julian489289

On 19/11/2015 at 13:46, sheeprug said:

Professional pride kicked in and I've mended it.  I had to break it apart and drill out the LED which was smothered in leaked gunge from the batteries - which is presumably trashed it.

Unfortunately the only replacement LED I can find at the moment is green - quite a cool colour, but maybe not the best from the point of view of night vision. I must have a red one somewhere to replace before I glue it back together again.

SR

Hi Sheeprug.  My telrad has just failed in the same way.  Everything else works just fine it is the red circle LED that has failed.  Where did you locate the new one that you used to replace your defective one please?

Thanks

Julian

Is anyone using one of the new Altair Astro Hypercam 1600 mono cameras?

I am keen to move from a Canon 650D DSLR to a CMOS camera.  I like the 1600 mono camera and see many great results from the ZWO ASI 1600m.  The Altair Astro seems to have a slightly better spec so I was after any reviews on this camera??  ?

Hi  julian489289 what setting on PHD do you use.? Are you Drizzling as well? I wondered what those blips were on you PHD data graph

Alec

Thanks to all of your advice.

Leo Triplet in Leo

Explore Scientific APO 102mm, Canon 650 D Unmodded camera on a SW HEQ5 mount. These subs were dithered to minimise noise.
This result is 10 x 600 second guided subs with associated calibration frames, 3 darks, 25 flats & 25 bias.
Shot at ISO 400
Has been stacked in DSS with x2 drizzle function and then been processed in PS CS6 using Noel Carboni's tools.
This is my best attempt to date of this target and probably the last this year.

Thanks A G .

Yes I  must agree it is a great scope.  Thanks for your and other member's valued input it has been most helpful. 

As it was mentioned earlier effective drizzle is mandatory. Set the guide software to extreme dither ( you need this for a DSLR ) and give it a long settle time before exposure begins so the guiding settles to the normal rhythm. If the pixel sixes of your sensor are on the small size the drizzle may not be as effective as you are probably reaching the theoretical resolution limit of your scope and camera combination. The number of the subs need to be rather large, I 'd say upwards of 30 . In theory a minimum of 4 subs should be enough if the dithering could be absolutely repeatable from sub to sub  but this is beyond the mechanics of most hobby or even pro equipment, I believe Hubble space telescope is capable of doing this but I would not go to court with this one. In practical terms set your dithering to extreme and go for many subs as you could get. Hope this helps.

Regards,

A.G

Thanks AG.  I have my dither set to 5, so I would assume that would be classed as extreme.  I usually set the delay to 5 seconds but may now increase that to 45s for the guiding to settle down??  I am not too sure of the theoretical resolution limit of my scope and camera combi though, Explore Scientific 102mm 714 FL APO and Canon 650D. 

Thanks AG.  You say that the effective use of drizzle is subject to certain conditions re scale and subs.  What are those conditions so I know if they can be met or not?  Is it not right that If I am dithering my subs that I need to drizzle??

Thanks Steve, I was just told that if I dithered I needed to drizzle!!

Hi Marky1973, thanks hopefully it will work and will have to try x2 & x3 to see what difference it makes to a normal stack?.

Don't really know what the drizzle function really does?  I thought that it improved the area of interest but don't really know why or how??

Hopefully someone can shed some light on the benefits of drizzle??

Thanks mate, I will try that and let you know

Thanks D4N.  I am not familiar with the red region of interest box to stack only park of the image that one wants??

I use an 18mp Canon 650D DSLR for my imaging and stack images using DSS.

I have no issues stacking my images in DSS usually.  However, recently I have tried to stack using the x2 and x3 drizzle function.  DSS takes a while longer to process with these drizzle options and stacks all of my subs.  However, when the program moves to autosave the stacked result, DSS shows a yellow exclamation mark in a triangle and goes no further.  It gives no error message.

Has anyone else had this issue and how did you resolve it?   Is the18mega pixel image too much for DSS to stack in drizzle mode?

Hope you guys can help, thanks

Julian

Well I finally got out on a clear night to try out guiding with PHD2. 

With all of your kind help and suggestions, all of the issues that I had before are now sorted, with a guiding rate set at 0.5 this sorted the calibration and gives a great looking graph.  On calibration, set at  1850 with 0.5 set, PHD calibrated itself with only 7 steps in each direction.  Previously it was over 40 steps on some occasions.  10 minute subs with pinpointed stars, PHD is fab!!

Thanks again

Also I have found a version 2.5.0, I will try this as well

Do you think changing these settings will sort how the cross hairs track the star on calibration ie  returning back to the star before doing north south ?

