Go Back   IceInSpace > Equipment > Astrophotography and Imaging Equipment and Discussions

Reply
 
Thread Tools Rate Thread
  #41  
Old 29-04-2021, 07:56 AM
SB (Chris)
Registered User

SB is offline
 
Join Date: Oct 2019
Location: Lake Macquarie NSW
Posts: 273
Having read this thread and done some practical experiments I was almost ready to go to Mono. Now I just discovered that it is best practice to do flats for each filter for each session. Well that is a major put-off for me!! With OSC I have been using the same flats for 12 months and working well. Perhaps the 2600mc is the way to go after all!

Chris
Reply With Quote
  #42  
Old 29-04-2021, 08:21 AM
The_bluester's Avatar
The_bluester (Paul)
Registered User

The_bluester is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kilmore, Australia
Posts: 3,342
While it is best practice, it is not 100% essential if your image train is not disassembled. I am using Voyager and it can automate sky flats very well so I shoot them in the morning after each session with the ASI2600 camera as they can be calibrated with bias frames where the ASI294 really needed dark-flats and fixed exposure length flat frames, so that required a flat panel. With that camera I shot flats with the panel once I was happy with target framing and used the same master flat until I changed something such as camera angle, or if I disassembled the image train given the chance of changed dust bunnies that comes with doing that.

Once you get up to speed with them flats are not hard to do, they can just become part of your routine.
Reply With Quote
  #43  
Old 29-04-2021, 08:54 AM
Karlz's Avatar
Karlz (Karl)
Registered User

Karlz is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2021
Location: Lake Macquarie
Posts: 170
I'm also in the same boat Chris, looking to go mono so I can get a better range of colour than what my OSC with l-extreme gets. It feels I'm limited to a certain range when processing although in saying that I can extract Ha and Oiii with APP but seeing some mono imagery my mind goes I want to produce that.

I take it Paul you have a permanent set up?
Reply With Quote
  #44  
Old 29-04-2021, 08:57 AM
AdamJL
Registered User

AdamJL is offline
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
Posts: 2,100
Quote:
Originally Posted by SB View Post
Having read this thread and done some practical experiments I was almost ready to go to Mono. Now I just discovered that it is best practice to do flats for each filter for each session. Well that is a major put-off for me!! With OSC I have been using the same flats for 12 months and working well. Perhaps the 2600mc is the way to go after all!

Chris
geez, I hope you have a permanent setup!!
Reply With Quote
  #45  
Old 29-04-2021, 10:51 AM
SB (Chris)
Registered User

SB is offline
 
Join Date: Oct 2019
Location: Lake Macquarie NSW
Posts: 273
Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamJL View Post
geez, I hope you have a permanent setup!!
Hi Adam,
Thanks for your comment.

I rarely take the imaging train apart but if I do I remove dust and clean filters and lenses. However having said that I now realise I should take Flats each time this happens!

I'm working on a system that can transport my scope and imaging train intact when I go out to Bortle 1 as I dislike reassembly out in the paddock and there is no risk of me forgetting stuff!.

I have the whole kit mounted indoors and carry it out in sections. The Scope and imaging train stays intact and is 11.5Kg so OK to carry in one piece.

Chris.
Reply With Quote
  #46  
Old 29-04-2021, 03:39 PM
DiscoDuck's Avatar
DiscoDuck (Paul)
Raider Nation

DiscoDuck is offline
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Adelaide
Posts: 691
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nikolas View Post
You missed my point I think
I personally use an osc camera because of my limited time for image acquisition and the crap weather Melbourne serves up. No time to acquire 4 times the time to acquire an image with different filters, what takes me hours would take me weeks with a mono camera.

I respectfully disagree that it takes 4 times the time. With luminance, you're capturing (for a broadband target e.g. galaxy) photons at 3 x the rate of an OSC camera, as each pixel in the OSC is rejecting 2/3 of the photons hitting it (even before QE). So with some basic colour data to colourise it, I'd argue that you can take the same or better quality image in perhaps even less total time with a mono camera than an OSC one. Leastways for a deep enough image that that extra L depth makes up for the RGB capture time.



