I have a similar image train on my C8 SCT. Starizona focal reducer, Celestron OAG, ASI174mm mini, ZWO filter drawer and ASI071MC Pro. I use an Antlia Quad Band filter and sometimes just an Optolong IR/UV filter. I agree it's sometimes hard to find a guide star, you just have to rotate the OAG sometimes. I don't have your mount and I find short guide exposures help guiding for me (1" or less) which sometimes cause lost star alarms in guiding. I found using a parfocal ring around my guide camera allows me to adjust focus easier and to keep the guide camera centered when tightening the two set screws . I wish Celestron designed it with compression rings. I found some videos from James Lamb youTube helps in planning for locating guide stars around a target. What kind of guiding RMS are you getting from the ASIAir on your C8 with OAG now? Thanks
Hi, the weather has not helped at all since setting up the new gear with wind just about every night and a lot of cloud. So when it’s windy there is no point in comparing results. I did have one clear still night a couple of days ago and the results were pretty pleasing. With the 174mm guide scope I could regularly get sub .5 RA and sub .25 Dec but as the OAG is at 1280mm = 7X the low 1s on each is actually better, the results look a lot better and with dithering on the old set up it could take
@@KJRitch I had a still night last night, patchy cloud and a very bright and high moon. So got about an hour of guiding in and the result was about .7 RA .3 Dec and total between .7 best and 1.0 worst over that time and bounced back from a dither in a few seconds. With the bright moon it was still not ideal guiding conditions. How does that compare with your system?
Another set of great shots. I notice a few images from before, which ones are the newest. Here in the northern hemisphere I'm at latitude 43 and by the time I get set up, polar aligned, focus and PHD2 guiding going its between 11pm and 11:30pm. I might be able to get 2 hours before packing up. I can't leave my rig out all night yet. Did you use a dual narrow band filter for the nebula or doest the 2600 pick up the red? I'm liking the results from the 2600mc. It was $500 more than my ASI071MC Pro when I purchase it 6 months ago. I suppose the file sizes are pretty big. Another channel that is using a C8, and Edge HD, is AstroAF. He just performed a corrector plate collimatation and showed how he did it. He has other good content. Give hime a try. He has a great video showing how he modded his HEQ5 with the Rowan belt system and he replaced all the bearings. His guiding is much improved and he's using the Celetron OAG dispite him living in a Bortle 6 area in the US state of Illinois.
Thanks, they are all quite recent as I have only had the 2600 for a few weeks and mostly new versions of each shot. In mid Summer here about 10:30 to 11:00 is the best I can do as I am at 42’ south but at the moment 6:00 to 6:30 is quit possible. No filter as they have gone missing in the post, so all natural colours the Swan is just one hour 20 x 3min I think but the Lagoon was a 2 panel mosaic set up in the ASIair each 20 x 3 min with a 25% overlap but due to the poor quality of the stars in the corners of the frame I decided to also use an earlier centred shot which I think was 30 x 2min but each stacked separately then combined in the panorama section of Affinity. It did a pretty good job as the middle of the shot effectively had 3 hours of integration where as the ends only an hour each. There was a bit I was able to crop out which helped. The three shots were across the nebula stacked on the vertical plane and then rotated 90’. The files are just under 50meg which is why I have switched to 3min subs to keep the volume of data down a bit for processing. I use a MacBook Pro with an M1pro chip so it has plenty of grunt. When I bought the HEQ5 I looked into the Roman belt but decided to see how well it tracked first and so far I am pretty happy. I plan on moving to an OAG soon with the 174MM that will free up the guide scope for my camera and lenses as well as letting me use either the 2600 or 533 as the main camera. I feel that I can still improve both the focus and alignment of the guide scope and that should improve the guiding performance. I have temporarily given up on dithering as it takes ages to settle and the guiding (average error) is much bigger at even at 3 min subs, I was using 60 or 120sec the settle time can be over 30 seconds and never recovers to the undisturbed <2”. The extra coverage of the 2600 over the 533 is what I like most as if I had rotated the camera 90’ the whole Lagoon would fit in one shot, not the Orion or Rosette and the Carina is a different thing all together. Even the galaxy shots look nice with a bit more space around to be able to crop and extra dynamic range plus for RU-vid at 16:9 cropping from 3:2 is a lot easier than 1:1.
