Why is a good mount important? –
23.06.2020
Hey folks,
so finally everything arrived. My old rig was quite overwhelmed with my ambitions and had to be replaced. Why so?
– First reason was the old mount. The mount is undoubtedly the most important part of your equipment. No fancy OTA will produce sweet DSO images without a proper tracking mount. And “proper” means: The mount must be able to carry the optics with ease.
„First light with my EQ6-R Pro and the Canon EOS 700Da“ weiterlesen
30.12.2019 – 23.04.2020
New aspect:
Visualize the impact of seeing while taking images of Venus.
Image acquisition & processing:
I took three different images of Venus during the recent few months. All of the images were taken with the exact same hardware and setting – a ASI ZWO120MC-S Color planetary webcam with a 3x Barlow lens on top of my 750mm Newtonian reflector carried by the Skywatcher EQ3 -Pro mount.
All images were recorded as .avi files (2min @ 60fps) and stacked (20% best) and sharpened in Autostakkert!3.
29.04.2019 – 04.05.2019
New aspects:
– first time with an auto-guiding system
– Guiding shows first signs of overcapacity
– revisited a target for noise reduction
– first „proper“ galaxy
– longest project so far
Image acquisition:
So finally every part of my new guide-scope arrived and I could use phd2 for proper guiding for the first time!
Last session I had unsolvable difficulties with the guidecam, the „ToupTek Camera G-1200-KMB Mono Guider“. I stayed in touch with astroshop.de and they finally replaced my guidecam with another model, the ZWO ASI120mm mini-mono. This camera arrived and the current guiding setup now looks like this:
31.03.2019
New aspect: Trying autoguiding for the first time
Guiding basics:
During the last sessions I slowly build up the dream of autoguiding my images. There are many advantages of having a guidecam with a guidescope attached to your main scope.
25.05.2019
New aspect #1: Failed polar alignment issues
New aspect #2: Capturing an object with high ISO and low exposure time
Image acquisition:
M81: On this night I originally wanted to capture more data on M81 and M82 to increase the quality of this image by a factor. So I set up my rig as usual:
16.02.2019
New aspect: Stay long on two galaxies
Image acquisition:
This time I wanted to capture tow cool galaxies in one frame. I searched Stellarium the day before and found those two beautiful galaxies. They fit into the FOV of my camera/scope as I use an old Olympus E510 and a Skywatcher 150/750 Newtonian reflector. Challenge was to frame the objects right into one frame and not accidentally cut one galaxy off. So I chose a high ISO 1600 (max with my camera) and like 60’ test frames to locate the galaxies. Due to my little mount with high inert slewing errors I had a hard job of even finding the two of them. After that I needed to fit them into one frame. My sister and her fiancé can tell the story of me trying to move the scope just ever so slightly than taking a test shot, wait for 60’ then reslew. Than me realising I slewed in the wrong direction. Me reslewing again. Taking another test shot. Off again. Where are the galaxies at all? Reslew. Test shot. Searching….. Uff! It was tough.
„#20: M81 and M82“ weiterlesen31.01.2019
New aspect: Visual observation of DSOs
Image acquisition:
This two images of the Orion Nebula were taken using a smartphone hand-held in front of the 2” lens. This evening I observed a few DSOs with my Skywatcher 150/750 Newtonian on my little Skywatcher EQ-3 Pro mount. Doing visual astronomy is normally not really my thing but I wanted to give it a try. I was surprised, how much of M42 the Orion Nebula was visible trough my little 6” newtonian scope. But than I couldn’t resist to hold my LG G6 in front of the lens to shoot some images. I then tried to get the exposure time of that single frame exactly in such a way that it would match the experience with the eye. So here they are:
„#19: Visual observation of M42 Orion Nebula“ weiterlesen23.01.2019
New aspect: Taking an image of Jupiter
Image acquisition:
I took video files of both planets on the morning of the 23th of January. It was a Wednesday so I was (again) in a hurry. Setting up the scope was not that hard but keeping the last trouble with the moving Venus in mind I took one more look through the polarscope to align a bit more properly than last time. Then I searched and found Venus. Again the planet was so incredible bright, that was not able to choose the right settings for exposure and focus. I tried my best ether way. Jupiter was a more easy part. I did some over exposes videos to capture the moons of Jupiter and then fiddled around to find the sweet spot for exposure, gain and “brightness” (whatever this item means). I finally managed to grab three files before I had to end the session. Focus? A nightmare!
„#18: Jupiter and Venus“ weiterlesen02.01.2019
New aspect: Return to M42 to gather more data
Image acquisition:
This time I had one target and one target only in mind (finally managed to obey my own rule!): M42. The last session gave me 32x1min light frames to work with and hence a lot of noise in the image. After setting up the scope I was about to frame the image. This was my first do-over of an object where I was about to ADD data to my already captured data-pool. I had already framed an object to my wishes as I framed M31 (Andromeda) to snugly fit into my DSLR frame. This time I had to match the previous image framing with enough precision to be able to add the two sessions together. My problem about this was that my mount tended to move even so slightly from frame to frame. So first and last frame and all the counter-re-framing had to fit as well. I did my best and framed M42 after focusing on a nearby star with my bartinov-mask. Then I hit the “run” button.
„#17: Return to M42 Orion Nebula“ weiterlesen05.12.2018
New aspect: Revisiting a target to improve quality and seeking for the next
Image acquisition:
Venus: This was a shot in hurry. On morning the 5th of December I set up the scope in a hurry to capture Venus. Polar alignment, balancing: All quick and dirty because of the limited amount of time. The result was a hard job to even find Venus with the scope and the attached webcam. After finding Venus I struggled with the right driver-settings. Venus was so incredible bright that even focussing was a nightmare. The bad polar alignment made I just worse. Venus, taken with a 3x barlow, hurried to leave the FOV whenever I thought that I got the settings right. Then I needed to reslew and start all over again. I managed to capture one video file with a very unstable Venus and an unclear focus.
„#16: Venus, Andromeda and the Orion Nebula“ weiterlesen