98 replies to this topic

[Infiniumguy]

NGC 7000, North America Nebula and IC5070, Pelican Nebula. My first session with this target and my first time using the Dual-Band filter. 3:06:10 time on target, Mosaic mode completed almost 2 passes, 1117 10-sec subs. Processed in PI, PS and LrC. Pretty noisy. My guess is I need a lot more time on this target. Good news is the Multi-Night feature was selected so I'll try and improve on this over the next few weeks. 

Attached Thumbnails

• 

Edited by Infiniumguy, 02 June 2025 - 09:54 AM.

[Peter Besenbruch]

Another update on my Vespera II's hygrometer.

 

In my back and forth with Vespera tech support, it looks like that the hole drilled in the Vespera for the hygrometer screw is off-center. The screw passes through the hole in the hygrometer to a hole in the Vespera itself. The hole in the hygrometer has a countersunk top so the screw will lie flat. The angled top of the screw hits the countersink to one side and pushes the sensor sideways. Removing the screw and pushing in the sensor allows the Vespera to report temperature and humidity readings. Tighten the screw and that ability goes away. I have the screw tightened so it just touches the side of the countersink area. I can still get readings, and the dual band filter still works, but I am uncertain of the stability long term.

 

Regarding the one-sided USB-C port, I have the opting of sending the scope in now, or later, even after the warranty expires, as I reported the issue now.

[Infiniumguy]

Well, at least you understand it. Kind a weird a piece like that would be drilled at an angle. Poor process control!!
I’d send the whole thing to them and expect back one that works correctly.

[BrickInTheSky]

I do not know how much you are willing to ‘vandalize’ the scope but one way is to glue in the censor with just 1 tiny drop of glue that remains flexible. Given my watchmaking experience I would use something like ‘G&S Hypo Watch Crystal Cement’.
https://a.co/d/7YkIpl0


I am talking about a tiny drop that is less than 1mm. The sensor will stay in place and if needed can be extracted by pulling it upward. Tye glue can also be cleaned off from the scope and the sensor with a toothpick or something like that.

But if the scope on the warranty….

Edited by BrickInTheSky, 05 June 2025 - 06:12 PM.

[Astronotrip]

I received my Vespara 2 just a few days ago and finally got clear skies while visiting a friend in Albuquerque. First light is a real delight. I chose the Horsehead and Flame nebula. I used a mosaic to increase the FOV, but frankly I may not have needed it. I'm still learning how large the native FOV is on the Vespara 2. 

 

I started this thread in the hope that others with Vespara 2's will join in. When trying to decide which telescope to move up to, I struggled to find enough on the Vespara 2. Numerous threads with great info, but spread among numerous postings. 

 

I'd hope to see V2 owners join in. Post pics, discuss challenges and delights, share experiences. Anything and everything related to the Vespara 2. 

 

My first light experience: 610 subs. I think they were 15 secs, but I'm not sure., They may be 10 sec. subs. Something I need to clarify. Processed in PixInsight and then Photoshop. Kudos to Peter Zelinka for his Deep Space course. I learned a lot about using PI and PS because of his course. Still learning. 

 

The Vespara 2 is a VERY capable smart telescope!

Yep, it's a great scope that doesnt get enough attention versus the Seestars or even the overpriced/underperforming Unistellar... and I've had an evscope2 that I got rid of to get a Vespera 2, best decision ever !

I even got a Stellina recenty to have a narrower FoV and target smaller objects.

Some of my pics with the Vespera 2

[Infiniumguy]

Finally had a few hours of clear skies albeit with a very bright moon not far from the eagle nebula. Frankly, I think it did really well with the moon so nearby. Used the Dual Band filter. 2:51:50 on target and 1031 10-sec. Subs. My first attempt and I need more time on target. Noise around the periphery is pretty bad indicating to me that the session spent more time on the middle of the target than around the edges. Still, I like it. I actually love the center section and the detail in the nebulosity. Not Askar quality, but not bad for a 50mm scope. I cannot really see the eagle, but I guess it’s there if I shut one eye. Processed in PI, PS, LrC.