Very nice Steve I have the C925 let me know if you need any help with anything. Im assuming you're using an OAG for guiding and the Starizona focal reducer is much better than the Celestron one. In any case great start 👍
@@AstroSoundscape Thanks, Not using an OAG as I also have a sensational camera lens 200mm f2.8 with a Tele extender to 280 f4.0 and a 400mm 6.3 so made up a rig to mount on the HEQ5 pro and use the guide scope Saxon 170 with the 533 to find and centre images then change it over to guiding. That way I have the C8 for tight work and the camera G9M2 for wide stuff, also some very wide lenses for Milky Way etc that go on a smaller rig. The ASIair plus is reporting 1281mm with the 6.3 reducer so I guess my back focus is about as good as I can get as there seems to be a 4-6x factor when you change the back focus as well as it being in reverse. But still getting dodgy stars in the corners of the frame so might need re collimating or as you say using the Celestron reducer is the problem. I was hoping to use the 533 with the camera lenses but of course all the lenses are focus by wire with OIS and no power when connected to an Astro camera.
Nice, That one screen shot of Lagoon in the ASIAir screenshot showing the guiding the DEC was going crazy yet the stars looked OK. The 2600 looks like the one to upgrade to. I like my ASI071MC but the 2600MC is only $500 more USD. The arcsecond/pixel is tighter 0.55"/pixel vs 0.69'/pixel so oversampled but not much difference. Still using Affinity to process? I'm at a standstill with Affinity. So many macros and tools I just don't know what to use next. I've been playing around with it with some of my galaxy data, NGC6946, Fireworks galaxy. and I've tried the stretches but the Remove Background filter has difficulty with some of the color gradients from the macros. Using the Pinwheel Galaxy can you list the macros and other tools you used to achieve the final result? I'm finding much help on Cloudy Nights. Maybe I should just do the initial stretching in Siril then bring it into Affinity for color enhancements or color corrections but I'm still not sure what tool or macro to use for color. I find this part of the hobby the hardest. Thanks
@@KJRitch Hi again, that was the wind and I was deleting the wrecked shots as they came through but the one on screen was ok most of the rest were no good. One advantage of 60 sec subs is if it is windy you still get a few keepers. I have been trying 180 sec subs and they are fine with no wind but too exposed if there is wind. Also with guiding without dithering I can sit well within 2” on the graph but with dithering it takes ages to settle and never quite gets in the groove. I might try every 2 or 3 at 180 sec and see how that goes. As far as affinity goes I like the colour preserving stretch but often the colours in the sky are too hard to remove. So mostly use the live stretch and take out the green cast with added red and blue do extra stretching then tone compression and contrast, back to live tone stretch contrast adjust to balance the colour then reduce background luminosity then star reduction and either enhance structure or enhance nebula structure and finish off with band pass sharpening (try one and if no good undo and try the next). I finish off exporting the tiff and clean it up in photos with luminosity colour curves enhance structure etc to taste. Don’t forget to delete the two adjustments made by default after the end stack before the first stretch. Another good macro after reduce background luminosity can be enhance DSO luminosity. I rarely now use the remove background filter. Good luck we are having a run of clear nights so got some good stuff last night and might get more tonight. Sent from my iPad On 6 Jul 2024, at 12:04 AM, RU-vid <noreply@youtube.com> wrote:
I used my Fireworks data and found the Color Preserving Tone Stretch worked well but Live Tone Stretch didn't show any galaxy structure. I opened it up from the Layers list and How do you remove the green cast? What do you mean "added red and blue". Did you play around with the formulas in Live Tone Stretch, Live Procedural Texture dialog? Those formulas make no sense to me.
