dannybgoode

@chaxastro - @WbRaDy convinced me the service was easy enough to do and so far I’d agree. They also pointed me in the direction of this grease. Apparently it is the goto stuff (pun almost intended).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01186U64Y/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_DFEPCKNBZ9PXN4AHE692?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

@Jonny_H - happy to measure them once I’ve cleaned them up. My mount is embarrassingly lightly used so I’m not going to change mine. Assuming I actually get some proper use out of it going forward I’ll look to change them next time I do this.

Well I've started :). Actually considering the mount is probably closer to 8 years old much of the grease is actually OK but as can be seen from the paper some of it is loppy.

And now I've got going I want to do it all so over the next few days will get it nice and clean and re-greased

Watching this video it does not look too complicated.  Less gears and stuff than I expected and nothing that looks a proper fiddle and faff.  Can't see anything that I could get so wrong as to damage anything also.

Typical - we had 1 1/2 really good nights in Sheffield last week just before my motivation to really get back into things kicked in.  So, took the opportunity to have my scope in at RVO to have a whirl on their Zygo, have been really fiddling around in the murky depths of KStars/EKOS to ensure that, as far as I can be sure, everything works each and every time I fire it all up (the number of hours I have lost with stuff just not quite starting up properly!).

I will be attempting to service my mount as well over the next few days so hopefully when there is a decent night I will be good to go  

12 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

I’ve had mine 8 years and so far it seems to working as well as ever. Famous last words!  

I’m thinking: if it ain’t broke …. etc. 

There is an element of that to my thinking however the grease does go off over time and running bearings on old, hardened grease could cause damage to them so was contemplating having a tinker...

So my AZ EQ6GT mount - it is 6 or so years old but lightly used however it is well due a clean and a re-grease.  I am pretty handy with mechanical stuff and have all the tools, have watched a few YouTube videos on it etc and it doesn't look too hard to service.

But, are there any real pitfalls that makes sending it away a more sensible option?  Anyone DIY'd and wished they hadn't or indeed found it pretty straightfoward?

Cheers all

Wow - this looks really interesting. I'm a big Affinity fan and great to see AP being more and more integrated.

Will be watching the videos for sure and it looks to be another great option. I too use PixInsight a fair amount but the more decent tools the better and in particular it gives alternatives to those starting out. 

Not the postman as such but took a trip over to RVA and picked up a Pegasus Pocket PowerBox Advance.  Been wanted one for ages as I am very keen to get my rig a) tidier and easier to set up and strip down at home and b) get portable, particularly to my RC flying club's field and whilst I know there are some excellent DIY solutions the PowerBox is just so neat, small and easy.

Can't wait to try it out.

I also dropped my TMB LZOZ off to have a go on their Zygo rig

Teased quite a lot more detail out of the data I captured last night of the moon. 
Not bad for a hand held bridge camera 🙂

Bored and realised I hadn’t done anything remotely astro in ages. Also annoyed at myself for not getting the motivation to at least get my imaging rig working again and have missed at least one decent night and looking at tonight, probably two.

So, grabbed my lowly Sony RX10M4 and decided to do a moon shot. Handheld and aligned and stacked in nothing more than Affinity Photo and then into DxO PhotoLabs for final tweaks.  Quite pleased with it for a quick and dirty grab.  Need to knuckle down and get my mojo back for some full imaging though.

Thought I would have a second stab at this and go for something completely different.  Yes, AP can be all about the colour but what if we removed that distraction to focus on the form and structure and process the image in a more art-like fashion and go black and white, chuck in some false vignette, perhaps add a border.

You would end up with something like this.  This target struck me as an ideal candidate for such processing due to the clouds of nebulosity surrounding a very interesting and intricate core object

Whilst by no means a competent image processer I do love playing with this IKI data.  So clean and just so much in there.  Way better than anything I could capture, particularly under my Bortle 100000000 skies!

So here is my attempt.  Initial processing in PixInsight; ABE, colour integration (SHO), EZ_Denoise, EZ_starreduction, EZ_HDR, bit of a tweak here and there with saturation etc.  Nothing fancy, mainly because I do not fully understand PI yet however I am getting there.  

Then into DxO PhotoLabs 3 to have a play with the colour wheel and bring down the saturation as it was overly red and green and also into Affinity Photo to play around with the levels there and then merged the two files together to give the final result.  

Slight edit - prefer this version

On 30/03/2021 at 11:26, JamesF said:

Well, I'm at a bit of a loss to explain this now...

The Altair cameras I can test against the latest Astroberry generally work.  The exception is one that has had support dropped from the Altair SDK and therefore won't work anywhere (though as previously mentioned I have hacked support for it, in a fairly ugly way).

