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Can't find camera
3
My 660wsg has functioned flawlessly since 2014. I use it with maxil d.6.28 I'm starting to get messages can't open camera. The usb plug and socket seems ok on inspection, but sometimes I can get it to function by removing and reinserting the plug in the camera, but with increasing rarity. Change of USB cable does not seem to help. Any suggestions. Is a new socket a spare part that is obtainable? Could it be a software problem? Morten
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NGC 80 galaxy group image
8
This is an image of the NGC 80 galaxy group in Andromeda which has 13 confirmed members at an approximate distance of 260M light-years. NGC 80 is the large, bright lenticular galaxy to the upper right and is the ¡°lead¡± member of the group based on its size and brightness. The lenticular galaxy to its lower-left has some unusual shell/disk structures of dust and gas. The two most striking galaxies below center are undergoing tidal interaction - NGC 90 is the distorted blue spiral galaxy and NGC 93 is the reddish, dusty spiral galaxy below it. The image was captured during 3 nights in October 2023 under average conditions using a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB integration of 20 hours. https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/NGC90_LRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.
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My QSI 532 died, and I replaced it with a used 632. The latter has a variable gain that defaults to "high". I need to change this to Auto. The manual says this has to be changed in the driver and describes using SGP to access that. I don't have SGP and can't find a download for it. In maxim set-up the gain is grayed out. Solution needed. Thanks Bruce
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QSI 532 ws loose shutter capstan
4
Hello, It appears the shutter capstan drive on my QSI 532ws has come loose and it no longer turns the shutter. I contacted Atik service and learned that they stopped servicing 500 series QSI cameras in 2018 and they could not tell me what tool (possibly allen wrench) or size to use to tighten the shutter drive capstan. Up to now the camera has predictably provided great results and it would be extremely disappointing not to use it going forward. I would greatly appreciate learning from anyone who has had a similar issue and has knowledge of what tool and size is needed to tighten the capstan. Sincerely, Phillip
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QSI683 Overscan region
4
Dear All, Do you know if the QSI683 has an overscan area and how to get access to it? Thanks -- Nicola Sky Monsters - http://www.skymonsters.net Skype: betelgeuse368
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Sh2-135 image
4
This is an image of Sh2-135 in Cepheus. It's an emission nebula that isn't often imaged and then usually with wider field setups that also show some neighboring LBN objects. I only added it to my target list recently after seeing someone else's image and noticing there was some structural detail that would work with a long focal length setup. The image was captured during 5 nights in August-September 2023 under fair to average conditions while dodging summer monsoons.. Image acquisition was done with a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LHaRGB integration of 26.8 hours. https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/Sh2-135_Lum_HaRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.
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I have been using my trusty 6120 now for more than 6 years. It still works quite well! I have recently upgraded my Observatory computer and am re-installing all of my software and drivers. I am running an Eagle5S - and basically using NINA and TheSkyX to control my telescopes and cameras. I have a dual OTA/Camera setup - Stellervue 80/QHY268, and Stellervue 130/QSI6120. I have just loaded and installed what I am assuming are the most current QSI drivers - QSIInstaller-2020.07.30 (2021_10_28 12_27_48 UTC) NINA seems to work quite well with the ASCOM drivers which are easily accessible. However, when I go into TheSkyX there are no longer any "native" driver options available. For the SkyX, I used to have access to a native QSI driver - which, when installed, gave me the ability (in the SkyX) while using @Focus3 to download frames at either "high-quality" or "fast". This option, with the ASCOM driver, does not seem to be present. This is likely more a Software Bisque issue than a QSI driver issue, but I just thought that others on this forum might have run across this same issue. ALSO - I am curious about which gain setting is the most appropriate in the ASCOM interface. I have read that HIGH (or 0 in NINA) gain is for 1x1 binning - and that LOW (or 1 in NINA) is for 2x2 binning. Thank you for any help/advice on these matters. bob
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Sh2-82, "Little Cocoon" nebula
4
This is an image of Sh2-82 in Sagitta, sometimes called the "Little Cocoon" nebula. It is a combination emission and reflection nebula located about 3600 light-years away. Its location in the sky places it in a very dense region of the Milky Way with an overwhelming number of field stars. For that reason, I chose to suppress the field stars in order to focus attention on the nebula itself. The image was captured during 4 nights in June 2023 under fair to average conditions. Image acquisition was done with a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LHaRGB integration of 19.5 hours. https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/Sh2_82_HaLRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.
