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Hey, RedCater's! It's cool to see a handful of us all together on this forum. Looks like it's slowly getting off to the races with users joining up. Also some amazing pictures for sure! Looking forward to some amazing topics and thought I would start it off! I am shooting from Belen, NM, USA in Bortles Class 4 skies (some websites list it as Bortles 3). Currently stopped shooting till my new ASI533MC Pro arrives. Right now focusing on PixInsight with my free time and also figuring out the best objects to shoot from https://telescopius.com/deep-sky/search, however seeing your images also give me some ideas well! Looking forward to hearing from the rest of you. |
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Hi all, Thanks for the invite. I've been shooting with my Whitecat 51 Since June of 2018. It's probably my most used imaging scope. I usually have it on my Losmandy G-11 but on occasion will use my Explore Scientific IEXOS-100. I live in San Antonio Tx, and shoot from that area. Most of my processing is done in Astro Pixel Processor and Photoshop. I look forward to seeing everyone's images. |
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Hey Everyone! Thanks for the invite. It’s great to see some of the targets you’ve al been going after with your RedCats. I’m in a Bortle 6/7 just outside of Boston so light pollution is a monster. Plus I’m only like 3 months in to this so I am terrible at post production. Never even used a real camera until I snagged my 6D Mark II and started up. I look forward to learning from some of you pros. Matt |
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Hi, and thank you for inviting me! I was almost going to unload my RedCat which is now the third one from William Optics, as I returned the first two. The third was better, but still had odd star shapes off-axis. But I did some tuning with the tilt plate, and also the forward collimation screws and got it "good enough" for a 16mm diagonal sensor (ASI-183 and ASI-533). It does give incredibly sharp images, with no false color, and 4 pieces of glass seems better than reducing a triplet with a 4 or 5-element reducer-corrector. If you are curious about my RedCat tuning, I made a CloudyNights post about it: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/744130-collimating-aligning-my-redcat-51/ Steve |
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ShricklyBizness Matt, You're doing really well with Photoshop! Have you looked into other software like Astro Pixel Processor or PixInsight? I decided to roll with PI myself as I like what I saw on AstroBin over any other application when doing searches. You may want to check it out and see what you can get. Here is an article I posted on it after using Affinity Photo and DSS https://joeytroy.com/pixinsight/. Like you, I have been shooting for three months as well, it's been a ton a fun and a lot of learning and sharing! Best of luck! |
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Welcome, All! And thank you to Joey for starting introductions 😊 I hope you all don’t mind the invites. I started this group with the hope of providing a forum for all CAT Series users to share their images and experiences with this fantastic little scope. Thank you for joining! I started my DSO journey with 5” and 8” Newtonians, but found them to be a real challenge, especially with a Celestron AVX mount. In contrast, it’s been a real joy imaging with the SpaceCat. Any error the mount exhibits is well under my current sample rate, yielding sharp round stars across the field. I couldn’t be happier with it. The camera I use is a Fujifilm X-T100. I use a remote intervalometer to control exposure times and capture sequences. I live in the Central Coast of California under Bortle 4 skies at the edge of town, but have recently adopted use of an Optolong 2” L-Pro filter to reduce gradients due to light pollution along the horizon. I’ve been really happy with the results so far. Clear skies, Nikko |
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Nikkolai Davenport: Nikko, Thanks for taking the time to start up this forum! Maybe we can start some challenges from our different areas to see what we can all do? I know they do monthly challenges on CloudyNights however, some users with DSLR's can't shoot specific objects so maybe monthly best images? Also maybe a thread on our setups as well, along with a thread on post-production assistance? Just some ideas to get us rolling since we are using similar setups and I can see the benefit of having a more focused forum on just the RedCat's |
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These are really great ideas! I love it. Thank you! How should we run the challenges? Thinking it might be cool to have target specific threads for sharing images and discussion. This would make a few targets available each month, which could be beneficial for some folks depending on their latitude and whether they have a clear line of sight. The subjects would then gradually cycle out as we move through the seasons. And if someone wants to go after a subject that hasn’t been picked yet, they could start a new challenge thread for it. What do you think? |
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Nikko, Sounds good to me, I know right now for us Northern Hemisphere guys we are enjoying the Orion constellation which has a ton of fantastic objects near and around that we could all do especially DSLR users with NGC2032, M42, and possible M78, and NGC1909. Maybe we could do like constellation challenges each month so everyone can pick their favorite objects in those constellations and they can capture whatever they can based on location and setup? |
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I really like the constellation idea. These CAT series scopes have such a wide field of view, it's relatively easy to compose an image with multiple DSOs in frame. Especially when using a larger sensor. Orion is a fun one for sure. There's a lot going on there. Cygnus would be fun, too. Trying to come up with a short title, I just called this one the Jewels of Orion.  Jewels of Orion In this, you can see the Flame and Horsehead Nebulae along with the Great Orion Nebula and Running Man nebula. I had seen a number of images framed with these subjects, and wanted to try it for myself. I didn't expect to end up with the amount of detail that I did. I think with more exposure time, I could pull out more of the surrounding molecular clouds. This was definitely a personal best at the time. But after seeing the results of others, I'm motivated to shoot for more and see just how far I can take it. |
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Agreed, after seeing all these killer images I am chomping at the bit waiting for my ASI533!!! I am almost ready to call OPT and tell them to cancel my order and ship me the ASI183 as they have it in sto.....nevermind they are out of stock on that one too  man it's some tough times for us new to the hobby everyone is buying everything off the shelves.
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Haha 😂 Yeah, everything seems to be out of stock everywhere, but that 14bit ADC and zero amp glow... I’d hold out for the ASI533MC Pro unless you really want that higher sample rate with 2.4um photosites, vs 3.76um. That ASI533 is going to be a pretty sweet camera. I’ve been eyeballing it since it came out. It’s a tough call for me, though. Don’t want to step down from the APS-C size sensor, but the ASI2600 and ASI6200 are out of my reach at the moment. |
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I have the 183MC, 183MM and 533MC. I like them all. You will find that with a monochrome camera and an inexpensive LRGB set, that you gain much more control of the final image, and it is cleaner as no de-bayering is required, which adds another source for "noise" (which, by definitions is the amount of uncertainty. De-bayering algorithms, though very advanced, still make "assumptions" about what color to assign to each pixel). And the 183MM is in stock. A 533MM would be an incredible astro-imaging camera. But it may not ever happen. Sorry to add more complexity to your decision-making process. (: Steve |
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Nikkolai Davenport: Nice one. Mine which I titled "From the Flame to Sword" is similar. You have 3x the exposure time and were guiding. Something I just got into recently. I used the Optolong L-Enhance since I was shooting from my then Bortle 6/7 skies in Corona, CA. I too was surprised to get the molecular cloud detail. I seem to have lost a lot of color in stretching my image, something I'm working on.  From the Flame to the `Sword |
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Craig Bobchin: That’s a really good title. I’m also really digging that full-frame format. Nice work! |
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Hi Bought my Redcat just before Christmas, FLO in the UK had a delivery and they sell out quickly, so with that and potential issues with Brexit looming I took the plunge. So I now have a vey wide, wide (RASA 8) and close/ish (8" Fast Skywatcher Newtonian). Weather gods prevented imaging until 10th January. Impressed with the build, time will tell for everything else. First target was Horsehead/Flame using a Baader 7nm Ha filter and Zwo ASI183mm. I had a little problem with amp glow which could have been caused by PHD2 believe it or not and an artifact when processing in the latest version of Startools. 180 second exposures (80) plus calibrations. David |
