dannybgoode

I'll be honest - I don't fully understand the remote/local aspect. I just have all the software running on the Pi, the option set to 'local' and control the Pi via a web browser or iPad and it works. So with this being the case I just leave it alone .

This is as per controlled from my PC. I am not 100% sure what the remote option does but when I tried it I couldn't get it to work so I leave it set as local and it still controls just fine from my browsers. The Stellermate vids are pretty good and explain this somewhat - ignore the fact it's Stellarmate as 99% of the stuff is to do with KStars/EKOS so works identically under Astroberry. The one thing you do need to change is if you use PHD2 for guiding then you need to change the Host from 'localhost' to astroberry.local. In PHD2 you pick the INDI camera and INDI mount. For reasons underknown you also need to select an Aux mount which is INDI again for it to all register properly but then you just ignore the Aux mount going forward. If you do choose PHD2 for guiding also you need to manually open it as well as EKOS does not trigger it. I have not tried the internal guider but apparently it's very good. When you get to it I use the ASTAP plate solver as it's near instant and I can't get Astrometry.net to work properly.

When you go in to EKOS to set up a profile you just pick your kit from a dropdown list and it feeds all that into INDI. When you hit 'Start' on the profile and your kit connects it does fire up the INDI control panel so you can tweak in there if needed.. Dead easy - any questions let me know as I've just set mine up so much of it is pretty fresh in my mind.

TMB Optical (a proper Thomas Back one ) 105/650 with a Starlight Xpress Trius SX674 mono CCD, SX filter wheel and Baader filters. Mount is an SW AZ EQ6 GT. Scope has a monster manual focuser on it at the moment - I want a motorised unit but am not going to modify the scope to take one so need to find something that works. Have a few options lined up. So this was just focussed with a WO clear mask manually.

I use a mix of vids, written tutorials (there’s some excellent ones in the links on this thread) and of course Inside PixInsight. Wouldn’t be without that book although I did find other tutorials easier to follow to just get going with the very basics. The book though covers just about every process in-depth and covers the technically nitty gritty too without getting too bogged down (although it is heavy going in parts). I do really like PI though and now I’m getting comfortable with the basics think it is the best option for all the technical aspects of processing image data but I do still fall back on my various ‘normal’ photo editing suites for final tweaks.

Yes this is what I do also. I have a base ‘project’ which I load up and that has all my basic processes set up already so for the initial work I just go through them in turn but save the outputted subs each step. I am now pretty comfortable with the basics but need to explore the more advanced processes in much more depth. Wouldn’t be without PI though-I can certainly do much more with the raw image data through to integration than I can using any other software I’ve tried.

I would rather walk barefoot on Lego than suffer a dob or any other manual mount for one very simple reason. I live under Bortle 8-9 skies and light pollution makes star hopping more or less impossible in any meaningful way. Yes a goto mount was frustrating at first but not nearly as frustrating as just not finding any target night after night. With a goto mount there are always at least two bright stars to align to and after that accuracy is generally very good these days and polar alignment, at least for visual use, is easy enough to get the hang of and to get accurate enough to keep objects centred and tracked once found. I still use a Telrad for the bright planets and lunar obs but for DSO's it's goto all the way...

Just the initial calibration, cosCor, star align and stacking in PI. I did them dump it into Topaz DeNoise, DxO PhotoLabs, Lightroom and PS to faff about with but I need to do more with the PI tools before dumping it into other packages I think to tease the detail out a bit more

It wasn't and I am sure there is a fair bit more detail in there. Only really undertook the basic steps in PI and I imagine I could do a lot better with a bit more knowledge - slowly working my way through 'The Book' though and will revisit this and hopefully add some more RGB data as wel.

OK there are some artefacts that need dealing with and the core is a little blown but this is still an improvement on my past efforts so I am happy. Need to spend more time with the initial processing in PI I think but overall I'll take it. First time properly using KStars/EKOS and an RPi4 and it worked very well. Much prefer it to APT etc, much less faff to set up. Roughly 2 hours of LRGB - 20 mins each RG and an hour of L (minus the few frames I ditched). Could do with more RGB data but grabbed what I could whilst the clouds were away. Close in shot of M31

Interesting - did it complete the plate solving and re-run the routine to try and centre the image? I am not familiar with ASI air software but it does not look hugely different to KStars/EKOS and that just works. Goto target and then in the Align tab just click slew to target, capture and solve and off it goes and does its thing..

Goto won’t be accurate first time round regardless of how good your PA as your mount will be a little be out to what the goto commands think it is. For imaging in particular plate solving is the answer. It sounds daunting at first but once you’ve nailed it you’ll never go back. If you’ve not looked at plate solving before what it does is goes to where it thinks the object should be, takes a shortish exposure, matches the stars to a database and works out exactly where the scope is actually pointing, adjusts the mount, takes another exposure, matches etc until the object is centred. And by centred last night I got targets centred to 2-3 arc seconds. As for the park position, I suspect the software may have a different home position stored. I am not familiar with the Air software but there will be a way of telling it the scope’s current position is home. So you’d manually set the mount to where you want home to be and then tell it to use that position going forward.

There is not one that will plug into the mount directly for cheap money but any any of the USB GPS dongles on Amazon will do the job if using a computer and EQMod

Your SynGuider will work without a PC but you still need the actual guidescope to mount it in. Guiding via a PC or something like a Raspberry Pi will give better results and would probably be easier to use.

You remote access into the Pi and yes this bit is a one time setup. You can use anything to log into the Pi though so an iPad or Android tablet is fine and they often have a very long battery life. The routines are pretty straightforward too and it has all the plate solving built in and pre-set up. So you program your light sequence and then tell it to go off, find whatever target and image it and it does the whole thing automatically. Very clever. Watch some YouTube videos in getting started with Stellarmate - Stellarmate is basically a paid for version of Astroberry but how you use them both to image is pretty much identical. It'll definitely show you what it can do.

