Gumminess8083

Hello everyone, as a result of my mirrorless camera dying on me, I have decided to purchase a dedicated monochrome camera, ZWO ASI294MM Pro, a filter wheel, and an lrgb filter set. While the camera has not been delivered yet, I'd like to start asking some questions, so I can set everything up quicker when it does finally get here. 1- Gain and offset: I have read a bit about how gain and offset work, so I was wondering if I got it right. What I plan to do is to set my gain at unity (175) and keep my offset as low as possible. If I can, I will just take longer frames to avoid having to raise the offset above 0, provided I can manage that wothout light pollution getting in the way. 2- Binning: I read that binning is not as important on CMOS sensors than it is on CCD, so I should just leave it at 1x1. Does this sound correct? 3- Temperature: What temperature should I set my camera to? I've read that -15 C° is a good temperature, but can I just set it to reach 15 at all times, regardless of the atmospheric conditions and outdoors temperature? 4- Sensor tilt: I've read that some cameras have sensor tilt problems. How would I go about diagnosing this, and is this even something I should be worried about? 5- Filter and imaging order: Suppose I'd like to image a target over multiple nights, would it be better to shoot with all 4 filters on every night, or would it be better to just do maybe l + r on one night, and g + b on the next? I think I may have other questions, but at the moment these are all the ones that come to mind. Thanks in advance for your replies!

Sorry for the late reply, but I forgot to check for answers to this question and, throughout the week, I managed to figure this out on my own! Basically I had taken the flats with the sun at an agle, so they had a nasty shadow covering the top half of the image caused by the dew shield, which threw off the calibration algorithm.

I replied tot his in my previous comment, but I basically realized that this was happening because the shots I had used came directly from my camera rather than NINA, so they did not include anything in the FITS header!

Oh, that is probably why, then! The images used for the stack were some of my first shots, still taken with the camera itself rather than through NINA, so it wass missing that data 😅

Hello everyone, I am about halfway through my PixInsight trial, but, unfortunately, I have run out of data to process... The clouds around these parts haven't been merciful and I've probably had 1 or 2 clear nights at most in the past month. With that said, I'd love to practice some more, so I'd really appreciate it if someone could share his data with me, so that I can make an attempt at processing it My only requirements are: - Camera must be OSC: Since I only own a mirrorless camera, I have yet to learn how to process Monochrome data, so, at the moment, I'd prefer to stick to OSC data -If possible, I'd appreciate it if the data shared with me has already been processed by the owner: Having a finished result I can comparwith mine would really help me understand where I can do better -Including calibration frames is appreciated, as I can get a chance to test out WBPP properly with them -Please, include details about your camera, scope, and name of the target (not yet good enough to know all of them by heart :D) Other than the points above, this should be all. Thanks in advance!

Hello Everyone, I'm currently two weeks into my PixInsight trial and everything is going quite smoothly, except for a few doubts I have regarding the WBPP script. For context, I use it to align, register, debayer, and drizzle. Here are my questions: 1. Is it normal for the program to ask me to manually input the plate solving data during the pre-processing phase? This is what I get after the second or third process while running WBPP. I tried looking at some guides on YouTube, but it looks like nobody is getting this popup window... I'ts not a big deal, since I just have to input my target's coordinates and my scope's focal length, but I was wondering if there was some way to input this data before even running the script, so I could just leave my pc to do its thing while I shower, instead of waiting for it to get halfway through and having to manually insert this info. 2. Is it normal for my image to look completely washed out when including flats? The left one only includes darks, lights, and bias; the right one includes darks, lights, flats, and bias; the bottom one includes only lights and was aligned, registered and debayered manually (RGGB), no WBPP involved. Is this normal behavior or are my flats just bad? 3. Is it normal for the debayering (applied automatically through WBPP through CFA) to be applied differently depending on whether I have included flats or not? Same as above: the left one only includes darks, lights, and bias; the right one includes darks, lights, flats, and bias; the bottom one includes only lights and was aligned, registered and debayered manually (RGGB), no WBPP involved. I have included all thrree xisf files, one of my flats, and my master flat in the google drive folder at this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18cx1WOPkg9ABm6TtXX2EKXXzD3k00-ki?usp=sharing Any help would be appreciated; thank you!

Hey, thanks for your reply and sorry for the delay, work's been quite busy this past week! I think I get the gist of it now and will be trying put it to good use in my next umaging session. Thanks again! :)

https://imgur.com/a/XKEPqQu https://imgur.com/a/vsnADPW This is what I'm talking about All the values above the histogram under "statistics." While I do understand some of them, I figured that some of the ones that I don't may play a part in helping me get a better image. For example, I see that "min" and "max" change depending on how long my exposures are, but sometimes the number in parentheses change as well (1x, 2x, etc) for some reason, and I'm not entirely sure why that is...

Thabks for your reply! I'm using a Sony mirrorless camera, a6000. Should I pay any attention to the values above the graph itself?

Hello everyone, I've been shooting some images the past few nights, but I couldn't really get any good results. Turns out I was using NINA's histogram all wrong! I was trying to get the peaks around 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through, not knowing that the histogram doesn't work the same way as my camera's. What are the things that I should pay attention to when trying to get well-exposed images through NINA? Thanks in advance!

It works! Thanks again for all the help

OH WOW! I think you might have just solved my problem! I just downloaded the FTDI drivers update and BAM, The port is now recognized! I'll try and see if I can get the mount to work and report back. Thank you

Yup, both ASCOM Profile Explorer, ASCOM Diagnostics, and EQASCOM (plus the drivers for my camera, as I cannot find any specific drivers for my mount) Edit: oh, and the Prolific drivers, despite my cable not being recognized as Prolific

Here you go :) As you can see, unfortunately the COM 3 port is greyed out and not connected, since my cable is recognized as FT232R (aka, when I unplug and plug the cable back in, that is the device that gets disconnected and then connected again)

I've tried setting my baud rate to all values to no avail already This is what I see when I inspect the connection in device manager Should I maybe try and plug the cable in the back of my pc instead of the front? Doubt that'd change much...

Thanks for your reply! I do have the lastes ASCOM platform installed (both ASCOM Diagnostics and Profile Explorer) Where would I go to find my mount's drivers? I found this page, and the first link seems to be referring to my mount, but the link sends me to a download page for another program (GSS, Green Swamp Server)

Hello everyone, hopefully this is the right place to ask I'm getting an headache trying to get my telescope to work with NINA, since I can't even get past the EQASCOM setup process! First of all, this is a list of the equipment I'm using: SkyWatcher EQ-6 PRO EQMOD cable I got from amazon (Amazon link here). This connects directly into my mount, no need for the remote USB over ethernet extender to connect the cable to my pc (not factoring this inot the equation, since I'm having the same problems even when connecting the eqmod cable directly to my pc) I've been scouring the internet for solutions, so here's what I'm currintly dealing with: I connected the EQMOD cable from my mount to my pc (the pc does the "device inserted" sound, so it definitely works) I checked to see that my cable gets recognized in device manager (it does, but not under "PORTS." It's shown under "Other devices," as you can see here—"FT232R USB UART") I run EQASCOM as administrator and check "register" on both eqmod and eqmod sim (success!) I go to "SETUP," choose eqmod and then driver setup Set my options as following (I tried changing polling rate a couple of times for the next step) I close the window after setting my location and try to "ASCOM Connect" but I keep getting the "Connect error: Port not available" error I tried the step above with ALL COM ports, but to no avail I tried checking comm stats, but I keep getting this on all of them Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I should proceed? I've watched tens of videos and read many posts, but I'm still at a loss as to what I should do... Is my cable faulty by any chance?