Thanks Ole.

My pulse guide setting in Eqmod is 0.1 for both RA & Dec, will change to 0.5.

If I calibrate any lower than 2000 steps PHD2 does n't calibrate.  I was initially using dec algorithm at resist switch when I had the issues but changed it to hysteresis after reading some other forum and was to give this a go.  I have n't tried it on hysteresis yet??

I usually use the software to pick the guide star and it seems to go for the higher ones??  Will bear this in mind.

Any idea regards the cross hairs on calibration run?

I have an Explore Scientific 102 mm F/7 APO refractor.  I am guiding this using the magnificent mini guide scope package with the Orion starshoot camera and the 9x50 Focal length 162mm guide scope all mounted on my HEQ5 pro mount.

I have used the original PHD without many issues before and achieved smooth guiding graphs but I have recently upgraded to PHD2.  Ever since this time, I am having issues with my guiding.  Most recently the guide cam kept crashing however, however, I reloaded the software and that issue seems resolved now, fingers crossed!

I have read the tutorial, which is very detailed and helpful, thanks.  However, I was trying last night to guide on M66 in Leo and the graph was awful.  I played with the hysteresis & aggression altering both in opposite ways but could not get a smooth guide graph.  So I closed down PHD and tried again to calibrate on a guide star.

Then PHD would not complete the calibration stage.  One main issue that I had last night (and always) is that during calibration of the guide star typically it goes west & east 15-20 steps but north south 30-50 steps.  Why a difference in the two?

Also the guide cross hairs move west say 15 steps but when they move back the same steps east the cross hairs do not centre back on the star they are usually out of the green box that is around the star.  It then does clear backlash sometimes upto 7-10 steps but does not recentre the star in the green box with the cross hairs.  So when the north south calibration starts it is not aligned with the star initially and ends up even further away after doing sometimes upto 50 steps.  It then read final nudge south 1 and the program goes no further.

I took some screen shots to try and explain this issue in pictures.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i8sxikrzbljnogq/Screenshot%20%2859%29.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ivsc4y4y4wwjkw4/Screenshot%20%2860%29.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o7n4r5sn0ohcc1b/Screenshot%20%2861%29.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/px8lv5bhte42h8f/Screenshot%20%2862%29.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gt56y00vbrc3ia9/Screenshot%20%2863%29.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/h33fnbuz4yw03yd/Screenshot%20%2864%29.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s2yb83adnbf798f/Screenshot%20%2865%29.png?dl=0

For the mount, I have RA & Dec algorithm set to Hysteresis both set to 10 for hysteresis and aggression 100.  Hys Min move 0.23, Dec min move 0.22 & max duration RA & Dec at 2000.   Dec guide mode is set to auto and I have set the calibration step to 3500 ( i did try the calculate option but his never seemed to work). Typically I chose a guide star with SNR 40-50. 

The camera I set to 1.5 s refresh.

When I used to calibrate in PHD, the cross hairs moved west and then east centreing back onto the star before starting north and south and again finishing back up on the star.  What have I set wrong and why is the program doing this during calibration?  I assume that this maybe the issue with the poor guiding?????

I would appreciate any help in resolving this, please

Kindest regards

Julian

Thank You every one for your great advice. 

I then followed guidance from Kayron as to the sequence for opening the different programs.  However, this still failed and AT did not re centre after solving until I changed  the append on sync command to dialogue based on Eqmod, then it solved and re-centred!! 

Thanks again

Thanks for your patience everyone.     As you have probably guessed I have no idea re computers etc!!

However, with everyone's kind help and time, hopefully I am getting there!!

I have now reinstalled 4212 missing from  my data file and put all of the others in a separate sub directory within the data file. 

I will let you all know how I get on on the next clear night with AT.  Oh no i hear you all gasp!

I also note that 4203 - 4207 all have a number of additional files connected but after 4208 to 4219 there are no additional files.

4203 47 extra files

4204  47 extra files

4205  11 extra files

4206 11 extra files

4207  11 extra files

Sorry Louise ignore my last I did not read you full reply.

I have checked this data folder and 4212 & 4213 are not there??  Is this right?

Thanks Louise.  I have windows 8, will that be the same location?  Sorry not too computer savvy.

Do I have to set up a sub directory for the files not required in that same data directory and leave the ones required as they are?

Where are these index files kept on my computer when I downloaded them?

Thanks Kayron.  Is there a tutorial or instruction page for how to remove the unwanted index files?  I assume that you should not delete them.

Kind Regards

Julian

With a FoV of 1.79 deg x 1.2 deg how do I work out what indexes I would need?