Xplode

Use the Windows 10 Media creation tool to make the USB drive a Win 10 install stick.
It's super easy, if you got any problems just search for a guide on Google.

Is it a new pc or used one? If it's used there might already be a licence tied to the motherboard that will automatically be activated

For OAG guiding the ASI 120 isn't a good choice, you're better of sticking to your Lodestar.
The theory is that you can guide at almost 1/10 the resolution of your imaging scope, you're at around 1/4 so that should be no problem.

If you wanted an uprade to the Lodestar the ASI290 or the ASI174 is the best choice, in my opinion ASI290 with a small guidescope and ASI174 for longer FL guidescopes or OAG.
Lodestar is indeed not the best guidecam and haven't been for years, imho it's way overrated, but still sell well because of it's good reputation
 

Here's a screenshot at 1855mm/f5 with an ASI174 at 0.65", main camera is at 0.67"
The best i have seen is RMS 0.31"
I'm sure this can be improved upon with some small improvements that i don't think is up to my standards
I have also seen flex in the OAG, USB cable from the guidecam is now strapped to the main camera so it doesn't create unnecessary weight on the OAG.

22 hours ago, blinky said:

Just realised in my above screenshot the total error is 0.94 arc secs, I'm imaging at 0.95 so it should... be ok

You really want RMS to be under half of your resolution because the peaks will always be larger than the RMS, your setup seems to have peaks around 2"
There's generally 3 things that limits guiding, firstly the mount of course, how well will it guide?
There's also the seeing and of course how high in the sky you image, there's big differences through the night and how high your scope is pointing if you are seeing limited.
 

18 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

I'd agree with whoever it was who pointed out that if you can guide for five minutes, you can guide for 10 minutes or half an hour.

CMOS is the obvious option for me because (a) I'm often cloud dodging and (b) my skyglow makes long exposures pointless as it dominates over read noise.

Being able to guide for 5 min with nice round stars doesn't mean that one will be able to guide for 10min with the same nice round stars, flexure give a larger effect over time

There's also the higher chance of something happening for longer subs, wind, clouds etc can all ruin 1 10 min exposure, but if 10x1min were taken only 1 minute would be ruined.

Also there'sa big difference from 5 minutes to 10 sec which is possible for a CMOS setup, i've tried Sharpcap with 10 sec exposures which gives pretty good results, for most mounts it would be fine even without guiding.

Just now, WanderingEye said:

They are very different cameras, and are used very differently, but both give excellent results, I would always go for CCD myself... personal choice..

I'm using a CCD myself, slow readouts and having to take long exposures because of the high readnoise are big drawbacks.
CMOS helps people with cheap mounts get better images because they can take short exposures, shorter exposures are easier on the guiding.
It's also easier to focus with CMOS because of the high framerate
CMOS + live stacking is also pretty amazing, especially if you got visitors 

I would go with the ASI1600 or the QHY163, going for a 15 year old sensor like KAF8300 doesn't really make sense today.

Very nice and detailed image for such a small scope, colors are also very good.

This was imaged at SkyEyE Observatory in August/September.
We're very satisified with the framing and also that we gathered so much dust, being able to use just flats for correction with no DBE making it very easy to pull out the faint dust without uneveness showing up other places in the image.

Processing was done by Ola Skarpen
We would appreciate any feedback if we can improve it.

Frames:
Astrodon B 50mm: 33x300" bin 1x1
Astrodon G 50mm: 33x300" bin 1x1
Astrodon L 50mm: 55x600" bin 1x1
Astrodon R 50mm: 33x300" bin 1x1

Total of 17.4 hours
Pixel scale 0.667"

Telescope: AG Optical Convergent FA14 14.5" f/5
Mount: 10 Micron GM2000
Camera: Motavian G3-16200
Guiding: Moravian G3 OAG and ZWO ASI174mm Mini

Any update on your mount problem?

Very nice galaxy!

Color balanse seems a little off.
What i don't like is the black background, it makes it look a little "lifeless".

You have lost a lot of faint background galaxies and also the faint dust because of the dark background.

Here's an area very close to NGC7331 (upper right corner), lots of faint yellow background galaxies can be seen and also the faint dust.

Looks very unnatural due to the hard editing.
If you use Pixinsight there's no reason to use DSS for stacking, PI does a much better job at aligning/stacking.
How does a single image look like straight from the camera?

