

[low mural]

I would try and dither a bit more often too

[rugged jackal]

ok

every 3?

[low mural]

Perhaps beezer could make some suggestions. But pulse guiding speeds does mean redoing calibration

[rugged jackal]

i am exposing for only 60 sec

[low mural]

Yeah try that and maybe bring the pixel tolerance to 1.5

Whats you average total guiding error?

[rugged jackal]

varies a lot from .5 to 1.7 currently 1.22 but lots of haze at the moment

[low mural]

Yeah do the tolerance at 1.5 perhaps

[rugged jackal]

i have made the changes

[modest nebula]

it's weird here too. my guiding is good, and my star HFR is getting smaller (2.0 at the moment) yet the number of stars is also dropping suggesting seeing is getting bad

I think it's just light pollution

[rugged jackal]

the full moon

WTH???

[modest nebula]

probably, although I'm pointing in the opposite directon now

[modest nebula]

Did Birmingham just get nuked?

[rugged jackal]

looks like it

wall to wall thick clouds

stopped my imaging

[rugged jackal]

i think i am done

met office showing all clouds

[modest nebula]

green and yellow clouds?

[low mural]

Skies still clear for me so far!

[modest nebula]

sky appears clear for me, but there's a slight haze everywhere

given up for the evening

are you getting some good data with your new cam?

[rugged jackal]

I have no idea why I was getting the green and yellow images when the clouds rolled over?

any ideas?

[low mural]

It is probably just over exposed. The moonlight reflecting iff the clouds etc

I have about 3 hours of data. 2.5 is probably useable. I will be taking flats in 5 mins

[low mural]

Yeah the moon is overpowering now

[low mural]

Quick auto stretch! Will process in the morning!

[rugged jackal]

That looks cracking already!

[low mural]

Still messing around with the data but had a go on HOO this morning

[rugged jackal]

Wow, that is nice!

[modest nebula]

nice! lots more data needed yet though

[rugged jackal]

I can see why it is called the ck & b*s nebula 😆

[low mural]

Yeah if I want more Oii I defo need more data haha. The moon last night was not helpful either

[modest nebula]

are you pleased with your first light though?

[low mural]

For sure! Here is the image in its pure Ha form.

[low mural]

I think i will end it there as I want to make a start with M81&M82 Going to try and put a big project together. Broadband shots during the new moons and Ha shots during moon nights. Just need to hope for a decent batch of clear skies. I have not gone beyond 7 hours of data in one image. I am hoping to triple thag amount on the galaxies. Wish me luck 😂

[low mural]

Any good results from you guys last night?

[rugged jackal]

Not really, I had to get rid of about 50% of the subs due to cloud and the rest are suffering from washout due to the moon and Birmingham's incessant psychotic mania to throw photons in my direction.

[low mural]

Can you not add any of the data you took last night onto your current data?

Im just going ham on this data at the moment, wanted to see how far I could push it 😂

[rugged jackal]

I am stacking what is left of lasst night's data and then I need to understand how to add the 2 stacked images togther?

[low mural]

Dont stack them individualy. Just add the data sets together and stack them all at once

[rugged jackal]

Oh dear, I've done a substack of last night's data:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kjhvxKPAAKL9-SPnk3ANn68KkXUww-SK/view?usp=sharing

Is there a process of stacking 2 or more sub-stacks together?

[rugged jackal]

I like it, nice clean image though ofc the red is so saturated, impressiveresults from such small dataset.

[low mural]

Is this your second stack?

I would restack all of them combined

I dont think there is an efficient way to stack to stacked images

[rugged jackal]

yes it is my second stack, so I have 2 stacks of M33.

[low mural]

Yeah I quite like oversaturation. The only reason why I do not usually do it is because its frowned upon lol

[low mural]

Yeah there is a decent amount of data in that second stack and considering both of your datasets are the same orientation, you can stack them all together

Your darks would be the same because your camera is cooled. And provided you did not mess with the image train too much, the flats should work for both nights. I tend to reuse my flats when imaging over multiple nights

[rugged jackal]

I am surprised to see this much detail for last night's capture, only 81 subs at 60 seconds.

[low mural]

Yeah I am looking forward to seeong the full stack!

