Starflyer

I think it you're using ST4 you need to recalibrate on every target change anyway. Any reason you're not using pulse guiding, it's just set and forget once you have a good calibration?

I'm a long time just of SGP trying to wean myself off it and onto NINA, this year I will make the move.  It's unbelievable the pace that NINA is being developed, it's a truly amazing piece of software.

I'm sure you'll love it, over the last ten years I've owned two VX10's and now own a CT10, all with 1/10 wave mirrors all bought secondhand for bargain prices.

I've never experienced the collimation problems reportedly caused by the thin tubes on the VX10s, and less frequently reported on CT10s, and I think I hang a fair amount of weight off them, CC, OAG, FW and camera.  I've travelled relatively long distances with my scopes, Scotland on many occasions and France a couple of times with only a tweak needed to the primary collimation.

The only thing I'd like to improve on the CT10 is the secondary spider, the vanes must be soft or too thin and twist / bend easily.

I've had a few mirrors recoated by OO over the years and always had great service from them.  That said I do personally know a couple of people who've had a hard time getting what they've ordered and paid for, either within the timeframe agreed or to an acceptable quality.

19 hours ago, Thierry_Beauvilain said:

Hello,

I got some strange circled patterns on preprocessed  pictures (with Siril 1.0.6).

When inspecting my flats I saw some vignetting and concentric circles and other strange things.

My setup is:

- Refractor APM LZOS 130 F6,

- APM Riccardi M82 Flattener (52 mm image circle) with M82 to M68 adaptor ring,

- M68 Zeiss rapid ring,

- M68 Baader tilt ring,

- QHY M OAG in M54,

- QHY CFW 3L 7 2'' filters with full set of Antlia Pro 2'' mounted with M48 threads LRGB + Ha OIII SII pro 3 nm

- QHY 600 M PH

- Home made flat box with ceiling light box with 224 led with white translucent polycarbonate + transluscent paper and white diffusing polycarbonate: much larger than the APM 130 aperture,

On luminance nothing appears and on others lots of things see attached pictures.

I compared with an Astronomik 2'' mounted filter in an Altair filetr box but with my previous camera a Canon EOS 6D MkII moded with astrodon filter and no rings on flats the sole vignetting is due to camera body.

Has anyone already got this with ANtlia filters  ?

What are your thoughts about that ?

 

Thanks a lot for your replies.

 

Clear Skies !

 

Thierry

Sorry if I missed it somewhere in the thread, have you tried flipping the filters over?  When I was reading up on Chroma filters the manufacturer was adamant that filter orientation didn't matter, they're plenty of threads on CN that prove otherwise.

By "starlight express v1" do you mean a Lodestar?  If so stick with that for your OAG if you can, it's way more sensitive than the 120.

Have you tried reshooting a dark with the camera on in a totally dark place?  I get a slight light leak on my QHY268M when shooting darks in a light room, I guess it's at a joint somewhere between the camera, filter wheel, OAG etc.

19 hours ago, Moon-Monkey said:

I’m inexperienced and in no way to be advising anyone if anything here but if it was me I would mark the center point of the focuser hole and run a line oarralle to the end of the tube (sky side) then measure the longest therefore widest distance which should then be the opposite point runs line down the inside of the tube with tape and a pen then when the new foxuser is in run a simple laser collimator through the focuser and make sure it matches that line and is true if not shin it so it all lines up ?? Maybe I’m over thinking this ?? 

I've recently done this with a new focuser and I'll try and explain how it's done. There was a great thread here years ago with pics that showed how to do it but I can't find it now.

This process assumes the new focuser will be centred in the existing focuser hole.

Remove the secondary and focuser.

Take a piece of thin card, a couple of inches wide and a couple of inches longer than half of the tube circumference.  Hold the card tightly inside the tube with one end on the edge of the focuser hole, ensure it lays flat against the curve of the tube and mark the tube with a pencil at the end of the card.  Repeat this on the other side of the focuser hole. You'll end up with two pencil marks opposite the focuser a few inches apart, find the centre of these marks and you have a centre line directly under the focuser.  I did this by holding the card next to the two pencil lines, marking the lines on the card, folding the card in half, marking the centre and transfering the line to the tube.

That's one dimension, now you have to find the centre of the focuser hole in the up / down direction of the tube.

Measure the distance from the tube end to the near side of the focuser hole, call this A. Measure the diameter of the focuser hole, call this B. The distance from the end of the tube to the centre of the hole equals A + (B/2). One you know this, measure down from the tube and mark with a pencil, you should end up with a cross of pencil marks exactly under the centre of the focuser hole, I then marked this with Tipex so it was more visible.

Fit your new focuser and use a Cheshire or other sight tube to ensure that your focuser points exactly at this point.

20 hours ago, wvrfish said:

Sorry to resurrect this thread again... but I had a question about fixing a flanged pier down:

How do you ensure the pier sits plumb when bolting it down? In my limited experience with concrete, it is never particularly level nor flat.

Or do you not worry to much about it and rely on the top plate to get a level surface for the mount?