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[Albatus]

Hello dears Vespera 2 fellow users!

 

I am relatively new into this game, and I have barely 2 nights of observations behind me (with poor light pollution and almost full moon, thus not ideal). Yet I managed to get the half decent (for a noob) image of M81 and M82 below. 

 

But I digress; my question was as follow. When I process the .tiff in Siril, after doing plating solving when I apply photographic color calibration I get the following error message (or rather warning, as the process still completes successfully): "Image color space is nonlinear. It is recommended to apply photometric color calibration to linear images."

 

This is quite surprising to me, as this is the raw .tif file straight from the Vespera. Is there any color stretching applies by the score beyond simple image stacking? 

 

clear skies

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[BrickInTheSky]

You are correct, I see same. Not sure why but I suggest you switch to the new color calibration: Spectrophotometric Color Calibration. It does the same as PCC plus more (adjusts for your sensor, etc) and it does not produce the erroneous warning. :-)

Great picture btw!

[Infiniumguy]

Hello dears Vespera 2 fellow users!

 

I am relatively new into this game, and I have barely 2 nights of observations behind me (with poor light pollution and almost full moon, thus not ideal). Yet I managed to get the half decent (for a noob) image of M81 and M82 below. 

 

But I digress; my question was as follow. When I process the .tiff in Siril, after doing plating solving when I apply photographic color calibration I get the following error message (or rather warning, as the process still completes successfully): "Image color space is nonlinear. It is recommended to apply photometric color calibration to linear images."

 

This is quite surprising to me, as this is the raw .tif file straight from the Vespera. Is there any color stretching applies by the score beyond simple image stacking? 

 

clear skies

Confusing to me too. I regularly use the .Tiff file from the Vespera 2. Definitely linear as far as I know. I process in PixInsight and the first thing I do is an Auto-Stretch. Otherwise the images are typically black. I do a Blur reduction on stars and then SPCC for color correction. No errors as long as I have previously given PixInsight the correct coordinates, time of session, and V2 focal length and pixel size. I use Image Solver in PI to do that. 

[Albatus]

You are correct, I see same. Not sure why but I suggest you switch to the new color calibration: Spectrophotometric Color Calibration. It does the same as PCC plus more (adjusts for your sensor, etc) and it does not produce the erroneous warning. :-)

Great picture btw!

Thanks, helpful to know I was not doing anything wrong :-)

 

Did any of you took Darks, Flat and Biases calibration frame with your Vespera? If so how did you go about it?

[BrickInTheSky]

Thanks, helpful to know I was not doing anything wrong :-)

Did any of you took Darks, Flat and Biases calibration frame with your Vespera? If so how did you go about it?

No, you do not need anything except the stacked Tiff. The DFB are optional.

The only thing I did to fully use the new calibration method I defined the Vaonis CLS and DB filter configurations. Not that hard to do but I can share what I came up with.

Edited by BrickInTheSky, 12 June 2025 - 01:54 PM.

[Albatus]

I guess I might took the time to take some darks since I’ll be also processing the raw fire files myself (when it’s worth it).

Not sure what you mean by the settings of the filters? Aren’t those plug and play? In any case happy to hear your thoughts on them as at least one will be on my shopping list at some point.

[BrickInTheSky]

I guess I might took the time to take some darks since I’ll be also processing the raw fire files myself (when it’s worth it).

Not sure what you mean by the settings of the filters? Aren’t those plug and play? In any case happy to hear your thoughts on them as at least one will be on my shopping list at some point.

When you use the new calibration method, you select your sensor and if you used a filter you can specify that as well. Unfortunately Siril does not come with the Vaonis filter’s configurations. It has some other popular filters but not what we need. There is an option for DB (narrow band filter) and you can keep specifying the wave length and band width but that is for one off cases if you borrow someone’s filter. Much better way is to define the right configurations in the same way the other filters are defined. Siril’s documentation explains how to do so. Once you do so, the Vaonis filters appear as a choice in the color calibration tool.

