Stinky_Pete

I have a ASI294 MC Pro, purchased in 2020 and up until now it has been a solid little workhorse camera

Last imaging session, about 4 degrees and battling dew it started producing very screwed up subs. I wondered if it was a connection issue but packed down for the evening. I have just fired it up again (as we have clear skys for a change) and it is still not right.

It seems to have a rolling shutter issue on bright subjects such as the moon, stars it only has the green channel working (see attached image)

Has anyone seen this before? any advice? the Orion shot was taken the day before it all went to pot

cheers

steve

Ok thanks for the feedback. I'll give 2x binning a try. I was just happy to be out 😁

unfortunately if i run MCupdate i get 

ERROR

Celestron MCupdate (2.2.5) is not allowed to run on Win (5.1)

Setup Aborted!
 

Ok im after a bit of advice. I sort of inherited a 9.25 nexstar evolution (2015 version i think). Optics were clean but the secondary holder rotates badly. I think ill see if orion optics can service it rather than making things worse my self. My problem is with the mount. When its switched on i get No response error 17 and 16 which means it cant talk to either axis. Now, i understand this could be due to low power but i use my observatory power supply and it still happens and looking at the battery each cell is well within acceptable voltages. No wifi is detected so cant connect via sky portal and the handset thinks it should be the GPS version (which it isnt)

soo
Might be firmware?
I tried flashing via the handset/serial USB with CFM which went without errors but on restart i get the same error
looking in utilities it says
HC: NXS 5.34.2065
MC: ? . ?? . ? . ??

this says to me that the motor control firmware is corrupt or can not talk to the handset. 
Has anyone else got past this? Is there anyone nearby with the same handset controller who could help me talk to the MC board or test my handsets connection?

cheers all 

Seems to be a January thing for me. Locally the skys always seem to be appalling in November and December is manic anyway so my first imaging session for some time always seem to fall in January. nice to be back out this week, good skys and i was able to take about 8h on the horsehead. Still working the kinks out of the 294MC Pro and its flats particularities (no less than 3sec, but need a very dim flat panel for that)
anyway feedback is always welcome

 

For your first Pics you should be very pleased with your self
 

First time out in well over a year (yes, 2021 was a bitch which kept biting)
6h on M33 and 8h monkey head nebula
struggling to get flats to work well with the ASI294MC Pro so these have a reasonably heavy crop.
Anyone with a 294 have any tips for Flats? i'm using a Flatfield panel on its lowest setting and still need a few sheets of paper to get 3s exposures with 30k ADU
nice to be back out mind...

Not guided for these images I'll.have to check my graphs next time it is clear and im using my newt setup. 

im surprised if its RA error over that length of sub (30s) or my guiding in my other setup would be very biased, the image would move out of frame over the length of an evenings imaging .whats the best way of checking that?...unless sidereal rate is off on the stellarmate? 

ok below we have an untouched frame direct from DSS which i used to convert from fits to tiff then 8bit jpeg for size constraints. The other one is the same sub but cropped and a simple stretch, stars are still elongated and v shaped at the edge of the frame. 

I picked up a second hand hyperstar to go with my C6 and im struggling to get good results with it. It originally came with the incorrect adaptor for my camera (294 pro) and Dean at starzona has been a great help getting a new one out to me. Trying it out last night on M42 (Bortle 5-6 skies but some high cloud) i have to say im underwhelmed with what i achieved. Im not sure if its me, the conditions or the equipment. This is 30 subs of 30 seconds each, focused with a Bahtinov mask, no flats or darks as i was only playing about. The second image is 1 min subs x30 from my 200mm Newt at F5 just with a modded dslr from 5 years ago. I seem to have oval shaped stars so tracking is a bit off although i know that my pier has been drift aligned recently and the whole thing is sitting on a tuned Neq6 with a guided RMS of >1 usually. Other issues i am still getting is a slight v shape to the stars in the corner but the chip in the 294 is quite large so I'm not that surprised with that (the image can be cropped anyway). I cant really see any improvement in "depth" even tho im running at F1.9 instead of F5 at comparable exposure times and number of subs. Am i asking too much of the system? it was a frustrating and tiring night and my expectations could be too high for sure but i was hoping to have a much more convenient setup so i can get out much more easily when there is a gap in my frenetic life 

any tips gratefully received.

