daz

Got back on Sunday after 8 nights there. The first Sat/Sun/Mon was amazing weather for October! Warm sunshine, shorts and t-shorts, ice cream on Cromer pier! Fantastic...

Then the wind and rain came! 

My scope survived until Friday morning - annoyingly, I'd even checked it about 20 minutes before my utility tent gave in and collapsed, taking the rig with it! Thankfully the only real damage was the flat-flap and that should be easily repairable!

The LP is definitely getting worse, but then so is the amount of moisture in the air (and not just the precipitating kind!). 

Still, as @Hobbes says, it's great to meet up with friends again, look through some nice glass and chill....

Another terrific image Peter!

Gonna have to move to Spain!!!

That is just peachy Peter!!! 😵

That's a cracking image! So much going on!

I love images like this, where you can zoom in and see even more in the background!
Fantastic!

That's an outstanding image Olly!! Awesome job from everyone!

I've used SGP for a long time and recently ran some comparisons to NINA. I must say, I do like the operation of NINA and the features. The interface ... not so much, but I can live with it! 🙂

There are a couple of key features that really stand out for me:

• Monitoring of star sizes to determine if an autofocus trigger is needed (although to be fair, this is now in SGP too) 
• Plugins - There are some really useful extras that you can extend NINA functionality with!
• The advanced sequencer is very powerful - nested blocks, blocks that can be saved for future use - very clever!
• The different file-naming for the calibration frames - SGP is limited to one file naming format for a sequence

Downside for me is Discord (I just don't 'geddit'!), and the interface.

I still subscribe to SGP, in fact, my renewal is due anytime, as I do actually like the software...! In terms of stability, I have not actually had very many issues with my setup. The one I had recently turned out to be the camera at fault (had to be sent for repair) not SGP... Having made a change a while ago to 12v powered USB, that solved a lot of issues for me!

Have you got limits enabled in EQMOD?

That's a great read - and your observing cards are just amazing!! 

Definitely a bug.... mine shows the usual red colour - as it should!!

I have one for sale in case you were interested, is all...

You could look in the For Sale section Paul ... 😇

Thanks Gordon!

Shot through my ED72 with ZWO 178, best 500 of 10,000 frames. Just over 12 days old, at approx 87% illumination.

Processed in:

• Pixinsight for deconvolution
• Registax for wavelets
• Affinity for contrast, shadows & highlights, curves, high pass filter, cropping

I tried to keep the overall tone as natural as possible - previously I have tended to go a bit OTT with the contrast, but I am pleased with this attempt.

Thx

Hi all

Firstly - an apology for the delay in getting back to you all...

So, we have been working with the team at Lucksall again to see if we could make an event work - but sadly we believe that Lucksall is no longer a suitable venue for us....

The rally field has now been converted into hard-standing to accommodate more caravans and motor homes and the last two rows of the rally field (Hare) have now been converted to static holiday caravans. There was a glimmer of hope in the form of Long Meadow, but.... Because this lies at the bottom of the slope from the hill, and is below the level of the river, it is very prone to getting wet - and in fact, the recent wet weather has meant that Lucksall are not allowing the use of the grass pitches for this reason. There are 16 hard-standing pitches on Long Meadow, but these are not suitable for tent use, and the lines of trees that are in the meadow means many of the pitches have quite a restricted Southern view.

See the attached pictures showing the trees. The fence along the back of the first picture, is the bottom of what was the rally field. While it does give some screening, it would not block all the lights from that area...

All in all, not at all suitable for what we need.

So, where does this leave us?

Well, we have already begun the search for a new venue - but this is going to take some time to work through. We are looking at variety of factors (number of pitches, number of hook ups, toilets/showers, space for talks, dark sky levels, etc) and we are looking across all areas of the country. 

This is going to take some effort to work through, so bear with us while we do this.

We know it's disappointing, but hopefully we'll be able to find a suitable place and get back to meeting up again..

Daz, on behalf of all the Admin and Mod team

Wow! That's a landscape!!

Still finding my feet in processing, but first light with the ZWO 178MM running on the mobile Beelink miniPC - very pleased with the set up! Now just need to add autofocus to the scope!

StellaLyra 6" Cassegrain, 500 frames, processed in AS!3 and Affinity

Captured over two nights (05/01 & 06/01), here is my rendition if IC405, the Flaming Star in Auriga. 

The bright star is AE Aurigae shining between approx 5.7 and 6.1, it lies about 1,300 LY from us. Although the light from the star lights up the nebula, it's not it's birthplace - it is only passing through. It is thought have originated from the trapezium in Orion, ejected after a collision with Iota Orionis some 2 million years ago....