Edited by BrickInTheSky, 12 June 2025 - 03:42 PM.

[BrickInTheSky]

Full moon from a few days ago. V2 + CLS filter. Stacked 500 photos and a bit of stretching. 

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[Infiniumguy]

Very nice. It was sure bright this morning at 5:30 in Colorado. 

[Albatus]

When you use the new calibration method, you select your sensor and if you used a filter you can specify that as well. Unfortunately Siril does not come with the Vaonis filter’s configurations. It has some other popular filters but not what we need. There is an option for DB (narrow band filter) and you can keep specifying the wave length and band width but that is for one off cases if you borrow someone’s filter. Much better way is to define the right configurations in the same way the other filters are defined. Siril’s documentation explains how to do so. Once you do so, the Vaonis filters appear as a choice in the color calibration tool.

Oh yes ok I see what you mean, I thought you were referring to something to configure on the Vespera itself :-) thanks for pointing that you can tweak the filter configuration on Siril to fit the Vespera filters, good to know for the future

But now more than filters I need clear skies… :-(

[Infiniumguy]

External Power challenge. Twice now I've put the Vespera 2 out for a planned session during the night and in the morning found the power cable to the USB-C connector wrapped tightly around the base. Seems pretty obvious that it struggled to initialize and I attribute that to greater number of clouds than I expected. It was not successful initializing. It appears the V2 keeps looking for clear skies by rotating further in the same clockwise direction. I tried using a long cable and loosely wrapping in around the tripod so that it would not be in conflict. Even doing that didn't prevent it from making my guess is maybe 5 full clockwise rotations or more.  The skies here have been highly variable lately and much clouds at times. I use Atmospheric and Clear Outside apps to predict when skies should be clear. Most of the time that has worked well for me. For the first time, I'm somewhat wishing I had purchased the Pro model with the much larger battery. Anyone else experienced this challenge or even better solved how to deal with it? Thanks. 

 

M16-Eagle Nebula. Three multi-night sessions. 4 hours integration, 1630 10-sec. images. Dual Band filter. Developed in PixInsight, Photoshop and a little in Lightroom Classic. The blue in the center is somewhat false, but my attempt to bring out colors I see in images in AstroBin. Needs more work!

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[BrickInTheSky]

External Power challenge. Twice now I've put the Vespera 2 out for a planned session during the night and in the morning found the power cable to the USB-C connector wrapped tightly around the base. Seems pretty obvious that it struggled to initialize and I attribute that to greater number of clouds than I expected. It was not successful initializing. It appears the V2 keeps looking for clear skies by rotating further in the same clockwise direction. I tried using a long cable and loosely wrapping in around the tripod so that it would not be in conflict. Even doing that didn't prevent it from making my guess is maybe 5 full clockwise rotations or more. The skies here have been highly variable lately and much clouds at times. I use Atmospheric and Clear Outside apps to predict when skies should be clear. Most of the time that has worked well for me. For the first time, I'm somewhat wishing I had purchased the Pro model with the much larger battery. Anyone else experienced this challenge or even better solved how to deal with it? Thanks.

M16-Eagle Nebula. Three multi-night sessions. 4 hours integration, 1630 10-sec. images. Dual Band filter. Developed in PixInsight, Photoshop and a little in Lightroom Classic. The blue in the center is somewhat false, but my attempt to bring out colors I see in images in AstroBin. Needs more work!

An obvious solution is to use velcro and attach the battery to the scope’s body. Many people tried and it seems to work just fine. Assuming the battery is not super big/heavy.

