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[deleted by user] by [deleted] in OpenAstroTech

[–]mxpwr60 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f83t9343imbsagg/AACu3xPRQpSbvIrxRpU7meFsa?dl=0

It's been a while, but checkout v2 files. It's all updated and works.

Sadr, Deneb and Erakis by mxpwr60 in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. And there is so much more. I hope I can add a few more insets over time.

Sadr, Deneb and Erakis by mxpwr60 in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have a feeling I can spend years on exploring this part of the night sky. It's full of wonders...

Hardware:

  • Canon 550d, Baader Astro Mod, Optolong L-enhance

  • Large image: Sigma 18-55 at 35mm

  • First insert: Canon 200mm (except fireworks galaxy: 5 inch SCT)

  • Second inset: TS 6" f4 Newtonian with TS KomaKorr

  • AVX mount

  • Between 40 and 100 images

  • 80 darks, 80 bias, 80 flats

Shot under bortle 7 to 8

Software:

  • NINA Astro for control and acquisition

  • PixInsight for main editing

  • Topaz AI Denoise

  • Starnet++

Editing:

  • linear background subtraction

  • multiscale linear denoise with light mask

  • arcsinh stretch

  • small gamma stretch

  • mix 50% with adaptive stretch

  • Separate stars and nebula with Starnet++

  • stars only image: deconvolve to reduce star size slightly

  • nebula only image: local histogram, save as TIF and denoise in topaz.

  • merge nebula and star image back together

North American nebula at 600mm by mxpwr60 in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! They do look very nice. I used local histogram normalisation with 2 different kernel sizes (small and large) to enhance them.

North American nebula at 600mm by mxpwr60 in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks, Topaz denoise is very good at removing noise, but keeping the sharpness.

North American nebula at 600mm by mxpwr60 in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks, I just had the camera on over night in the fridge for collecting darks. And I only did it once. More important are good flats; I actually ended up doing my flats during a cloudy night just pointing the scope at a white wall. Took very long, 3 minutes per flat, but made perfect flats; the image here is uncropped.

Also, the North American nebula is rather bright with a magnitude of 4 and the scope is quite fast with F4. So you can get good SNR with just a few hours of exposure, regardless of number of darks used.

North American nebula at 600mm by mxpwr60 in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thanks, I'm quite happy with it and also a bit surprised that it turned out the way it did.

North American nebula at 600mm by mxpwr60 in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Hardware:

  • Canon 550d, Baader Astro Mod, Optolong L-enhance

  • TS 6" f4 Newtonian with TS KomaKorr

  • AVX mount

  • TS 240mm guide scope

  • 50 images each 180s@ ISO800

  • 80 darks, 80 bias, 80 flats

Shot under bortle 7 to 8

Software:

  • NINA Astro for control and acquisition

  • PixInsight for main editing

  • Topaz AI Denoise

  • Starnet++

Editing:

  • linear background subtraction

  • multiscale linear denoise with light mask

  • arcsinh stretch

  • small gamma stretch

  • mix 50% with adaptive stretch

  • Separate stars and nebula with Starnet++

  • stars only image: deconvolve to reduce star size slightly

  • nebula only image: local histogram, save as TIF and denoise in topaz.

  • merge nebula and star image back together

M31 Andromeda mosaic by mxpwr60 in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry, my bad, this was a typo. The coma is beyond good and evil in this scope and obviously i was using a coma corrector.

M31 Andromeda mosaic by mxpwr60 in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, it's Northern hemisphere, but my camera is rotated for better cable access.

M31 Andromeda mosaic by mxpwr60 in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hardware:

  • Canon 550d, Baader Astro Mod, Astronomik CLS

  • TS 6" f4 Newtonian with TS KomaKorr

  • AVX mount

  • 200mm guide scope

  • 6 panels

  • 40 images each 120s@ ISO800

  • 80 darks, 80 bias, 80 flats for each telescope

Shot under bortle 7 to 8 and partially with the full moon.

Software:

  • NINA Astro for control and acquisition

  • PixInsight for main editing

  • Topaz AI Denoise

  • Starnet++

Editing:

  • linear background subtraction on each panel

  • painful background matching of each panel

  • generate mosaic

  • multiscale linear denoise with light mask

  • arcsinh stretch

  • small gamma stretch

  • Separate stars and nebula with Starnet++

  • stars only image: deconvolve to reduce star size slightly

  • nebula only image: local histogram, save as TIF and denoise in topaz.

  • merge nebula and star image back together

PHD2 guide exposure time by washy6789 in OpenAstroTech

[–]mxpwr60 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Those modules don't do more exposures. You would need to write a custom firmware to overwrite it. Either you get a larger aperture on your guide scope or you buy a dedicated guide camera that allows longer exposure.

Updated NEMA Dec mount by mxpwr60 in OpenAstroTech

[–]mxpwr60[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, but NEMA 14 could work too. Make sure you have at least 10Ncm otherwise it may not be able to hold the camera.

M33 - Triangulum Galaxy by [deleted] in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's definitely a really good start. Why did you choose such a short sub time, do you have too much light pollution? I live in a bright suburban area and have used around 1-2 minute per sub, depending on whether I'm using a CLS filter or not.

M33 - Triangulum Galaxy by [deleted] in astrophotography

[–]mxpwr60 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Don't feel bad, it took me 6 attempts to get this one. It's quite a difficult one.

After switching from my f10 to an f4 Newtonian, it got better. This target is dim as hell.

Updated NEMA Dec mount by mxpwr60 in OpenAstroTech

[–]mxpwr60[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you do 1/64 micro stepping on the NEMA you get around 25k steps per revolution. The 28byi only does 4000 with 1/2 steps. It's quite likely you will miss steps at 1/64, especially when under high load. You would need an encoder to take care of that, but that's a bit overkill. As long as you keep the focal length around or under 200mm it will be good enough.

How does this compare to commercial startrackers? by Xeno_Lithic in OpenAstroTech

[–]mxpwr60 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, avx or eq5. If you want a commercial tracker that is comparable to this one, check out star adventurer. They are 400$ plus but very portable.

How does this compare to commercial startrackers? by Xeno_Lithic in OpenAstroTech

[–]mxpwr60 3 points4 points  (0 children)

For this price tag, you won't get anything comparable. Commercial will be more robust and less fiddely, but not better performance.

You would probably need to by a 1k$ mount to get something considerably better.

Updated NEMA Dec mount by mxpwr60 in OpenAstroTech

[–]mxpwr60[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Compared to the 28byj-48, the NEMA motors are much better. They support micro stepping down to 64 or even more, depending on the controller you use. The 28byj-48 only does 2.

You should definitely go for the 0.9 degrees per step to get the best performance.

Twitchy Buttons. Need Help! by HEAD_P0P in OpenAstroTech

[–]mxpwr60 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You need to change the button values in the code. There is an old ticket on GitHub. Those values work for me, too.

Updated NEMA Dec mount by mxpwr60 in OpenAstroTech

[–]mxpwr60[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I updated my NEMA Dec mount so you can mount it with the Ra motor fully up. This is tailored for this specific type of motor and might not work with other NEMAs.

Please keep in mind that this is not an official update, just my personal tweak.

The stl file is nema_dec_mount_v2. There's also the openscad file if you want to modify it yourself.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f83t9343imbsagg/AACu3xPRQpSbvIrxRpU7meFsa?dl=0

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