Technical Card

• Camera: ZWO ASI533 MC Pro, cooled at -20,
• Exposures: 600s x 74, unbinned
• Acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro
• Guiding: PHD2, ZWO ASI Mini, ZWO OAG
• Mount: AZ-EQ6
• Processing: Pixinsight
• RGB Data only

Some new-to-me processes used in this (thanks to Adam Block!) so pretty pleased with the outcome.

As always, any feedback gratefully received...

They look like shadows of dust from the flats?

What do the flats look like?

Hello - and welcome!

I've not done this myself but this would sound sensible - doing it this way would give you the opportunity to run MureDenoise (for example) before combining.

And of course with PM, you can have fine control over the mix of different channels...

Will be interesting to see the results!

Once you have the cables sorted, run the Guiding Assistant as well... it will measure backlash as well as suggest suitable values for the min move parameters...

On 21/12/2021 at 11:45, Dr_Ju_ju said:

In answer to the original question, which version of Win 10/11 are you using as all my "Pro for Workstations", all have the Mobile Hotspot functionality, but thesystem also detect that there are Ethernet & Wifi adaptors ....  

W10 Pro - whatever the latest build number is for H2...

And yes, it has the hotspot functionality, but this is different to an ad-hoc network. As per previous posts, the hotspot function is designed as a connection sharing mechanism for other devices to use as their internet connection. It relies on internet connectivity for it to operate. But I didn't want that - I just wanted to be able to connect two computers via wifi so I can RDP to one, but that functionality has now gone.

So, while you can fool the hotspot to make the connection - using my phone in hotspot mode - after a while, the host PC realises there is no internet and disconnects.

@malc-c - thanks, but that is not the use case. My observatory is networked, but I am looking to implement the mini-PC for my mobile set up to reduce cabling to the mount. Using the mini-PC, I just now need to provide 12v supply to the mini-PC, and mount the camera and mount USB will plug directly into the mini-PC and I will RDP over wifi from my laptop. 

The mini router that @ONIKKINEN linked to is just perfect for the job. It's a tiny thing, about 2" square and 1" high and runs off a micro-USB cable plugged into the mini-PC. I have now configured the mini-PC to connect to that wifi automatically and I can RDP to the mini-PC perfectly!

So, everything is now as I wanted it to operate, it was just a faff because of the changes Microsoft have made in the Windows driver model.

BTW - the mini-PC is this one from FLO, and it's a great bit of kit!!

It looks solid cloud for me on the 22nd, but if that changes, I'll let you know

Thanks StarryEyed - the inbuilt wifi does not support it, and neither does my StarTech USB3 dongle.

What version of Windows is that from?

9 hours ago, Stuart1971 said:

Once set up, it works over Wi-Fi…

So each time the PC is booted it creates the hotspot, then you connect to that with any other PC….

The option for remotely enabling the hotspot is no longer available. You need to manually switch it on each time. Hence my post about a scheduled task that switches it on when you log in.

Which does work, BUT.... after a while, the host turns off the connection, presumably because it realises there is no wifi connection....

So, looks like it will be the external router option that is needed!

40 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

You can create a hotspot on windows 10 anyway, why do you need the travel router….?

Not any more - at least, as far as my digging around this afternoon has concluded....

Microsoft have changed the model for the drivers, so they no longer are allowed to support SoftAP and the HostedNetwork services. So you can't create a hotspot. 

Unless there is something I've missed Stuart? All the articles I have come across refer to the 'netsh wlan' commands, but because the NIC drivers no longer supported the hosted networks, it doesn't work...

@ONIKKINEN - in W7 (and earlier versions of 10) you could create a simple script that would create the hotspot and start it, and then execute that at boot time - and bongo! your hotspot would be created ready for you...

The external router was my next thought, but have been doing some more playing and think I have a work around.....

• I found a Powershell script to automatically turn on the Mobile Hotspot
• I had to un-restrict scripts from running using Powershell
• I created a Scheduled task to run the script at logon of the mini-PC user, with a 1 minute delay, and only when a specific wifi SSID was available
• Turn on Mobile Hotspot on my phone - use this SSID in the step above
• Connect mini-PC to the phone wifi, set to automatically connect - ensure all others are set to NOT automatically connect
• Using registry keys, enable auto-logon for my mini-PC user (latest updates have removed the tick box in netplwiz to disable the need to login)
• Reboot

Bingo!

So, the process now seems to be:

1. Enable hotspot on phone
2. Turn on mini-PC
3. Wait for up to 1 minute
4. Connect to mini-PC mobile hotspot
5. RDP to mini-PC
6. Turn off mobile hotspot on phone

The connection seems to be holding, even though there is no internet connection  on the mini-PC anymore. So, as long as there is one when you start the mobile hotspot, it seems to work. So far.

But the external router could well be easier!!!