[rugged jackal]

This is a rough and ready result of last night's M33 data: I can't seem to control the noise.

[rugged jackal]

I have combined both sets of data and Siril is now running the stacking script. 160 subs at 60s each. 2.6 hours of data. Should take about 2 hours!!

[low mural]

Try and push the symmetry point up a bit so you arent stretching the background too much. Its looking good though. The signal will be better hopefully once you have stacked both together

Try not to crop it down too much too. The noise would be less prominent.

[rugged jackal]

Right, thanks for the tips, will follow these once Siril completes the stacking. Running on a fairly old laptop so it does take it's time. lol.

I was looking at the Pixinsight website and this is their recommendations to run the app:

sonot only spend £300+ on the app but need to buy a new hardware ecosystem too. 😥

I think i'll really really will stick with Siril & GIMP.

[tough scaffold]

Tried to plate solve with barlow. I changed focal length at nina and it not worked. It just fails. Uploaded photo to astrometry and it worked but astap fails. Will try bigger astap base today

Wanted to test small galaxy crop + drizzle VS barlow

[low mural]

Yeah I had to download the largest base for astap to operate normally. What scope are you using a barlow with?

[tough scaffold]

SW 72ED and 3x barlow but looks like focal length with barlow is 850

[rugged jackal]

Combined M33 data stacks: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WyyTGBHvPoUBUA-EPvYJmDQpDAbNz7Y3/view?usp=sharing

[low mural]

The 72ED is like f6 so with the barlow you are shooting at f18. You are going to have some real trouble pulling out any data

Is it an ED barlow? If not, you are going to introduce chromatic abberations too

[low mural]

Will take a look shortly!

[rugged jackal]

Thanks

[low mural]

Nice Colours @rugged jackal !

[rugged jackal]

thanks buddy, nice processing, now i need to up my processing game.

[tough scaffold]

Yeah it's ED barlow. According to astrometry plate solve i got f 11.8. So it's not so bad)

[tough scaffold]

Tried moon once more. It's 72ed with barlow. Not bad as for me

[low mural]

11.8 would be 2x barlow, although good for the moon, you will still have trouble with galaxy imaging. What camera do you have?

[tough scaffold]

Using this barlow. It's says 3x but I did plate solve at Astrometry.net and looks like i have 850mm focal. Camera is sv405cc. My scope is 420mm so it's more like 2x)

[tough scaffold]

hmm astap with bigger base solved and showed my focal as 1600

[potent turret]

Will this guiding setup be problematic? It wiggles when I touch it but if I don’t touch it it doesn’t move even while slewing. My main cam resolution is 6 arc seconds per pixel

[low mural]

This will be the view of the moon with you camera, telescope and 3 times barlow. If thats the case, then you are shooting at f17. 5 which is impossible for galaxy imaging

[tough scaffold]

testing now. this is one sub of bode galaxy

[tough scaffold]

should be easy for az-gti i think

[potent turret]

Ok

[tough scaffold]

Just watched video from narrowband channel about sv220. He said that putting filter too close to sensor can cause halos. Halos become more spread as you move filter away from sensor and at some point they become too spread to detect them. @modest nebula Where do you put your filter? Have you tried to move it?

[tough scaffold]

stacked galaxy with 3x barlow

[rugged jackal]

Nice except for the light vignette in the middle but nicer than I expected.

[modest nebula]

Yeh I watched the same video. My filter is on the front of the flattener which is really as far from the sensor as you can get

[low mural]

How much data is this?

[azure solar]

Managed to get 2h or horsehead rgb, 50m of M1 narrowband, couple more hours of the horse in narrow and 1.5h of rosette. A bit of everything

[tough scaffold]

4 hours

[tough scaffold]

Yeah, it's full moon now and maybe my gain was too high. Can extract blur but loss some details

It was unguided btw. Was surprised that i got no trails with 3x barlow. Astap showed 1428mm focal. 30 sec subs

[rugged jackal]

That's very good, where, how, when,? BTW what do you guys mean when you say RGB data is that not the same as OSC imaging?

[azure solar]

When I say rgb it's just with a uv/it cut, mainly to use the stars but I want to see if I can bring out something else too

[tough scaffold]

I tried to use nina target sequence but it starts to slews at floor, but when I use Slew and center separatly it works ok. Any ideas?