Of course, if clouds come in before you get a complete set of data then you're stuffed, whereas with an OSC you can process what you've got :-)
Reply With Quote
  #47  
Old 30-04-2021, 08:39 AM
alpal's Avatar
alpal
Registered User

alpal is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 3,602
I went straight from a Canon EOS 1000d DSLR to
a QHY-9 mono and the difference is amazing.
All with an 8" f6 Newt.



DSLR pic of the Hamburger galaxy:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/247194...in/photostream


QHY-9 mono pic of the same target:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/247194...n/photostream/


Close up crop with QHY-9
https://www.flickr.com/photos/247194...n/photostream/
Reply With Quote
  #48  
Old 01-06-2021, 09:30 AM
toc's Avatar
toc (Tim)
Registered User

toc is offline
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Victoria
Posts: 826
To a large degree it comes down to personal preference, and the enjoyment you get out of the whole end to end process.

I went from modded DSLR to a ZWO 1600MM and filters, and while there is a huge difference in the data you can get, the mono workflow is much more involved and you have many more elements in the 'chain' to get right.

I added a ASI533 OSC about a month ago with various filters (IDAS NBZ and optolong l-pro) and the workflow is sooo much easier and huge amounts of fun with the RASA8.

For dimmer objects in my bortle 6 skies I can start to see the limitations, so I will go back to mono at some point, but I can definitely recommend OSC for the fun value
Reply With Quote
  #49  
Old 01-06-2021, 10:06 PM
mswhin63's Avatar
mswhin63 (Malcolm)
Registered User

mswhin63 is offline
 
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Para Hills, South Australia
Posts: 3,620
It appears that a good OSC could be the best intermediate step camera from a DSLR.
How long do you think the sky can dish up OSC targets before frustration settles in to get the really faint ones?


Quote:
Originally Posted by toc View Post
To a large degree it comes down to personal preference, and the enjoyment you get out of the whole end to end process.

I went from modded DSLR to a ZWO 1600MM and filters, and while there is a huge difference in the data you can get, the mono workflow is much more involved and you have many more elements in the 'chain' to get right.

I added a ASI533 OSC about a month ago with various filters (IDAS NBZ and optolong l-pro) and the workflow is sooo much easier and huge amounts of fun with the RASA8.

For dimmer objects in my bortle 6 skies I can start to see the limitations, so I will go back to mono at some point, but I can definitely recommend OSC for the fun value
Reply With Quote
  #50  
Old 01-06-2021, 11:30 PM
toc's Avatar
toc (Tim)
Registered User

toc is offline
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Victoria
Posts: 826
Quote:
Originally Posted by mswhin63 View Post
It appears that a good OSC could be the best intermediate step camera from a DSLR.
How long do you think the sky can dish up OSC targets before frustration settles in to get the really faint ones?
I'm starting to hit the wall a bit - I'm trying targets like the Lobster Nebula and struggling to get good results, but I want to get a lot more data and use longer exposures before I give up. I think the lobster probably needs many hours of data to start to look good.
Reply With Quote
  #51  
Old 02-06-2021, 06:12 AM
The_bluester's Avatar
The_bluester (Paul)
Registered User

The_bluester is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kilmore, Australia
Posts: 3,342
Quote:
Originally Posted by mswhin63 View Post
It appears that a good OSC could be the best intermediate step camera from a DSLR.
How long do you think the sky can dish up OSC targets before frustration settles in to get the really faint ones?

