Starwiz

Just to add, in addition to the good advice given so far - it's a good idea to run all your applications as Administrator.  I don't know if it will help or not, but I've had all sorts of weird things happening when I don't.

John

13 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Nice, how high in the sky is it from Malta?

Thanks.

At the time of imaging it was at about 30 degrees, so less than perfect but obviously not as bad as the UK.

The seeing index was reasonable and with a  jetstream speed of under 10 m/s, I thought it worth a go.

John

27 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

That's a great image! You've come withing a gnats whisker of capturing the polar hexagon. 

Thanks.  I wasn't aware of the polar hexagon, so had to look it up.

John

Hopefully an improvement on Friday's effort.

This was done by adding in a 2x Barlow between the ASI1600mm and the SW200p, so the raw images didn't look pixelated on this one.

John

38 minutes ago, almcl said:

I moved from RA hysteresis to predictive PEC and found a small but mesurable improvement.  A few sessions ago the Guiding Assistant recommended using Low pass 2 on DEC and again switching to this produced a small improvement. 

At present I am trying to record a repeatable  PEC curve in EQMOD to transfer to the mount's own permanent PEC playback. It hasn't been as straightforward as I'd hoped, mostly due to operator error! 

37 minutes ago, bottletopburly said:

switched to predictive pec ,graph looked better for me i wont be changing it back ,thumbs up from me ,takes a few worm drive cycles but bear with it.

Thanks both, I'll be giving that a try.

John

Has anyone experimented with the alternative guiding algorithms that PHD2 provides and were there any benefits found over the defaults?

i.e.

Lowpass

Lowpass2

Predictive PEC

ZFilter

Thanks

John

21 minutes ago, maw lod qan said:

Not only are the details on the planet and in the rings impressive but you've managed to get the shadow of the planet on the rings!

I'll just clicking away with my Canon, and dream!

Like I once did with my Canon.  😀

I hadn't noticed the shadow on the rings, thanks for pointing it out.

John

22 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Looking good! Have you tried the 1600 on the moon? The big chip should create stunningly large lunar surface images

No I haven't yet, but you've tempted me to have a go.

John

My first attempt at a planet for 3 years.

Captured a few nights ago between breaks in the clouds.

This was a bit of an experiment, using my ASI1600mm-Pro and filter wheel mounted directly onto my SW200p.

I was impressed with the download speed compared to my ASI120mc which is only USB2.

The individual RGB images looked a bit pixelated, so I'm going to try it with the 2x Barlow that I have next time. 

Still, pleased to have captured the Cassini Division and some surface detail.

John

2 hours ago, Starwiz said:

Thanks, that could be a good shout.  I thought I was running it as Administrator, but have just checked the shortcut and the 'Run as Administrator' tick box has become unchecked.  I'll give it a try.

Thanks

John

Confirmed, it was the APT 'Run as Administrator' box not ticked.  😀

I can only think it's been reset somehow, perhaps due to one of the updates that's come through in the last couple of weeks.

Thanks again.

John

15 hours ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

Try running APT as administrator. It has a habit of not playing ball sometimes and running as administrator sometimes sorts it. Also try connection cdc and apt to the eqmod simulator and then back onto the ASCOM HEQ5/6 option. 

Thanks, that could be a good shout.  I thought I was running it as Administrator, but have just checked the shortcut and the 'Run as Administrator' tick box has become unchecked.  I'll give it a try.

Thanks

John

14 hours ago, Dinglem said:

Are you using Ascom/EQMod to connect to your mount, if so have you tried POTH Hub as that works fine for me with APT and CDC.

Yes.  I've tried POTH Hub for APT but it won't connect at all with that for me.  I have to use the EQMOD ASCOM HEQ5/6 option.

15 hours ago, bobro said:

Doesn't CdC connect to the mount for positioning and APT to the camera for imaging, with (for example) an APT connection to a PHD2 guiding program server for dithering? Perhaps your setup works in a different way?