[azure solar]

Target sequence?

[tough scaffold]

last night it crashed while parking home, but that was GSS not nina

[azure solar]

The legacy sequencer always worked fine for me, are you sure it had the right coordinates?

[rugged jackal]

This may not be useful, but just in case, I had issues last week and it turned out that putting lot's of USB onto a USB hub going into 1 USB port in the PC can cause it to go a little bonkers, I removed the hub and added the devices to their own usb ports & this helped sort it out. Also I used to see this when using wifi on the mount and using SW app being open. Replacing the wifi with eq-mod helped a lot.

[low mural]

Yeah you would have got a lot more detail at the native focal length. M81 and M82 are actually good widefield targets

[azure solar]

if it was a passive hub that's normal, maybe a powered hub could work

[tough scaffold]

yeah, coordinates ok. Will try legacy again today

[azure solar]

I'd suggest to make a template on the advanced sequencer and just use that

[tough scaffold]

yep, synscan wifi worked very bad for me

[tough scaffold]

Yeah, thats what I wanted to test. Will try it with native too. But anyways not so bad for barlow

[tough scaffold]

now legacy worked ok. Is there way to stop legacy sequence at defined time? i only see number of subs option

[azure solar]

I'm not sure, I think it might be a feature of the advanced sequencer

[tough scaffold]

anyone knows solution to force phd2 to restart guiding after losing star. After some clouds phd2 starts this nonsense

[rugged jackal]

My attempt at processing the combined M33 data:

Please critique my process and advise on what I have done wrong. Thnaks.

Besides my spelling 😆

[tough scaffold]

Nice. I personally prefer AstroBenn's blueish version. Spiral is more distinguishable there as for me

[rugged jackal]

I agree with you, @low mural and others are good at processing and his version is better, I'll have to go back and try again lol.

[low mural]

Its good! To bring back the blues, try not to use "remove green noise" in siril. Its not always perfect

And pull the green and blue channels forward a tiny bit

So noise x is my new best friend. This image is clean!

Sorry @modest nebula I know you don't approve of Ai Noise reduction

[modest nebula]

It's ok in small doses, but it's the mushy background look that I don't like

[low mural]

Yeah I am only running it once. It is defo to my taste haha. I get it washes things out slightly.

[modest nebula]

I bet one more evening on that and you won't even need noise reduction

I found for me, 5-6hrs seems to be the magic number of subs

[low mural]

Yeah and the moon was not helping. And since you guys were eager to remind me it looks like c**** and balls, I wanted to tidy it up and be done with it

[rugged jackal]

Hahahaha , but now @modest nebula has mentioned it, I cannot see it any other way, what fish?

[rugged jackal]

What is noise x?

[low mural]

Noise xtermintor, by the same guy who does blur xtermintor. Its a plug in that can be used for photoshop. Not sure if it works in gimp

[rugged jackal]

Right, I just went to the site and stars above - it is not free - $60 of your best dollars. Then all the other plugins are the same price each !!!!

😥 😆

[low mural]

Yup 😂 cost me £47 after conversion and I did pay on 3(it finally worked for me 😂)

Im gnna edit your data again with noise x @rugged jackal

[rugged jackal]

woohoo thanks dude.

I am gonna do mine again following your tips.

[low mural]

Just Noise X'd my Horsehead from the other week. I am probably going to end up re-editing previous data sets now lol

[rugged jackal]

Might be worth getting the gradient xtermintor too?

These plugins also work with Affinity Photo.

[low mural]

Possible if you have a lot of LP gradients, but bbackground extraction tends to do the job tbh

Here we go, couple of background gradients I could not shift. But I think its great!

I figured that PCC on your data then do an ordinary colour calibration and remove green noise before stretching. That was the best way to get the blues out in your image.

IMX585 and Noise X, it is unstoppable

[rugged jackal]

Wow! looking even better - what are you guys doing to me!!! will you not think of the children, I mean my diminishing wallet, now I want to get noiseXterminator is there a free version like astrosharp? Otherwise Affinity plus NoiseX

[low mural]

You can get the NoiseX trial and see how you get on with it?

[rugged jackal]

There does not seem to be a trial for Affinity and I do not have PS only GIMP lol.

