Saying Hello

Hi all,

Thanks for the invite. I've been shooting with my Whitecat 51 Since June of 2018. It's  probably my most used imaging scope.  I usually have it on my Losmandy G-11 but on occasion will use my Explore Scientific IEXOS-100.

I live in San Antonio Tx, and shoot from that area. Most of my processing is done in Astro Pixel Processor and  Photoshop.

I look forward to seeing everyone's images.

Hi, and thank you for inviting me!

I was almost going to unload my RedCat which is now the third one from William Optics, as I returned the first two.
The third was better, but still had odd star shapes off-axis.  But I did some tuning with the tilt plate, and also the forward collimation screws and got it "good enough" for a 16mm diagonal sensor (ASI-183 and ASI-533).
It does give incredibly sharp images, with no false color, and 4 pieces of glass seems better than reducing a triplet with a 4 or 5-element reducer-corrector.

If you are curious about my RedCat tuning, I made a CloudyNights post about it:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/744130-collimating-aligning-my-redcat-51/

Steve

Welcome, All! And thank you to Joey for starting introductions 😊

I hope you all don’t mind the invites. I started this group with the hope of providing a forum for all CAT Series users to share their images and experiences with this fantastic little scope. Thank you for joining!

I started my DSO journey with 5” and 8” Newtonians, but found them to be a real challenge, especially with a Celestron AVX mount. In contrast, it’s been a real joy imaging with the SpaceCat. Any error the mount exhibits is well under my current sample rate, yielding sharp round stars across the field. I couldn’t be happier with it.

The camera I use is a Fujifilm X-T100. I use a remote intervalometer to control exposure times and capture sequences. I live in the Central Coast of California under Bortle 4 skies at the edge of town, but have recently adopted use of an Optolong 2” L-Pro filter to reduce gradients due to light pollution along the horizon. I’ve been really happy with the results so far.

Clear skies,

Nikko

These are really great ideas! I love it. Thank you!

How should we run the challenges? Thinking it might be cool to have target specific threads for sharing images and discussion. This would make a few targets available each month, which could be beneficial for some folks depending on their latitude and whether they have a clear line of sight. The subjects would then gradually cycle out as we move through the seasons. And if someone wants to go after a subject that hasn’t been picked yet, they could start a new challenge thread for it.

What do you think?

I really like the constellation idea. These CAT series scopes have such a wide field of view, it's relatively easy to compose an image with multiple DSOs in frame. Especially when using a larger sensor. Orion is a fun one for sure. There's a lot going on there. Cygnus would be fun, too.

Trying to come up with a short title, I just called this one the Jewels of Orion.


Jewels of Orion

In this, you can see the Flame and Horsehead Nebulae along with the Great Orion Nebula and Running Man nebula. I had seen a number of images framed with these subjects, and wanted to try it for myself. I didn't expect to end up with the amount of detail that I did. I think with more exposure time, I could pull out more of the surrounding molecular clouds. This was definitely a personal best at the time. But after seeing the results of others, I'm motivated to shoot for more and see just how far I can take it.

Haha 😂 Yeah, everything seems to be out of stock everywhere, but that 14bit ADC and zero amp glow... I’d hold out for the ASI533MC Pro unless you really want that higher sample rate with 2.4um photosites, vs 3.76um.

That ASI533 is going to be a pretty sweet camera. I’ve been eyeballing it since it came out. It’s a tough call for me, though. Don’t want to step down from the APS-C size sensor, but the ASI2600 and ASI6200 are out of my reach at the moment.

I really like the constellation idea. These CAT series scopes have such a wide field of view, it's relatively easy to compose an image with multiple DSOs in frame. Especially when using a larger sensor. Orion is a fun one for sure. There's a lot going on there. Cygnus would be fun, too.

Trying to come up with a short title, I just called this one the Jewels of Orion.


Jewels of Orion

In this, you can see the Flame and Horsehead Nebulae along with the Great Orion Nebula and Running Man nebula. I had seen a number of images framed with these subjects, and wanted to try it for myself. I didn't expect to end up with the amount of detail that I did. I think with more exposure time, I could pull out more of the surrounding molecular clouds. This was definitely a personal best at the time. But after seeing the results of others, I'm motivated to shoot for more and see just how far I can take it.

Nice one. Mine which I titled "From the Flame to Sword" is similar.

You have 3x the exposure time and were guiding. Something I just got into recently. I used the Optolong L-Enhance since I was shooting from my then Bortle 6/7 skies in Corona, CA. I too was surprised to get the molecular cloud detail. I seem to have lost a lot of color in stretching my image, something I'm working on.

From the Flame to the `Sword