alan potts

One I can't see from here, nice shot Dave. Alan

Been doing it now seriously, well a bit seriously for about 6 months, had many setbacks and members were very helpful. Sad thing is I have a massive amount of gear now not getting used, 25 TV eyepieces for starters and an 18 inch Dob, selling stuff here is not worth the advert, anything you try and sell they immediately want to offer you half and whilst I am happy to deal with any members everything I courier is now about 30 quid. Alan

At least this is one where you can see the shape of a swan in even a modest telescope. This is 2.5 hours of a mix of 3 and 4 minutes at 800 and 1600iso on the 805mm apo with the D40, so nothing new. Apart from Guiding that is, as the EQmod guide doesn't wish to help me, for whatever reason , I reverted to ST4, which I feel is not as good. Could be wrong there and it may be condition related, but just a feeling I have. Feel free to rip it to bits, can't say I like the colour so much, the more time I added the more purple it seemed to become, 1 hour of capture made it mainly red, think I preferred it that way, could change it of course but I will leave that to what people think. Any attempt to take out what looks like a gradient seemed to lose delicate details so I leave it as it is, conditions could have been better, but with the Moon on it's way and my battle with the gap in the tree, one has to strike whilst the iron is hot, hope you like it. Alan.

Don't mind at all, I don't have this program only PS, on my monitor it is a touch blue but somewhat cleaner in general with tighter stars. I didn't spend a massive amount of time in process and most of the changes I are purely to the Raw file using Select and mask and the Raw adjustment, a very powerful tool and with a bit of effort as good as any other way. The trouble with the likes of PS is there are so many ways to basically do the same thing, I use almost nothing now that I did before apart from stretching. Alan

I can't say I noticed Dave as there is no real reason to look at this box, as I am sure you are aware, once located the target it is tracking, the start guiding and then start APT for the camera, really rather a lot going on at once As far as I am aware the EQmod never stops tracking unless you stop it by pressing the correct tag. I am up loading what it did as I have two shots see if this give you or anyone else a clue, it is very artistic, and had a circles and zigzags period in it art career. Pretty isn't it, the one thing I will say is circle suggests it could track East and West, though what it was doing I haven't a clue,but it won't work now. Alan

Nikolas, both softwares are latest versions and the mount is mains powered at 13.8v at 8amps with a decent quality unit. The full sysytem was only put together 8 weeks back with EQmod, before I didn't use it. Alan

Michael, yes you have it right and I have cleaned all the contacts, it's an odd one this. The EQmod cable is only a few months old from FLO, I may ask them what they think. For now though ST4 is working, so I can as least get subs though guiding didn't seem as good, that could be conditions though. I looked for a setting like you suggest, why would there be one, in any case I can't see anything. Alan

Dave I tried M55 last night which only gets to 17 degrees at best and though it was not the best of nights I did get something to work with and get a result, the difference is, south I have nothing until Greece. Alan

Yes, this is what I don't understand. I have just got 2 and half hours in with ST4 so not all was lost but two night gone begging. It is only the PHD2 interface or manual guide that is only work on N&S, it will not guide just using that or calibrate. Alan.

Alot higher than in the UK I am sure, nice image David. Alan

Has everyone gone to the beach? Right done some work on my mount issue with the following findings so looking for most likely cause if anyone knows. EQmod, via cable, guidescope and camera all connected to laptop. With this set up which I have used for a while without issue, using MANUAL guide in PHD2 North and South guide but East and West do not!! It used to work. Disconnect this and go to ST4 option with cable and handset, the only cable of 4 that works that was given to me and all NSE&W work, this to me suggests no mount problems, I am hoping this will calibrate later. I am going to see if ST4 works with EQmod as I like the Carte du Ceil program for locating. So it would seem that no East, West guide signal is getting to the mount using only the EQmod cable but all controls work when you use them to move the mount. Any ideas anyone. Alan

Elimination of what my problem is with the mount guiding as covered in the other thread is never easy from here, any parts have to come FLO and then I am not sure what the issue is. So if I turn the clock back and revert to ST4, do I do this, 1 Unplug EQmod and replace handset. 2 Use PHD2 on different settings for the mount EQ/5, EQ6, not sure which one I go for a AZ EQ 6 is not covered. 3. plug ST4 cable from camera to mount and select On Camera, Canon 40D and APT I do not believe have anything to do with the problems. Alan