@@KJRitch Yes live tone stretch is just a start you need to tweak each individual adjustment to get a good result, the benefit is it is all non destructive and no need to flatten the layers and lock anything in. Just hit the disclosure triangle and it drops down several sections, just have a play around and see what they do. It appears the 2600 always has a green cast that I need to remove.
@@zanelindsay1267 It happened on a Sunday afternoon and I remember thinking “they won’t be able to fix that in a day.” But over two years! even the bailey bridge took months to make. A massive disruption cutting the city in half.
Tasman bridge suffered major damage from a ship collision in 1975 with 12 deaths. Repaired and reopened 2 years 9 months later. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman_Bridge_disaster
Yes indeed some very slow trips to work for the next few months until the ferries were sorted out and eventually the temporary bridge up stream. I have a video on that as well, ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-31ARuSu4ByE.htmlsi=dpDVnWgHj5kNw369
Hey Steve - Youve made a nice start with these the 2600 is a great camera. Not sure what you're applying to your images but flats should take care of the vignetting and of course darks to get rig of any hot pixels. Which telescope is this and what is the focal length of your guidescope. Clear skies 👍
Hi, so far any flats I have tried make it worse, over correcting. The guide scope is stated as 900mm but ASI reports it as 700mm the shots were taken on the C8 with 6.3 reducer so 1280mm. I have an IR cut filter and Optolong L extreme on the way so that will be interesting. The thing I need most is some clear nights to get more time actually using the gear, the back focus is right now, I think, so getting the guiding settings right and perhaps tweaking the columation and of course trying new things when processing.
Interesting usage of the 533. Giant guide camera. Have you got guiding to work reliably to increase your exposures with this setup? What average RMS guiding error does ASIAir report? Still processing with Affinity? I'd be interested in you rworkflow using Affinity after stacking. I've been testing some of the stretching macros on my OSC data of galaxies and find with some of them I can't get good background extraction. In Cloudy Nights I have added some posts to a thread "Astrophotography Macros for Affinity Photo" in the Vendor and Group Announcement forums. I was hoping James Ritson would frequent this forum to answer some of my questions but I guess he's too busy with other activities probably due to Serif being acquired and astrophotography features are not high priority. Have a look at that thread if you use Cloudy Nights. Thanks.
Hi again, as I said in the video the weather has not been very helpful so most sessions have been a failure due to cloud, others only a few shots as there were only small gaps in the clouds but it allowed me to eventually get the back focus right and prove the guiding works. The bloke at the telescope shop advised that a colour camera is not ideal as a guide camera so I wasn’t expecting too much. However so far it seems to pick up the stars quite quickly and start guiding, finds them again after a cloud and seems to guide in the under 2” range. I suspect the backlash in the mount may be the biggest cause. Have taken 1min and 2min subs without issue, but with the patchy sky reverted to 60sec subs as that way I got more between the clouds. Also I have changed my processing as (and it was probably mostly the full moon) had vignetting and a big central hot spot. Tried using flats but so far that over compensates and I end up with a dark centre and bright ring around the edge. Have resorted to just stacking and then “live stretch” in affinity as it allows me to work out the green tinge that seems to be inherent to this camera. There is probably a bit of colimation to sort out. With the G9M2 and 533 I had no issue with background extraction buy with the gradient on the new camera I can’t get it to work yet. I am hoping that once the moon is gone , and cloud, I might get some clean shots to process and I will try longer exposures say 3 min for a start.
This was before the ASIair had just received the C8 so still using the G9M2 never used the hand controller as I got the WiFi dongle with the HEQ5 Pro when I bought it in November and always used the Syncscan app on the iPad. All Go To with manual centering very slow and difficult, having the ASIair pro now is so much quicker and easier. And I was using JPEGs with the G9 so long shutter noise reduction takes equal to the exposure so every 30 second shot took one minute. Always used either 30 or 40 seconds to keep the stars round and I think 3200ISO all processed in Affinity (prior to macros) and with JPEGs normal stacking and hand stretched as the image has been stretched in camera while processing the jpeg. Stacking reduces noise a lot as well as the in camera noise reduction Affinity did the rest usually just after stretching before background removal as well as sharpening later.