Honestly I am a Windows man through and through - I even quite liked Vista. Once you get the used to the basic concept an RPi with Astroberry which automatically installs KStars and EKOS is much easier to set up than fiddling around with Ascom, all the drivers, EQMod etc. Astroberry just installs everything you need and then from the EKOS settings you just select your mount, camera, guiding etc from drop downs and it just works.

This is one of the reasons I am moving over to an RPi4 with Astroberry. My laptop's battery is still pretty good but I would hate to be stuck out in the wilderness with a dying laptop and no way of charging it. At home I just leave it plugged in but with a view to going portable I am making the switch. An RPi with Astroberry will run off a mobile phone power bank quite happily for hours. I have a 20000mAh one with a 2.1Ah output and have left the Pi plugging in and running 5 hours and it barely touches the amount of juice available. One option is some large power banks have a 240v AC inverter so you can plug things into them - something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/TOPQSC-Portable-Generator-Rechargeable-Emergency/dp/B07G3ZFHTZ/ref=sr_1_30?crid=2A23J4GKO3XS3&dchild=1&keywords=portable+240v+battery+pack&qid=1597420919&sprefix=portable+240v+batter%2Caps%2C134&sr=8-30 Alternatively, there is no reason why you could not cobble up a lead to just power the laptop from a 12v DC supply assuming that's what it needs. Note some laptops charge at 18-20v and have quite a high current draw so this is not necessarily an option.

That's outstanding - a target on my to do list this late summer if I can get it in...

Apologies-what I meant was in forums people often just recommend what they themselves use. So that’s what I did I popped a link to the guidescope and camera in my first post

That's a stunning image although I suspect the rest of the kit used to partner the 'nifty' was a shade over the OP's £200 budget

This is outstanding. I can never get bored of looking at the moon and this is one of the best widefield images shots I've see of it. So much subtle detail to drink in...

I bit the bullet and got PixInsight and have found I can tease more detail out than using any other package. It's not the cheapest route and it takes some learning but I just couldn't get the results I wanted using anything else. I'd love to get to darker skies too - Bortle 8 here - and am slowly getting the bits together to go portable but that's then another layer of complexity so am going to give my portable set up a good few tries at home before going out and about so I can iron out any issues. PHD is pretty straightforward. I just leave everything as default on the basis I can guide to 5 minutes without issues so don't really care whether the guiding graph could be better etc. I am also transitioning across to a Raspberry Pi4 and KStars to control the show as this will be better when I go portable I think.

£200 isn't going to get you very far if you want to photograph deep space objects and a 50mm lens isn't going to get you much in the way of them either. A 200mm lens isn't going to be much good for them either but may help with some of the much larger DSO's (M31 and M42 spring to mind) but then you'd need a tracking mount. For DSO's the starting point is the mount but then the issue is budget again. £200 will not buy a tracking mount that is capable of carrying much more than a camera with a small lens. This is about the minimum you would need to photograph DSO's with just a dSLR https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-star-adventurer/skywatcher-star-adventurer-mini-sam-wifi-astro-imaging-mount-bundle.html assuming you already have a tripod for the camera. If not you would need to factor in a sturdy one as well. You might get a but more for your money second hand but not a great deal. It is all a bit chicken and egg but ultimately you need the mount most of all and then a lens or scope capable of resolving DSO's. I would suggest getting a copy of Making Ever Photon Count though and have a read through that to get some idea of what you need to commit to and where to best spend your money but I fear the budget is going to have to be quite a lot higher to get much out of AP.

It will be very very difficult to use any camera on a dob mount even just for lunar and planetary work. A phone shot is just a single quick sub-second exposure whereas when you start using dedicated cameras of any type you will be taking multiple exposures and often for planetary work, video clips of some seconds in length meaning the target is going to pass across the frame and you will forever be having to nudge the mount, wait for the vibrations to settle and take another short clip. Using a dSLR without laptop control can be fiddly and touching the camera at all will cause a lot of vibrations that will make taking photos without some kind of remote control very difficult. For me, I would get either of the ZWO's for a couple of reasons (and note I am not hugely familiar with their product range however the spec of the 224 looks to be enough of an improvement to go for that if you can afford it). 1/ They are more suited to planetary and lunar photography than the Canon options and 2/ when you get your EQ mount and you want a camera more suited to do more deep space work you can use the ZWO as a guide camera when you take that step. That said my advice would be to save the money now and put it toward a good EQ mount and hold off on the camera and enjoy using the phone a bit longer. If you have a point and shoot camera you could also look at an adapter such as this - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Baader-Microstage-II-Digiscoping-Adapter/dp/B002SYHDIS/ref=sr_1_21?crid=5HUH7AS9HPMJ&dchild=1&keywords=telescope+camera+adapter&qid=1597315133&sprefix=telescope+camera%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-21 - and do some a-focal photography with a slightly better camera than your phone perhaps.

Following the tradition of recommending what you have this is what I use. Really nice package; the scope is very good and the focuser ideal for guiding. Once dialled in it can be locked down with almost zero chance of bumps etc knocking it out of focus. The guide rings are very solid mounting point are very solid too. You could get away with using the SynGuider however you would be better with a standalone guide camera and using pulse guiding to control the mount over USB than via the camera and ST4 via PHD2. The AR0130 is a nice little camera and works very well. Could be pushed into use as a planetary/lunar cam as well if desired. https://www.altairastro.com/altair-60mm-guide-scope--gpcam2-mono-camera-combo-with-polar-alignment-assist-75-p.asp