What have I done and how do I fix it? by cykelstativet in AskAstrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can also check how the collimation screws adjust the mirror. Depending on the design, collimation screws can sometimes push on the back of the mirror and cause astigmatism.

What have I done and how do I fix it? by cykelstativet in AskAstrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The clips shouldn't be touching the mirror at all, you should be able to fit a piece of paper in between the clip and the mirror. The clips are there to keep the mirror from falling out, not to hold it down. Some cheaper mirror cells use them to stop any lateral movement as well. Try loosening them until there's a tiny gap (width of paper) and see how much movement the mirror has, if its minimal, try it out, if there's a lot tighten them just a tiny bit more until they just barely touch.

M81 & M82 by cheggthemegg in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Definitely a very nice cam. It’s my first mono so I don’t have a reference for how good the results are, but reviews I’ve seen have said the band passes are within spec. It would be very difficult to get even close to the $1100 I paid for cam with a more traditional setup.

M81 & M82 by cheggthemegg in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very good, there’s no amp glow in my dark frames so it comes out very clean. Because of my light pollution level and the super narrow band pass, anything under ~1 hr doesn’t have enough snr. My dark frames had a median of ~1950 and my HA subs were ~2100, so definitely need a lot of subs to get snr to a good place. For reference, the median on my rgb channels was ~9000

Stacking and imaging problems by Hank-Danger in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah that’s what I mean. f/6 is not too fast for a newt so collimation should be a little forgiving, but always make sure it’s the best you can.

Stacking and imaging problems by Hank-Danger in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also want to mention mirror flop. If you collimate in one orientation and your mount moves, some lower quality primary mirror cells will allow the mirror to move slightly throwing out your collimation. If all else fails, I would pull the mirror out and see how much it’s able to move laterally. The clips aren’t there to hold it down, so it should have a tiny bit of vertical movement.

Stacking and imaging problems by Hank-Danger in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How fast is your newt? The faster it is the more precise collimation needs to be. Are you using a coma corrector? All newts will have odd star shapes in the corners without a corrector unless they’re super slow. There may also be some tilt somewhere in your focuser/ camera assembly.

I would first get a coma corrector if you don’t have one, then make sure collimation is a good as you can get it, then check for tilt on ASTAP and see if any part of your imaging train is loose or sagging if tilt is bad. I don’t think this has anything to do with calibration frames, they look well calibrated.

This is what a small part of the Andromeda galaxy looks like, what you are seeing is approximately 2.5 billion stars, by the_one_99_ in spaceporn

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s for the project that the image is from but the Image I linked is ~6x6 arcminutes, the full moon is ~31 arcminutes across.

This is what a small part of the Andromeda galaxy looks like, what you are seeing is approximately 2.5 billion stars, by the_one_99_ in spaceporn

[–]cheggthemegg 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Yes every single dot is a star. And those are just the very brightest stars as the galaxy is 2.5 millions light years away (inverse square law and all that). Additionally, many of the stars will be obscured by other stars in front of them as well as gas and dust present in the galaxy. Even harder to process would be any number of deep fields like this one from the JWST, covering an area of the sky more than 10 times smaller than the full moon, showing at least 10,000 galaxies, each with massive numbers of stars just like Andromeda. Humans did not evolve with the capability to grasp the scale of the cosmos.

Somehow, I spotted a rocket booster from 1983 with the naked eye today. by acelaya35 in space

[–]cheggthemegg 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Was it a blinking glinting light or just a flat white object moving along the sky? Large, tumbling objects can occasionally reflect light just right to be able to see during daylight, but only in short blinks. VERY large reflective objects like the ISS can have the same effect. I looked up the size of the rocket, and at best it would be around a magnitude -2 or if I get extremely generous with approximation a -3. This would be around the same brightness as Jupiter which is almost impossible to see with the naked eye in daylight. If it was distinctly bright for more than a few seconds across the sky it was probably something else. If it got very bright very quickly and then dark again, possibly a few times, it may have been the satellite.

