mattssporre

Lovely image, Pavel, A colorful greeting to the new year. BR Matts

Happy New Year Antonio! Very nice - I am a bit surprised to see this suposedly dark nebula being bright and colorful! BR Matts

Excellent image, only 52 degrees from a 72% moon - narrowband really is like magic BR Matts

Nice one Antonio! Are you putting together a VdB image catalogue BR Matts

"But the Wiki will never replace our manuals." I guess this means that we will see an update of the manuals in the near future? BR Matts

As usual top notch! BR Matts

Hi Mark, I too have loads of dew this time of the year, but I did not have to go down the heater road. I did some tests and it turned out that I managed using the ASA N10 fans (almost on full) in combination with a dew shield. I bought myself a dew shield for Celestron OTAs and cut a hole for the focuser. It works excellent - both as a dew shield and to block stray light. Maybe you have already tried this? BR Matts

Hello Ian, I use the fans to prevent dew from forming on the primary mirror. Where I live the humidity is a real problem in the fall when temperature starts to drop in the nights. One would think that the long tube would prevent the dew formation - but that is not so. From August I use the fan on 1-2 steps lower than max. From December or so most of the water is out of the air and I can go without the fans if I would like, but the fans not seem to do any harm so I usually leave them on. BR Matts

Very nice Gerhard! Did you bring your own eq to Namibia or did you use local eq? BR Matts

Why not have an option in AS that, when checked turns on the fan automatically? Maybe not as fancy but it would help me at least. BR Matts

Really great image, Gerhard! Only 1hr of L and 20m each for RGB - hard to believe you got this result from that small amount of data - really astonishing. BR Matts

Lovely image Bob! NII is a nice addition to the usual Ha, OIII, SII. Was the signal strong in NII? I guess you are using 3nm filters? BR Matts

MIchael, first check the Autoslew manual (page 20 - English version) regarding "Ignore futher slews in Pointing files" - it should be checked. Then check the helpfile in Maxim - Telescope tab, the heading is Auto-Center: There are three different ways of calibrating so that Maxim know in which direction and how much to move the mount (the most accurate being a plate solve using pinpoint, but there are two other methods). And remember to have your mount connected under the Observatory window. BR Matts

Gerhard, I tested it last night for the Ha-filter and the median value I had was correct. It is very easy to check the focus when you have the double spider vanes. If the OTA is not in focus an image of a bright star will produce double diffraction spikes (8 instead of 4). Thanks again for answering. BR Matts

Ok, so what you do then is 1. focus using FocusMax with the reference filter 2. use the median filter offset as found using CCDAP filter offset wizard to get e.g. the R-filter close to focus 3. take an image and check the FWHM on that image 4. move the focuser outwards and check the FWHM again 5. move to the other side of original focus and check the FWHM again BR Matts

Gerhard, thanks for the input - I have been thinking along the same lines. How do you go about to do the fine tuning by visual inspection? Any tips? BR Matts

Dear all, I am trying to find the filter offsets for my OK3Z focuser by using FocusMax and CCDAP5. In CCDAP5 there is a wizard that automatically will loop through a given number of series (L - R- G- B - Ha - SII - OIII), focus each filter and noting down the focuser position. One should do at least 5 loops. The offset is then measured with the L-filter as the reference. For a fast OTA (F3.6) the critical focus zone is only 9microns (CFZ = the zone within which it is not possible to measure a difference in focus). Thus I need to get the offset measurements for the different runs within 9microns. I now have 20 measurements for each filter. The problem is that the different measurements differ too much (more than 9microns). As an example here is the first 9 measurements for the R-filter: 156, 193, 181, 182, 174, 197, 185, 211,184. These are the value to add to the L-filter focus position in order to get the R-filter in focus. The min value is 156 and the max value is 211. The difference between these are 55 microns which is much more than 9microns (CFZ). Obviously if I add 156 or 211 to the L-filter position at least one of them will not give correct focus for the R-filter. I thought the OK3Z focuser was meant to be reliable and able to repeatable. Anyone else having this issue? Or do you have a repeatable OK3Z focuser? Is there a way to optimize it (adjusting some screws or something)? BR Matts

Hi Nigel, Yep - my mistake. BR Matts

Smart solution Nigel, What kind of focuser is that - it does not look like an ASA focuser, but you seem to have the Wynne corrector in the package? BR Matts

Really nice image Antonio! BR Matts

Super image Dave! I see that you binned the RGB images 1x1 as well as the L. "Normally" - not sure what is normal though - you bin L at 1x1 and RGB 2x2 OR use only RGB binned 1x1. Any particular reason for this way of combining? BR Matts

Wow - there is a lot of stars in that image Pavel! Normally I would have said that the stars compete too much with the nebula, but not for this one. The stars are many, but they are sharp and adds splendid colors. A top image. BR Matts

Lovely images Wolfgang! Have you been to Tivoli recently or is this data from past visits? I note that you shot M8 in IR - that is interesting. I have been thinking along the same lines. Which IR filter do yo use? How did you color map it into RGB? I guess you mapped OIII to blue (and/or green) and SII to red? BR Matts

Antonio, Lovely image! I like your new "series" of less imaged objects. It is nice to see some new objects. BR Matts

Thanks for answering Robert, I use Astrooptik... so maybe that is the difference and what makes my conf behave funny? I will try pots hub and see what happens. Any other suggestions out there? BR Matts