* autofocus
* cooled camera
* pixinsight
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Both using PixInsight and obtaining proper flats are crucial for me but if I have to pick only a single thing, I would pick the knowledge on obtaining good flat frames.
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Frank Lothar Unger:
Dithering........
CS Frank
100% same for me, I had terrible walking noise until I found out about dithering. Plus if you're undersampled it allows you to drizzle and upscale to a much larger image size if you want to do a big print, without sacrificing quality.
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What a useful topic!
In my case, the single biggest improvement came when I found a Bortle 4 site with free access to electricity only 40 minutes away from my Bortle 7/8 backyard.
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Very interesting post!
In my case...
- NINA & plate solving
- Guiding
In a short time I want to invert in:
- ASI533 cooled camera to replace my non modified DSLR
- Autofocuser
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Longer total exposure time! As I switched to I dedicated astro camera I more than triplet my total exposure time.
CD
Haakon
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The Skywatcher Star Adventurer.
Going from untracked to tracked images allowed me to really start this hobby.
CS
Tim
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Scott Badger:
A better mount.
Celestron CGEM to an Ioptron CEM70. The Celestron is a good observing mount, but due to the backlash in particular, not so much for AP. Ironically, it worked pretty well without guiding where the BL wasn't a factor.... The Ioptron CEM70 is probably best in class and one of the first of a new wave (hopefully) of mounts designed with AP in mind; onboard power and USB ports, minicomputer dock etc.
Cheers,
Scott
I have a lot that many have already mentioned, but Totally agree here with @Scott Badger! I’ve had several mounts over the years and always questioned myself about the guiding. I gradually moved up and upgraded things on my previous mounts but when I finally got my AP1200 CP3 V2 I just don’t worry about it any more. If I see something I don’t like I can now look elsewhere for the problem.
Dale
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Dale Penkala:
Scott Badger:
A better mount.
Celestron CGEM to an Ioptron CEM70. The Celestron is a good observing mount, but due to the backlash in particular, not so much for AP. Ironically, it worked pretty well without guiding where the BL wasn't a factor.... The Ioptron CEM70 is probably best in class and one of the first of a new wave (hopefully) of mounts designed with AP in mind; onboard power and USB ports, minicomputer dock etc.
Cheers,
Scott
I have a lot that many have already mentioned, but Totally agree here with @Scott Badger! I’ve had several mounts over the years and always questioned myself about the guiding. I gradually moved up and upgraded things on my previous mounts but when I finally got my AP1200 CP3 V2 I just don’t worry about it any more. If I see something I don’t like I can now look elsewhere for the problem.
Dale
That's one hell of a mount and way outside my budget  That said: you just made me go and tune my RA and DEC axis worm gears and belts on my HEQ5 Pro ... I was running at 0.6 arc secs RMS guiding beforehand, so let's see if I've improved on that and can start forgetting about my mount being an issue as well. To be honest, I am saving up for something like the CEM70. My OTA is only a £380 Skywacher 200 PDS so I am trying to optimise what I have before shelling out a few grand on a new mount.
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andrea tasselli:
Dew-heaters
I had a question on these actually ... do you get benefits of dew heaters on Newtonians or are they really only useful on refractors? Just asking as my mirrors never seem to really fog up most nights.
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Andy Wray:
I had a question on these actually ... do you get benefits of dew heaters on Newtonians or are they really only useful on refractors? Just asking as my mirrors never seem to really fog up most nights.
I use a combination of optical systems (mostly not refractors, maks in the main) so they're useful on most of them. Considering guiding scopes, all of them. In the specific of Newts a secondary dew heater is likely to be on the most wanted item list as I can see they can really dew up in some of the nights. Much will depend on the specific of the scope. In my case the secondaries of both my 10" and 12" are really exposed to the vagaries of humidity but the one on the 6" isn't so it is much less affected. And, yes, even primaries can dew up and no dew heater is gonna help with that.
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Andy Wray:
Dale Penkala:
Scott Badger:
A better mount.
Celestron CGEM to an Ioptron CEM70. The Celestron is a good observing mount, but due to the backlash in particular, not so much for AP. Ironically, it worked pretty well without guiding where the BL wasn't a factor.... The Ioptron CEM70 is probably best in class and one of the first of a new wave (hopefully) of mounts designed with AP in mind; onboard power and USB ports, minicomputer dock etc.
Cheers,
Scott
I have a lot that many have already mentioned, but Totally agree here with @Scott Badger! I’ve had several mounts over the years and always questioned myself about the guiding. I gradually moved up and upgraded things on my previous mounts but when I finally got my AP1200 CP3 V2 I just don’t worry about it any more. If I see something I don’t like I can now look elsewhere for the problem.
Dale
That's one hell of a mount and way outside my budget That said: you just made me go and tune my RA and DEC axis worm gears and belts on my HEQ5 Pro ... I was running at 0.6 arc secs RMS guiding beforehand, so let's see if I've improved on that and can start forgetting about my mount being an issue as well. To be honest, I am saving up for something like the CEM70. My OTA is only a £380 Skywacher 200 PDS so I am trying to optimise what I have before shelling out a few grand on a new mount.
