One of the issues with such a quick scope is the ability of using filters. From what I have read any scope faster than F4 requires certain filters to eliminate the spectrum shift that comes with such a quick scope. I suppose you could use a wider bandwidth, somewhere around 12-35nm but this would be at the cost of losing a large amount of contrast, which is the main draw to 3-5nm filters. I know Baader makes filters for F2 scopes, I am sure Astrodon and Custom Scientific probably makes a version also, but when Astrodon can charge almost a grand for one filter makes me rethink that avenue. Seeing the price of the filter drawers, holders and knowing I would want one drawer for each filter, not to mention the initial cost of the filters, would make me just break down and build a 3D printer and make my own.

Very nice images,
Matthew

I think the main issue with tracking issues after the flip have to due with balance. The AVX is a beast to achieve proper balance due to it being slightly stiff in the axis. The pros recommend repositioning the counter weights to help the gears remain meshed together. Personally I used a 3-5lb bias weight to always pull the mount to the East, along with stripping the mount down and replacing all the cheap Chinese grease with high grade Super Lube, to make both the axis silky smooth. When cleaning found quite a large amount of burs and metal shavings left over from the manufacturing process.

As for focusing if you have an ASCOM compatible driver download Focusmax V3 which is free, V4 was bought and is now sold under CCDWare Licensing. V4 is not really that much of an improvement over V3, other than a complete rework of the GUI, I did not notice any added features, especially considering a $150.00 price tag. I am not sure how long it will still be available or supported, especially since it is in direct competition with V4's paid version. It takes a few attempts at tweaking the parameters, and is not as easily managed as SGPro's auto focusing routine, but then again it is free. I have mine set up to refocus every 0.5c of temp change. One thing I have been debating on adding to my auto focuser is two limit switches or Hall effect sensors to show when the drawtube has reached its limits.

Great images BTW
Matthew

Very well done and only slight bloating of the larger stars, having a quicker scope must make it a dream to be able to get all the data you need in a fraction of the time. It is insane to see how much each of us have learned on our little journeys.

Honestly I never gave any thought to why they called it running man, learn something new every day.
Matthew

Very nice Ed,

Definately love the color you captured in M82, I have noticed that I get decent results quicker, by shooting my color frames binned 2x2@. Since all the resolution/detail data is held within the Lum channel I have not seemed to notice any loss of detail. Since the exposure duration is all dependent on the target as an example I will shoot 20) 10m subs of Lum and 5) 5m subs of each color, with green being my last, in case for some reason I can't get the green frames I am able to create a synthetic frame from the others. Another trick I use is to mix images from two different cameras with the same exact FOV, shooting my Lum and narrowband images with my mono sensor and then switching to a OSC camera for my RGB channels. As they say 101 ways.

Keep up the great work,
Matthew

On top of this thought process you can look into network controlled relays to turn on and off equipment from the comfort of your comfort of your favorite lounging spot.
I have one but it is fairly large and designed for a network server rack. Personally I am hoping that the INDI format takes off, so I can ditch ASCOM altogether. Not that ASCOM is bad, its just that it is based on decades old out dated COM wrappers, which are only Windows based, and aren't cross platform compatible without running through a VM. With Linux it would be nice to be able to have a small device, like a Raspberry PI at the mount, with the only function of transcoding instructions sent from the inside server to the mount and devices in the observatory. But since most of the Astro programs are Windows based and it seems that ASCOM has a stranglehold on the driver development, the current iterations of SBM PCs like the Raspberry or Arduinos are either not designed for the proper language decoding or not powerful enough to run the multiple programs on top of the base Windows running in the background. A simple USB/Device server is all that is required, something to decode TCIP into simple USB commands. This way your mount, cameras and every other device would behave as if directly connected to your base computer. This is simple to do under Linux, yet being able to control all of my equipment would require a great many complex drivers and that is a bit over my head.

Matthew

This is one of my fresh install priorities, I do not allow Windows to dictate the power state of any of my devices. I also disable Windows from being able to arbitrarily changing the power state, my computer is always in S0 unless I decide to restart or shut it off. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen issues with system files being damaged due to improper wake management from either hibernation/S1 or sleep/S2. I do restart my computer about once a week, give or take or if I notice a large chunk of RAM is being used by system processes.

On a side note, I do allow devices to wake my PCs, whether it is the keyboard, mouse or LAN. This way I do not have to manually go hit the switch, which is in a closet, in the basement (I'm slightly lazy).