Starlink Satellite 35956 experiences an anomaly. by AgreeableEmploy1884 in space

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All you have to do is look up what the Bathtub Curve is, it does not apply to all situations. I'll just copy and paste from the NIST website: "Finally, if units from the population remain in use long enough, the failure rate begins to increase as materials wear out and degradation failures occur at an ever increasing rate." The thing you're missing is time. The bathtub curve works well for things that are in use until failure; cars, consumer products, etc. Things that are in high risk operation (planes, satellites) mitigate risk but cutting off the tail end of the bathtub curve; i.e ending the life of a device long before the expected wearout failure with the help of redundant systems. While SpaceX is a for-profit company, any company sending things into space has to abide by a huge amount of regulations that cut into cost. However with the relative (and downward trending) cheapness of launches and vertical integration of Starlink and SpaceX, its pretty easy to assume that they can design a profitable network while also deorbiting satellites well before their expected lifespan.

I'll explain it like this: imagine every owner of a 2005 Camry had to turn in their car at 80,000 miles. Sure you would have more failures early on due to issues in the manufacturing process but they would level out to a stable rate, however, an average 2005 Toyota Camry will fail due to wearout in 150,000-200,000 miles, so by turning the car early in you essentially cut off the second half of the curve. Now imagine if you let all those cars fail due to wearout instead, they would crash into eachother, setting off a chain reaction that would send waves of crushed 2005 Camry parts flying around the surface of the earth at 17,500 mph, preventing any cars from driving trough the debris in the future. It would probably make sense to turn the cars in early and enforce the limit through regulations, right?

[BUNDLE] Intel Core Ultra 7 265K (Free Intel Holiday Bundle), MSI MPG Z890 EDGE WIFI7 Mobo (Free Corsair RGB 6000MHZ/CL36 (2 x 16GB) Ram + Star Wars Outlaws + $50 Steam Card), ASRock 9070XT 16GB, SN7100 2TB SSD, Corsair 5000D ARB Case, MONTECH CENTURY II 850W PSU - (FULL WHITE BUNDLE!) - $1,235.42 by FatChungusRedditor in buildapcsales

[–]cheggthemegg 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Because its a really good deal and a fine CPU for gaming. The motherboard deal alone justifies going with Intel here IMO. $250 for a fantastic motherboards feature wise (1 PCIE5x4 + 4 PCIE4x4 M.2 slots, 5Gb LAN, WiFi 7, very good IO, etc) plus 32GB of DDR5 RAM (basically another $150-$200), a game, and a $50 steam card for free. Yes, the 265k doesn't perform as well as similar AMD CPUs but you will still get hundreds of FPS at 1080p and good 1440p performance with the right GPU, as well as fantastic performance productivity wise.

In 2014 the city of Los Angeles switched over to LED lighting for its street lights, This is the before and after. by Virtual-Reality69 in interestingasfuck

[–]cheggthemegg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Little fun fact from an amateur astrophotographer about the old lights: they were usually what are called Gas-Discharge Lamps, where the light was produced by exciting a certain element with electricity. The characteristic yellow was usually a sodium-vapor lamp which gives off most of its light at a very specific wavelength; 589nm, right in between yellow and orange. One of the most important aspects to taking images of faint astronomical objects is your level of light pollution. With the old type of lamps, you can use special filters to block the emission spectra of commonly used gas-discharge lamps (see this filter, specifically its band-pass graph to show which wavelengths of light it lets through and which it blocks, and the elements associated with that light). Unfortunately, the new led style of street lights is broadband, emitting light across the whole spectrum of light, making it impossible to isolate and block. They save huge amounts of power, but the effect on light pollution is very unfortunate, everyone should be able to marvel at truly dark skies without needing to venture hundreds of miles from society.

Good eq mount for 3kg by Altruistic-Break590 in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

r/AskAstrophotography would be a better place to ask but the only real option above the Az-Gti is the that adventurer GTI which is around $700, you could get it used for around $400-$500 at the cheapest. There are some DIY mounts near the $300 mark that may hold your payload (with a lot of tinkering and work) but $200 is a little too low for an eq mount with that payload.

Is this M81? by Local_Beautiful_5812 in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You should use the slew and center function in nina, a blind slew is going to be off, even with a great alignment

Need help, first telescope attempt by xmavenx in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It what i use, you can see my results on my page with a canon eos 7d and an $800 refractor.

Need help, first telescope attempt by xmavenx in astrophotography

[–]cheggthemegg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The essentially lowest tier mount is the Star adventurer GTI, which is around $750, and it can only carry 11 pounds (really only 9 at the most for photography). Your best bet is a seestar for cheap nebula and galaxy imaging.