My code doesn't have a clue what camera is actually connected -- it just asks the Altair SDK for frame size, what controls are available and so on -- so if it works for one then in theory it ought to work for all, but perhaps I have subconsciously made some assumption that just isn't true for these particular cameras.  Or perhaps there's some issue in the SDK that means they won't work in streaming mode (which is different from how INDI uses them as far as I recall), but I struggle to believe that.  Unfortunately there's no way for me to work on that directly without access to the specific camera in question.  If anyone can do that for me then that's great, though it's probably only really practical if you're really comfortable with Linux.  Otherwise I'll have to look at what logging I can add to the code to help debug this problem in the next release.

James

How comfortable is comfortable?  I am not an expert in Linux but am pretty comfortable, with guidance at least, doing most things on most OS's via command lines or anything else and would be happy to help if at all I can.  Of course if I would be more of a hinderance I quite understand

Given I am currently confined to quarters anyway I have time on my hands... 

2 minutes ago, JamesF said:

It shouldn't (he says

It might be interesting to try, but I'm not sure that it wouldn't potentially mess up the saved configuration for oacapture, so probably isn't a good idea unless you'd be comfortable fixing that if it did.

James

What's the worst that could happen

5 minutes ago, JamesF said:

Just open a terminal window, type "oacapture" and press return.  Then proceed as normal when the application starts.  If you can screenshot whatever appears in the terminal window, that would be great.

James

Does this help?

Been confirmed Covid positive and feel pretty poo so no chance of doing any full imaging etc for the next few days but could not waste the stunning moon.

Grabbed my Sony RX10M4 and fired off a few dozen frames and then gave Autostakkert a whirl (in the past have used Registax). Final tweaks in DxO and PS.  Came out pretty nice I think - particularly considering camera was handheld...

23 hours ago, JamesF said:

Just had another thought for those who still have Altair cameras that aren't working...

Could you run oacapture from the command line and paste any output it gives in the terminal window, please?

James

More than happy to try.  How do I do that though?

7 hours ago, Yawning Angel said:

I have ICE archived : Google Drive link - MS ICE

Nice - thanks for this.  Been looking for a copy...

12 hours ago, HyperBiotec said:

Yes I can. But my long goal is to make an a dyi obsy 400km from home since I live in a Bortle 8-9 skies zone. I have now bought a eqmod cable to control the mount through astroberry remotely so I am getting close to my objective. All I am waiting for now is a guide scope to platesolve since I won't be near the scope to do the alignment routine.
So this topic can be closed. Thanks guys

You are better plate solving through the main imaging scope and camera, that way you can be sure of being on target regardless of whether the guide scope gets knocked out of alignment

Thought I would try my hand at some close in lunar imaging.  Not done it before so a bit of a learning curve but wanted to try out my new Pegasus FocusCube - just used the hand controller to focus, quite hard as the image was not steady on my screen at all and seeing wasn't great but for a first attempt I am happy enough.

Any tips on how to sharpen up the focus would be gratefully received though.  The image was a bit 'swimmy' on my computer screen so nailing it was very hard.  Seeing could have been better too with some very high cloud spoiling things.

Scope is a Meade 10" SCT, camera Altair AR0130 mono and processed in Registax and a variety of 'normal' image processing packages.

Gassendi and I think Bianchini but happy to be corrected on the latter (and indeed the former).

3 hours ago, JamesF said:

Sorry, this one:

Apologies if I wasn't clear.  Covid jab day today and I was a bit distracted trying to plan for things in case I don't feel great.

James

Apologies - ignore me... 

9 hours ago, JamesF said:

I'm at a loss to explain this for the moment, I have to admit.

Do you know if it works ok with Kstars/Ekos?  (Apologies if I've missed that information somewhere already.)

James

Hi James

Yes it works fine with EKOS and PHD2. I use it as my solving and guide cam.

OACapture doesn't pick up and cameras at all. Doesn't pick up my main SX cam either and the camera option in settings is greyed out.

As another alternative you could look at Kstars/EKOS instead of Stellarium. Full mount control built in and full imaging workflows as well if that's your thing. 

@JamesF I have run lsusb and screenshot attached showing the result. I have also made the change you suggested to the 99-altaircam.rules file which is how it shows on my installation of Astroberry. Again screenshot below of the change I made - bottom line is the one I added.

Full power off and reboot of the Pi and reconnected the camera and still nothing showing up in OACapture (v1.9.0). The Camera settings tab is just greyed out.

A I say Linux is not my strong point so if I've done something stupid do let me know

Also apologies for the literal screenshots. New keyboard and can't find the actual screenshot key

23 hours ago, Droogie 2001 said:

Still trying to get outside to setup my new Pegasus FocusCube, its either cloudy or too windy!

Me too! Desperate to try it out