dannybgoode

On variousForums I’ve seen several people mention that it is very easy to get APT to run a mosaic routine using CdC but can’t seem to find an idiots guide to actually doing this. 
 

Can someone explain the basic steps or point me to such a guide?

 Many thanks

Agree with the above. Assuming your motherboard supports NVMe then even a small 128gb drive will make a massive difference for you put your swap files on there. 
 

Note that it is worth experimenting with multiple swap files on the same drive. On my pc I find that 5 or 6 files are optimal with slower performance either side of that. 
 

I run 32gb as well which helps. PI performance scales with what computing power you can throw at it. My laptop is no slouch - a 2017 Dell XPS 13 i7 with 16gb but it’s destroyed by my desktop which is a Ryzen 5 2600 with 32gb and an NVMe SSD. 
 

My laptop gives a benchmark score of 3800 and my desktop around 12000 because I’ve spent a bit of time optimising it for PI. Most tasks take a handful of seconds to complete. 

You know I have PS Align Pro and didn't know about this feature.  Just tried it now - too cloudy to see Polaris so can't compare it in the scope but will do so in due course.  Neat feature - bet it gets it close enough of your guiding too

Here's a flat frame I took as part of last night's sequence.  All frames look very even across multiple filters - very happy so far.  Will see how I get on as I process some of the actual data from the session.

Proving to be a good little flat box...

3 hours ago, Anthony1979 said:

I use a eq5 with Enhanced duel axis motors... But went through my random images of last night and found an image with the whirlpool right on the edge of the image

All you need then is an EQDir cable (get a good one from somewhere like FLO - cheap ones cause more hassle than the initial saving is worth) and you can use the Goto++ feature of APT. 
 

This will gives you perfectly centred targets every time. The whole routine only takes a couple of minutes.

42 minutes ago, Anthony1979 said:

Went out again last night and thought i would try and get an image of the whirlpool but couldnt find it so tried for bodes and couldnt find that either... Spent all night look but nothing.. 

I have no chance of finding targets manually - too much light pollution. Do you have a goto mount. If so which one? An EQDir cable, APT and plate solving is the answer. 
 

Its really quite easy to use as well - takes literally a couple of minutes to get any target bang centre. And it’s pretty much automated so you don’t have to even try and find the target first. 

1 minute ago, david_taurus83 said:

It's an absolutely crackers hobby. What with the cost and the weather and never ending issues with kit. Yet here we still are! I've been doing this for couple of years now and still have to deal with kit niggles. I've just learned to streamline the issues and problem solve quicker! Trust me, 90% of nights I'm out something goes wrong! Keep at it and gather as much data as you can on a target. You'll get there. M81 and M82 are starting to rise this time of year if you can see them, nice beginner targets as they are fairly bright. Theres nothing better for a beginner once you start to see a galaxy or nebula emerge out of the darkness of your stack. Keep your data and as you get better at processing you can always go back and reprocess stuff as you learn new techniques. 👍

I’ve had a couple of stabs at M81 already but now it’s a bit higher I’ll have another crack at it. Trying to get a few hours in M51 at the moment because it’s just such a cool target. 
 

And yes, it’s madness to do what we do  

I use it extensively as the first step in my normal photography workflow. 
 

The in-built lens correction profiles are brilliant and I generally tweak colours with the colour wheel and play around with ClearView and the noise reduction. 
 

I then open the file up in LR and then PS most of the time but occasionally if I’m bulk processing raw files I just do the whole lot in DxO. 

I can’t comment on your camera but what I will say is AP is by far the hardest, most frustrating hobby I’ve ever tried. 
 
I am now at the point I know how to get everything set up and get a good imaging sequence done etc but I still lose whole evenings just messing everything up. 
 

It just takes something small like forgetting to press go on guiding to ruin a whole precious cloudless night. But I won’t be beaten - I will get this hobby nailed down. 
 

The satisfaction when you get your first Nebula, first galaxy, first colour image, first really nice tightly focus image etc is just so satisfying it makes all the frustrating lost to equipment issues or just plain stupidity worth it. 
 