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CEDIC Team goes Namibia - Part#11 (Nebulae in Oph)
3
Hello group, ¡®Nebulae in Ophiuchus¡¯ is the topic of part #11 of our image presentation, where we want to share the results from our astrophotography-trip to DeepSkySafaris in Namibia. At the border between the constellations Ophiuchus and Scorpius we find a very well known and often photographed object complex: the Ophiuchus Molecular Cloud. It is one of the closest star forming regions with a distance of only 400 light years. The colorful region is known for its large number of reflection-, emission- and dark nebulae. To conclude our series, we also show a Milky Way mosaic of 34 parts, made over 4 years in the northern and southern hemisphere by Bernhard Hubl. Milky Way mosaic: http://www.astrophoton.com/milky_way_2022-06-02.htm B 44 with Baader Apo95: http://www.astrophoton.com/B044.htm IC 4603 with Vixen FL55SS: http://celestialphotographer.com/namibia%20-ic%204603%20wf%20vixen.htm M 16 with Esprit 100: http://celestialphotographer.com/namibia%20-%20messier%2016%20esprit100.htm M 16 wide-field with Vixen FL55SS: http://celestialphotographer.com/namibia%20-messier%2016%20wf%20vixen-.htm Overview on all results from Namibia 2022 including background information: http://www.cedic.at/namibia2022/index.php http://www.astrophoton.com/namibia2022.htm https://celestialphotographer.com/namibia%202022.htm Important CEDIC conference news: Save the date for CEDIC¡¯24! Location: Linz (Austria) Date: March 22-24 2024 We are working on the agenda and have already secured some high-class speakers for CEDIC'24, including our key speaker Russell Croman. Greetings from CEDIC-Team Markus Blauensteiner Bernhard Hubl www.cedic.at www.ccdguide.com www.deepskysafaris.com
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I took this one at the July New Moon weekend. It was a little tricky to process and I thank Niall MacNeill and Dean Carr for helpful comments on a preliminary version. The picture is here: https://www.astrobin.com/2bl82f/ Instrument details: Tele Vue NP101is, QSI 540wsg, Astro-Physics 900GTO Processed in PixInsight FOV: 85' x 60' (cropped)
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Sh2-106, "hourglass" nebula
Sh2-106, the "hourglass" nebula, is a small emission nebula in Cygnus. Because of its small size and dual-lobed shape, it looks like a planetary nebula. But instead, it's an emission nebula driven by a massive, very young star in its center, hidden in amateur images by opaque dust. In addition to ionizing the surrounding gas, the star also emits jets of ionized material from its poles, clearing out much of the gas in those areas to form the bipolar structure of the nebula. Studies have shown the nebula is also host to several hundred brown dwarfs, protostars with too little mass to sustain nuclear fusion. The image was captured during 7 nights in June 2023 under fair to average conditions. Image acquisition was done with a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LHaRGB integration of 21 hours. https://www.coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/Sh2_106_LHaRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.
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Arp 105, "the guitar"
6
This image shows the central part of the Abell 1185 cluster of galaxies in Ursa Major. The cluster is roughly 450M light-years away and contains 80+ confirmed members. One striking component of the cluster is the peculiar collection of distorted galaxies below center. These were catalogued in Arp's atlas of peculiar galaxies and given the appellation of "the guitar". The object is comprised of elliptical, spiral, and tidal dwarf galaxies that are undergoing dramatic gravitational interactions. The "neck" of the guitar represents stellar material that has been extracted from the blue dwarf galaxy at the left and the bright blue knot to the right of the elliptical galaxy is thought to be the end of that tidal stream. The largest elliptical galaxy in the upper left is NGC 3550 which exhibits a rare triple nucleus. Those nuclei have very different velocities and are therefore presumed to be the result of recent mergers of at least 3 galaxies. The image was captured during 8 nights in May and June 2023. Image acquisition was done with a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB integration of 16 hours. https://www.coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/Arp105_LRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.
