Gina

I'm not giving up!! I have a better way of dealing with the several tens of gigabytes I will hopefully capture in a decent imaging run. I have a 64GB micro SD card installed in my imaging laptop so I can transfer the data to that from drive C: then later take the card and connect directly to my processing desktop to copy the data to HD. Still an interim measure until I get the RPi and INDI setup going - awaiting good image capture software.

Hmmm.... I've given up for the night There's cloud coming in now anyway! I had everything set up and working before I went out tonight for a social event. Got back indoors at 10pm and the sky was clear. Should have only taken a few minutes to point the rig at the Cygnus Loop and get imaging instead of which, nearly three hours later and still not working Makes you wonder why you bother... sometimes...

Now I find the focus has gone out and the focuser USB is not connecting

After restarting CdC umpteen times I have the Cygnus Loop more or less centred in the frame Now waiting for the camera to cool before taking 100 3nm Ha 30s subs with gain of 600, the maximum. Earlier I got the temperature down to -20°C - that will have to do on this warm night!

Yes - I see what you mean

I dunno... Why is it that the computers behave fine in the afternoon but as soon as we get a nice clear night, all hell breaks out!!! Well at least with the Win7 laptop in the observatory. I just can't seem to get CdC to control the mount properly! Tried rebooting. Now the Linux Mint desktop has locked up!!! Should I give up and go to bed??????????????????

I think I'll do flats for all the filters this afternoon - nice and bright so I'll be using low gain anyway. I'll take bias and dark frames in the same run at the relative high temperature. As long as temperatures match and the exposure for flats of 32μs for darks then the flats can be calibrated and be applicable for other camera settings and temperatures.

I was hoping to do some imaging last night but it was a bit foggy - hopefully tonight though. I have a list of DSOs I particularly want to concentrate on :- Cygnus Loop - NB NAN & Pelican - NB M31 - RGB IC 1396 - NB (includes Elephant's Trunk) I'm thinking of 100 subs of each colour with an exposure of 30s with gain of 600 for NB and 10s exposure with 250 gain for RGB. All hopefully at -25°C if possible but the ambient temperature is still quite high at night and I might have to make do with a few degrees warmer. I will probably need to redo the bias and dark frames anyway. I've found the noise is reduced noticeably with every few degrees colder. The change from 5nm to 3nm Ha has shown really substantial improvements in the images and I'm now thinking I'm being a bit let down by the 5nm SII - I already have 3nm OIII. The SII is weak anyway and having larger and brighter stars to cope with doesn't help!

The RGB images look reasonable but it's difficult to tell if I've lost some of the lighter gradation also the present lights haven't got the information I could do with to make PixInsight easier to use so I think I'll retake them as it won't take very long with 10s exposures or less. Matching darks won't take long either and doesn't need clear sky. I may retake other DSOs too to get the required data in the file names. Most of these were basically test runs anyway but I think I'm about ready to do some real DSO imaging with a view to good final images

Hmm... Think I've made a "boo-boo" - just looked in the Blue folder and it's empty - think I've processed the blue on top of the green so I guess the master green light is actually the master blue light. I'll have to re-do the green then. Not to worry - processing only took about 15m. I'll rename the green to blue and do the green again. Think I'm still half asleep

Now running BPP in PixInsight on the M31 sets of RGB subs. Red finished and examined and it looks alright so now doing G and B. Using master Bias, Dark and Flat.

Yesterday I installed an SSD in my new PC, SSD partitioned with 100MB for /boot, 150GB for / and 99GB as /ssdata, OS and other software installed followed by PixInsight and TeamViewer. Everything running fine.

Yesterday - SSD installed in my new PC, SSD partitioned with 100MB for /boot, 150GB for / and 99GB as /ssdata, OS and other software installed followed by PixInsight and TeamViewer. Everything running fine.

Did a defrag on my Win 7 desktop in preparation for shrinking the boot drive with Linux Mint with a view to migrating to a smaller SSD. That went fine but when I tried to boot from USB it got to the MB start-up screen with options to change boot order etc. but nothing worked. Without the USB boot stick plugged in it booted as usual but straight into Windows. Maybe I won't bother to upgrade to SSD - shan't be using it much anyway and I have the new Linux desktop to upgrade to SSD so I'll do that first. I might add a second 250GB SSD to add to the first one of 500GB.

Sorry, FLO price is £1316 and is for the latest version with the USB hub.

Here's the NAN & Pelican from PixInsight with a bit of histogram stretching and resize in Ps .

Still working... Further speeding up would be good I'll probably add the 500GB SSD tomorrow and reinstall everything on that. The data is all in a separate partition on the HD designated /home starting at about 250GB. I've read that reinstalling on the new SSD is much better than migrating from HD to SSD in Linux. Once I have the system and software installed on SSD I can reuse the root partition and assign it as a data partition.

Now running the PixInsight script to calibrate the NAN & Pelican 3nm Ha subs using sets of bias and dark subs and the master flat. Then going on to register and stack the lights.

I'm not proposing to open the rig so the optics is pretty much sealed. Actually I thing it's perfectly sealed because I was taking darks around midday today with the roof open and in broad daylight, with the lens cap on and there was no light getting in. The only surface open to dust is the lens front element and I'm sure any dust on that will be well out of focus but I'll keep it clean anyway.

Since all the filters are the same size and distance from the camera, I think this master flat could be used with other filters as well as the Ha. Any comments. please?

And this is the same image histogram stretched to show the variation and slight vignetting in the corners which is easily calibrated out. Must say, I'm pleased with the cleanliness of my optics - I did clean everything before assembly

Here is the master flat obtained from PixInsight using biases and darks for calibration, reduced in size to 1200px wide. This was with the 3nm Ha filter.

The connection to the camera is USB3 but will also take a USB2 plug. The built in hub is USB2 only. The camera works perfectly well with USB2. USB3 is only needed for the maximum frame rate as used for planetary imaging - USB2 is perfectly adequate for frame exposures of a second or more (up to 2000s = 33⅓m).

Interesting but I can see no mention of the built-in USB2 hub that the latest version of this camera has and is the version sold by FLO. Maybe the 365Astronomy one doesn't have the USB Hub and that's why there's 10% off!

Well, most of their cameras are designed for planetary or lunar imaging with only around 2.3Mpx. The next down from the 1600 in pixel count is the 178 with 6.4Mpx, 3096x2080, 2.4μm and sensor size of 7.4mm x 5mm. The mono version of this is the one I'm using in my ASC. Cooled version ASI178MM-Cool is just over half the price of the ASI1600MM-Cool.