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Elephant's Trunk Nebula 11/8/21


Sterrenland

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Managed about 100 mins on the Elephant's Trunk Nebula last night...must say using the new 294MC camera together with guiding/dithering via the ASIAIR PRO is being a bit of a revelation.

 

I'm still adjusting the guiding settings, but got much better figures during this session so am slowly getting things sorted.

 

First time on this nebula...another beauty that deserves further work.

 

elephant4_reduced.thumb.jpg.0e0081daac78c4ed7291305c8a657931.jpg

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1 hour ago, Sterrenland said:

Managed about 100 mins on the Elephant's Trunk Nebula last night...must say using the new 294MC camera together with guiding/dithering via the ASIAIR PRO is being a bit of a revelation.

 

I'm still adjusting the guiding settings, but got much better figures during this session so am slowly getting things sorted.

 

First time on this nebula...another beauty that deserves further work.

 

elephant4_reduced.thumb.jpg.0e0081daac78c4ed7291305c8a657931.jpg

Very nice image with plenty of detail. The guiding assistant is your friend in PHD2, choose the settings it recommends. Run it for a full cycle of the worm, usually 8 or 9 minutes before stopping it, then let it calculate the settings.

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12 hours ago, Sterrenland said:

Managed about 100 mins on the Elephant's Trunk Nebula last night...must say using the new 294MC camera together with guiding/dithering via the ASIAIR PRO is being a bit of a revelation.

 

I'm still adjusting the guiding settings, but got much better figures during this session so am slowly getting things sorted.

 

First time on this nebula...another beauty that deserves further work.

 

elephant4_reduced.thumb.jpg.0e0081daac78c4ed7291305c8a657931.jpg

Can you post up your guiding log with https://adgsoftware.com/phd2utils/ you may be doing better than you think.

Roger

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3 hours ago, ApophisAstros said:

Can you post up your guiding log with https://adgsoftware.com/phd2utils/ you may be doing better than you think.

Roger

 

Roger...I don't think I have a guide log....I use the ASIAIR PRO which, I think, uses a cut-down version of PHD2 under the bonnet.  I don't remember seeing any log collection options, though I may be wrong.

 

When I was doing the captures for the Elephant's Trunk I was getting down to around 0.7 total error (I know you shouldn't only dwell on this figure) - not brilliant, but better than the 1.4 I was getting when doing the Pelican. Occasionally it would rise up to 1.4 - presumably when the seeing deteriorated/high clouds.

 

I'll continue playing with the Calibration Steps, Max DEC Duration, Max RA Duration and agressiveness to attempt to improve further. Even at the stage I'm at now I'm managing much longer exposures than I was without the guiding so I'm pleased with the progress made and the dithering has had an amazing effect on getting rid of a lot of the background noise.

 

But thanks for offering to look over the figures Roger.

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51 minutes ago, Sterrenland said:

When I was doing the captures for the Elephant's Trunk I was getting down to around 0.7 total error (I know you shouldn't only dwell on this figure) - not brilliant, but better than the 1.4 I was getting when doing the Pelican. Occasionally it would rise up to 1.4 - presumably when the seeing deteriorated/high clouds.

The general rule of thumb is to have your guiding below your resolution. With my 80ED and ZWO 1600, my resolution is around 1.4, your combination is 1.59, unless you have a reducer on the scope. I would say 0.7 is excellent guiding, of course it can be improved with tweaking the mount and PHD2. I wouldn't fret too much unless your guiding goes over your resolution, you will still get round stars.

Edited by AstronomyUkraine
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17 minutes ago, AstronomyUkraine said:

The general rule of thumb is to have your guiding below your resolution. With my 80ED and ZWO 1600, my resolution is around 1.4, your combination is 1.59, unless you have a reducer on the scope. I would say 0.7 is excellent guiding, of course it can be improved with teaking the mount and PHD2. I wouldn't fret too much unless your guiding goes over your resolution, you will still get round stars.

 

Thanks for the info...very helpful. I don't feel tooo bad now! 😀 As I said, I know there's more to the guiding than just concentrating on the total error figure, but your figures show I'm heading down the right track! Thanks...very useful.

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