Gina

Ah yes No rain forecast for here and it's expected to clear later.

Aaarrrggghh

Another ASC shot with cloud!

It certainly is!! It's bitter! A minute or so to open the observatory roof was enough for me! Everything else I can do remotely from the comfort of my settee in the warm Here's a pretty good sub of rather a few.

My sub length is 60s alias one minute But I need hundreds of them for a good result!

This is not looking good

I'm cloud watching too and another lot has reared it's ugly head from the east

Amazingly that clouds has not come over but actually seems to had decreased

Image has improved but still passing by the weather station stuff...

I see more cloud approaching!

The sky has pretty much cleared again tonight and I'm collecting yet more OIII images of the Heart and Soul. Not exactly brilliant yet but I think the sky is still improving. The DSOs are just passing by my weather station wind instruments - the dark shadow in the bottom right of the image.

Thanks Hugh Rather thought so Oh well only £12 out of pocket - could have been much worse.

There was a special offer on registering the repair software of a tenner which I though was reasonable, then I found there was VAT to add but £12 to register the software and fix problems still seemed reasonable so I went ahead now the want a phone call to activate the software (admittedly freephone number) but I'm now getting decidedly jittery. Have I been conned? I'm very reluctant to phone that number as that will give them my number. Think I'll change my PayPal password for safety.

Now it says it's "Scanning and repairing drive (:C)" AArrgghh

Great Scott!!!! The Beelink Win 10 has just thrown a DSOD And rebooted!! I Thought we'd seen the end of these with Windows long since!

Tried the new Mint bootable USB stick in one of my laptops and it worked fine but when I tried it in the Beeline box it got part way through loading Linux Mint and then just stopped with no display output. I waited a few minutes but nothing and the power button did nothing so I unplugged the power, removed the USB stick and powered up again. It successfully booted into Win 10. The first USB port I tried didn't see it but another did. The third.USB port recognised the boot and displayed the boot menu from the stick - chose Linux Mint Cinnamon and almost immediately the monitor output ceased. Otherwise same as 2nd port - needed power disconnection to boot into Win 10. I have ordered a ready made bootable USB stick with 9 different Linux distros on - maybe a different distro will work t

Today I'm planning to move the all sky camera from its testing position to its proper working location beside the observatory and attached to the framework. I think I also have the Beelink mini PC ready for use in the observatory and will be looking into its mounting, with some sort of hood to keep dew off it while still allowing ventilation. It requires 12v @ 3A and could be run off the main observatory power supply making it power-cut proof but for initial testing I shall use its supplied PSU. I might need to run another cable back to the warm room to cater for the extra current when running of the DC supply.

Currently downloading several hundred 32MB data files to the PI desktop ready for checking with Blink. Considerable variation from quite good to totally duff frames but I've certainly got some reasonable OIII subs of the Heart and Soul This is an average one - admittedly this is histogram stretched in Photoshop but there is data there.

Hmm... There's some little bobbles of cloud about so my imaging run is not going to be perfect.

I have now shutdown the Beeline box - Win 10 downloaded a whole heap of updates then shut down. I'll run the ASC now that I have a spare socket to plug in its PSU I really must get a bigger distribution socket box!

I plugged the unbootable USB stick into my Win 7 desktop and copied the ISO files to the HD. Then Googled "making bootable USB sticks" and Rufus was suggested as a quick and simple to do the job so I downloaded that and used it to create a Linux Mint bootable USB stick. Went fine though took a while So I should have the ability to install Linux Mint on the Beeline box - probably as a dual boot system with Win 10 if there's enough room. I wonder if Win 10 knew this and decided to play ball

Capturing is still going well Win 10 seems to be behaving itself now Ran ASCOM installer and it found the MS .NET thingy just leaving the C++ runtimes but it said it would automatically download and install them so I just clicked Next and the installation went ahead all the way through Then went to download EQASCOM but Firefox on Win 10 couldn't find the SourceForge server so I downloaded it on my Win 7 desktop and copied the file to Win 10 with TeamViewer. EQASCOM then installed fine in Win 10 Next I went back to Firefox on Win 10 and downloaded the ASCOM drivers for ASI1600MM-Cool camera and the ZWO EFW and installed them. Then on to APT download and installation, which also went fine I think that's about it for the Beeline box for imaging. I downloaded and installed SharpCap before.

Imaging Heart and Soul in OIII - 60s subs, the usual gain of 50dB and -30°C. Slightly different framing from previous but adequate to cover the objects. Didn't want to spend too much time framing.

Very useful link Hugh Found the problem with the USB boot - tried booting another machine from it and it didn't - went into the HD OS. Guess the USB stick has got corrupted. Could have happened first time I plugged it into the Win10 box - it said it was corrupted and did I want to fix it. I didn't but I do wonder if Win 10 did something to it anyway. So if I make a bootable USB stick again I should be able to boot the Beelink box from it with any luck.

Thanks Hugh - I'll have a read