Thanks

I think I just tamped my concrete down and it was reasonably level, I did set the wooden former level when I built it too.

After years of battling with collimation on Newts; my eyes aren't up to seeing what's going on accurately enough through a Cheshire or a Cat's Eye kit, I now have the best collimation and star shapes I've ever had.  I could never tell whether the secondary was perfect until I bought the Ocal, and it was far from it, I even used it to set up a replacement focuser and get it dead square.

1 hour ago, Richard_ said:

You have better eyes than me! I could swear blind I missed it, but looking at another person's photo, I can see where the soap bubble is meant to be. Perhaps it'll appear during processing? 

Bottom edge at 5 o'clock

5 hours ago, Richard_ said:

Wow, we must be on the same wavelength as I also shot NGC 6888 last night! I'm using a 120mm refractor and the 4.5nm Antlia edge filters 😊 See screenshot of the master lights below. The camera is still new to me, so I was blown away when the first H-alpha sub came in, so imagine my surprise when I stacked them together! 

H-alpha (1h 40m total at 300s exposures) 

OIII (3h total at 300s exposures) 

Regarding back focus, you're off to a good start. Your star shapes in the corners suggest the camera is too close to the flattener so you could increase the distance slightly. When a filter is introduced, you typically increase back focus by one third of the thickness of the filter. I think the 36mm Antlia filters are 2mm thick so add 0.6mm to 106mm bringing you to 106.6mm. 

Luckily, I'm using a William Optics adjustable flattener so I can increase back focus up to +15mm in fine steps instead of using spacers. Even when I hit the correct back focus stated for the falttener (taking into account filter thickness), I still needed an extra 1mm of back focus to get rounder stars at the edges. They're still not perfectly round, but it's good enough for me! Maybe give that a try? 

Nice images, I can see the soap bubble quite clearly in both images, something I hope to get this season.

You're very welcome, looking forward to your first light, they're great cameras.

QHY also discuss the USB frame corruption problem here, look for this section in the FAQs;

USB data corruption can also be caused by voltage/ earth leaks between equipment, this is discussed in the same FAQ, and has the potential (pun intended) to destroy your camera, mount or something else. It's easily tested for and you probably should before just putting the problem down to a USB cable problem.

Before you start probing with a meter make sure you take note of their warning to do it with the camera, and probably everything else USB, disconnected first.  You do this at your own risk, I've seen a mount mainboard destroyed by earth leakage.

Nice pier.

It's covered here

Check what the sync behaviour is set to atm, if it's not "Dialogue Based" then this is your problem.  Remember to clear your pointing model in EQMOD too.

I had this happen with platesolving when I started using EQMOD and SGP, I guess platesolving works the same in N.I.N.A.

If you use EQMOD then check the sync setting, if it's saving sync points on every solve and adding them to a pointing model you'll end up in a situation where the pointing model fights the platesolving and they'll reach deadlock.

For platesolving you don't want any pointing model being built, change the sync setting in EQMOD to Dialogue Based and clear any existing pointing model.

This assumes your using EQMOD 😀

What mount are you using?

The moon's around atm, that's a nice easy target to help get good focus on.

Lovely image, good to see you back in the saddle Steve, I hope you're well.

2 hours ago, Skyline said:

Sorry to pull up this old thread. Can I ask what are the measurements of the concrete base and depth please?

Thanks.

It was just over one metre square and around 700mm deep.

19 hours ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

Cuiv done some testing and the  real world results showed no improvement using a ramdisk under windows and a little improvement under linux. I posted his video a bit further up. 

 

Thanks for opening my eyes to this, I've done some reading and now this makes perfect sense.  In the past I was only using the benchmark results and it appears the benchmark doesn't reflect real life use cases.  I had super fast undo / redo though 😄

I'll revert to no RAM disk and set up the swap space on my nvme when I next process some images and see what difference it makes.

18 hours ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

Ah, ok. Might be worth trying if/when i can afford to add another nvme drive. I'm probably being greedy anyway. WBPP is blazingly fast with this new machine compared to my old gen 4 i7 

RAM disk for swap is way faster than nvme, like 10x plus faster.

I think it was ImDisk Toolkit, I'm away from my PC at the moment but that rings a bell. It loads at startup and I'd forgotten about it until you posted, it just works.

I run the same nvme disk and it's fast, but a ram disk for PI's swap files is way faster. Screenshot your benchmarks, I'd be interested to see the progress as you tweak things.

A ram disk really helps, I can't remember my exact config but I have 32GB with 16GB dedicated to the ram disk, set as 8 scratch folders in PI, I think, Google will tell you more.

There are some settings to make PI use your GPU for certain functions too, this speeds up star removal massively.

Then there's the PI benchmark, you can benchmark your system upload the results and compare the results to other machines.  Take a benchmark before you start tweaking so you can see how much of an improvement you're getting.

Sorry I can't be of more help with the specific setup, but these should point you in the right direction.

You may be able to download a fresh copy of the Windows 10 iso and use your win 8.1 licence key, make sure you install the same version, Home for 8.1 Home, or whatever they called it back then.

Or you can purchase a win 10 pro licence key for around £10.