[low mural]

"NoiseXTerminator is available as a plug-in for both PixInsight and Photoshop. The Photoshop version also works with Affinity Photo."

So the PS trial would work with Affinity

Or do you not have Affnity either?

[rugged jackal]

I don't have Affinity - £68 is not bad for something almost as good as PS?

but GIMP for £0 is even better looool.

However, I do have Luminar Neo - got it cheap years ago when it was new, but never considered it for astro-photography.

[low mural]

Yeah I do not have much exp on Affinity or Luminar tbh. I get PS for free. I think it used to be like £10 a month, not sure what it is these days though

[rugged jackal]

Just did a redit of your noisex image of my M33 data using Luminar Neo, what do you think?

[low mural]

Did you edit the processed image I sent? I can run Noise X on a non processed image and then you can have a go at processing it?

[rugged jackal]

yes, i saved the noise-x image you posted earlier and then edited in luminar neo

[low mural]

Actually scrap that, You cannot run Photoshop Noise X in Linear haha

[rugged jackal]

still thanks for the offer, perhaps let me process again, and then you can run noise x for me.

[low mural]

Yeah can do that!

[rugged jackal]

if possible.

[low mural]

Sure thing 🙂

[rugged jackal]

thanks. let me have your thoughts on the luminar edit I've just done.

[rugged jackal]

Hi @low mural need your magic wand on this semi-processed image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ALUNrINqKnoUWbfOu3tvCRht5hRT2yeO/view?usp=sharing

I mean NoiseX ofc. Thank you.

[tough scaffold]

first test of sv220 with 405cc. 1 hour. 10-30 AZ degrees

[low mural]

Done. I did a 60% Noise X on it only https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dn8kv26p6aqCHIBT0cfa78aHI9VGsXzP/view?usp=sharing

[low mural]

Thats nice for an Hour of data 🙂

[rugged jackal]

Thank you, very much appreciated sir!

[tough scaffold]

4h 3x barlow vs 2.5h crop(left). I think crop wins

[azure solar]

well the barlow makes it 3x slower no? would require much more data

[tough scaffold]

Yes. both 30 sec exp. I used bigger gain with barlow(500) and 200 without barlow.

[rugged jackal]

Could be clear tonight, any targets to try?

[modest nebula]

did you try Horsehead yet?

it's an easy bright target that gives nice results

[rugged jackal]

Going for M33 again to add more data to my previous m33 captures.

getting fluctuating star counts - there must be some high clouds around!

[low mural]

Woah madness you have cleat skies! Hooefully you get some good subs!

[modest nebula]

do you guys think a Celeron N2930 with 2G of RAM will be enough for NINA & PHD2?

[rugged jackal]

In my opinion this PC looks underpowered. I have 12G and even then I find it a little slow.

[modest nebula]

yeh my current pc is massively faster. This one came up locally, dirt cheap, and is tiny. I could mount it on the az-gti

[rugged jackal]

It might have slots to add more RAM which could improve performance. As you say it is dirt cheap so must be worth a punt.

[rugged jackal]

I know and even bigger surprise is that I went for it instead of just bingeing Netflix lool.

[rugged jackal]

I was running Stellarium with NINA and guess whatwhen I tried to do a TPPA, the mount turned rogue and pointed it to the ground. I had to stop Stellarium and restart to get normal TPPA again.

[low mural]

Is the ram changeable? I dont think 2G can turn a pc on these days 😂

[modest nebula]

no. Would have to run a cut down edition of Windows . It's one of these https://www.jetwaycomputer.com/JBC400P93.html

It's only £30 but I'll hold out for a better one

[rugged jackal]

£30! this is cheaper than the vixen style rail bar!! but I don't think you can run anything meaningful with just 2G.

I am not sure if I should carry on with this target?

[modest nebula]

I wouldn't bother tbh

[rugged jackal]

It is heading towards the city centre and the light pollution is swamping the sky!

I'll get to 100 subs then stop, seems like a nice round figure my ocd can handle

[modest nebula]

You're going to discard some subs so you better make it 113

Let your OCD deal with that 😄

[rugged jackal]

hahaha, too late moved to orion

[rugged jackal]

Clouds! now that is a surprise!!!