I mean think about what you’re actually doing, what you’re actually capturing. I can take photos of galaxies from my back garden and that’s cool   

The mount is everything in astrophotography. If I were you I wouldn’t be looking at anything less than an AZ EQ6GT and at this stage world blow the whole £1k on a secondhand one of those. Really like mine - proper bit if kit it is. 
 

That way you’re set for pretty much any scope at all. It guides well, is very robust and will see you through your whole journey unless you get really serious. 
 

The scope can wait or keep your eye out for a nice 750mm focal length 150P which I find to be an excellent compromise between the 130 and 200. 

Apologies of this isn’t quite the right section - mods feel free to move but seemed as good a place as any to post this  

Following a thread I posted a little while ago about diy flat boxes Bill @A320Flyer dropped me a note to say him and a mate had designed a 3D printed one and that they could custom size the nose piece. 
 

A couple of PM’s later and I had a quote of £47 inc shopping for one that would fit my TMB 105mm frac and having crossed his palm with Paypal, a few days later the kit turned up well packaged and as described. 
 

Mine came ready made but however they are usually a kit but only require a little bit of soldering. The mask is just made up of layers of A4 to the required thickness to achieve the brightness required and the various sections of the box itself are held together by plastic bolts. 
 

As mentioned mine was custom sized to fit my TMB and it fits absolutely perfectly. And I mean spot on, just snug enough it’s completely light-proof and has no danger of falling off but slides back off with gentle pressure. They also have pre-sized options for a number of common scopes as well. 
 

Build is excellent, sure you can tell it’s 3D printed but it feels solid enough and they even include a printed cap for the nose piece when not in use. 
 

Having plonked it the scope and applied a 12v supply to it I’ve found 2 sheets of paper is just right to allow APT to run a flats routine with minimum of fuss. So far the resulting flat frames look very good and when I’ve finished processing some data I’ll post some results. 
 

In the meantime here are some photos of it. If you’re looking for a flat box I can highly recommend this one so do tap Bill up if you’re interested.  Note I paid full price for it and have not been incentivised in any way to write this review  

I have used PS, Affinity and LE extensively. Nebulosity 4 a bit and APP a bit. I hate GIMP and the horse it road in on. Just so clunky compared to PS. Sure its free but I’d rather pay Adobe for a highly polished piece of software than suffer GIMP but for a second. YMMV 
 

I then tried PI.

Inside PixInsight is invaluable and together with a couple of YouTube videos it’s much easier to pick up the basics than some would have you and I just really liked it. 
 

The control is gives you is astonishing, the way instances are used and the way it is completely non-destructive and totally ‘undoable’ is brilliant. Further, once you’ve got a modest workflow going it’s a totally repeatable process. 
 

Well worth the money imo. 

I believe in praise when praise is due so I thought I’d share my recent experience with Starlight Xpress. 
 

I bought one of their filter wheels second hand and over time the USB socket has become loose to the point where I was losing whole nights due to it losing connection. I could perhaps have risked repairing it myself but equally could have made it worse so felt it better to see of SX could help.

I dropped an email to them on a Saturday morning and received a reply straightaway letting me know how to get an RMA number etc and by Tuesday it was in the post to them for assessment.

The wheel has got to be a good few years old so of course I wasn’t expecting a free repair or anything and was delighted that they would fix it for a modest £50 including RM special delivery back to me. 
 

Within a week it was back in my hands, fully repaired and working complete with the latest firmware etc. I know their kit is quite expensive but the fact that they can repair even their older gear for sensible prices I think demonstrates it is value for money. 
 

All in all a painless experience and I am likely to stick with them if/when I look to upgrade my camera. 

On 16/11/2019 at 14:22, Space Hopper said:

So with a lens of this pedigree, if it was me, i'd be thinking about having it professionally cleaned,  polished and recollimated.

The only way i'd do that is to send it back to Lytkarino in Russia.

To do that i'd enquire with the UK distributers of LZOS (Astrograph UK)

@Space Hopper thanks for your advice here. I’ve been trying to decide whether to leave it and monitor it or just get it dealt with. 
 

In the end I think your idea is best and have since been in touch with Rupert at Astrograph and he can arrange for the lens cell to be sent to a specialist lab in Germany. Apparently sending it back to LZOS is a) not particularly necessary and b) can cause all kinds of issues with customs clearance and the like. 
 

