Gina

It's certainly different! I wonder if it will be rigid enough.

I can't be 100% sure that the rig is pointing exactly where it should be but at least the Solver worked on the saved image. It can't have taken a new image and solved that as the sky is not in view (roof closed). I guess it must be relying on the mount encoders to know where it is. Proof of the pudding will be next time we get some clear night sky and can take an image to see where the rig is actually pointing. From the weather forecast maybe Friday night. Still looks like the image needs to be smaller than 2000' in both axes.

Had a thought. Cropped an image saved earlier and used that for Load & Slew and it worked - the mount slewed to a new position (below the horizon but it's about 10 hours earlier than the time-of-day of the original image so expected and agrees with KStars sky view). Strangely, KStars set the FOV to 3' x 1.4' so it seems that doesn't mean the imaging FOV.

My FOV with the 28mm lens and ASI 1600MM-Cool camera is 2172.26' x 1642.26' as shown by :- Is the fact that one dimensions exceeds the 2000' of the widest index file any problem? Otherwise, everything looks fine.

I've set FOV to 2000' x 1400' which seems to be the maximum that astrometry will solve. And here are permissions for one of the index files :-

Looks like that's alright then.

Aha!!

Here is ~/.local/share/kstars/astrometry/astrometry.cfg # This is a config file for the Astrometry.net 'astrometry-engine' # program - it contains information about where indices are stored, # and "site policy" items. # Check the indices in parallel? # # -if the indices you are using take less than 2 GB of space, and you have at least # as much physical memory as indices, then you want this enabled. # # -if you are using a 64-bit machine and you have enough physical memory to contain # the indices you are using, then you want this enabled. # # -otherwise, leave it commented-out. #inparallel # If no scale estimate is given, use these limits on field width. # minwidth 0.1 # maxwidth 180 # If no depths are given, use these: #depths 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 # Maximum CPU time to spend on a field, in seconds: # default is 600 (ten minutes), which is probably way overkill. cpulimit 300 # In which directories should we search for indices? add_path /usr/share/astrometry add_path /home/gina/.local/share/kstars/astrometry # Load any indices found in the directories listed above. autoindex ## Or... explicitly list the indices to load. #index index-219 #index index-218 #index index-217 #index index-216 #index index-215 #index index-214 #index index-213 #index index-212 #index index-211 #index index-210 #index index-209 #index index-208 #index index-207 #index index-206 #index index-205 #index index-204-00 #index index-204-01 #index index-204-02 #index index-204-03 #index index-204-04 #index index-204-05 #index index-204-06 #index index-204-07 #index index-204-08 #index index-204-09 #index index-204-10 #index index-204-11 #index index-203-00 #index index-203-01 #index index-203-02 #index index-203-03 #index index-203-04 #index index-203-05 #index index-203-06 #index index-203-07 #index index-203-08 #index index-203-09 #index index-203-10 #index index-203-11 #index index-202-00 #index index-202-01 #index index-202-02 #index index-202-03 #index index-202-04 #index index-202-05 #index index-202-06 #index index-202-07 #index index-202-08 #index index-202-09 #index index-202-10 #index index-202-11 #index index-201-00 #index index-201-01 #index index-201-02 #index index-201-03 #index index-201-04 #index index-201-05 #index index-201-06 #index index-201-07 #index index-201-08 #index index-201-09 #index index-201-10 #index index-201-11 #index index-200-00 #index index-200-01 #index index-200-02 #index index-200-03 #index index-200-04 #index index-200-05 #index index-200-06 #index index-200-07 #index index-200-08 #index index-200-09 #index index-200-10 #index index-200-11

/usr/share/astrometry is empty. The permissions are set to root so maybe I should set permissions to user (me) using sudo.

Gradually getting everything sorted out for using KStars to control all aspects of remote astro imaging. The only remaining problem is with plate solving and pointing the rig where I want to. When I was using Windows software, I was controlling everything from the warm room and not using remote operation. This meant I could see directly just what the mount was doing. I was planning to set up a webcam to watch the mount remotely but haven't got round to it - got into real actual astro imaging sooner than I expected. I have definitely got my astro imaging MOJO back! 😀 I have got a little further with plate solving. Found where to set up the FOV for plate solving and the Index Files setup form made sense, showing some wider field essential files already downloaded. However, when I tried plate solving I got "Solver started" followed a little while later by "Solver failed". I didn't think to take a screenshot of all this though - I was clearly getting tired and gave up, closed the roof and went to bed. I'm still wondering if having a FOV bigger that the widest index files is the problem. I tried setting the solver FOV within the index files range but it still failed. I think I'll change to a longer FL lens that will give a FOV within the index files range and see if that works. If it does, I'll find another way of slewing the rig for the widest FOV.

Thank you Chris, that would be very much appreciated. I'm certainly thinking of it and fairly soon. I can interleave it with astro.

Ubuntu Mate 18.04 has an RPi B+ version which works fine. With planets not well placed and Solar minimum I'm unlikely to be doing anything other than DSO imaging for the next year or two and the RPi 3B+ and even RPi 3B are adequate. I can tolerate a few seconds download time. All the same, I shall be following this with interest.

It would seem so.

Hmm... the 0°C Bias frames look the same as the -20°C ones. Maybe Bias doesn't depend on temperature.

The PixInsight book recommends taking lots of Bias frames so I just set it going - very quick to capture. Just grabbed 150 😄 PI book also seemed to thing Biases to subtract from Flats was a good idea so I'll do some of those - different temperature. There's a patch of clear sky slowly approaching from the west but could be an hour or two before reaching here. If it gets here in the next hour I might set up for some more lights or I might decide on an early night after late one last night.

Looking at fields of view with the various lenses it strikes me that the ability to rotate the rig for better DSO framing would be a very useful feature. I did design a rig with this facility some time ago but thought it was too complicated. Since then I have much improved the accuracy of 3D printing and may consider it again. KStars actually supports this feature but I'm not sure how it's implemented in INDI yet. A stepper motor would be used to turn the rig in a turret and this would need calibrating so that the software would know the angle. When I was looking into this before, I had in mind writing my own INDI driver with a suitable GUI display but this may be already covered.

Ultra stretched 240s dark in KStars FITS Viewer.

After total cloud most of the day the sun has appeared and shining on yonder hill!

This is a metal lenscap with felt inside the rim. Proper job as supplied with these high quality Japanese lenses.

Forgot the link :- A4 Tracing Light Box - LitEnergy 9x12 Inch Light Pad Ultra-Thin Only 5mm USB Power Light Table for Artists, Drawing, Sketching, Animation

Light panel for taking Flats for astro imaging.

Found it! Was looking for 2.85mm filament nozzles but it's a 1.75mm. No problem - Concorde printer takes either. And I have both sizes in white PLA.

This is a screenshot of one of the 120s OIII subs in KStars FITS Viewer.

Quite right - they aren't - 1.2mm is the biggest I've found.

No sign of light getting in with 120s and gain of 600 as used for OIII - temperature set to -20°C as for the last set of Lights. No problem reaching that even with ambient of 25°C. The light patches on the left are amp glow and shot in the Lights. The band along the top is also in the Lights.