[modest nebula]

pretend they're nebula

[modest nebula]

all you have to do is refocus and HOO

[rugged jackal]

Lol, yeah and try to pass it off as a new discovery.

[modest nebula]

"Zulu Nebula"

[rugged jackal]

I like it

[low mural]

You had a good run!

[rugged jackal]

The cloudy remains of a proudnation

[rugged jackal]

1 hour too early according to the met office app, oh well I got some more M33

Right time to pack up.

[rugged jackal]

I've packed away and guess what?

It is clear again

[low mural]

Classic 😂

Wait @rugged jackal when did you get nerded?

Or have i just realised and you have been red all this time 😂

[rugged jackal]

On a 'zoom' style meeting I said my inner nerd is coming out - everyone said - it is not so inner...

[low mural]

Was this recently?

[modest nebula]

probably years ago

[rugged jackal]

it was about 2 weeks ago.

[low mural]

Wow i need to catch on 😂

[rugged jackal]

You know what they say - birds of a feather ... lool

[tough scaffold]

I have not crashed my az-gti already for 2 days 🤣

[rugged jackal]

This is the stack of 3 combined dataset of M33:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1koZ3b_zyognnPcVmO8Pp2-YvaAVqjvpU/view?usp=sharing

[rugged jackal]

My attempt at processing in Siril only:

Still not as nice as @low mural 's edit of M33

Looks like I have overdone the black - but this stack was pretty noisy - perhaps I will need to come back to this target when I have some filters

[lament lion]

Do you have a problem with light leak, I found where it’s coming in on mine, and with the neighbors lights and bortle 7/8 it’s a problem for me, it seems to be coming in from the vents on the bottom closes to the sensor and it seems any light coming in any direction on the vents creates a little difference

What it looks like when I have a a flash light on it

But I don’t want to cover it up and I don’t know if I can place some tape to cover it just ever so slightly so it’s not covering the vent by all that much

[tough scaffold]

I have a leak at scope during day. So doing darks with cap on scope not working. Are you sure it's camera and not the scope?

[lament lion]

Positive it 100% the camera, never had the problem before, only difference is the camera, I covered absolutely everything except the vents and it’s the only spot giving me it, I even covered just the vents and left everything else and then got nothing so I know it’s the vents

It’s like there is a small gap here that’s letting in the light

[tough scaffold]

I flahed at radiator for about 1.5 min with phone. Looks like no change with previous frame. But not 100% sure that i have no leaks

Maybe you should contact manufacturer

[rugged jackal]

Do you have a filter wheel? I have heard that they can be a source of leaks.

[azure solar]

Which cam is it?

[tough scaffold]

sv405cc. imx294 sensor

[azure solar]

Ok so at least we know the amp glow is normal

[rugged jackal]

The second image is my stacked image and the gradient looks very similar to your light leak image - I think I will need to check this further!

I was thinking of enclosing the image train in a black dustbin bag lool - baggy enough not to interfere with the fan and dark to limit light leaks in the imaging setup.

ofc I am open to better ideas.

[lament lion]

Yeah I tried the tape thing, didn’t work, might have to get a little aluminum foil and tape it to get that spacing covered

[rugged jackal]

This is a bit worrying, but I know your concerns but a dustbin bag should be big enough to provide enough ait for the vents to dissipate the heat.

[modest nebula]

a dustbin bag is not lightproof

[rugged jackal]

Please send images in case we need to do the same. This should be reported to Player One and get advice/replacement.

[tough scaffold]

That's what you don't want to see after 4 hours of imaging

I forgot to cool camera

[modest nebula]

😄

[lament lion]

Yeah I cannot for the life of me figure out where it’s coming from, it’s like one side with the vents is really bad, the other side even with a flashlight close doesn’t really do much, that’s what I’m mostly getting, and maybe path the same time something with the fan is causing it too

In the room not worried about small little light from the night stand

Trying to seclude areas and going all around, the last 2 images are from the one side that seems good, the others were the other side of the vents, all seem to be if light is behind it going to the camera is when i see it any other direction doesn’t seem to do anything

Room is starting to get warmer from the heating so it’s working a little bit harder to cool, but still same results from when it was cooler in the room and it was doing about 20% of power to cool it