The lab will properly dismantle and clean the optics and provide a new test certificate for the cell. He’ll then reassemble and collimate the scope. 
 

Not particularly cheap but it’ll be done properly and I’ll not have to worry about it again   

The main issue with using NB filters on an OSC camera is the amount of data you lose due to the Bayer filter.  The filter is constructed so that 50% of the pixels read green data and 25% each red and blue.  Software trickery then calculates the luminance value of the missing colour data from the values of the surrounding pixels.

If you stick say an Ha NB filter on then really only the red pixels are going to receive any meaningful numbers of photons so you are only utilising 25% of the sensor which is a bit of a waste! 

I prefer a mono camera with a filter wheel accordingly but I'm pretty rubbish at imaging at the moment so I am not convinced I get better results at the moment!  I am confident over time though I will get more from mono than OSC, particularly when using NB filters.

2 weights on a shorter bar present exactly the same loading to the mount as one weight on a longer bar assuming both balance the scope. 
 

That’s how Newton’s laws work . The only practical issue is a longer bar has more chance of getting caught on tripod legs, tangling wires etc. 

It’s very easy to use but if you’re going to be imaging and using a guide scope then SharpCap has a polar alignment routine that works in exactly the same way but uses your guide camera and scope. The licence is $10 so way cheaper and just as effective. 

The major limitation is that most Astro software can’t/won’t control the Samsung so you’ll have to press the shutter for each shot and use the camera screen for focusing etc rather than being able to have the live view image on your computer screen. 
 

I keep meaning to see what my Song RX10M4 is capable of but lack of software control is the biggest annoyance due not doing so yet. 

Well I've finally but the bullet and bought the full licence.  Trial didn't expire until 9 February but there's no way I was going back so got it sorted.  Just a shame it's still permanent cloud and with little chance of getting any imaging done for at least the next week!

Thing is I genuinely doubt it is anything to do with the Windows update. 
 

There are literally thousands of astronomers running W10 with all manner of different astro set ups who don’t have any issues at all and who update their computers all the time. 
 

Further W10 doesn’t do sneaky updates. It tells you its going to do them and you can opt to delay them if required (or to not carry them out at all but that is not recommended). 
 

It is more likely software conflicts that have coincidentally reared their heads after an update than the update itself. 

Genuine question. I’ve have run W10 since its release and it’s never updated with me giving explicit consent.

 Further I have never skipped an update and nothing has ever broken, stopped working, mysteriously changed, borked or otherwise caused an issue. 

I run it on 4 PC’s which undertake all manner of tasks and we run it at work as well without any problems at all. Most of my friends run it just fine as well. 
 

It’s therefore entirely possible to run W10 quite happily and without any issues whatsoever and I just don’t understand what people are doing to their settings to  cause such issues. 
 

So that is the question - just how are people borking their W10 computers. Interestingly I’ve only ever seen (on here and on many other groups and forums) people with a clear dislike of W10 in the first place having problems. 

Also get a copy of the 2nd edition Inside PixInsight. Worth it’s (considerable) weight in gold. 
 

Mitch’s videos (and others) are excellent but the book really pulls it all together into a solid, repeatable workflow and where necessary drills right down into what the processes can do. 

Buy the package, sell the scope - job done. 
 

You can never have too much mount assuming it is portable enough for the application you have in mind. 
 

The other option I have and someone mentioned it above; because my scope is usually on the patio I could just run a long USB lead out of the dining room window where my main computer is. Be nice and warm inside then! 
 

Now I can plate solve etc it’s a very tempting option. 

7 hours ago, rickwayne said:

Sometimes when I've worked in the back yard, I've used the high-end MacBook Pro on which I develop software for a living. 2-second plate solves, I'm down with that! But then I have to worry about leaving it outside all night. If the Pi gets rained on or possum-gnawed, meh, it was $56.

I can relate to that. I’m currently using my Dell XPS 13 fully loaded i7 but I get very nervous about leaving it - even just out in the garden. I’m in the process of getting my old laptop back off a friend I lent it to a year or so ago. 
 

I bought it for imaging but was then ill for ages so didn’t use it but will be far more comfortable leaving that out