Hi folks, can i just get a quick sanity check before i loose mine. First light with a hyperstar coupled with an asi294mc pro, im seeing v shaped stars at the edge of frame, collimation seems ok but i think i might have a back focus issue

The back focus is i think 44.3mm (although its a second hand older model so i could be wrong) and the back focus i need for the camera is 55mm so i just need a spacer of 10.7mm right?

i think you have the colours really nice

Ok getting a bit better now. M51, still picking up an odd vignetting in APP like the flats have been over enthusiastic so had to crop quite small. New camera and new software is always going to produce something weird. Ill keep working on it

About 6h total integration with 300s subs binned 1x1, 40x flats (teeshirt on evening sky), 30 darks, 40 flat darks
ive got two more nights of clear skys so i can either add more time to this or try a new target

Finally made the move from a DSLR to a OSC and bought my self a Zwo Asi294mc Pro. By some miracle there have been a few clear nights since it arrived so i have managed to get about 4h on M81 and M81. Struggling a bit with colour saturation and i have picked up an odd gradient i cant get rid of yet and a LOT of sky background. i think it might be the streetlight but M81 is quite high up this time of year. I normally use a CLS clip in on the cannon but had to put in a cheep skywatcher light pollution filter here which might also be to blame. Might look at getting a IDAS
60 x 300s subs, 30 Darks, flats and Dark flats. Stacked first in DSS but ive also given Astro pixel process a go using the free licence. I can get a bit more colour out using APP it seems. 
please, any hints and tips gratefully received  

Thought i would put my 2p's worth in. Last night just about to start on M51. Pier made from an I-beam knocked together for my by a lab mates boyfriend in exchange for a crate of Guinness. I use a cheep as chips lynx 10 windows 10 tablet and a powered hub to run everything. guiding with Phd and Cartes du ciel all throug EqMOD

11 hours ago, pete98 said:

Was the first rainless/cloudless nite in about a month here, and temperature was up to a balmy 40° F , so just had to take the scope out.

Considering back in the 60's, when I was an avid amateur astronomer and spent countless hours trying to photograph this object without any luck, I was pretty happy.

But, know this needs a lot of improving.  Registax and DSS make my head spin.  Really need to find some step by step "stacking for dummies" tutorial.  Not that I am a dummy, cause im not...im just getting very old I guess.

Vintage c8 at prime w/.5 focal reducer.  30sec @ 1600 iso.  Canon 350d.  Seeing conditions: fairly good sky, but light pollution an issue.  Exposures longer than 60sec get very washed out.

One of 10 images.

But when I stacked using DSS, I got this.

 

Can anyone tell me why I lost the "dark sky" background?

 

That's a lovely start,  you can see you are getting more details. Export as a tiff and open it up in photoshop or gimp and reset the dark point in levels and you will get the dark sky back.  Then it's time to play with curves..... Just tinker with it and it will start coming together 

****edit**** just re read that and thought I could make it easier. 

In deep sky stacker,  on the left hand side you will see save image as.  Save it as a 16bit tiff file to desktop or where ever.  Open up your photo editing software. In photoshop press control L to open up levels.  Now more the left hand triangle under the histogram to the right until it nearly points to the start of the curve. Click OK. Now the sky should be black. If you repeat this you can get a bit closer to the start of the curve. You have to be careful because you  can make the sky too black (clipped you will hear it called) if you point the triangle too far into the start of the curve. 

Hope this wasn't patronizing but I know it took me a while to learn the vocabulary which surrounds this

Ok [takes a deep breath]

my first propper attempt at an astrophoto from last feb (i say proper because im not counting photos of the sky from holidays etc..), the newbie favorite M42. Unguided and i think 90s subs (i cant remember how many) and flats, darks and so on have not happened yet. Suffice to say i was dead chuffed with the result.