It is doing that when I tried to guide align, however the laptop is fine I use windows 7

Dave, Yes there is a box that I put some setting in a while back but I calibrated after that first time, the problem now is I can't re-calibrate, that seems to be a whole deal more serious, sounds like a cable or connector has had it. I don't understand why, it was fine a couple of nights back. I am going to check if PHD will guide manually again to see if signal is getting to the mount, I don't believe it is. as to why I have no idea. Before I got this Star did no move enough message it was faulty cables using ST4, I am wondering if the EQmod cable has a problem after all it is the only connection. The cable from the guide scope now only carries the picture signal to the laptop, it does'nt play a roll in the guide does it? One of the problems of living out here, no dealer with any stock of anything, this is all decent fairly new stuff. Alan.

Well I tried everything people suggested and it appears I am back to square one with guiding. Cleared calibration and tried a re-cal, failed because the star did not move enough. This is a connection problem I feel, like before with the ST4 leads being faulty. I am running EQmod as you all helped me to get this working and it has been very good, the telescope slews around and there appear to be no problems between EQmod and scope. However the PHD2 is giving corrections but the mount is not following them as far as I see. I unplugged the camera and re connected that, the pictures come through on PHD2 with stars and you can even star guiding, then after 10 seconds the lines head off the map, clearly no corrections are taking place. The mount tracks on it well enough for visual say, so seems that's OK. Now lost 2 nights, can anyone give me an idea of where to start? Need to start eliminating things from the list, it appears the camera works and this just sends pictures as ST4 is not connected.

As much as I agree with you re spending, someone commented the other how good one of my shots was and the fact it was a 40D, still capable but I imagine not worth much to acquire one already modded. Alan

I am using Eqmod so the cable goes direct to the laptop, but I am fairly sure its going to be a connection, though I couldn't find it last night, give them all a clean I think. Thanks for the help. Alan

Yes the mount operated correctly without guiding as far as I could see as I shot 3 x 20sec exposures to see where M17 was in the frame. It was when guiding was engage the problems started. The guide scope was clearly indicating a movement but the scope mount wasn't doing what it was told, could be a connection I think, will try again tonight. Alan

It is a permanent setup Michael and it has guide well many times now, just went crazy last night. Calibration was fine night after night, I don't redo it, but maybe should try this. Alan

Right I have done nothing to the mount and I was trying to use the drift align, it would not do a thing right which ever way I moved the controls for Az and Alt it just got worse saying align error over 100' which it will not have been. I gave up and did a visual alignment. The mount is AZ EQ 6. Then the scope would not guide at all it was fighting directional movement on all directions on Dec and RA giving the message it couldn't move far enough or something like Dec and RA were off the scale of 4"movement when it is rarely even 1" on either and more often hovers around the centreline . Tried restart and checked balance but no change, it just would not guide and looking at the graph looked like an earthquake had happened. It was fine last night. Connections seemed to be OK, I tried all of them but nothing made any difference. Any pointers as to what to try?

Peak Imaging in Sheffield use to be excellent used them many times when I did Med Format, not cheap though but professional. Alan

I haven't got my head round Plate Solving yet, it's on my to learn list with almost everything else. I am shooting targets that can be seen clear enough with a 10 sec shot, bet it comes into its own when trying to find faint subjects. Alan

Simple question, can you mix 1600iso and 800iso files as long as they are put into like batches in DSS. I often do different length exposures but never tried ISO. I am hoping for a slight quality improvement in the slower ISO over a longer exposure. I normally stick to about 3 minutes but am now going to 4 mins. Alan

Nice image Mick, where is it and can I try it with a modded DSLR. Alan

I can't offer any advice on the image other than it is superb, I am stunned by the time you have put into this. Have to say reading how it was done was rather pointless as I didn't understand a word. I sit outside banging out my 3 and 4 minute exposures of various targets and think after 2 hours I have done enough. I feel I would need at least to months to get near your data, it was a subject that I was thinking of having a go at, Great image and I see why Datalord is you chosen name. Alan