Thanks Andy, I wasn’t trying to brag or make you feel bad or anything like that in any way! It was just my personal experience is all. I always questioned my tracking/mount related issues but with the lucky aquision of this mount it has now just put my mind at ease in every way now. This has always been my Holy Grail mount and after 30yrs I was lucky enough to get one. Like you I didn’t have to money over the years but with buying and selling/upgrading and going thru 5-6 different mounts I just new this was the mount I wanted before I die. In fact I’ve told my boys to bury it with me 🤣.
I hope your tweaks to your mount help you out with your RMS.
Dale
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Dale Penkala:
In fact I’ve told my boys to bury it with me
That would be a shame, woudn't it? I'd leave it to them as heirloom of the family  |
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andrea tasselli:
Andy Wray:
I had a question on these actually ... do you get benefits of dew heaters on Newtonians or are they really only useful on refractors? Just asking as my mirrors never seem to really fog up most nights.
I use a combination of optical systems (mostly not refractors, maks in the main) so they're useful on most of them. Considering guiding scopes, all of them. In the specific of Newts a secondary dew heater is likely to be on the most wanted item list as I can see they can really dew up in some of the nights. Much will depend on the specific of the scope. In my case the secondaries of both my 10" and 12" are really exposed to the vagaries of humidity but the one on the 6" isn't so it is much less affected. And, yes, even primaries can dew up and no dew heater is gonna help with that.
Yes, @andrea tasselli hit the nail on the head with this. Concur on all accounts. I didn’t really have a big problem with my 8” f5 but my 10 & 12” newts defiantly had issues. With my 10” I started out with a dew strap around the housing and that worked very well but in some of my images you could see the one vane caused a bit thicker defraction spike so I upgraded my secondary mirror with one of my DBA housings and installed an Astro Systems dew heater underneath the secondary mirror. Fixed that problem. Now with the rebuild of my 12” I’ve done something a bit different using the Kendrick dew heater that heats the housing with a thin wrap around unit and I used copper tape and soldered in the wires to the vane now so that I don’t even run wires across the edge of the vane. So now all I do is plug the rca jack into the plug on my OTA and put it into the dew controller and control it that way.
Here is my newest mod.
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andrea tasselli:
Dale Penkala:
In fact I’ve told my boys to bury it with me
That would be a shame, woudn't it? I'd leave it to them as heirloom of the family
You are right Andrea, but they are not interested in astronomy unfortunately. I’m sure when I’m gone they will sell it in the end 😊
Dale
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Never leave a good mount go to waste, that's what I'm saying...
Mine are the same but they may still be turned around before I kick the bucket...
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andrea tasselli:
Never leave a good mount go to waste, that's what I'm saying...
Mine are the same but they may still be turned around before I kick the bucket...
Yes Agreed!
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1) Ignoring “likes” and, for the most part, forums focused on quick answers rather than deeper understanding.
2) Adam Block’s PixInsight Fundamentals and Horizons.
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Relocating my gear from Spain to Chile.
- Humidity dropped from 80 - 95% to 15-30%. Don't laugh but the observatory in Spain had a 90% humidity roof shut threshold. That was a lot of unusable clear nights!!!
- Seeing has gone below 1". The air flow in Chile is low speed at night, stable and laminar. Guiding is a dream.
- Number of usable clear nights increased from 120 to 320 per year. So much so I now half share the rig with a team from Scotland. Even full moon gets used for a close binary white dwarf automated survey.
- Altitude increased from 3000ft to 6000ft. As its also dry in Chile most of the time, we are imaging in near IR too.
- Southern skies. Lots of new targets.
- Using a 10Micron mount and an Optec Gemini temperature compensating focuser. Easily expose NB images for 1 hour or more to go stupidly deep
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Nothing makes more difference than a clear sky.
Other than that, plate solving was huge when transitioning from 480mm to 1600mm.
Pixinsight made processing dramatically better.
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Setting an 180 degrees opening tent on my terrace and put all the equipments there:
https://astrob.in/m9i1hl/E/
Using a separate industrial pc (now inside the tent) to manage instruments.
Remoting operation with Astroart from my house.
Opening tent + putting the c5 with dslr on top of the newton + start powet + autofucus newton + setting up the script = 10 to 15 minutes
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I think you have covered many things/gear already… however, I would say 3 x Automation … this includes adding a mini pc from Amazon Quieter 2Q with NINA, mono and filter wheel, and autofocus… everything controlled from inside the house!… Before I would be lazy sometimes and now there is no excuse 🤷♂️…
I have a similar set up with the HEQ5 pro, Newtonian and mono qhy camera…
outside of gear I would say,
I live in bortle 7 and went straight into narrowband … it gave me great results, and perhaps was always afraid of LRGB… now days I actually capture a lot with LRGB filters many exposures of 60-120 seconds and recently have captured galaxies that provide amazing colours… will post a photo here over the next couple of days
also, patience to capture lots of data over a few nights and not just collect 2 hrs in one night and process it very quickly (still working on this one myself)
Big one: Processing, many hours of learning Pixinsight online or with YouTube tutorials (still a work in progress for me)
hope this helps
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I shoot from a Bortle 9+ sky.
"+" is not a joke... 9 stars visibile in normal conditions.
Best thing I do, sometimes, is to stay in front fireplace looking at YOURS photos... :-)
Paolo
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0.00
0.00
11.14
0.00
1.81
1.43
0.90
0.00
15.85
11.01
2.41
0.00
4.95
3.61
0.00
0.00