I also use the scope overnight but I never have any issues. This is what I do:
1) initialize the scope ‘manually’ under supervision.
2) see what area of the sky is clear (or make sure the area that I want is clear)
3) start the plan. The scope will wait for the target start time. Usually I leave about 5 mins till the plan needs to start so I am basically waiting for 5 mins or so.
4) once the plan starts I go to sleep
5) I am not greedy and not trying to aim at many targets in any given night. Plus I like to use CLS or DB filters and you cannot mix them in 1 plan/night. So I pick usually 2 targets (with same filter requirements). When the scope needs to point to the 2nd target it can freely do that even with a short cable. Occasionally I will pick 3 targets.
6) I like to finish the plan no pater than 4:30 am because after that the heavy dew comes. Plus sky starts to brighten. If I start at 10:30 pm and end at 4:30 am it gives me 6h. Or 2-3h per target. Given that some frames will be bad (clouds, planes) I usually end up with 1h30m of exposure per target per night. If I go for more targets then I will mot get enough exposure.

If you get VPro with a tiny pixels, it will require even longer exposures to get some signal so you will not be able to aim at many targets each night. Just initialize the scope before starting the plan!

Edited by BrickInTheSky, 27 June 2025 - 09:43 AM.

[Infiniumguy]

An obvious solution is to use velcro and attach the battery to the scope’s body. Many people tried and it seems to work just fine. Assuming the battery is not super big/heavy.

I also use the scope overnight but I never have any issues. This is what I do:
1) initialize the scope ‘manually’ under supervision.
2) see what area of the sky is clear (or make sure the area that I want is clear)
3) start the plan. The scope will wait for the target start time. Usually I leave about 5 mins till the plan needs to start so I am basically waiting for 5 mins or so.
4) once the plan starts I go to sleep
5) I am not greedy and not trying to aim at many targets in any given night. Plus I like to use CLS or DB filters and you cannot mix them in 1 plan/night. So I pick usually 2 targets (with same filter requirements). When the scope needs to point to the 2nd target it can freely do that even with a short cable. Occasionally I will pick 3 targets.
6) I like to finish the plan no pater than 4:30 am because after that the heavy dew comes. Plus sky starts to brighten. If I start at 10:30 pm and end at 4:30 am it gives me 6h. Or 2-3h per target. Given that some frames will be bad (clouds, planes) I usually end up with 1h30m of exposure per target per night. If I go for more targets then I will mot get enough exposure.

If you get VPro with a tiny pixels, it will require even longer exposures to get some signal so you will not be able to aim at many targets each night. Just initialize the scope before starting the plan!

Excellent suggestions. I have an Anker 733, but have thought it too heavy to attach to the scope body. It would completely solve the problem and no more cable wrapping. I've worried about stressing the USB-C connector. Thanks!!

Lately Clear Outside has shown clear skies do not come until midnight or 1 -2 am. Thus I let it do the automatic initialization as a part of the plan. I literally cannot remember an evening this month where the skies were clear at dark. Typical Colorado summer weather. 

I confess that I was not familiar with doing the initialization manually and then letting the plan takeover. I will pursue that and especially as the sunsets occur a bit earlier in the evening. Hopefully I get some clear sky evenings again. 

I typically go after one target with the idea of getting as much integration time as possible. The super short dark sky times combined with cloud free skies happening so late has greatly limited my total session time. Looking forward to longer night skies in the months ahead.

I hear you about the Pro version. I still think overall the V2 is the best value and really nice package with the Singularity app. 

 

Much appreciate your comments. 

Edited by Infiniumguy, 27 June 2025 - 10:04 AM.

[BrickInTheSky]

Excellent suggestions. I have an Anker 733, but have thought it too heavy to attach to the scope body. It would completely solve the problem and no more cable wrapping. I've worried about stressing the USB-C connector. Thanks!!
Lately Clear Outside has shown clear skies do not come until midnight or 1 -2 am. Thus I let it do the automatic initialization as a part of the plan. I literally cannot remember an evening this month where the skies were clear at dark. Typical Colorado summer weather.
I confess that I was not familiar with doing the initialization manually and then letting the plan takeover. I will pursue that and especially as the sunsets occur a bit earlier in the evening. Hopefully I get some clear sky evenings again.
I typically go after one target with the idea of getting as much integration time as possible. The super short dark sky times combined with cloud free skies happening so late has greatly limited my total session time. Looking forward to longer night skies in the months ahead.
I hear you about the Pro version. I still think overall the V2 is the best value and really nice package with the Singularity app.

