Welcome to the Feedback and Suggestions forum!

[Mentore Giorgetti]

Your thoughts and ideas matter to us, and this space is dedicated to hearing what you have to say about the platform. 

Whether you have a suggestion to enhance user experience or feedback on a specific feature, your insights help us grow and improve. 

Engage with other users, share your experiences, and contribute to shaping the future of Telescope Live. We value your input and look forward to building a better platform together!

[George Hatfield]

I see my post on "All telescopes are not created equal" has been deleted.    To save you some time, this is what I posted.  

SPA 2 CMOS  Officina Stellare 700 RC, FL 5600mm
Equipped with a QHY 600m pro camera, 3.76 microns
Often runs in bin 4 mode—blurry images with lots of dead (black) pixels.  Avoid due to dead pixels and very large pixels when running at bin 4.

AUS 2 CMOS  Tak FSQ 106 ED running at f3.6 but sometimes at native FL (f/5).  Equipped with QHY 600M pro camera with 3.76-micron pixels.  Seems to have some optical problems which lead to red (and sometimes green) fringes on stars.  Worse in older image sets (e.g., 2021 images).  This can be minimized by resampling to 50% with more recent images.  Note that Image Solver sometimes shows that the scope is running at its native focal length (530mm and not 382mm) with some data. Avoid due to optical problems.

CHI 1 CMOS Planewave CDK 24 equipped with QHY 600 M pro camera (3.76 micron).  FL 3962 mm.  Images are usually very good with minimal problems. "

So what is the deal?  Is this information inaccurate?  If so, please let me know.  The main frustration I have with Telescope.live is the variable quality of the data.  Some is very good, and some are crap.  This needs to be discussed.  What are the problems?  How can they be addressed in processing?  What is Telescope.live doing to address them?  How does Telescope.live screen images?  

George

 

 

[George Hatfield]

Here are some examples of the problems cited above.

 

George

[ERNESTO GUIDO]

Dear George, 

Thank you for your message. First, I want to assure you that we did not delete your message. In fact, I can still see it. As per your request, we tried to move your message to another section of the forum. However, as this forum is new to us too, we made a mistake with the redirect command and your message was hidden under another subsection.I apologize for this inconvenience. I have now canceled the first post, and we can discuss here.

I understand that you are frustrated because of some issues with the image quality, but as you know, we have already discussed every single point you highlighted in your message here. Image quality is very important to us. With Telescope Live 3.0 (launched almost 2 years ago), we implemented stricter filters and a manual check of all images. I personally check manually every frame that arrives from our telescopes before it reaches our users. This has allowed us to have fewer and fewer images with defects in the archive. Additionally, we are deleting the old frames in the archive with tracking or focus problems, with the help of our users.

As regards the points in your message, as we have already discussed in private many times, it is true that we are facing some issues, particularly with the SPA2 telescope and some sort of aberration/spacing problem with the AUS2 telescope. Most of these issues cannot be resolved remotely, and we are planning a trip to the observing sites in the near future to assess the situation and try to fix it. While we are of course sorry about some of the frames being less quality than we would like, it is still possible to work with these and obtain beautiful images using some small cautions in the post processing (like cropping in the corner where you think the aberrations of the star are too much, or following the blog post by Scotty where he shares some tips on how to work with some of the SPA2 frames etc.). The gallery is full of magnificent images obtained by our users using these very same datasets. 

However, the most important thing is that, as you know very well, we are available 24/7 to provide assistance and suggestions. If I remember correctly, just few days ago I provided you with a full refund for some datasets that you didn't like, and in addition, I gave you free credits to grab and try the AUS2 datasets on M42 (and from those datasets you got a wonderful picture, which is visible in the gallery and I I take the liberty of sharing here because I think is a beautiful image and to show what can be obtained by AUS2 telescope).

Lastly, please let me add that the wording "crap" and "avoid" is disrespectful to our entire team, who is working very hard to provide many hours of great astronomical data every day. It is only yesterday that our datasets on the supernova in NGC 1097 processed by B. Miller were published on APOD.

Clear Skies,
Ernesto

[George Hatfield]

Ernesto...  Thank you for the response and for correcting my previous post.  I agree that you, personally, have been very helpful in providing suggestions and, at times, refunds when I have a problem with an image set.  My rationale in posting this is to inform other users of these problems and to see what others are experiencing.  I'm also hopeful that this post will stimulate a discussion of ways to overcome these problems with processing.  Isn't that the purpose of a forum... to stimulate discussion? 

But, it is hard to imagine that processing can overcome the problems noted in the two images I posted above.  Perhaps "crap" is too strong a word, but when I download a set of subframes, I expect them to be of such a quality that the limiting factor governing the quality of the resulting image is my skills and not problems with the subs I download from Telescope.live.    The images provided to evaluate a data set are not all that useful in screening the good from the bad.  For framing, yes, but not for the problems cited above.  Admittedly, the optical problems with the FSQ106 are only apparent when an RGB is formed.  But the bad pixels in the SPA2CMOS images are obvious in the subs.  Cosmetic correction can be used to remove much of the problem, but the result is not what I would call a good image.  Why are they posted?   The evaluation images are also useful in determining the number of subs for each filter.  No data set should be provided with fewer than three subs per filter.  

But on the positive side, I must admit that the cost of a data set is so reasonable that a few"throw-away" sets are not a big deal in the scheme of things.  However, I look forward to the day when all sets from Telescope.live are of good quality.  

Edited October 12, 2023 by George Hatfield
minor edit

[Andre B.]

When we are on it not sure if its the right place here?

I see a lot of Telescopes in the network beeing offline 

AUS-SA-1 (offline) , AUS-WA-1 (offline) , CHI-7-CMOS (offline), SPA-3-CMOS (offline) and USA-NM-1-CMOS (offline) 

I remember end of last year it was said that USA will get a scope since then its offline. (Or at least I never seen it online). Is it even planned to put these scopes online? Would love to hear an update on the situation of these scopes. 

Edited October 13, 2023 by Andre B.
timechange for USA annoucement

[ERNESTO GUIDO]

Dear Andre,

In the coming days, we will be releasing a comprehensive communication that outlines all the developments and updates we have in store for our platform. This communication will address your question about the telescopes and much more. 

In the meantime, please feel free to continue engaging with our forum. Your input and questions are highly valued, and they help shape the direction of our platform.

Clear Skies,
Ernesto

[Astro Newbie]

Hello,

I'm glad that I found this discussion as I've been experiencing similar issues with the stars on the few images that I've so far processed and been taken with the AUS-2-CMOS setup. I had attributed it to something that I had been doing incorrectly when using WBPP to process the raw images. So many options to choose from. Not a good thing at my age when "the elevator can no longer make it to the top floor".

Using Blink in pixinsight at 1:1 after registering, can clearly show the variations in the stars possibly due to unfavourable seeing conditions. Combining stars with images taken before and after a meridian flip I believe adds to the variations.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion George to resample which I will try later. This would certainly be a far less time consuming method to that which I have been using. And echoing George's comment, I agree the cost of these datasets is such that it doesn't terribly concern me. There is plenty of good data and having some that's not quite as good certainly helps. Finding solutions ,successful or not, I believe will help me in understanding more about processing.

Additionally having access via the gallery to see what far more proficient people have achieved using the same data we have access to, acts as an incentive to try and go that one step further, maybe at a later time.

Clear Skies and Low Humidity guys,

Ray [astro_newbie]