Also just wanna through this out there, I did the same test without the camera hooked up, and put the cover back on, so I know it’s not anything else since everything was eliminated and it’s just the vent and the fan area possibly

[tough scaffold]

maybe put your camera at camera bag so the back will be opened and sides covered, so you can test back side for leak. Disable cooling, so you don't overheat camera

[lament lion]

Hard to confirm that since the light going in from the fan area will also be hitting the same area where I’m having problems with one side of the vents

At the end of the day not really that big of a deal calibration frames will sort it out and I’ll have to really make sure I find a new area to stick my set up so no stray bright lights hit it

[tough scaffold]

you can try some narrow beam light to determine exact location, mb low power laser point

[lament lion]

Yeah not going to happen I don’t have the patience for that, I’ll just make sure no bright lights from all the neighbors are going to hit it and the calibration frames will fix everything so not really that upset, just found it out by accident

To be fair also this is a bright flash light just a few feet away from the camera so stray light from 50+ feet away should not be a concern with it

[low mural]

Interesting, i have not immediately noticed any leaking light myself but will run some tests

Just reading up and people aay its quite common for light leaking through the vents

Zwo cameras seem to be a large culprit

[rugged jackal]

Thanks for the heads up and info, a bit of a crappy design to allow light leaks into the sensor via the cooling?

[rugged jackal]

Last night I started to image Orion and even at 30 seconds, I was finding that the heart of the nebula was blowing out and I could not see any details esp the trapezium, has anyone imaged this? and what were your settings? thanks.

[low mural]

Ywah i like the blown out look tbh. You will need to take like 5 second exposures and then blend the shorter exposed stack with the longer exposed stack

[rugged jackal]

https://www.facebook.com/PlayerOneAstronomy/?show_switched_toast=0&show_invite_to_follow=0&show_switched_tooltip=0&show_podcast_settings=0&show_community_review_changes=0&show_community_rollback=0&show_follower_visibility_disclosure=0

Player one FB page, worth it just to see some of the images esp by Damian Peach

[rugged jackal]

Oh OK so take images at different exposures and then combine them in the same folder for stacking?

[low mural]

Defo a reduction in noise with the added data. Going to give this a go now! 🙂

Whats the total exposure now?

[low mural]

Not too sure if that would work. I think you would need to blend two stacks together. Not sure though...

[low mural]

This is good data @rugged jackal !

[tough scaffold]

Nina shows that I have 6% power after several hours after warm. Is it ok or it's a bug? Fan is stopped

[tough scaffold]

Tested my sv405 for light leaks. Looks like I am ok.

[azure solar]

I haven't checked if it's the same on mine but it could be normal power draw?

[tough scaffold]

When I connect camera at first time it looks like this. Power remains only after turing off cooling

[azure solar]

Could be a bug, if the cooler kept going you would notice a drop in temp, even small

[tough scaffold]

not sure, temp raised a few degrees after reconnect. Also power remains at 6%, when i disconnect power supply and left only usb. Don't have equipment here to measure actual power

Looks like I get defective sv220 filter. The thread is bad, and it doesn't hold. I can insert filter without screwing it. Uv-ir filter screws in normally.

[tough scaffold]

Guys, I have find a way to achieve perfect guiding with az-gti. Look at right graph!

[rugged jackal]

[rugged jackal]

Thanks @low mural nice processing! no surprise there. My efforts are not so good, struggling to up my game!!

[tough scaffold]

bode galaxy with sv220

[rugged jackal]

I cannot get the details and colours that @low mural can extract:

[low mural]

I can process your data pretty well in 15 mins. I'll get a vid over to you later

[rugged jackal]

Thank you, look forward to the video so I can understand what the fluck I am doing!! 😆

[modest nebula]

The way i do it is to stretch each channel individually. I get it most of the way there in Siril with GHS and then finish it in Gimp with the curves

[rugged jackal]

Is this process in your website?

[modest nebula]

no. I must re-do that

[rugged jackal]

Oh OK, I look forward to reading the new article.

no clear skies for the foreseeable future!

[low mural]

@rugged jackal Just done a Siril only process for you and got this result. Video coming through shortly..

I think your main problem is moving the black point too far to the left which is losing the faint galaxy arms!

No Noise X on this, purely Siril.