It has worked great for me on Android 9 so there must be something else causing your problem than the android version.

Can you see any of it on your raw images?

Could it be that the current owner greased the friction locks?
"unscrew" the dec lock and check, how it looks inside, should be an easy check.

8 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

I think your chances of usefully imaging at 0.3"PP are zero. I'd also say they were close to zero at 0.6"PP.  The Mesu should deliver 0.3"RMS which means about 0.6"PP useful scale at the imager. Then there's the atmosphere: uh-oh!!

Olly

I have to agree with this, i image at 0.667" from a remote observatory in Spain where conditions are much better than further north like up in the UK and northern Europe.
There's large differences in FWHM and guiding performance from night to night (which i expected)
I've actually thought about adaptive optics to get more out of the nights that are less than optimal.

Something else with larger scope is that they are very hard too cool properly to not get heat plumes.
It's a 14,5" open reflector with cooling fans, the roof is opened almost 2 hours before imaging starts.
The primary mirror still takes a couple hours after imaging starts before it gets to a nice temp....I wonder how long it would take with a pretty much closed construction like SCT/ACF etc...

It's very easy to flip the glass in a mounted filter, just cut a plastic sheet to fit the locking ring to unscrew it and flip it

Looking at the small halo it's easy to tell it's a reflection from within a filter.
Did you try to reverse the filter?
It can for certain help because you will switch side of the reflective side of the filter.

Does the mount respond to the power toggle button?

My controlbox died suddenly 3 years ago, Baader handled repair and shipping UPS shipping with pickup for free.
If you can't get it working again i suggest you contact Baader to prepare for sending in the controlbox/hand controller.

Both Lodestar cameras are outdated several years ago, both have small sensors with large pixels and quite noisy too.

A better choice would be the ZWO ASI174mm mini or ZWO ASI290mm mini.
The 174 for an Off axis guider (large sensor and large pixels) and the 290 for a small guidescope (smaller sensor and smaller pixels)
Since your ST80 is longer FL than a small guidescope i would think about the 174 if it's not too expensive

Comparison of pixel size and sensor size:
Lodestar X2    8.2x8.4µm    6.45x4.75 mm
ASI174        5.86µm        11.3x7.1 mm
ASI290        2.9µm        5.6x3.2 mm

In in my opinion the 174 is by far the best guidecam today for larger guidescopes.
Here's a screenshot from PHD2 right now taken from a 1855mm FL scope. 5sec exposure.

Guidecam is a little out of focus, but there's for sure no lack of stars to guide on. 

 

Nice result for a first image!
I'm unfortunately not able to help you with GIMP, but i looked at your image and there's potential in it


Here's what i made from it in Pixinsight

I use mostly PI too.
One thing i've found is that if doing a process and it's effect is too drastic and it's not possible to tune it down it can be a nice thing to combine the before and after image with Pixelmath to give a more pleasing result, it does of course not work with all processes.

That looks a lot better 👍

6 minutes ago, Domer said:

Also, I noticed that the stars are not very crisp in the corners of the images.  This is the case for both the originals and the stacked version No lens corrections applied).  In the upper-left corner the stars have a strange diamond-like shape and in the lower-right corner they are more like star trails (see attached images).  Is this due to the sper wide angle lens or a slight misalignment of the star tracker - or both?

If it's a star tracker alignment issue, that may be a good reason not to do longer exposures.

This is probably caused by sensor tilt or by the lens not being perfectly adjusted/collimated.
If it was an abberation from the lens design it would show up the same in all corners, if it was too long exposure it would show up all over the image (except when pointed at the pole)

It does definitely look like gradients.
I have a Samyang 135mm lens too and i also get bad stars in one of the corners, i think the only sollution is to adjust it with a tilt adaptor.

I may by off about the cause of the filaments, but if you run a process that creates artifacts like that you should step back. You will usually see the same kind of filaments on images with lots of stars and heavy noise reduction.

At the resolution your image is uploaded at most stars will look tiny anyway so there is no need to reduce the star size.
Sarah's image is really beautifull and has very nice processing, i don't think you would be far off with your data if you can take a step back with the processing.
Her colors are different so there's definitely something that can be done to your color calibration.

I've found that with good enough flats there's usually no need for DBE, could your flats be creating issues by leaving small gradients?