Much appreciate your comments.

If this is the case then yes, just initialize the scope under your supervision and then start the plan. Given you have an external battery you are not risking to run out of juice while waiting for the proper time and the scope will not spin around trying to acquire a target: it tries for 5 mins and if fails retries after a few minutes w/o spinning.

Edited by BrickInTheSky, 27 June 2025 - 02:32 PM.

[bradhaak]

This one currently has about 10 hours on a 23 megapixel (after cropping) mosaic of the Rho Ophiuchi dark nebula complex. The three stars at the top are Rho Ophiuchi, and at the bottom are Antares and M4. There's also a reasonable amount of cleanup in PixInsight. I'll probably keep gathering data through the summer. I'd like to get about 25 hours before I'm done. I captured it on my Vespera 2 with lots of ten-second subs and no filter.

 

[Infiniumguy]

Thanks to some excellent advice from BrickInTheSky, I decided to add an external battery to my Vespera 2. Previously I was using a Jackery 300 Plus and long USB-C cable for external power. That worked very well as long as I was present during the Initialization step. I mounted it in a way that when doing planned night initialization, no longer would the USB cable tightly wrap around the base of the V2 and stress the USB-C connector. The wrapping was as best I can tell due to clouds not allowing the V2 to find enough stars to plate solve for a successful initialization. It kept trying and each time rotated further in the clockwise direction wrapping I'd guess half a dozen times. I tried several batteries and ultimately chose an Anker A1383 Power Bank readily purchased on Amazon. It has a built-in USB-C cable which simplified making the connection clean and simple. The Power Bank has 20,000 mAh capacity. I first used it last night and after 10 hours of total time on and 6 hours of actual operation, the power bank still had 10% charge remaining and the V2 was at 100%. The Power Bank weighs right at 1 lb and with some heavy duty velcro it attached nicely to the V2. It is easily charged using the USB-C connection on the top of the Power Bank so I do not have to remove it to charge. So far I'm happy with the new arrangement. Should anything change, I'll add to this description. Frustrating that Vaonis chose such a small capacity battery for the V2. The very opposite of delighting their customers. 

[Infiniumguy]

Thanks to some excellent advice from BrickInTheSky, I decided to add an external battery to my Vespera 2. Previously I was using a Jackery 300 Plus and long USB-C cable for external power. That worked very well as long as I was present during the Initialization step.  I mounted the new Power Bank it in a way that when doing planned night initialization, no longer would the USB cable tightly wrap around the base of the V2 and stress the USB-C connector. The wrapping was as best I can tell due to clouds not allowing the V2 to find enough stars to plate solve for a successful initialization. It kept trying and each time rotated further in the clockwise direction wrapping I'd guess half a dozen times. I tried several batteries and ultimately chose an Anker A1383 Power Bank readily purchased on Amazon. It has a built-in USB-C cable which simplified making the connection clean and simple. The Power Bank has 20,000 mAh capacity. I first used it last night and after 10 hours of total time on and 6 hours of actual operation, the power bank still had 10% charge remaining and  the V2 was at 100%. The Power Bank weighs right at 1 lb and with some heavy duty velcro it attached nicely to the V2. It is easily charged using the USB-C connection on the top of the Power Bank so I do not have to remove it to charge. So far I'm happy with the new arrangement. Should anything change, I'll add to this description. 

Attached Thumbnails

• 
• 

[BrickInTheSky]

The latest update from Vaonis for Vespera addressed the cable twisting (I am guessing they will alternate clockwise and counter clockwise rotations when moving to a target or initializing). Update was released today for all Vesperas