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QSI-683wsg8
6
Apologies in advance but anyone interested in a QSI-683-wsg8 with Astrodon filters and a Lodestar 2, please check out AstroMart listing 568886 or contact me directly. Had a response saying the -683 is worthless - held myself in check by not responding to him... John
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NGC 3359 image
9
This is an image of NGC 3359, a barred spiral galaxy in Ursa Major located about 59M light-years away. The striking central bar is rather curious because it is much younger than the spiral arms ¨C 50M years vs several billion years. It also appears to be rotating at 2-3x the rate of the surrounding spiral arms. To the upper left of NGC 3359 is a faint blue dwarf galaxy that was first noticed in a Sloan digital sky survey image. Dubbed the ¡°Little Cub¡±, it is one of the most pristine dwarf galaxies known in our cosmic neighborhood and is thought to contain the chemical elements forged only a few minutes after the Big Bang. It still has sufficient gas to support star formation but it is now making its first pass near NGC 3359 which is likely to lead to the stripping of its gas and its eventual demise. The image was captured during 7 nights in April and June, bracketing unexpected May monsoons in New Mexico. Image acquisition was done with a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB integration of 16.3 hours. https://coldphotons.com/zen_astro/astro_images/NGC3359_LRGB_Web.jpg Thanks for looking, Bruce W.
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6120
2
My 6120 has been having intermittent power problems for a while. I¡¯ve changed power supplies it it worked for a couple of weeks. Just last week when connecting no lights or sounds. Tried a brand new supply and still nothing. This is in my observatory. Picked it up today and took it home. Plugged it into my laptop connected the usb and it powered on. Even the old power supply worked. Could there be a problem with the usb port or the usb cable. I sent it to Atik a year and a half ago and they couldn¡¯t find anything wrong with it. It¡¯s still connected to the same computer in the observatory Thanks, Roy
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[OT] CEDIC'24 - Save The Date
Hi astrophotographers! We are happy to announce CEDIC¡¯24! The Central European Deepsky Imaging Conference (CEDIC) is the leading conference for deep sky astrophotography in Europe. The conference will take place from March 22 to 24, 2024, in Linz, Austria. www.cedic.at In addition to the keynote lecture by Russell Croman, we look forward to many top lectures and interesting workshops from some of the world's most experienced astrophotographers. Please register to our newsletter to stay informed. http://www.cedic.at/en/newsletter.php We hope to see many of you at CEDIC! CEDIC Spotlight Team www.cedic.at
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MArkarian's Chain and M87
5
I grabbed this one early Friday and Saturday at the last new moon weekend. It was a bit late in the season for us SH people so it was transiting by the time darkness arrived. It is a 2 image mosaic and I could only get a bit over 2.5 hours on each pane before it got too low--not as much as I would have wanted. Telescope: Televue NP101is Mount: AP900 Camera: QSI540wsg FOV: 1.5¡ã x 2.6¡ã Processed entirely in PixInsight The link with technical details is here https://www.astrobin.com/oe851i/ Higher res here https://www.astrobin.com/full/oe851i/0/
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CEDIC Team goes Namibia - Part#10 (Highlights in Sgr)
7
Hello group, ¡®Highlights in Sagittarius¡¯ is the topic of part #10 of our image presentation, where we want to share the results from our astrophotography-trip to DeepSkySafaris in Namibia. The constellation Sagittarius offers such a wide range of interesting objects that you could spend many nights just looking at this constellation. On our trip we chose some of the great classics like the Lagoon Nebula Messier 8 or Messier 20 - a mixture of emission, reflection and dark nebula. Also the one or other open star cluster may not be missing and sometimes you should also look for something beside the known paths - then you will find treasures like NGC 6559. M 8 with Esprit 120: https://celestialphotographer.com/namibia%20%20messier%208%20esprit%20120.htm M 17 with Esprit 120: https://celestialphotographer.com/namibia%20%20messier%2017%20esprit%20120.htm M 20 with Esprit 120: https://celestialphotographer.com/namibia%20%20messier%2020%20esprit%20120.htm M 23 with Esprit 100: https://celestialphotographer.com/namibia%20-%20messier%2023%20esprit100.htm M 23 wide-field with Vixen FL55SS: https://celestialphotographer.com/namibia%20-messier%2023%20wf%20vixen.htm NGC 6520 with Esprit 120: https://celestialphotographer.com/namibia%20-ngc%206520%20esprit%20120.htm NGC 6559 with 10¡± Newtonian: http://www.astrophoton.com/NGC6559.htm NGC 6559 wide-field with Vixen FL55SS: http://www.astrophoton.com/NGC6559-2.htm Overview on all results from Namibia 2022 including background information: http://www.cedic.at/namibia2022/index.php http://www.astrophoton.com/namibia2022.htm https://celestialphotographer.com/namibia%202022.htm Important CEDIC conference news: We are already preparing the CEDIC'24! Save the date! Location: Linz (Austria) Date: March 22-24 2024 Greetings from CEDIC-Team Markus Blauensteiner Bernhard Hubl www.cedic.at www.ccdguide.com www.deepskysafaris.com
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Running Chicken
3
Taken over the last new moon weekend. Telescope was Televue NP101is Camera QSI wsg 540 Mount AP900 Filters: L, R, G, B, Ha Exposure about 5 hours Processed in PixInsight I processed the stars and the nebula separately then combined the two images at the end. Full details here https://www.astrobin.com/pchw2g/B/
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Hi, David, Thanks for going private with your good advice, perhaps you didn't want to embarrass me. But as you will see, no problem, so I'll go public, imho it's too important a subject not to be aired. I use Maxim DL to stack my images, normally using median combination. But with this particular image being taken in the short period of Astronomical Twilight, I didn't really have enough subs for that to do a complete job. Sigma clip was marginally better, but the brightest trails still left a faint remnant which I had to work on in Photoshop. I would have been better with twice as many 5 minute subs instead of the small number of 10 minute ones. For example the attached image is a single calibrated green sub frame (reduced to 1/3 size). Just a couple of trails, but one of them exceedingly bright, so as there were only 4 green subs, the resultant RGB colour combine contained a faint green streak which had to be further worked on. It would appear that those who are now using CMOS sensors generally have many more but shorter subs than we CCD dinosaurs are used to working with, so the rejection algorithms have a much better chance of doing a good job. But of course those large amounts of data need very powerful up to date computers with a lot of memory to process the data. My desktop is quite well specified, Windows 7 64 bit, i7 processor, but with 'only' 6 GB RAM not all that well equipped for handling massive amounts of data, although since I recently fitted an SSD has improved quite a bit, and it zips along with my relatively modest requirements. The maximum RAM the computer can take is 8 GB, so very little room for improvement there. I have to say the general feeling I'm getting both from this forum and Stargazers Lounge is that 'we're all right Jack', we can beat the satellite trails with clever processing. But that's not really the point is it? As Olly Penrice states in my SGL thread 'The satellite situation is like the plastic situation. We are drowning in plastic, yet still we churn it out.' Here is the thread for those interested in having a look: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/409788-horror-story-satellite-scandal/ It's bad enough for us amateurs at home, and must be particularly annoying for those lucky enough to have their own remote observatories at dark sites, with the attendant costs and initial hard work setting it all up. How much worse must it be for the large professional observatories with their huge multimillion pound telescopes! Cheers, Peter http://www.madpc.co.uk/~peterv Approx. 55 deg N, 2 deg W (Northumberland, UK)
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Image Name
Sat 8:39am
Sat 8:39am