DSI II pro first attempts

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

After much deliberation I lashed out and bought a DSI II pro. On the first night out 2 hours from home I realised I didn't have enough inward travel on the focuser. A week later in the back garden in Brisbane I captured these. I'm pretty happy with them - essentially straight out of the box with a slight focuser modification.

[mick pinner]

well done Peter, certainly enough detail in the images to tell your on the right track, maybe try just one object for a night and experiment with different settings and take notes to get a real feel for how the DSI works.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Looks like your having a ball with the DSI.

[h0ughy (David)]

gee wizz, if that is straight out of the box then I will definitely love your shots in the future

[Dr Nick (Nick)]

Nice, clear shots, i cant wait to see what they will look like with colour added!

[Ric]

Great looking images Peter, you have captured lots of great detail.
I am interested to know what setup you took them with and exposure times, focal ratio etc.

cheers

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Ric,

I took these through a GSO 10" f5 dob mounted on an EQ6 at prime focus. I used the IR blocking filter that comes with the camera.

The exposure was 5 seconds and each image is a stack of 50 exposures. I spent a bit of time drift aligning the scope first however the Envisage software takes care of a bit of mis-alignment when it stacks the image (on the fly). These images also have automatic dark frame subtraction that the software takes care of.

The camera settings were basically the default ones or those that are mentioned in the instructional DVD that comes with the camera. Despite the instructions being pretty basic, I'm impressed at how easy it is for someone with very little experience to get a reasonable image from this camera.

Peter

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Originally Posted by peter_4059

The camera settings were basically the default ones or those that are mentioned in the instructional DVD that comes with the camera. Despite the instructions being pretty basic, I'm impressed at how easy it is for someone with very little experience to get a reasonable image from this camera.

Peter

So, what's the secret to make it work correctly?
I even followed the tutorial as I did mine and it still didn't work!!!

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

I agree with some of the other posts I've seen on the forum that the software is difficult to get used to and the instructions are very vague.

I had the camera out last night and had more failures than successes although at the end of each capture session I had a nice image previewed on the screen. I think the thing I'm struggling most with is saving what I've captured, file types and post processing.

The good images I have captured were when I saved the image with the image stretched using the basic auto histogram as the image was being captured. My first few images were saved as JPEG's. Last night I tried to get clever and save the unstretched images as TIFF's for later post processing. When I checked out the files this morning it looks like I've lost all the details in all but one image (attached).

I have been using the Normal Operations save process with combine checked rather than trying to save all uncombined. The other thing I have been using is the two star alignment boxes.

[middy]

Great images Peter. What was the slight modification you made to the focuser? I only just have enough inward travel on my focuser (2 - 3 mm of travel left). This is on a Saxon 8" f6 Newtonian.

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

The focuser modification was to machine the flange off the 2" to 1 1/4" adaptor so it fits further into the focuser. I replaced the thumb screw with a grub screw. This gave me an additional 10mm if inward focuser travel. I've attached some before and after photos. The machined version now has the DSI nosepiece permanently fixed (with the grub screw).