Yes long before either the ASIair or 533 this was the on the HEQ5 pro C6 at 1500 plus 2x Barlow with the G9M2 m34 so a bit extra though quite a bit less than the 533. The G9 is a proper 4k camera and at 50 fps you get a lot on frames. Sorted in the ASI app to extract the best 20 or 30% then stacked and then processed with a waivelet app to extract more info. Affinity now has similar functionality with the macros so I hopefully won’t need to double handle that bit. I initially need to change the .mov file to .avi before the ASI app will accept the file.
Was this done with your C8 and HEQ5 mount? Is at native focal length 2032 with Barlow and the 4/3 crop sensor of the camera “magnifies” it higher? Great videos. My attempts with my C8, 2032mm, 2x Barlow and ASI585mc planetary camera are not very as good. Of course the camera is not 4K. I don’t have a 4k camera.
What camera did you use on the galaxy? Did you have the ASIAir when you took these images or did you use the hand controller GoTo? What exposure, gain/iso and length did you use? Affinity to process? Affinity to denoising and sharpen? At what point in processing do you apply denoising? Thanks
I think you gotten this astrophotography thing down pat. Did you use a filter? All processing was done in Affinity Photos? What color tools did you use to bring out the colors? Did you use Affinity to stitch the mosaic? Just read you are getting the 2600MC Pro. You image scale is down around 0.66”/pixel with focal reducer. I’ll be interested in your results.
From memory used the “Normalised” stretch macro as the retain colour was too much colour, I reworked it as the initial try was over sharpened and had noise/grain, no filter though that is on the list. Processed from go to whoa in Affinity including the stitch which is of the stacked individual panels which after stacking are Tiffs and as I said I did a minimal stretch to assist Affinity find some detail to line up in the mosaic. All my images end up in Photos on the Mac and I do a final tweak there. The pixel size is identical to the 533 and that came up as ideal in the calculator so it should be ok. Probably mid next week by the time I get it so just set up the 533 on the guide scope for my G9m2 as a test for when the 2600 arrives.
I've been playing around with Affinity Photos 2.5.2 and I have to tell you I'm having a difficult time. I've download the macros but havin't starting using them yet, deciding to learn more manual methods in case a macro doesn't work and I need to manual adjust the image. Stacking is easy but often the background color has a shade of magenta. I discovered how to use Levels to sync the colors and using samples in the Info tab to monitor if I clip my stretches. I work on color balance early in the process and then use Curves to stretch and I can get my target, M101, to show up but compared to Siril the I can't get the same colors to come to come out.
@@KJRitch No harm in trying the macros and compare with the manual result. Have you been removing the background? That usually removes noise, tint and or gradient from the background in one step.
Saw my first Mustang in 1965. Waiting at the corner near my house for the school bus a new Mustang would drive by about the same time every weekday. Guess the owner was going to work. That was in Brentwood, California on Bundy Drive. It was and still is beautiful car. Don’t care for the E Mustang, rubbish.
Not guiding? Just using a lot of short exposures? Any filter? What software are you using? Which mount? I have a C8 SCT also with Starizona reducer and Celestron OAG on an AVX mount. Still new to this hobby. I'll have to check out your targets. Did you have to do mosaics for all those DSO targets? I'm primarily imaging galaxies in the northern hemisphere. I'm learning processing on Siril. Saw your other video on Teddy and your 2019 video on Charlie. We had a Shin-Tzu for a little over 17 years before we had to say goodbye to Sophie in 2020. We haven't gotten a new puppy. We still miss her.
