Put out a QHY8 wanted ad here and on Atromart and on the QHYCCD yahoo group and you should pick one up for under a grand.
They regularly go for between $800 and $900.
I'm out at Mudgee, and sure, don't mind you dropping by to borrow the gear.
I'm off to UNE in armidale in the 2nd week of the school holidays, debating whether to take the camera with me, might be nice at that altitude. Anyone know if Armidale has good skies?
You are welcome to borrow it after that (or before if I don't take it), as I will have my exams and assignments due, so it will be removing temptation!
Do we have good skies?
As long as the cloud stays away I have lovely dark skies often with very good seeing. Bring your scope if it will fit in the car. Just remember to bring very warm clothes as well.
Looks like my comments to Chris just went through to the keeper. People ask why those of us who know a bit don't reply to threads.
This sums it up well.
Which comments? The ones about not buying a QHY8 or about the 8300 also being a good chip or something else? It has been a pretty busy thread and Chris only got back from a 9hr drive on Sunday night, so has been pretty flat out. I don't think you are being deliberately ignored, there just wasn't a lot to specifically reply to maybe, or he hasn't read and absorbed it all yet and is head-down bum up trying to come to grips with the camera.
I think Chris said he is looking at an 8300 as well in one of the posts, and he is only trying the QHY8 as I offered to loan him one.
The main point of the exercise is to see if it is worth spending his limited resources on stepping up to a dedicated cooled CCD camera of any description vs his DSLR, the QHY8 is a good way to try it and see. It will have similar performance to any other OSC cooled CCD, others may be a bit better or a bit worse, but the setup and use and results will be similar and help him decide whether to stick with the DSLR and spend money on something else, or purchase a cooled CCD of some description.
If going the CCD, the decision of *which* camera to buy will be a whole 'nother thread of agonising over choices I'm sure
I think Chris' main issue at the moment is with processing files with a wide dynamic range, and the hoops that have to be learned and jumped through. Some help in that arena would be appreciated from anyone, it isn't my strong-suit.
Do we have good skies?
As long as the cloud stays away I have lovely dark skies often with very good seeing. Bring your scope if it will fit in the car. Just remember to bring very warm clothes as well.
Thanks for the info. I think I will leave the camera with Chris though, and if the seeing is good try and improve my planetary imaging, and enjoy some visual for a change. That way I don't have to worry so much about getting alignment perfect in a strange land.
Thanks for the Heads up, I will be staying on Campus so will be a little way out of town at least.
Thanks for the info. I think I will leave the camera with Chris though, and if the seeing is good try and improve my planetary imaging, and enjoy some visual for a change. That way I don't have to worry so much about getting alignment perfect in a strange land.
Thanks for the Heads up, I will be staying on Campus so will be a little way out of town at least.
Contact me at the time if you want to come out to the uni's observatory
Which comments? The ones about not buying a QHY8 or about the 8300 also being a good chip or something else? It has been a pretty busy thread and Chris only got back from a 9hr drive on Sunday night, so has been pretty flat out. I don't think you are being deliberately ignored, there just wasn't a lot to specifically reply to maybe, or he hasn't read and absorbed it all yet and is head-down bum up trying to come to grips with the camera.
I think Chris said he is looking at an 8300 as well in one of the posts, and he is only trying the QHY8 as I offered to loan him one.
The main point of the exercise is to see if it is worth spending his limited resources on stepping up to a dedicated cooled CCD camera of any description vs his DSLR, the QHY8 is a good way to try it and see. It will have similar performance to any other OSC cooled CCD, others may be a bit better or a bit worse, but the setup and use and results will be similar and help him decide whether to stick with the DSLR and spend money on something else, or purchase a cooled CCD of some description.
If going the CCD, the decision of *which* camera to buy will be a whole 'nother thread of agonising over choices I'm sure
I think Chris' main issue at the moment is with processing files with a wide dynamic range, and the hoops that have to be learned and jumped through. Some help in that arena would be appreciated from anyone, it isn't my strong-suit.
Well Peter. Chris was not theonly one who drove 9 hours to get home on Saturday. I also made a 9 hour trip home from my holidays but managed to find the time to make a post which is informative and explained a lot of the reasons to avoid a qhy8. The posts in case were or appeared to be just ignored.
These posts are based on some years of working with the QHY range of cameras and to at least acknowledge them would have been just common courtesy. I have made the effort to help as many people as possible get the best from this range of cameras over the years.
