Finally managed to get out last night with the new QSI. Unfortunately the skies clouded over early on in the session however I did manage 7x5mins on the Cats Paw. For only a handful of subs I'm pretty happy with the new camera.
I've also been trying out the new version of Sequence Generator and I'm very impressed. It has all the functionality I need and seems to be a lot more robust than the earlier versions. I managed to get the plate solving working today. If this continues to work it will make imaging over multiple nights a lot easier.
Peter, a really nice image for only 35min exposure. One question though - the diffraction spikes on your bright stars are double to the right but appear single on the other three. Any suggestions?
Peter, a really nice image for only 35min exposure. One question though - the diffraction spikes on your bright stars are double to the right but appear single on the other three. Any suggestions?
Thanks Allan. The double spikes are probably misalignment of the spider vanes. Not sure how to diagnose or rectify at this stage though.
Peter during winter you can go to -30 on a lot of nights, but I mainly use -25. This means I can run darks during the morning if I need to replace my master dark. Flats can also be run at that too.
Very promising image, and it's a great camera isn't it? The noise is exceptionally low I think. I use -30C and cooler is operating around 75%.
The one-sided double spikes could be caused by being slightly out of focus. Your image doesn't looks like it's out of focus though, but I have seen that effect on occasion with my own gear if focus is not spot on so maybe it's worth checking.
My 583 was running at -20 at 50-70% over the last two nights. I should push it lower during the winter months. The better cooling on the 683 should help even more.
Thanks for all the feedback. I realised today that I was running the camera at -15C (must have got distracted during the set up). I will definately be trying lower temperatures during astrofest. I was also thinking a few more subs would improve the noise.
