michael8554

You can't make any quality judgements from a screen grab. Post a sub. Michael

What kind of filter did you have in mind ? Here's one of my M101 subs: 300secs @ ISO 1600, so roughly 4 times the data of your 120secs at ISO 800, and still looks dim. I took 39 others like that and stacked them, and got a pleasing result. So I wouldn't immediately say your sub was terrible. Michael

Look at Jem's "red" image, and Ivor's "cyan" image, and you see how hard it is to say what colour the subs should be. My subs of The Veil are red, but look neutral in a Windows preview. I tried your google drive link but only got your stacked image and various PHD2 screengrabs, not the subs. Michael

Permanently mounted on a pier, with good PA, powered up from a Park Position. All that is needed to get a good GoTo a Target, is to first GoTo a star near your Target, centre with the handset, and SYNCH. Then a GoTo the target should be spot on. My similar setup with a LX200GPS, the first GoTo is usually out either in RA or in Dec, but after SYNCHing is fine. Michael

Drift will be in Dec if PA is way off. Drift in RA on an unguided mount will be Periodic Error. Michael

Instead of guessing, why don't you read the Help and How To guides available in the PHD2 Help menu ? Michael

In general a long exposure on a Ha modified DSLR will have an overall red caste, like Jem's image. But a lot depends on which White Balance you have selected on the camera. Whether you chose to apply that when you converted the Raws. And what processes you went through to get the image displayable on SGL. Michael

As always, a LX200 can be a LX200 Classic, or a LX200GPS/LX200R. Very different beasts, so it's best to specific The 3 volt coin battery in the GPS/R is to store some GPS information, to speed up the GPS acquisition. It doesn't store the time and date. Most if not all Meade mounts don't have a clock module. Meade is one of the few mounts to have entries such as "June", instead of the easily confused US and European formats of mm/dd/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy I too have GPS switched off, entering time and date manually takes seconds. I use one of those digital clocks that get time information from a Radio Signal. It's set to GMT/UTC, so I always have DST OFF. Michael

The FF corrects the image from the telescope, so the spacing from the rear of the FF to the camera sensor is crucial. However, your stars are elongated top left to bottom right even in the centre of frame, which is due to guiding errors. There is a sniff of real coma in the bottom left corner, as per the "too close" image, suggesting a little tilt too. Michael

The PHD2 Dither button on the Manual Guide screen will Dither when you press it, even when guiding. Elsewhere, in the Advanced / Global tab, there are Random, Spiral, and RA only selections. As already said, to auto-dither you need external software to tell PHD2 to Dither the mount PHDMax is a Dither-only prog, that tells PHD2 to Dither by sensing that an image is being downloaded into a designated folder. http://www.felopaul.com/phdmax.htm Michael

Do you mean the DSLR Snap port ? Can you fish for the socket with a slim screwdriver or stiff wire, to renter it into the hole in the mount ? Then holding it in place, rescrew the nut back on. While still loose. plug in the DSLR cable to hold the socket in place, and fully tighten the nut. Michael

To summarize so far: Originally Slews and GoTo okay, but once on target it wouldn't track. Handset was set to Sidereal, so should have tracked. Do a reset of the handset and start over ? Too late. He changed a board, misconnected, broke the connector off. Michael

Find out how ........... what ? You got the numbers yourself using the calculator link. Seelive quoted the formula that calculator uses. I explained on CN how those figures give a ratio that needs to be applied to PHD2, to move the imaging camera 12 pixels. It seems some software allows you to enter 12 pixels and that works, with PHD2 set to multiply by 1.0. Michael

I'm not familiar with APT, but there is an interesting figure in your screenshot: 0.00 MB free - not enough storage for the image - do you have a SD card in the camera, or have APT pointing at a hard drive ? Michael

I think we nailed all this in your Cloudy Nights post, so why do you want us to go through it all again ? Michael

As I understand astrotracer, it does the opposite of Dithering. It tracks the movement of an object, and recentres it when the image is taken. But eventually runs out of range. Shake Reduction is something else, rapid correction of focus. Michael

Hi Jay Crop Factor was a marketing tool invented way back by the camera makers. To help buyers understand that when they mount their old Film SLR lenses on their first Digital SLR, that the Field Of View will be smaller by the "Crop Factor". Those lenses haven't magically altered their focal length, they're just projecting onto a smaller sensor. Crop Factor has no real use any more. AS LuckieEddie said, put in the real FL of the scope, with the correct size of the sensor of course. Michael

Not bad, but the rings are too close, big overhang. Take advantage of the lovely green bar and move the rear ring as close to the guidecam as you can. You could mount the rings directly onto the green bar and remove another source of Flex. Michael

CR2 file suggests a Canon DSLR, you didn't say ? Was this a zoom lens at 28mm, you didn't say ? Looks like Coma, the amount may depend on what focal length was used. For daytime snaps coma doesn't really show, so to save money often the makers don't correct it. Michael

Hi Stuart Typical descriptions to obfuscate everyone. Here's part of the spec of a FeatherTouch 3" Focuser: Draw Tube Thread M75X1 Female Thread Thread on entry (OTA/front) side of drawtube M109x1 Male Thread So the eyepiece end has a M75 x 1mm connection (roughly 3"). And the end that attaches to the scope has a M109 x 1m connection. You'll just have to look through the specs for the truth. Michael

" Baker–Nunn[edit] One of the Baker–Nunn cameras used by the Smithsonian satellite-tracking program The Baker–Nunn design, by Baker and Joseph Nunn, replaces the Baker-Schmidt camera's corrector plate with a small triplet corrector lens closer to the focus of the camera. It used a 55 mm wide film derived from the Cinemascope 55 motion picture process.[11][12] A dozen f/0.75 Baker-Nunn cameras with 20-inch apertures – each weighing 3.5 tons including a multiple axis mount allowing it to follow satellites in the sky – were used by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to track artificial satellites from June 1958[13] until the mid-1970s.[14]

Could be the standard Tripod size for mounting a still camera, 1/4"-20 UNC Michael

A colour QHY5 is going to limit you. Use a planetarium to find a good guidestar. With the Canons, and particularly with the Full Frame 6D, you will probably be cropping, so allow some prism shading, that will be corrected by Flats. This is my 6D at 1400mm FL. The prism position is accurate and does shade a little:

What could possibly go wrong. Like forgetting to take the Solar Filter off the scope for the first minute of a four minute Totality, and wondering why the images were black............? Don't take the film off the binos for a Partial !!! Michael

For use with your Canon lenses, top priority is getting the sensor in a position where infinity focus and Autofocus can be achieved. IMO the sensor can't be moved forwards enough to get this with all the filters removed. You can with just the #LPF-2 filter removed, retaining the #LPF-1 for IR Filtering and Dust Removal, and the sensor position adjusted forwards. The optical viewfinder will not be accurate, but Autofocus and Liveview focus will. If you don't know how far forward to move the sensor, then remove #LPF-2 and add the Baader filter, I believe you will then still have correct focus. Others reckon that a Clip-In filter can be used instead of the Baader to keep focus correct. Michael