Looks like the time has come to become one of the invisible minority here and leave it to the experts.
Well Peter. Chris was not theonly one who drove 9 hours to get home on Saturday. I also made a 9 hour trip home from my holidays but managed to find the time to make a post which is informative and explained a lot of the reasons to avoid a qhy8. The posts in case were or appeared to be just ignored.
These posts are based on some years of working with the QHY range of cameras and to at least acknowledge them would have been just common courtesy. I have made the effort to help as many people as possible get the best from this range of cameras over the years.
Looks like the time has come to become one of the invisible minority here and leave it to the experts.
I would say your post was appreciated and will be referenced when it comes time to buy. He isn't at that stage yet and was just keen to get started. Not all of us multitask all that well, and some like me are just scatterbrained and forget things. I often forget to acknowledge a post that isn't relevant to me today just because my brain works that way and I tend to laser in on what is relevant to me right now, or I get lost in the noise. I scan the posts quickly and might read them fully days or weeks later, especially when I'm in the middle of something.
I also post lots of times and the post isn't acknowledged, but I figure it either helped or didn't and that it may help others or the OP sometime in the future.
I don't take it personally if I don't get a response, I figure it is good to just throw whatever I know out there, how it gets picked up or used is at the whim of the universe.
I'm sure he will take it into account when the time to pull the trigger on a camera comes around, you know more about the QHY range than most.
I'm so sorry, it wasn't at all intentional that I didnt reply to you.
I did read your post about the temperature controlled versions and the Sony/8300 chip, to be honest, I immediately ran off and opened up another tab and checked up on a version I had my eye on before (I think its the Orion Parsec 8300 for about 2K) and then got distracted and didnt respond to you like I have done to others....
Likewise, when you mentioned Peter's camera and were addressing him, I absorbed what you were saying and in my mind I thought you were addressing Peter in any case. You did wish me well however, I should have responded to that regardless, sorry.
As you probably can see from my time here on IIS, I try to respond to everyone who posts in my threads, often by multiquoting their messages so I can keep the timeline accurate and use one reply to address many responses and thank people for their input.
On re-reading these, I realise I have indeed let your advice slip through to the keeper and for that I can only apologise.
I have read that other thread that discusses responses (or lack of them) on posts and it something I honestly never consciously do. Whenever I have input or comments, good or bad, I respond to the post, even posting when I think someone is looking for encouragement rather than let it slide and hope someone else might do the same. I also try, like you, to help out people who need advice on something that I know the answer to.
Peter is quite correct in his assumptions, since Saturday night, I have tried a LOT without success to process the QHY and DSLR data on M83 and have been all over the place reading advice here as well as the tutorials Peter posted as links. Add to that using Nebulosity & Startools and relearning that again and its been a bit hectic. I often come back to read updates here in between processing (or waiting for a pass to finish) but have been chopping and changing and not paying 100% attention.
I appreciate everyone's input, thank you for posting (even if its a bit too late now) and did not intentionally ignore or discount your advice, the simple answer is that it was purely an oversight.
Thank you also to Peter for defending me, you were pretty close to the mark and I appreciate your help in this as well as your generosity in lending me your camera to try out and research the suitability of it for my needs.
The good news is, I am slowly getting my head around processing out the vignetting (the dust remains ) but at least I am hoping to post a comparo 20 mins of M83 from the QHY8 side by side with 20 mins of the 1000D to see the difference. I will probably post it here, to keep things together.
Thanks so much to everyone who has contributed in this thread as well as my others, I do appreciate it all. If anyone else has missed my notice and I have forgotten or neglected to respond to your post, please let me know.
Back to processing, I am THIS close to getting some results that I am happy with. Fingers crossed....
Crack it open and give it a clean to get the last of that dust out.
Hopefully the processing is starting to make sense, and even more hopefully it will turn out to be worth the effort.
The other upside is I have found the secret of getting clear skies...lend your camera out!
I have another cracking night tonight, hope it is the same there.
Also, you may as well image M42 whilst you are at it, it is up early in the night, and it is a good candidate for comapring to an un-modded DSLR to show the difference in the Ha response, even though seeing may not be great due to its position, the colour compares will be worthwhile.
Oh, and don't feel guilty about having the camera, it is forcing me to finally learn to do planetary properly and sort out my image chain and alignment and all those other things I put off.