It's under the GEAR tab - CONNECT SCOPE.  It needs to be connected to the mount for Plate Solving as well as dithering.  It can also slew to an object using APT.  This all happens via the EQMOD software.  APT also connects to the PHD2 guiding, but all the mount control goes via EQMOD.  (That's the way I think it works 😀)

My setup has been working fine for the last couple of months, but now the mount won't connect to both at the same time.   If I connect to APT to the mount first, then CdC won't connect and vice versa.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what the problem might be?

Thanks

John

They look good to me.  I especially like the Andromeda.

John

On 26/08/2019 at 00:37, Neiman said:

Blown away. Struggles to star align my scope once the night filled up with stars so had a go at Saturn instead. Turned a frustrating night into an absolute awesome Night. What a sight ! ! 

Beautiful isn't it.  I can still remember when and where I was when I first turned my scope towards it more than 30 years ago.

On 26/08/2019 at 00:37, Neiman said:

Blown away. Struggles to star align my scope once the night filled up with stars so had a go at Saturn instead. Turned a frustrating night into an absolute awesome Night. What a sight ! ! 

Beautiful isn't it.  I can still remember when and where I was when I first turned my scope towards it more than 30 years ago.

On 28/08/2019 at 16:34, LordLoki said:

Hi all, 

It's a while ago since I started this thread lots of work and then holidays. But I thought I leave an update for anyone else struggling. 

Reading the answers I felt that I wrongly blamed the equipment and should listen to the ancient wisdom of computer science that says. 95% of all issues are between monitor and chair

So I went back to reading to see what I  not doing right. Turns out Bias flat and dark frames have a huuuuuge impact on the quality of the stacked image. 

Did a couple of darks before but never bothered to do flats and bias since I read somewhere it just makes it easier in post if you add them. 

Now I know that is a massive understatement if not completely wrong. Before I ended up with a mess after doing some stretching and it took me hours and hours just to get a picture that does not totally suck. But it still was not pretty

Below the pictures of M31 first with just a stretch second with a bit more processing. Still need to work on processing but I am very happy with the outcome 

Thanks to all of you and for everybody else who starts this hobby and gets frustrated. Don't give up there is a lot to learn but it pays off in the end 

 

Well done!  It looks better than my first M31.

John

Very nice. 

What exposure times and gain did you use?

John

8 hours ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

Which AV ??  but to stop it happening in the future, add a directory exclusion for APT and its working directories....

4 hours ago, stash_old said:

Julian is right but you MUST check that the APT files are not infected first . In fact do a scan of your computer first just in case you have infected files else where! You may have to boot from a "Rescue device" (e.g. USB) - sometimes provided by Anti Virus software

If your Virus scanner gave you the name of the poss infected file use it on here to check it out. https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload. 

False reports are quite common when a new version of an Anti Virus program comes out with a new algorithm 

I have never had ,lucky me touch wood,that problem with APT over 4 yrs and I use a number of different virus checkers!

Good Luck ! 🙂

 

Thanks for the advice.  I'm now running a full virus scan.

John

On 20/08/2019 at 11:16, chris2 said:

Impressed with images you have shown me, encourages me to have a go

Here's another to encourage you.  Done with a DSLR and SW200p scope during my first year of imaging.

You're going to love imaging.  Enjoy the ride! 

John

My virus scanner stopped APT and quarantined the APT.exe file during the warming sequence last night.

Has anyone else had issues like this?

I've had to restore it from the quarantine location this morning.

John

Both excellent images.

The second image looks more even and natural for me.

The first image has a slight darkness in the background at the edges of the cluster that for me, makes it look more unnatural than the second.

John

1 minute ago, ramdom said:

Thanks!

Not in these final compositions. When I first did the 240 x 15s stack, I tried it with and without flats and didn't make much of a difference (either that or I still don't know how to do flats properly - I can get rid of the smudges, etc. if they are present but I've never been able to cure gradients with flats). There is some vignetting but it is at the very tip of the corners.   The fall off is due to me being very aggressive with the curves...

--Ram

 

If you do use flats, you should include dark flats too.  I've found flats quite a challenge to get right, but when they are good it really makes a difference.

John

Nice image with very round stars. 

It darkens considerably towards the edges.  Did you use flats?

John