With the current crop of OSC, I am not really sure that applies. I imaged a very faint target with my OSC (ASI2600) to see how it would perform and it was pretty pleasing to say the least, link below. Now while I am waiting for my mono camera to arrive I have been using it with NB filters in my filter wheel. I have everything set up and good to go for mono imaging, except the camera itself.



https://www.astrobin.com/full/317xg3/B/
Reply With Quote
  #52  
Old 02-06-2021, 12:03 PM
mswhin63's Avatar
mswhin63 (Malcolm)
Registered User

mswhin63 is offline
 
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Para Hills, South Australia
Posts: 3,620
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_bluester View Post
With the current crop of OSC, I am not really sure that applies. I imaged a very faint target with my OSC (ASI2600) to see how it would perform and it was pretty pleasing to say the least, link below. Now while I am waiting for my mono camera to arrive I have been using it with NB filters in my filter wheel. I have everything set up and good to go for mono imaging, except the camera itself.



https://www.astrobin.com/full/317xg3/B/
Thanks for the input, I think one of the issues I have, firstly cost, still working on that one. I think the other just recently thought of is the quality of the lens in use. I have small not mostly noticeable some colour fringing. I feel this may work well with mono and filtering.

Personally, this is becoming a hard decision. The Banking Royal Commission has made it too difficult to consolidate my loans and give me the ability to afford a more progressive buying option. Still have to stick with the DSLR for a while.
Reply With Quote
  #53  
Old 02-06-2021, 08:31 PM
DRCORTEX (Lance)
Neo - as in Dr Neo Cortex

DRCORTEX is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Mt Druitt
Posts: 204
Quote:
Originally Posted by mswhin63 View Post
It appears that a good OSC could be the best intermediate step camera from a DSLR.
How long do you think the sky can dish up OSC targets before frustration settles in to get the really faint ones?
I totally agree. For a newbie, something like a RASA8, and a 294MC, will have them jumping for joy in no time. But then, you want more, so you go F/6 with OSC, great, then you want more, and then, it gets interesting. I am nowhere that yet, hard enough F/6

Cheers

Lance
Reply With Quote
  #54  
Old 02-06-2021, 08:37 PM
DRCORTEX (Lance)
Neo - as in Dr Neo Cortex

DRCORTEX is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Mt Druitt
Posts: 204
Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamJL View Post
geez, I hope you have a permanent setup!!
Same here, flats at this, flats at that. Spent days doing darks and flats to accomondate every possible scenarion from 30s to 6 mins. How on earth do some of these guys take flats/darks for exposures that I have seen are 30 mins for a single frame ?

Cheers,

Lance
Reply With Quote
  #55  
Old 02-06-2021, 10:16 PM
Nikolas's Avatar
Nikolas (Nik)
Dazed and confused

Nikolas is offline
 
Join Date: May 2012
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 3,253
Quote:
Originally Posted by DRCORTEX View Post
Same here, flats at this, flats at that. Spent days doing darks and flats to accomondate every possible scenarion from 30s to 6 mins. How on earth do some of these guys take flats/darks for exposures that I have seen are 30 mins for a single frame ?

Cheers,

Lance

Flats are only taken once per session for each filter, the exposure of the lights bear no difference to the flats, the flats are only used to calibrate the image train.
Reply With Quote
  #56  
Old 03-06-2021, 06:23 AM
The_bluester's Avatar
The_bluester (Paul)
Registered User

The_bluester is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kilmore, Australia
Posts: 3,342
What Nik said. Flats are a once per session thing and if you have a setup that makes dawn or dusk flats possible, or a panel of some sort they are pretty quick and easy to get. Darks are a once a year sort of proposition where you seal it up light tight, cool it down and shoot 50 or so of each exposure, temperature, gain and offset you plan to use to generate a set of master darks that you then use until there is sign of changes sneaking in.