Matthew

If his lights are set up on a photocell, you can point a red or IR laser at the photocell, and his lights will think it's daylight and shut off. This works for street lights also. I would rig up a 3vDC power supply/wallwart in a fake battery to spare battery usage. Personally an IR laser would be best as it would not be visible to the naked eye.

Or if you tend to only image a night or two a week you could go over and ask nicely if it would be possible to shut them off during your imaging times.

Matthew

I have an oil well right over the hill next to my property, when they finished fracking it there was a flare, 40' tall burning constantly. I used a "Blackout" curtain, for a long window, and hung it 20' away from my scope to block out the light it worked really well, as long as there was no haze in the air.

Great image,
Matthew

This along with the tiny1, this also looks very promising for an on the go setup. I decided to go a different route and am trying to DIY a CCDcam based on some guys in Eastern Europe called a Cam85. It's pretty neat having to see all that goes into, along with the trials and errors of getting components to play well with one another. Especially at the board level.

While I do not think these will be much competition against the big dogs on the block, I do hope they bring in those looking to spend a small amount to get their feet wet.

Clear skies,
Matthew

I have had a few hdds die over the years, I also have multitudes of programs and plugins that would require hours if not days to reinstall. That's not to mention all the personal settings that would have to be rebuilt. Now I clone my hard drive weekly, so this is not possible except under the most extreme circumstances like a home fire.

Was it a hdd or ssd that failed after the fall? If it was a had there is hope of resurrecting it, if your even mildly handy. Did you have to replace just the drive or the whole machine?

Sorry about your misfortune,
Matthew

It really all depends typically with an ultra wide lens like a 10-20mm on a FF camera I would shoot for 30-45sec exposures, stopped down two stops from fully wide open, @1600/3200ISO since the stars are moving the whole time you will only be able to stack 10-20 images before its too hard to register the sky to the foreground.

Some use free programs like DeepSkyStacker to calibrate and stack their images, then take the 32bit image to Photoshop/Gimp not sure how well it does to static objects like trees, but worth a shot.

Personally I use PixInsight to do all the precessing from calibration to color correction. But it's kind of expensive and designed solely for astro images.

HTH,
Matthew

I did not look at his site but have seen many images similar to this, and most are not fake or "Photoshopped". It's called astro landscape. Basically what you do is take a series of images with the highest ISO you feel your camera is capable of without introducing too much noise, for as long as you can without introducing star trails, unless that is what you want, this is determined by your focal length. Then in the last few images get yourself in the image, trying to hold perfectly still. If there are foreground items like an old truck or even a tree try lightpainting techniques with your torch. Mostly trial and error. Usually techniques used to eliminate all camera noise are utilized, such as Dark, Bias and Flat frames. These remove the majority of the noise and eliminate the gradients inherent in most astro photos.

A few tips for better shots:

1) A truly dark sky site.

2) Calibration frames 20 of each is minimal.

3) use of programs like stellarium or skysafari to know which direction and time to shoot, for the core of the Milkyway.

4) Scouting and setting up before dark

5) Mostly have fun and don't expect anything great on your first few endeavours.

I think Sonny was speaking of calibration stars. How I pick my guide stars is, depending on the seeing I lower my exposure till only 3-5 stars are visible that way I get the dominant star in the FOV while keeping my guiding adjustments as small as possible. Usually around 0.25-0.5s YMMV due to light pollution and skyglow. Really as long as the star you pick is not to the point of saturation, where the PC has issues determining what the correct FWHM/HMF values are, that it uses to calculate the proper star centroid.

HTH,
Matthew

I think a company called Optolong, from China, makes clip in filters for Nikon APS-C sensors. Similar to the ones Astronomic makes for EOS sensors. Probably a clone with slight adaption.

HTH, thankfully I do not need this add-on,
Matthew

I think it came out very nice indeed. Only issue I saw was on a few of the stars in the nebulousity, there is a colorless ring around them. Could be artifacts due to stacking of jpgs, more than likely it's due to chromatic aberration removal a bit too strongly, which I have done many times with the same results.

As for guiding, take a couple nights to play around. Don't worry about imaging, otherwise getting overwhelmed happens easily. First night worry about equipment communication. Making sure everything is talking to everything else. Second night tweak your parameters to get your graph as flat as possible, training your PEC is good use of your time here. Third night or when your comfortable try imaging at various lengths upwards of ten minutes, depending on your area's skyglow. That will be you limiting factor.

Very nicely done on M45, same object I'm currently imaging. Great minds think alike
Matthew