engstrom

I have all of them downloaded on an external usb hdd attached the pi. I am running all the devices from a powered hub and I’m within a few metres of my router (although I might try a powerline adapter to improve the downloads for online solving)

I’m getting that way but as funds are limited I just have to hope I can figure out why performance is so spotty/variable. i tried astroarch today and infuriatingly the platesolving was spotty (online failed every time but I’ve got offline “working” - slew to target doesn’t move the simulation mount…not sure if that’ll happen on the night).

Yes, it’s a great achievement by the team but for me it’s ultimately frustrating. I’m probably additionally hindered by the fact I’m Mac-bound as this limits my choice for alternatives. It’s infuriating as the first time I tried it, it worked pretty well but since then it’s refused to play ball and I’m at a loss as to what to try next to remedy it.

Going to give this a go. I've just about had it with Astroberry. Another 5 hours wasted trying to get it to work. Frustrating when the first time I used it, it seemed to work pretty well. Not changed a thing and now it's an exercise is frustration. PA using plate solving took ages to start showing the updated error...then it didn't show the correct updated error (no ,matter how long I left it to capture images)...and then refused to plate solve 9 times out of 10 no matter if I used online or offline (actually it just seemed to hang if I used my local indices). I even tried it native on my Mac but the plate solving didn't work there either. Online plate solving fails instantly, offline just spins and spins and spins....

I guess it depends on the size/design of the mask though? I self printed one for my 80ed and I definitely do need really bright stars for it to be of any use. But having said that; yes! They’re invaluable. I went from “I need an EAF!” To “I can spend the money on something else!” Overnight.

An utterly frustrating and baffling night for me. What promised to be 3-4 hours imaging of clear sky turned into a night of fighting against various things. First for some reason my Bahtinov mask seemed to only produce a blobby mess of colours with no indication of focus no matter how bright or dim the star I aimed the scope at. Focus looked “ok” without it via captured images but for some reason it was impossible to get focus even close with it on. Finally relied on eyesight (risky I know at my age) and started PA using Indigo A1…and it utterly failed giving me errors of 1000s of degrees and slewing to utterly baffling orientations. Tried Kstars on mac. For some reason the INDI server kept stopping and starting and the profile i was using was deciding to drop equipment randomly. Tried Kstars via Astroberry for the pa. Used the online solver as for some reason when I use the downloaded indices it just hangs and eventually fails. It solved images fine but when doing the PA routine the updated error kept failing to update.I ended up aligning a bit, noting the error then starting the whole alignment process again hoping I could get closer. Finally after about 2.5 hours after setting up I was ready to go. Find m101 and use Kstars to slew to target in the solver to resolve the syncing and it just danced around the centre of the screen for another 30 mins sometimes getting close then suddenly losing it and having to try to home in again. Finally just settled for “near enough” and started imaging. Clouds rolled in on image 3 of the sequence..Bah!!! It’s patchy cloud so I might just let it run and see if I can salvage some images.

I know your pain. Last week I used Astroberry with virtually no problems. Tonight I spent 3 hours wrestling with it (and Indigo A1) and captured exactly nothing. Last week platesolving went pretty much without a hitch and was solved within a few seconds. This week…it just seemed to stall. Up to 5 minutes with no results sometimes. After some false starts with indigo I got the platesolving working, got it polar aligned and all seemed good but then it would slew off to weird sky positions that certainly weren’t what I was expecting. Anyway it seemed to sort itself out and pointed in the right part of the sky but always just off the target…and despite the PA error being reported as within acceptable limits there was obvious tracking issues. Bah!

Handily the app doesn't let you save a corrected file as a fit. I'm just about to try as an unstretched, auto WBed tiff. loading an un-autostretched but auto WBed tif into affinity now shows all three channels but they’re too far from the left (which makes sense…I guess…if they’re not stretched). The pain in the bum thing is you can only load the fits in singly to the asi viewer before saving them out… And there doesn't seem to be a way in the capture app to specify what WB to use.

When I was taking the flats the histogram looked ok on ASIImage. When stacking in affinity (and viewing them in several fits viewers)when the flat frames are loaded prior to stacking they have just the green and red in the right place. If I use the ASI fits viewer the flats also show up as yellow and looking at the histogram the blue is there but seems to have been clipped from the final image. If I then press the auto wb button in that app all three channels line up and show a mid-grey(ish) image. It seems like the image is capture and balanced but when saved something goes wrong and the WB is off although the image thinks it’s ok (maybe). Changing the WB options in Affinity don’t seem to have any effect.

Still a novice so this could be a stupid question. I captured some flats after an imaging session the other night. The original lights were captured in Ekos but the flats I captured didn't actually seem to capture anything. I then captured more flats in ASI Studio and they seemed ok. When I stack these in Affinity photo the red and green channels seem ok but all the blue data is stacked to the extreme left i.e. level 0 of the histogram is reporting 518000+ pixels in the blue channel (I'm assuming this is reporting clipped data). Presumably some mismatch between ASI Studio and affinity might be the cause of this but has anyone else had this issue or similar? Anyway to recover? The resulting flat is yellow. I'm assuming this will adversely affect the eventual stacking?

I bought some Oklop bags for my 200pds and my nipper’s 130p and az-go2 mount/tripod. They seem solidly made; nice thick material, sturdy-feeling zips and strong straps/grips. There is some padding but perhaps not enough to prevent all the damage if bashed/dropped. Personally I think my purchases were worth it. The boxes and packing the scopes etc. came in offer great protection but take up tons of space. The bags are a great compromise. Incidentally I’m considering buying this same bag for my mount. The only niggle is that the descriptions said metal clips but mine came with plastic ones.

Joining the fray (although I did, in my excitement, post these in the What Did You See thread). M101; SW ED80, .85 flattener/corrector, ASI 585, HEQ5 unguided. 80x90s lights plus darks, flats, bias. Focused using a self-printed Bahtinov but I didn’t lock it off so it may have slipped. Processed in Affinity using James Ritson’s scripts. I really don’t have too much of a grasp of what I’m doing (typical “All the gear, no idea” lol) so I don’t know if the poor quality is a result of bad capturing or bad processing although I suspect it’s a combination of both. I did take some lights of various other objects (only 20-30 lights as a rough test to see if I could capture any data) and as with this one there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of colour present in any of them, even with my random mucking about with scripts and sliders.

Finally! Apart from a 10 minute period the sky was cloudless for me last night (flippin’ bright moon though). I managed to get the ed80 out and set up before nightfall and amazingly the Astroberry seemed to behave itself after some initial weirdness. PA said it within limits and I synced to an object ok but then it slewed off to the wrong part of the sky when I went searching for something. Finally got it working and had enough time to do a few test sequences including M13 and M101 to see if I knew what I was doing. Obviously the results weren’t amazing but I’m happy I got something. I processed them in Affinity 2 and bear in mind I’m a complete novice in that too. I used the scripts created by….um…I can’t remember his name but it seems he’s the goto guy….you know the one. Edit: James Ritson! 🙂 20x90s lights, 20 flats, 15 darks 60x90s lights, 20 flats, 15 darks SW80ED - .85 reducer - asi 585 - Astroberry was pretty much all I used. Next time I shall chuck the 1.25 adapter on and try with the IR cut and LP filters I bought a while ago but not used.

I was literally on my way back here to mention the fact that I have downloaded all the index files to an external USB HDD when I saw your reply 🙂 initially when it was solving it was really quick so I guess I’ve got the FOV right and it knew which indices to use. I guess I have to wait another 3 weeks for clear skies to try again.

I’m just taking my first steps into using an Astroberry pi 4. It’s accessing the home WiFi and I’m connecting to it via a MacBook. This evening I managed a few hours to figure things out live before the clouds rolled in. Managed to get the indi server running and connecting to the heq5 and asi585. Tried solving to no avail initially. I hadn’t entered the focal length and aperture 🙂 but when I did it complained of too few stars a few times before suddenly working. I solved a few times and got the error down. Emboldened I tried to Polar Align and it worked first time and I was only a few minutes out. I tried to correct but racing ahead and not thinking I accidentally slewed the mount instead of fiddling with the knobs. Tried to PA again but when it came to the first Image it captured and received but just seemed ti hang there. Stopped it after a few attempts and tried simply plate solving and it did the same thing; captured and received and the activity indicator just spun and spun. I killed the instances and the server but it just did the same thing. By this time the clouds were rolling in so I guess I’ll see what happens next time.

Finally! A couple of hours of clear(ish) sky and I’m so pleased with myself. Finally got a decent polar alignment (after a false start - 2 star align said RA was >45 degrees off. I guess starting from the Home position is pretty important after all 😂). Second go at 2star was quick and dirty but the handset said it was successful so I hooked up the asi585 with ASIStudio and imaged random patches of sky. They aligned and stacked ok so I’m pretty happy my PA wasn’t massively off. Plus my home-printed Bahtinov mask seems to have worked too! The clouds started rolling in so I was chucking the scope into the clear patches when I could, feeling very pleased with myself. I can’t wait until the next clear night. Hopefully I’ll put my Astroberry through it paces and maybe try some guiding and plate solving.

Last night could have been first light with my sw 80ed/ds were I not recovering from a flippin’ migraine and it dropping down to 1 degree. Gah! I need a decent patch of clear skies to: practice PA - I’m convinced my latitude scale on my heq 5 pro is slightly off. I used a phone inclinometer to measure the angle of the scope and it reckons it’s about 2 deg out which I think tallies up with my own observations. setup my astroberry (repurposed my octaprint unit temporarily) - done it indoors but now need to do it live. figure out platesolving - see above. In theory I know the procedure but need to try it live. Test out guiding - bought a asi120mm but not had a chance to try it out live. Test out the asi585 - nothing like finding the best balance of settings in a live situation before plunging into an imaging session 🙂 test imaging session - just to see if all the above pieces hang together. Once I’m happy with the above I then need to shift all my gear up to the proper viewing site away from the house so I can get more than 30% of the sky in view lol. We’ve got a long narrow garden, the end of which gives some lovely coverage of the sky but lugging all the gear down there (not to mention sorting power and t’Internet) just to get an hour of trying to make things work and then lugging it back seems counterproductive at the moment. And then…I need to balance the performance of the above setup against the Indigo D1/A1 suite that’s Mac native to see which one I prefer and will use going forward (Gah! I hate that phrase). Here’s hoping March is a little clearer. 😂

I bought this for my 6yr old this Christmas. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/sky-watcher-az-go2-telescopes/sky-watcher-explorer-130p-az-go2-wifi-parabolic-newtonian-telescope.html It’s easy to set up and align and light enough to be carried around assembled. The app is very easy to use. He’s loving his first steps into Astro after seeing Jupiter, the moon and various messier objects. I think this set up will keep him going for a few years. As a bonus it’s also rekindled my interest and I’ve dusted off my 200pds and bought an SW 80ED.

Sorry in advance for possibly obvious/stupid questions. I’m a bit on the spectrum and sometimes need confirmation of stuff that might seem obvious to others (I’m grateful at parties!) I think I’ve got my HEQ5 pointing in roughly the right direction of Polaris. Looking through the polar scope, am I right in thinking that Polaris is pretty much the only obvious, brightest POI in that region? Seeing’s not great at the moment and I don’t want to sweep using the alignment nuts and knobs as it’d take ages. I’m just trying to get a feel for it right now so the scope isn’t on the mount. I guess I could make sure my finder and scope are aligned and use my finder for Polaris and then get it in the polar scope? I know I could use some fancy-schmancy plate solving or 3 star alignment but I’d like to be able to do it myself before relying on tech.

Good for you. It must be something about the way I’m setting it up. I tried Kstars on my MacBook and on a Rpi 4b under Astroberry and they’re just not having it. After a while and much jiggery pokery they both “know” a canon camera is attached but think not mounted properly. The 450 I eventually got working for a while and the preview captures did all sorts of weird things. At one point the app was triggering a capture but it wasn’t even saving on the DS card. I tried Indigo and the 450 worked pretty much off the bat but…the Eos M makes it crash every time lol.

I've tried Astroberry this weekend on a 450d and EOS M and had no end of trouble. The EOS M I haven't had any real success with. I finally got Kstars to recognise it but I can't capture from it. The 450d was going the same way but I've managed to get some captures but it needs things to go in a certain order and (subject to more testing) flipping back between various settings to get the camera to save images on the card and also get them downloaded to the Pi. I saw your comment about having to remove the SD card before connecting. I haven't tried that but I did eventually manage to get the 450d connected and recognised with the sd card in. Do you find generally Kstars on a Pi using Canon cameras to be a MASSIVE P.I.T.A. or is it just me?

Anyone know if the SW AZ-Go2 mounts can connect to usb with one of these? https://www.firstlightoptics.com/sky-watcher-mount-accessories/lynx-astro-ftdi-eqdir-usb-adapter-for-sky-watcher-az-gti-mounts.html I 'm assuming so as the AZ GTi cable for the handset works fine.

Would it be possible to use the 120mm-s on the finder scope? edit - Answering my own question: yes you can!

Yes, I did check this before purchase 🙂

Sorry to resurrect an old thread. Long story, short; bought 200p DS and heq6 years ago to learn AP but life intruded and it’s mainly gathered dust. Now my 6yr old is gaining an interest in astronomy it’s time to dust it off. Reading through this thread it seems maybe with the additional weight of my camera body (5dmkiii) OAG might be the way to go to trim the load as much as possible. Malcolm, you mentioned the need to get a thin OAG for the 200p but would this be less of an issue with the 200p DS and its modified tube for DSLRs? Also am I asking for trouble using the 5dmkiii and its large sensor in an OAG setup possibly making positioning of the prism awkward? I do have a 450d (somewhere) but the 5d’s generally “better” sensor makes me eager to use it? Or should I just bite the bullet and buy a dedicated (budget - lol) camera? Probably a colour model as adding a filter wheel would add more weight to a mount already reaching overload.