I am making that sound probably more complex than it needs to be. With my ASI2600 I run -10 sensor temp year round as it can maintain that year round and going deeper than that on the cooling does not make much difference, and I only ever run gain 0 or gain 100, and everything is with an offset of 50, so I really only need to shoot two sets of darks, gain 0 and gain 100, all at -10 degrees and offset 50.
Reply With Quote
  #57  
Old 03-06-2021, 07:11 AM
Startrek (Martin)
Registered User

Startrek is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Sydney and South Coast NSW
Posts: 5,990
Paul,
I’m interested to know how your going to set up your new 2600MM in your newt
Are you using a ZWO filter drawer as a filter wheel will be like a dead elephant hanging off the side front of the newt.
Also the only way to maintain approx 55mm between coma corrector and sensor is to go Camera > spacer > coma corrector > filter drawer > 24mm spacer adapter. That arrangement also has the camera out on a “mast” on a yacht too
At the moment my set up for the 2600MC on both my newts is Camera > adapters > 1mm spacer ring > Baader MPCC CC > 2” L Extreme filter. This arrangement is ok as the camera is not sticking out to far like a mast.
Await your advise and set up
Of course the above is irrelevant if your not using a conventional newt but using an RC , CDK or SCT etc... where everything hangs off the rear like a refractor
I thought you bought a conventional 8” f4 newt ??
Cheers
Martin
Reply With Quote
  #58  
Old 03-06-2021, 08:33 AM
The_bluester's Avatar
The_bluester (Paul)
Registered User

The_bluester is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kilmore, Australia
Posts: 3,342
It is a fairly standard 10" F4, the upgraded amount to better mounting of the primary, an upgraded secondary and spider, a Moonlite focuser and a carbon fibre tube. For the mono I have the new 7 X 36mm filter wheel (which is currently attached to my OSC 2600) it works well and at least on my iOptron CEM70 mount the imbalance with the FW is hanging out to one side does not seem to upset it at all, and it clears all the moving parts.

I actually think that people obsess far too much about balance, there is an iOptron Facebook group I am on and it has endless rounds of questions and answers about balance and adding tiny little weights to 3D balance the scope/mount so that no matter where you point it the thing is perfect and just sits there, but in my experience so long as it does not swing free and smash in to something when you release it or have such an imbalance that you can hear a difference when slewing one direction and the other, it makes no measurable difference to guiding.

Pics added of the setup.
Attached Thumbnails
Click for full-size image (DB7AD9C4-CAF5-4593-86B2-5236EE064D2A.jpeg)
31.1 KB29 views
Click for full-size image (EBA325D8-A5B4-41C3-BA8A-75F8C5FAA438.jpeg)
25.6 KB24 views

Last edited by The_bluester; 03-06-2021 at 10:19 AM.
Reply With Quote
  #59  
Old 03-06-2021, 08:45 AM
Startrek (Martin)
Registered User

Startrek is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Sydney and South Coast NSW
Posts: 5,990
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_bluester View Post
It is a fairly standard 10" F4, the upgraded amount to better mounting of the primary, an upgraded secondary and spider, a Moonlite focuser and a carbon fibre tube. For the mono I have the new 7 X 36mm filter wheel (which is currently attached to my OSC 2600) it works well and at least on my iOptron CEM70 mount the imbalance with the FW is hanging out to one side does not seem to upset it at all, and it clears all the moving parts.

I actually think that people obsess far too much about balance, there is an iOptron Facebook group I am on and it has endless rounds of questions and answers about balance and adding tiny little weights to 3D balance the scope mount so that no matter where you point it the thing is perfect and just sits there, but in my experience so long as it does not swing free and smash in to something when you release it or have such an imbalance that you can hear a difference when slewing one direction and the other, it makes no measurable difference to guiding.

Pics added of the setup.
Nice set up and a pier mount too, very stable
Did you buy your carbon newt from Paul and Diego at Sidereal ?
Reply With Quote
  #60  
Old 03-06-2021, 09:21 AM
The_bluester's Avatar
The_bluester (Paul)
Registered User

The_bluester is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kilmore, Australia
Posts: 3,342
And the pier is on about 1.1 cubic meters of concrete in the ground.

I got it very indirectly from Diego. He built it some years ago and it has been through at least two owners since then, not including Diego himself.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT +10. The time is now 06:30 AM.

Powered by vBulletin Version 3.8.7 | Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Advertisement
Bintel
Advertisement
Testar
Advertisement