That sounds really good.

Hey everyone, 

I am about to upgrade my equipment and I came across the ioptron. Would it be perhaps even better then the Heq5 pro?

iOptron

CEM 26 1.5"

Tried again tonight. No Siril yet.

28 minutes ago, alacant said:

No. On a 600d, they are best avoided.  The bias must still however be removed, otherwise the flat frames will not calibrate correctly.

Please see my previous post regarding offset and use of Siril.

 

 

Ok. Kinda scared of Siril. Seems to be quite complex

15 minutes ago, alacant said:

 ~16 should do it.

Yes, but only if you change NOTHING in the optical train. This includes stuff which is difficult to control such as dust settling on the camera sensor... 

They only take a few minutes to do so you may as well take them each time anyway to save having to deal with surprises further down the process.

HTH 

so I took them white shirt pics. I thought it would be ok against the sky. Well, I was wrong. It did take away those black spots, those color differences around edges.... it also brought blue-ish shade towards the top  However, now I see the point of flat frames  What about bias frames? Are they really mandatory?

1 hour ago, alacant said:

Yes. A drawing tablet or a uniform cloudy sky is fine. Set your camera on Av and adjust the t-shirt/paper until you have an exposure of around 2s.

HTH  

How many frames do I take? Can I use them again later?

41 minutes ago, alacant said:

Any colour is fine. Or card or paper...

Do I need a light source behind the sheet of paper? 

42 minutes ago, alacant said:

 

Hope That Helps

Cheers and HTH

I'll try to remember that, thx.

40 minutes ago, alacant said:

 

Especially this: https://siril.org/tutorials/tuto-manual/

Oh wow... so much text. I'd have to find a video. (not too good with texts, done a college degree without ever buying a book)

After a fight with the mount. I had a good polar alignment. (I used the PHD2 polar drift alignment) I did the calibration twice, but it seems to make it somehow worse or at least it made no difference. The curve (both, the blue and the red as well) went off the grid few times. The whole screen flashed red few times. Anyway, after couple hours of being outdoor, the first pic is just about 20 minutes stacked, the other 2 pics of 1,5min. some darks with them. Somewhere close to M44. I just couldn't find M44. 

2 hours ago, alacant said:

ISO 800. Expose for as long as you can before overexposing or stars become distorted. Whichever comes first.

600d, so no dark frames of any type. Instead, calibrate simply by subtracting the offset (2048) from the flat and light frames. Siril makes this part easy.

90% moon, but way over to the east. Take any clear sky you have;)

Cheers and HTH.

ISO 800 was just a white screen, I did ISO 200 and ISO 400

Why no dark frames? Those are the only I am able to do :)) (calibrate simply by subtracting the offset (2048)..... no idea what that means. I never tried Siril

HTH = another thing that don't know what it means

LOL as far as the flat frames are concerned. I just realized, I won’t be able to do those today. I don’t own any white shirt.

25 minutes ago, alacant said:

ISO 800. Expose for as long as you can before overexposing or stars become distorted. Whichever comes first.

600d, so no dark frames of any type. Instead, calibrate simply by subtracting the offset (2048) from the flat and light frames. Siril makes this part easy.

90% moon, but way over to the east. Take any clear sky you have;)

Cheers and HTH.

The moon is just way too close, flooding the sky. There is no way I can find the M44. Not even with my dobsonian

1 hour ago, alacant said:

How about m44? One of the last clusters for a while.

any tips for my cam settings? ISO? Exposures? (Canon 600d)

45 minutes ago, alacant said:

How about m44? One of the last clusters for a while.

I’ll try. I can see some light clouds coming. Also the moon will ne quite close. But I’ll give it a try.

27 minutes ago, malc-c said:

Well looking at the graph, and the resulting stack you're doing fine.

Inverting and selecting a crop of the full

I actually tried and liked to use PHD polar drift alignment. That fixed my poor alignment from the last time. Took me about 40 min to get it done, but when I did the 3 star alignment after, I was quite close. I’ll look into calibration and I’ll do the calibration frames. 
Any ideas for a target to train on? I can see east, south, southwest sky from my place.

36 minutes ago, alacant said:

Good only if you're using a camera designed for astro-photography, flat frames are however recommended obligatory either way; they'll correct the dark spots and vignetting.

Cheers

This was only a test of the guiding. I sure will do the flat frames when I choose a real target. Tonight, if the weather stays clear. The spring sky here doesn’t give much though. 

1 hour ago, malc-c said:

Not bat at all. Did you add any darks when processing ?

yes 10 dark frames. Same settings as the light frames. There are some darker round spots, dirty camera I suppose.

And with that, last night, (another cold one), I tested how does it guide. Roughly half an hour worth of 2 min exposures stacked. I am actually happy with it :)

Well, I suppose, I’ve got some good news. Last night was very, very cold, but the sky was clear. I took my mount out, leveled it perfectly, found the north star…. and got so cold, that I skipped the rest of the polar alignment. Did a quick one star alignment, pointed my scope….somewhere, cranked up the PHD2….and….nothing. Well my brains froze again, I forgot to connect my cam to the mount. I quickly fixed that and … got my first curve. I know, it’s no good, it’s all over the place. But I’ve got the curve. One more step done

12 hours ago, malc-c said:

care to divulge  what resolved the issue..... just in case others have the same issue...

The slider. All the time, I tried to slide it left as much as possible, thinking the - is left and + right. Little hint for all developers: there are stupid people (talking about myself here) that need +- markings on all the possible sliders or other adjusters. Starting issue: the USB in the cam is really tough and tight to work with. Driver issue: TBA

Got my first star in the guide cam!!! There was a gap in the clouds so I just quickly laid the scope next to the window and here it is. 

Next step, the mount

Every step seems to have it’s own complication. Can’t wait to get through them. If only the weather changed. There is almost no time anymore. Soon there will be no dark skies here.

30 minutes ago, malc-c said:

Just googled "PHD2 and ASI Studio" to throw up similar threads - on Cloudy Nights one member with the same issue as reported here was advised to go to the camera's manufactures forum, which he did and got the following reply

Prior to this there was suggestions to ensure the latest drivers and Ascom platform was installed.  people reported that their cameras also worked fine in Nina, but that was down to Nina and asi studio using the native driver where as Phd2 uses the ascom driver for cameras.

Hopefully the admin won't mind if I link to the post on a competitors forum 😉   Read in full here

I’ll look into it. Thank you