Kilohertz

Thanks Michael, as I am still learning, I'm wondering what the reasons are? Cheers

I'm using a Neewer dummy battery and simply plugged the USB port of the camera to the computer, then opened NINA and it found the camera, then just connected to it using NINA, no driver install or anything, also no ASCOM drivers for the camera, just plug n play. It's been working perfectly for 4 or 5 days now. Good luck!

Thanks everyone for the awesome ideas and suggestions. I installed the EOS UTILITY 3.12 and it looked like it would work great, except it's drivers prevented NINA from connecting to the camera so I nuked all the utilities it installed, I may come back to it to get them to play together when it's cloudy. Using the camera LCD zoomed in 10X turned out to be the winner, I had no idea that function existed, I have since downloaded the manual. 🤪 I was able to get great Bat spikes on Jupiter and was focused in 30 seconds, cool! I've been capturing images of the Soul Nebula for the last hour but the moon is a real bother, too bad as it's otherwise crystal clear. I was amazed at how much the moon affected exposures, I could see it in my last nights images of the Heart nebula, the background noise just went away as soon as the moon set. Thanks again for all of the help, it's very much appreciated. Cheers Paul PS also happy with my mods to the NEQ3-PRO here is typical guiding.

Thanks all, I'm searching for the EOS utility to see what it has to offer. Yes, I had ISO cranked to 6400, was using one of the bright stars in the big dipper, a few weeks ago I had used Jupiter and it seemed to be bright enough to see Bat spikes, I may try that again with the Canon. Cheers

I finally have everything working properly and have had a couple of good nights of capturing having just bought a Canon T3i (600D) camera and modding it to remove the IR filter, capturing images via NINA and wifi transferring images to my main computer. Using a Dell mini computer at the mount to run the setup. My setup includes an ED80 480mm f/6 refractor, NEQ3-PRO mount guiding with PHD2, getting the hang of all of NINAs capabilities but my current struggle is figuring out an efficient focusing regime. I have a Batinov mask but it doesn't create any discernable spikes to use, the camera has live view on the LCD screen but it's small. Using NINA live view with stretch is very noisy and I can't see any stars for the noise. The only way I was able to achieve focus, which was extremely painful and drawn out, was to capture 2s exposures with HFR star analysis enabled, wait for the results, macro focus adjustment, do it again, adjust the other direction, rinse and repeat for about 20 minutes until a null in HFR was achieved. There MUST be a better way to focus a DSLR, don't even mind connecting to different software to focus. I am building an autofocuser but it won't be done for a few weeks and we now finally have a week of clear skies. Listening for suggestions. Thank you. Cheers

Nice work Jerome, looking forward to hearing how it tracks, good luck. Cheers PS I haven't pulled mine apart to replace the .75mm shims with the .1mm shims yet, I've been working on building an automatic focuser and getting my new Canon T3i connected and working in NINA.

Thanks Jerome, It's been 4 months in the works getting this far and FINALLY getting some images captured and everything working 100%, certainly been a learning experience, I learned never to do it again. 🤪 In the last few nights the guiding has been very consistent with only a few minor self caused glitches. I had the laptop out at the rig one night while I was focusing and putting a new battery into my camera, just the tiniest bit of me touching the gear caused PHD2 to complain and temporarily lose the guide star, I found out it is VERY sensitive to outside disturbances, cables binding or anything else that impedes complete freedom of the mount. FYI. Cheers

Cool, looking forward to hearing about your results. I can now comment on the mount performance as I modded it as I have had 3 great nights of imaging finally. Using GSS and guiding with PHD2, my average RMS errors are .35 - .6", which I a very happy with. Cheers

Nice work! That whole mount looks awesome! We finally had some clear skies this past week so I have been beating my head against the wall for another reason, although last night was a near perfect session, from 7:30 until 1:30am... no screw ups, great captures...now we have 5 days of crap weather so I will have a chance to learn processing software technics....I see more pain and anguish on the horizon. The darkroom days were so much easier. 🤕

In case you missed my update, it's in a separate thread...here is the link. NEQ-3PRO my modifications and upgrades

Well I just realized that I haven't updated this thread in a while and I have made some more mods to my NEQ-3PRO mount. The PTFE arrived and I cut out washers to replace the red fiber washers. I used synthetic 10W oil instead of grease on them as my mechanic friend said it would work better in the cold. The thin .1mm stainless shims arrived from China so I can use the thrust bearings without too much mis-alignment of the worm but I haven't replaced the teflon as I want to make some tests first, and as I am STILL mucking about learning polar aligning and plate solving and the weather is STILL crap, I won't be going back to the thrust bearings for a while. The PTFE seems to work very well, the mount axis are very smooth and no discernable stiction. While I'm waiting for clear skies I decided to bring the mount inside and add some knobs to make polar alignment easier. I just bought a 3D printer last month and am having a blast learning to use it as well. I made the knobs and new threaded shafts and it works AWESOME! So much easier than the steel slippy rod things. I'll update again once I have tested my PTFE washer mod and then again with the bearings. Cheers Here is the way I installed the PTFE washer with the polished stainless thrust washer from the bearing set. If you want the correct size bearing that doesn't need grinding it's TC1625 and is used on both ends of the RA shaft. Try to locate .1mm or .2mm thick stainless shims so you don't have to work too hard to get the worm gears re-aligned. The ones that come with the bearings are .75mm. I found this bearing which Petter couldn't locate in the hyper-tune video, but as it turns out, it's not needed, only the very ends of the shaft need bearings so I removed it. The bearing AXK1024 is needed for the very top of this shaft, circled in RED but not the one below it. The bearing at the bottom of the DEC shaft is AXK2035. I also changed the worm drive bearings. 686-2RS

I just found the negatives from the trip to Yakima for the eclipse, I just recalled it was broken cloud cover that day and we were loading into/out of the bus driving around looking for a clear spot, we found it after totality. 🙄 I was in grade 10, 16 years old.

@900SL Bubble nebula? I tried that on Saturday but my max exposure on the camera is 60s, I used ISO 1600, all I got was a nice star field but they were razor sharp. 🤪 cheers

Love your signature.

I decided last October to get back into Astronomy after a 40 year hiatus. I realized right away it was going to be a steep learning curve but I thought no problem, I've been building computers since about 1978 and into photography since about 1975 and was right into astronomy in the late 70's. Well holy shxt was I ever wrong! In the last 4 months I have spent $4000, I have had exactly 2 nights of image capture, mind you the weather has been absolute crap for 3 months, but still, I have spent 90% of my time screwin around with software, computers, mounts, drivers, errors, Windoze issues, software problems etc., it seems the art of photography and image capture has been greatly diluted by technology. When I was in gr10 I went to Yakima WA in 1979 with the local college for the solar eclipse and had a blast. I had a lens from a telescope with a piece of #12 welding glass in front of it, 35mm film camera, probably my old Minolta SRT-201, b&w film, I shot about 72 frames and when I got home I developed my own film and went into my darkroom to make the prints, I still have them and just came across them yesterday. It was a great sense of satisfaction. I know the images I captured were no where near as good as could be had today, but it was WAY more enjoyable, it was actually an astronomy hobby, not a computer hobby. Anyway, I was just wondering if any of you are in the same boat, completely frustrated with the whole image capture process? I know live observing hasn't changed much but I'm getting too old to be standing around stooped over a scope in -10 weather. Thanks for listening to my "rant". Your thoughts? Paul PS Feb 26th, 1979 eclipse below