New toy...this could become an expensive hobby!

[jimi43]

Great image Jim =D>
I bet the obsys like an oven this weather,how does the scope get on with cooling down in this weather,is it able to cool down enough??

Hi Paul

I have to open it up every day at the moment...the max/min thermometer shows 47 deg max and 8.4 min over the last week or so....but since I started opening it up...putting a fan inside and generally airing it out the highest it has got is 34 degrees...with outside shade temperature of 31 degrees.

I painted the top white now...and will be doing the bottom along with all of the warm room once it's completed. This has dramatically reduced the heating effect.

The warm room is going in here...

...and with the white dome...

I average night temperatures of 15-18 degrees so I can get down to -10 degrees with the 25 degree cooling capability of the ATIK.

Jimi

 

[Billy]

Amazing. If you were my neighbour I'd totally ask myself what the hell was going on in there or if I was being spied on

 

[Benchwayze]

BB. Generally you are correct. But I am sure we have all seen the Moon in daylight, at certain times of the day. And Venus is quite often visible before darkness is complete, as is Mercury at dawn.

Sol - 1
Nature - 1?

The question did rather explicitly mention galaxies

BugBear

I quite like the occasional bar of that too. In a ' general' way. Especially since Cadburys went over the pond. :wink:

 

[Reggie]

Amazing. If you were my neighbour I'd totally ask myself what the hell was going on in there or if I was being spied on

And you'd be like every other non-astronomer when they see someone with a telescope, seriously, don't flatter yourself, we're all far more interested in staring into the darkness than anything you'll be doing ;-) You could be running around your garden starkers and the most likely response you'd get is 'Can you turn the light off please?'

 

[jimi43]

Jimi, astro shed have the nice live chat feature which can be pretty useful. not sure what paig is, never been on it As for taking pics of the galaxy while the sun is around, it's just not going to happen, the moon and a couple of planets might be visible during daylight but that's entirely because of the sun trying to take long exposures of galaxies will just result in a white-out.

Yes...the live chat feature is a good "saloon bar" to meet up just as it's getting dark to see what people are imaging that night and other chit-chat...good for getting to know people more too.

PAIG is the Progressive Astro Imaging Group. A bunch of very keen imagers indeed....and wealth of information too! Most members know what they're doing that's for sure!

I have enough problems imaging galaxies with moonlight let alone sunlight...and astronomical twilight is around 3am at the moment. If I start imaging at 11pm and run through to 3pm the first and last sub images are obviously lighter compared to the remainder.

Mixing these in with the stack would increase the noise levels unacceptably.

Jimi

 

[Reggie]

Back to eqmod quickly, if you've got an obsy, then you're pretty much set for getting it drift aligned properly so the extra resolution and alignment that eqmod gives become pretty unnecessary, I get the feeling that along side the guide camera, you've probably got pec running too?

If you haven't got an obs then eqmod is ideal, especially when combined with starry night etc. it just gives a lot of options for getting to know the sky quickly.

I wouldn't mix the first/last subs with the herd either, in fact, you have to become incredibly ruthless and cull everything that isn't spot on, however, as you've got an obsy with a pier and a temp controlled camera, you have repeatability, so you can afford to wait it out for those good shots and of course, on the cruddy seeing nights, you can sit there and take all of the extra processing frames (darks, lights etc.).

Have you had a go at ngc7000 yet Jimi? It'd look very tidy on that megrez 72mm, it's huge in the FOV of my 66mm w/FFII and 450d

I've actually been thinking recently about having another go at the 'wobbly wooden wedge' that I made for the celestron nexstar mount but getting an oag this time round instead of trying to mount the WO 66 to the 6" SCT.

 

[jimi43]

Back to eqmod quickly, if you've got an obsy, then you're pretty much set for getting it drift aligned properly so the extra resolution and alignment that eqmod gives become pretty unnecessary, I get the feeling that along side the guide camera, you've probably got pec running too?

If you haven't got an obs then eqmod is ideal, especially when combined with starry night etc. it just gives a lot of options for getting to know the sky quickly.

I wouldn't mix the first/last subs with the herd either, in fact, you have to become incredibly ruthless and cull everything that isn't spot on, however, as you've got an obsy with a pier and a temp controlled camera, you have repeatability, so you can afford to wait it out for those good shots and of course, on the cruddy seeing nights, you can sit there and take all of the extra processing frames (darks, lights etc.).

Have you had a go at ngc7000 yet Jimi? It'd look very tidy on that megrez 72mm, it's huge in the FOV of my 66mm w/FFII and 450d

I've actually been thinking recently about having another go at the 'wobbly wooden wedge' that I made for the celestron nexstar mount but getting an oag this time round instead of trying to mount the WO 66 to the 6" SCT.

Hi Reggie.

When I set the pier up...apart from the obvious levelling, I made sure that the polar alignment was spot on first of all and then used Alignmaster to set it up more accurately. It's basically drift alignment in an all-in-one programme...worth checking out if you haven't already.

I have an EL panel which I made myself from a base sheet from Romania on FleaBay...a lot cheaper. I stuck it to a Corian sheet which makes it very flat and stable and I get even illumination at the end of a session. I believe there is an Auto Dark extraction mode for the ATIK somewhere in the Maxim functions but that's something for when I get to grips with stacking with it! :shock:

I haven't done the North American nebula...actually I've only had about three clear nights worth since I bought the ATIK as a move on from the 450D....but I'm glad I bought the OSC now...I can't imagine how patient you have to be with a mono and filters!

An off-axis guider is something I have been thinking seriously about...currently I use a QHY5V mono on the 9x50 finder which is apparently a good combination commonly used. I find it doesn't work if there are any seeing problems...but snaps in when the sky is of such a clarity to make it worth imaging! It's a poor man's seeing gauge!! :mrgreen:

I've been up to 25 minute subs with that setup...and it's rock solid....round stars...no hunting or anything. So I guess I have the settings spot on for what I am doing.

My biggest problem is getting clean enough data for relatively easy processing. I run the gauntlet of my neighbour's porch light (now sorted)...the moon...which has an amazing ability to know when to come out to play...and timing....which we've all suffered from with the Spring weather being so poor. Now it's too hazy! Roll on winter!! :mrgreen:

Hence the urgency to get the warm room sorted.

Jim

 

[Reggie]

I wouldn't bother with an oag with the rig that you've got, unless you're trying to image on both of the larger scopes? Personally, I pick a scope for the target, then whichever ones are left, I'll use one of them for the guide scope

You could use an OAG if you're trying to squeeze images out of both scopes but generally, you'd use them on something that had a weak mount that couldn't cope with an extra scope, which is entirely why I want one for the SCT, the celestron mount is pretty nasty for imaging and just can't cope with the extra weight demands of a guide scope hanging off it, it's really an observing mount rather than an imaging one (although it's fine doing planetary imaging as the techniques are generally different), if you put it into EQ mode it really doesn't cope well with tracking under it's own steam, it will make the object wander back and forth in the FOV so it needs auto-guiding to make it usable.

25 minute subs is very good indeed, especially if light pollution isn't blowing out the image