Gina

Integrating 600 g500 bias subs.

And how many frames did you integrate? I shall leave the file cache on as it doesn't seem to affect pixel integration. I have 600 bias frames with gain of 500 which is what I'm using now and also 600 for a gain of 440 which I used for earlier lights so I might as well use all of them, I guess. I doubt much if anything would be gained between 300 and 600 though. I'll probably try both 600 and 300 on one set of lights though and see if there's any difference in the final result. I'm currently downloading the 600 g440 bias frames from my obsy laptop - taking about 40m.

Here is a screenshot of the ImageIntegration setup that I tried with 200 bias subs and which failed during pixel integration. It might possibly give you a clue as to why changes in buffer size and stack didn't work as expected.

Turning the cache off didn't seem to make any difference. As soon as the pixel integration started the memory usage went up from about 2Gb and gradually rose to maximum when PI shut down. Running Firefox at the same time seemed to make no difference to memory usage - certainly less that 100MB. Conclusion - for more than 100 bias subs changing the buffer and stack from the default to what would seem realistic values doesn't seem to work. On 100 subs the speed increase in using 65MB buffer and 5120MB stack seems minimal which surprised me. For 300 subs or more it seems as if the default settings have to be used though I haven't tried setting the buffer somewhere between the 16MB default and 65MB needed to contain a frame's worth of data. Since bias frames only need to be captured and processed once for each gain setting the loss of processing speed from using the defaults in not really significant.

Shut down everything else except System Monitor and ran PI with different sets of bias frames - 100, 200 and 300. Using 100 frames, 65MB buffer and 5120MB stack with cache on and that went all the way through and not quite reaching 100% memory usage. Went on to 200 frames and that didn't even work with the default 1024MB stack - it ran out of memory. Next I'll turn off the cache and see if that makes any difference.

Yes, It's strange. Maybe I should give PI full reign and stop other apps. Maybe even Firefox...

162 frames - 65MB buffer and 5GB stack, cache on - FAIL

10GB Fail - stopped after integrating a few pixels.

5GB stack OK.

Running some tests. Firstly, I thought I'd see what happens with fewer subs so I selected part of the set - 90 subs instead of 300. Tried 65MB buffer size firstly with 1024MB Stack then 2048 - both OK.

Back to PixInsight... Put everything back to what worked using the 300 bias subs. Fine. Then changed just the buffer size to 65MB and ran it again - got to the pixel integration and crashed - no error message - just disappeared from the screen. The file size of the FITS files is 32.15MB so maybe 64.3MB would suffice so I'll try that.

Torrential rain here again and my observatory underfloor sump emergency bilge pump is working well 25s on and 25s off with a great spout of water coming out of the 22mm hose which I can see from my living room window. The pump is specified at 750 gallons/min so it's clearing a LOT of water

No joy - sat for a while with the rotating disc at the pixel integration stage then shutdown. Maybe I'll try turning the cache off.

PI aborted when it got into the pixel integration I guess I've set the Stack Size too high - the cache must be using memory leaving less room for the stack. Trying again with 5GB stack.

Thanks very much Ken No - I hadn't read that - I plowed through quite a lot of the documentation but I'm too old for all that maths so gave up! Thanks very much - the default values are far too small. No wonder the pixel row integration is so slow!

That's better Auto-stretched image.

Thanks again I've been in touch with one plumber but they are booked up until after Christmas I spoke to the main plumbers wife and he is going to phone me back later today. He may be able to recommend another plumber. I've spoken to one of my farmer friends and he thinks that they should be able to replace the boiler - some of his family have had a similar problem and the boiler was replaced. So I'm feeling a bit more optimistic than I did yesterday. Running PI again and I found the problem with the Pixel combination - "Generate integrated image" was turned off. So how I got an image for the 300 biases I don't know.

Thanks Wim I'll see if I can track down the Pixel combination business tomorrow. I think hot pixels etc. are handled by Cosmetic Correction

Thank you Ah yes I'm thinking of going back to those for a daytime ASC - you seem to have got yours well enough sorted out for night use Great stuff

Your ASC has a nice FOV Huw

Thank you Huw I think this Rayburn must weigh several hundredweight I remember when three men delivered it and maneuvered it into place on rollers!

Just have to see - I'll keep my fingers crossed. It may be that the boiler can be replaced.

Thank you Chris too I think the Rayburn is probably a lost cause as it's 20 years old but I shall get professional advice.

Thank you very much Huw Commiserations to you too - hope you get things sorted out soon Funny how pipes and boilers spring leaks in autumn but I guess it makes sense as things will have been corroding merrily during the summer then when the cold weather arrives and we get the fires going and the central heating and stir it all up. I have another, smaller water problem to sort out too. The torrential rain last night almost flooded to observatory - the lower level regular sump pump had stopped working but thankfully the emergency higher level pump had kicked in and stopped the water rising too high. I think the lower pump has silted up and got bunged up so I'll be sorting that out before long.

I've got bigger worries though - much bigger The boiler in my Rayburn has sprung a leak and I've got a big mopping up job to do then see what I can do about it. Meanwhile I have some (much lesser) electric heating and have ordered a fan heater form Amazon for delivery tomorrow. I've got a convection heater in the observatory too - I'll bring that in.