Vox45

thank you all for your answers. I've had my eye on the Baader Diamond Steeltrack for quite a while so there seems to be a consensus on this beeing the right choice for my 80ED I was put off by the fact that there is no mounting shoe for my guide scope so I am a bit curious about what you said johninderby ? Do you mean that it is possible to install a shoe on the baader focuser ? No DIY hole drilling or anything like that needed ? Thanks

Hello all, I fiddled with the stock focuser that comes with the SW 80ED and followed a lot of tutorial on how to make it better, less slippage and so on, but I still have issues when using an electric focuser to bring the tube back in when there is load on the focuser (camera and FF/FR) In the meantime I've decided to construct my own little Arduino focuser (MyfocuserPro) so now I am thinking of changing the stock focuser for a better one ... Should I go for a Crayford type focuser or a rack and pinion focuser ? I think that rack and pinion make more sens as I can set the backlash in the autofocuser software and that would eliminate the slippage issue (unless there is too much weight and then the motors would skip steps but that is another issue). It seems that most people use Crayford focuser, why would a rack and pinion not be worthy of consideration ? Any thoughts on this ?

Thank you for you advice I will try that !

I have to admit that I just threw everything into the mix. Your comment gave me pause ... So I did the whole process once more but I only used the 300s light frames this time. this is the result after integration of 12x 300s light frames: no more vertical bands ! but I still get the dark corners on the upper and lower right side. Compared to 12x 300s + 10x 10s + 10x 15s + 10x 20s giving this result : So it seems that throwing all the files with different duration into the mix was not such a good idea I was biased (no pun intended) by the fact that I just throw everything in DSS and get good results...

It took me a while to understand where you got the 10s exposures number from I see that you got that number from the name of the file in the debayer window I posted. Actually, it was 300s subs and I took a couple of 10s and 15s to help with the core of M42. The rest are 300s subs.

Yes I did check to see if if my Canon produced "RGGB" patterns. It is the case. So I've applied this method from Cloudy night I posted earlier in this thread : https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/667524-preparing-color-balanced-osc-flats-in-pixinsight/ It is possible to prepare a balanced CFA master flat in the same way with PixInsight. Here is the procedure I use: Prepare the master flat as usual. Use the SplitCFA process to create images containing the four separated CFA channels. Use the LinearFit process to equalize the four images. Use the channel with lowest intensity as the reference, and apply LinearFit to the other three images. For me, the CFA0 (red) channel has the lowest intensity in twilight sky flats. Use the MergeCFA process to recombine the four images, and save the resulting CFA image as a file. I name the resulting image file "grey-master-flat". Use this color-balanced master flat (without debayering) to calibrate the light subs. I ended up with a flat file like this: A single frame calibrated with the master flat/bias/dark now looks like this (debayered/strech for the purpose of showing the result, I do not do this before registering and stacking) once star aligned I get this (!!!) and after stacking I get this final image: All those vertical bands ! and the dark corners on the upper and lower right side. I am doing some tests right now, with different combinations of duration/light intensity and with/without the CLS-CCD filter and I am getting results all over the place. I am obviously doing something wrong, I will need to dig a little deeper and read again the "Inside pixinsight" book

Very nice picture indeed, I did not know this galaxy, amazing details ! What software did you use to frame your picture and write your signature and info on the target ? It looks quite nice and adds a nice touch when sharing with others

So I had my first go at M42, it was quite difficult to process. I used DSS for the 1st picture and Pixinsight for the the second one. I prefer the second one but I find it a lot more noisy and blueish .. After a couple of hours playing around I tend to lose track of what is good or overprocessed.. I need your fresh eyes people Please, any constructive criticism is welcome as I have not a lot of experience processing deep sky images Processed with DSS Procesed with Pixinsight Thanks!

no I am running the debayer process like this I debayerd my master flat to see what it looked like ... My "problem" might be related to this thread I found on Cloudy nights https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/667524-preparing-color-balanced-osc-flats-in-pixinsight/ I will try and see what happens

Hello all, I am having this issue where I import FITS files in Pixinsight and on debayering them I get funny colors like this: If I use the same FITS files in DeepSkyStacker I get this ... So I started to remove steps from the routine and when I removed the Master Flat from the "Image Calibration" step I got this (single light frame) ... so it looks like this part of the process screw things up and I have no idea why ... Anyone with Pixinsight experience here ? I have a hard time understandig why flats would change the color of the debayered light frame... