kirkster501

I'm also into Electronic music production as well Steve as well as Piano playing blues/Jazz/classical.  Using Ableton 12 but I am falling more and more back onto Logic Pro.  I use an Alturia Keylab 88 Mk II on Apple Studio Ultra with 192G of RAM.  I use this same machine for PixInsight and Photoshop for my astronomy processing.

Aaah Steve, sad to hear and a massive loss to us all if you leave AP.   Have you considered putting your towering expertise into a mobile rig perhaps with fast DLSR lenses at F1.4 allied to a CMOS camera that can grab a ton of data in quick time??   That's what I am thinking of doing since I am likewise surrounded by trees and live in an housing estate in Bortle 5 skies.  I've already scouted out dark fields and quiet places close to where I live in Nottinghamshire that are dark but I can be back in civilisation inside fifteen minutes.  I can nip out in the car and be set up in ten minutes and grab a ton of data whilst I do visual with a dob or my binoculars.

I am getting remarried in 18 months and moving home  - into Bortle 6-7 - and I am considering abandoning the obs in favour of a more portable setup for AP - I'm trying to think outside the box for my AP future.  You could do something similar perhaps?  I hope I don't appear to be interfering and of course respectful of your decision - but there are always other options?

On 17/05/2024 at 23:33, tomato said:

It will be another big loss to UK AP if you decide to quit Steve. There is remote imaging of course, but I think you need to have a certain mindset to enjoy that approach, I’m not sure I have it…

Remote will never be for me and I'd rather quit than go down that road.  To me AP is about what I can do with my own gear with my own hands - that's of course another debate that I don't want to start on this thread about Steve.   I'm not going to quit, no way, but I am going through a period of consolidation.  I am also a visual astronomer as well and I am getting more interested in lunar, solar and planets in terms of AP.  We do get clear skies of course but we just have to acknowledge they are few and far between in the UK and it makes deep sky AP very challenging on these shores - or in Northern Europe for that matter.  I think if you are a champion imager like SteveR then it's so much more frustrating because you cannot get the clear nights integration time in on a project in the UK to give the object the exposure time it deserves to create an image at the level someone like Steve would think satisfactory.

Ah wow, news to me!  Steve is AP royalty, very sorry to hear.

Whatever Steve's reasons,  I must say AP in UK is incredibly frustrating and I have considered likewise as the conditions are getting worse every year.  I'm certainly going to downsize.

Very good, thanks for sharing you efforts.  I agree also with your easy/moderate/hard conclusions too.

I agree.  Permanently wired and you can just bung it on your mount and off you go.  Thing is, it has been so bad that we can't even do that either.  Ive beeb working on a project covering the whole of Orion and I am two years into it with little to show for it.  Every winter is the same, endless nights of wind, grey and rain and you may be assured that the rare clear night we do get will see the Moon full.

Very sad to hear.  I attended several of his talks, a really friendly and welcoming bear of a man.  He'd always reply to you if you emailed him.

On 11/04/2024 at 10:33, PeterCPC said:

I have given up on this year due to weather and health issues. I will see what happens next year. If it's the same the gear goes.

I am of the same opinion regarding the weather.  Another year of this god-awful appalling astro weather and I will move to a DSLR and lenses for wide-field only imaging and upgrade my Dob for visual.  Since last May it has been utterly hopeless in the UK.

34 x 240s.  Samyang 135mm at F2.8 and QHY268C on a NEQ6, guided.

I keep all the good files - lights, flats, flat-darks, bias, darks.  I use a darks/bias library that I refresh twice per year so it is not that onerous.   I am far from an expert but I have reprocessed my images in light of my improving skills numerous times and I am glad I kept the data.  I keep it all on my NAS.  In 11 years of imaging I now have about 5TB of astro data on my 40TB RAID6 NAS.  Storage is cheap nowadays.  However, I do get rid of the intermediate files that get created as part of processing.  No need to keep those.

I never keep the raw capture files from lunar/planetary/solar.  I only keep the outputs from Autostakkert.

I assume you are using autofocus?  The fact that the central stars are good suggest your focus is good but, still, it is worth pointing out just as Robin has done, that focus distance changes in the CFZ at F3 are minute.  Any issues with the chip not being 100% orthogonal with the illuminated field of the telescope will cause these issues you discuss.  Are you 100% sure you have no sag whatsoever in the imaging train?  Is everything screw-in in the imaging train?  There is no slippage in the focuser when pointed at high angles?  I had that issue on my FSQ85 focuser and had to tighten it up since I too had this issue when using the reducer.  Is the telescope itself collimated and producing a flat field?  These questions are not easy to answer, I concede.

I upgraded to Windows 11.  I am now getting a crash of NINA when I take a sub with the Atik, even Artemis (Atik capture software) is having a wobble.  I need to investigate more - at least a firm crash is something to work with whereas a disconnect after a few hours is a nightmare.  I was also getting a peer collision last night for no apparent reason as well when I tried to use my FSQ rig side mounted.  So frustrating; we wait for months for a few clear skies and when we get them sometimes we have issue after issue.  I will get some longer USB leads and wire directly back to the PC ports.

Some good tips here too such as USB power down, USB controller issues etc:

What to Do If Your USB Port Stops Working (pcmag.com)

Still disconnecting,  Lovely clear night and I've been fighting this issue all night.  Will buy some longer USB cables to eliminate the hub.  Gave up on AP and doing some visual.

HI Steve, thanks for the suggestion, yes mate  changed the cable and tried it on different ports of the quality Startech USB hub atop the mount.  It has been working happily like this for ten years though and the hub is fine with everything else still.  Next thing to try is to connect the camera direct to the PC and not via the USB hub.  I also wiped the drivers.  Rebooted and reinstalled them.  I've got the camera taking BIAS and darks now and been working for 2 hours so far.  I am not convinced though!

Hello,

Been having a intermittent issue with my 460EX.  I start imaging and randomly after maybe an hour or more, the camera disconnects.  Sometimes I cannot connect at the start of the imaging session and have to power on and off a few times before it will connect.

I cannot determine if it is a camera problem or a PC driver issue.  I hope the latter since I have built a new imaging PC.  That said, the camera is now of a venerable vintage - 2012 I bought it - but it is still superb paired to the TEC140 and I see no need to update it.  You can still even buy these cameras they are so good still.

I have installed the drivers from the Atik All-in-1 driver pack "SetupAtikCamerasUniversal-2023.07.14" so they are recent and up to date.  Windows 10 and all up to date.

However, when I look at the driver in device manager it states driver 4.1.0.1

According to Atik website

Change Log - Atik Cameras (atik-cameras.com)

the latest driver is at least 4.2.2.9.  How can I get this latest driver - which I thought would have been installed in the last driver pack?  Where do I see this installed DLLs and ASCOM versions?

What is making me worry a bit that it might be hardware is that I get the same problem with the native driver and also the ASCOM driver.

Any thoughts please guys?

Thanks, Steve

I never tire of adding more and more to this image, such a rewarding and magnificent object that even 15 years into AP I keep coming back to it and I always see something new.  This is now up to 16 hours - I added a bit more luminance two weeks ago when we - at last - had a few clear hours before the moon came up.  FSQ85 and Atik460.  Astrodon LRGBHa.  There are other faint background galaxies in here too if you look for them.

Steve

I love this object and have done it numerous times.  I love yours, one of the best I have ever seen.

The Edge C925 is pushing the NEQ6 to its limits in my opinion at its focal length for AP purposes, great mount that it is ( I have one and a C925).

Superb IC1396 by the way.

1 hour ago, Mr Spock said:

As a planetary observer, a 250mm apo is hard to beat.

 

A cool $60000 even in the US.  By the time it has been shipped and duties paid in the UK it would be a £80k scope and you'd need a large obs and a tall pier to mount it in.   What a scope that would be.   Yuri makes four of them per year on average he told me.

I have the TEC140 which is also amazing.

Wow, very nice.  They could have saved $10 billion on the JWST and gave it to you  

I'm loving it.  Superb!  Well done.

My counsel and my experience with foriegn astro and girlfriends and I accept that YMMV:  there's a time and a place for everything.  Don't ruin your holiday and upset her on the basis of some astronomy when you are meant to be on holiday with her.  I just pack a pair of bins and do some wide angle stuff with a camera on a regular tripod and fast exposures    Now then, if in your case she is fully supportive then happy days.  But if she shows pushback then I'd counsel caution.  I limit myself to using the bins or my camera on the balcony whilst she is getting ready (hours 😂).

I also want to do dark skies astro in a southern locale and will do so on my own or with astro minded buddies when she has a girly weekend. 

An 8" Dob remains good advice IMO although we always have to remember that not everyone is going to be able to (or willing) to collimate a telescope. 

We just have to hang on in and hope that the clouds will eventually part for a few nights. 

As I said earlier, I am enjoying what I have at Kirkster501 towers and not spending any more major money on astronomy.  Maybe a couple of lenses that I can also use for terrestrial.