Astrofest Dump

[that_guy (Tony)]

Back from an exhausting 5 days at astrofest. Had an AWESOME time and got to catch up with many people (who apparently still remember me from 2010 astrofest ) and made some new buds. The first night there was ok until around 12am where it got cloudy, apparently it cleared up after a few hours but I was too tired from the drive up to wait it out. The second day was an absolute CRACKER of a night. The clouds cleared around sunset with crisp and dry night all the way until twilight. First time imaging from 6pm to 6am 12 hour run! Most of the images were taken on this night.

Now on the the not so fun part, I've been having issues with some of the images I've gotten as well as problem with some of the settings on the QHY8, so if anyone has any solutions to these problems that would be great. If you look closely at bright stars (they're also in all other stars but more visible in the brighter ones), theres a black streak going in one direction of the image, (they all go in the same direction). Not quite sure what they are, asked a couple of folks at astrofest but noone seems to know.

Also, I'm getting very blown out stars and cores with the current settings on my QHY8 (0 gain and 125 offset as per the manual). All the frames were 5 min and all sometimes, the stars come out colourless and blown out as white circles. If anyone knows whats the optimal setting for the QHY8 using APT, thatd also help.

I'm not quite sure how to downsize images without horrible compression loss so I'll link the astrobin urls. They are also works in progress as I've just arrived from the event and all tuckered out. Will reprocess when I've recovered.



Andromeda Galaxy
Horsehead nebula
Dumbbell Nebula
Western Veil
Running Chicken
Nebula
Helix Nebula

[doppler (Rick)]

You've got some great images there, plenty of data to play with. As far as saving the pics here I find that its best to resize first to about 1280 x 800, then reduce the quality and save to the 200kb size.

[RickS (Rick)]

A nice collection, Tony. The black lines look a little like the horizontal blooming that you see on a KAF-8300 when binned with too much gain. Might be reduced or removed when you get the gain and offset right? I've not used a QHY8 so I can't offer any suggestions on that.

Cheers,
Rick.

[that_guy (Tony)]

most of the images were taken with gain at 0%, i dont think i could get it any lower aha.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Good set of pictures. From memory the black streaks on bright stars I had with my QHY9 were sorted by having clamping on in the settings. Not sure about the QHY8 as mine is the very first model that came out (square body) and I don't recall having this issue on stars. The only banding I might have got was on very hot nights and during readout in fast download mode or busy USB traffic so I'd pause the guider while downloading the subs and added ferrite blocks to the USB leads.

[that_guy (Tony)]

Redid Andromeda, now it actually resembles a galaxy! wasnt sure if i was going to upload the helix since the focus was off but here it is aha

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Originally Posted by that_guy

Redid Andromeda, now it actually resembles a galaxy! wasnt sure if i was going to upload the helix since the focus was off but here it is aha

Yes, that looks better. Glad to see someone having a go at this object given it is much higher in the sky for you than it is for us poor southerners! Despite the slight off focus, your Helix still came out well. Sounds like you got some great conditions to be able to shoot for nearly 12 hrs. I'm very envious.

[gaseous (Patrick)]

Great images Tony, you have to be happy with those. Out of curiosity, how does the Astrofest site compare to Wyaralong Dam as a dark-sky site? Orders of magnitude better?

[that_guy (Tony)]

I'd say its much better. Though its not just the sky conditions, its the company . you learn so much just by being there over various nights. You get less sky glow from gold coast but theres still a bit of LP from bris. I think its worth it. Weather that far out west is usually good too and having onsite power helps plenty as well.

[gaseous (Patrick)]

Cheers, sounds good.