You may want to throw your captures into drop-box so others can have a go at processing them and compare to the results you get.
You can then get a better idea of how much is the equipment and capture, and how much is in the processing.
Yeah, I will probably do that once I finish processing this data, I got M104, NGC5128 (not much) and M83 sets to look at once I have a method sorted out.
Its a pity the moon is out, I thought last week that the forecast was for rain all this week, it seems the curse goes in reverse if you don't BUY the camera but borrow it instead
Yes, I trust you saw me sign up on Drop box, I am loathe to do that yet until I can post mine first, otherwise I might lose faith in my efforts.
I think once I post my comparo, I will drop both sets on there and let the mob loose on them to see how much can be extracted from them.
I have given up as I am not getting anywhere, again.
I can see some results, dont know what to do to finish them.
I have 20 mins of M83 QHY data as well as 20 mins of M83 1000D I will put on dropbox. I assume I can simply link to the folder to give anyone access? They are uploading now, so I dont know how long it will actually take for them to be ready.
I have also put two stacked versions of each camera as tiffs on there, both have NO flats, darks or bias frames so the comparo is identical for exposure length and simply lights.
Once they are uploaded and I can share them, anyone who wants to try processing them, feel free, and if you can, please document what processes were used, so I can attempt to reproduce your workflow with my software, I use Startools, nebulosity or PS CS3.
So much work on and not much quality sleep means I have no patience left to try anything different and once I fix something, I dont know the next step to say fix the noise from the DSLR,
Anyway, I will drop back once the files are on dropbox to give you the link. Peter, feel free to tell me how to use dropbox the right way, any tips would be good.
God my eyes are sore, and my brain hurts, I need sleep.
I'd start a new thread crying out for processing help and post the link in there, and see what people can come up with.
To share the files, put them in the dropbox public folder
Then Right-click the file, then choose Dropbox > Copy Public Link. This copies the Internet link to your file so that you can paste it here for all to access.
BTW, what is the spacing between the MPCC and the camera?
One other thing to remember is that you can probably take *much* longer exposures than you could with some DSLRs due to the deep well depth on the QHY8. I'd try some really long exposures as a separate exercise.
I've decided to leave the camera with you while I go to Armidale, so you can have it for an extra 10 days or so. Should give you a chance to do some more experimenting without killing yourself!
Yes, I might just do that rather than lose it in this thread. Good idea.
I havent used the MPCC on the QHY shots as it makes the coma worse as the spacing isnt right. I didnt even think it was going to be an issue when you asked me if I needed any spacers. D'oh!
I did use the MPCC on the DSLR though.
I used 20 mins per camera as a comparo, 4 x 5 min subs for the QHY8 and 10 x 2 mins @ISO 800 for the Canon.
Thanks for the bonus time! Its a pity the moon is full, but I will try some deeeeeeep shots hopefully on the weekend. I tend to get lost with the Nebulosity tutorials, so I might have another crack at those with just the QHY data after I post my please help process thread.
I think the thing thats killing me at the moment is the vignetting, so I will attempt some flats with the QHY so I dont have to process the hell out of the stacks to remove the gradients.
What is your suggestion on how to do flats (exposure time I spose...) with the T shirt method with the QHY?
I have posted a snapshot of the 20 min stacks below in JPG of the two cameras below so you can at least see what I mean. The Canon surprised me of how much it picked up considering its not modded.
These are both resized to 1024 x X and then saved as JPG at 85-90% to get under 200kb. Nothing else done to them since they were DSS stacked, so you can see how they came out of DSS.
Still feeling a bit embarrassed about what Doug said, hope he read and believed my response..., it definitely wasnt intentional.
That vignetting is severe, which scope do you have? I can post you up some spacers if you need them.
Uhhh yeah, it is, its the F5 200mm reflector. I find the UV/IR nosepiece is too small for the 2" focuser to grab it, so its in place but is inserted right down flush to the camera body so the focuser grabs the 2" flange flush with the camera. Maybe I need to remove the UV/IR nosepiece and just use the camera's short 10mm barrel.
When I put the coma corrector on, the spacing is wrong, so the coma is WORSE than without it.
Anything you can send me to build up spacing would be good, I realised all I have is 1.25" bits which dont work. DOH!
) but at least I am hoping to post a comparo 20 mins of M83 from the QHY8 side by side with 20 mins of the 1000D to see the difference. I will probably post it here, to keep things together.
, it definitely wasnt intentional.