Hi “K” No guiding yet that will be the next purchase probably, as I have purchased most of this stuff in the last 6 months a bit at a time. Started with the HEQ5Pro mount and a second hand C6 with my Lumix GH6 and then G9M2. Next was the C8 and soon the ASIair Plus the Dew ring heater and dew cover and ASI533 camera. Followed by the focuser and special mount for the C8. So with no guiding I am doing 30 or 60 second exposures but to my surprise the mount on its own seems to be fine for at least an hour or so before it needs re centering. With the 6.3 reducer it is running on 1286mm so pretty tight framing. Nearly all single shots I did the mosaic Carina one by eye with the G9 and it worked out well, as I have only had two sessions with the new gear not had a successful mosaic yet as cloud and perhaps poor focus stopped the plate solve part way through. Once I can work out the best overlap and have everything working will try mosaics on things like the lagoon and eagle nebula. No filter yet either as we have pretty clear sky here but it is on the radar. Love my little dog he is on my lap asleep as I type this, delayed getting another dog when Charle died but glad I didn’t wait too long as Teddy is a perfect little companion. Clear sky’s Steve
You’re a lot further along than me. I haven’t tried mosaics.I wish I got the HEQ5 instead of the AVX. I have an ASIAir and it has some issues with the AVX. Switched over to NINA. Guiding is being difficult with the AVX using PHD2. I’ve settled down to PPec algorithm for RA. My AVX has a lot of DEC baclklash. I spent the day adjusting the worm gear and motor gears of the DEC axis. Sometimes I get to take images instead of piddling around with NINA, plate solving issues, PHD2. Don’t forget to add Teddy to some of your future videos. Thanks.
@@KJRitch Managed a 9 panel mosaic last night (that worked and became a pano) but with a full moon the result was not much good but proved the system worked. Did a couple of live stacks of about 150 x 30 seconds and the tracking was adiquite, quite happy with them. I need to get some Teddy stuff up on line.
I guess the panels are imaged in ASIAIR. What do you use to process them to a pano after moving them off the ASIAir? Mosaics are one way of getting around the higher focal length. Maybe when M31 is up at a reasonable hour later in August I'll be ready to try a mosaic with my C8. Cheaper than purchasing Hyperstar.
@@KJRitch I initially did a mosaic by eye six panels from memory with the G9m2 and that worked beautifully. That was from jpegs each 25MP which is easier to assemble as you can see the image. With the ASIair it is from Fits and after stacking there is still not much to see until after Affinity Photo does its thing to assemble the Pano. Affinity also does the stacking and final stretching etc. To equal just one shot from the G9 I need almost 3 x 2 with a 25% overlap. So I plan on using the camera lenses 200, 280 and 400 for wide shots. It all worked beautifully last night except for the clouds wind and Moon but the system did a great job.
Thank you, only been able to use it twice so far (weather) on the C8 it has a tiny field of view so I will need to do a few mosaics and still use my camera lenses for wider images. I am pretty impressed with the Centauris A shot which is hopefully a sign of things to come.
It is just a Celestron Astro Fi6 (a six inch Schmidt-Cassegrain) on an Alt-Az mount using a Lumix GH6 straight and with a 2x Barlow. The seeing was pretty poor but as my first capture with this set up it was ok. I will use 25fps on the planets next time as 50 pushed the ISO too high.
Of course, I made a mistake in shooting at 50fps so the ISO was too high will try again once the weather co operates. Also the atmosphere was pretty disturbed so hopefully can get a more settled night soon.
Hi Simon they are Silvereye no gap between silver and eye tiny little things but they kept an eye on me and were not scared of me or the camera which often scares birds away.
Tres très jolies prises de vues, carnac j aime beaucoup mais impossible de se loger les locations étant essentiellement saisonnière et l achat hors de prix c est dommage nombre de retraités souhaiteraient s installer à carnac toute l année. Merci c est agréable de voir ces images 👍👏
Michael Miller my guess is mostly weekends it took from August 16th when the old bridge was towed away until December 23 when it was opened so a fair bit of time but I guess he must have had time off for the moving of the steel temporary section and towing away the old bridge. No RDOs in those days.