After following this Siril process, you could probably go into Gimp and tame the gradients with a colour noise reduction via masking.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BQR4Uqm_u0PtRax-7d9-1t3JqNt8ilJS/view?usp=sharing

[rugged jackal]

thanks dude

[tough scaffold]

can't plate solve at siril photometry after drizzle. Changed pixel size at settings but still not working. Any suggestions?

[tough scaffold]

solved. unchecked manual detection

[rugged jackal]

My latest aattempt, thanks @low mural for the processing video, very helpful, I have not been able to fully follow your steps but here is my latest image:

[low mural]

Your best attempt @rugged jackal. I would be happy with that if I were you!

[rugged jackal]

Thank you, I agree it is a major improvement, each iteration is helping me understand the use of siril and image processing.

[low mural]

No clear night in sight, and new moons approaching. So annoying 😂

Want to start on the m81 project!

[modest nebula]

never had much luck with those targets. They're really a little too small for our equipment

[rugged jackal]

When is the next clear night? Mild weather is a bonus but at the expense of covered skies.

[modest nebula]

I heard that's it's some time in July

[rugged jackal]

july 2025?

[modest nebula]

probably 😄

[low mural]

Last time I imaged M81 was with an IMX224 camera and no guiding

[random elk]

Do you have the IMX178 color? I have a 203/800 f4 8" newton and want to buy a guiding cam and use it with the ZWO OAG. Do you think a IMX290 MONO or a IMX178 COLOR would be better? I ask because i could use the IMX178 color for planetari photography as well. But dont know if its as good or better compared to the IMX290 MONO

[tough scaffold]

This is my m81 processed by your video

[tough scaffold]

got 30 min on california nebula

[tough scaffold]

and 50 min flame star

[low mural]

I have the IMX178 Colour yes. Been using it for imaging but not used it enough for guiding to say it's any good. I am now using it as a guide cam. Will let you know how I get on.
Here is a review on the imx178 as an imaging camera https://www.astrobenn.com/post/altair-gpcam-3-178c-camera-review

[low mural]

This is nice, what is the total integration?

[tough scaffold]

it's about 4h with uv-ir + 4h with sv220 filter

[low mural]

Nice, but you are losing so data here. Galaxies should be shot in broadband.
You can use the data from the sv220 to extract the ha and put it into your broadband data, when you get it

[rugged jackal]

Nice! at least you are getting some action, we, here in the UK, are in the greyzone. 🤣

I am confused, now that is a surprise! 🤣 there are so many filters types out there it is difficult to understand which one to use when, is there a cheat sheet or simple chart to explain how to use them?

[modest nebula]

Use a dual-band on emission nebulas. Everything else (e.g. reflection nebula, star cluster, galaxies) just use ir cut

[low mural]

When I start my M81 project I will be shooting with just ir cut and then on moon nights, I will be gathering Ha via the L-enhance

[tough scaffold]

I didn't extracted Ha, i just mixed to layers(rgb and sv220) with transparency in photoshop.

[low mural]

Do you fancy sending the data? I would like to have a go

[tough scaffold]

ok, will upload it soon

[tough scaffold]

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qfjoxljezfkzf0hou1c2q/sv220_bode.tif?rlkey=fc93pneki4so42nc1haev39g9&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fgmxj6tmtesxghysh8yn9/uv-ir_bode.tif?rlkey=1fmd5842ei14gnz0wn3qxmdsm&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/az7uzqqah1aezm8sgg4rd/drizzled_bode_uv-ir.tif?rlkey=brmb90efqus7mykqw319vwqpo&dl=0

also uploaded drizzled version of uv-ir, but i could not get good colors out of it, so i used nondrizzled version

[low mural]

Bit rusty on Galaxies and the Ha mixing is new to me. But this was my attempt on your data 🙂 Galaxies need a lot of integration haha!

[rugged jackal]

Nice, is that red natural or enhanced/added by the processing?

[low mural]

That's the Ha!

[rugged jackal]

Right, lol

[low mural]

You see the purple bits in your M33 image? With Ha data, they would stand out and bit red. There would also be a lot more of them on the image

Like this for example

[tough scaffold]

Nice, red dots on m81 looks cool. did you use extract Ha script at siril?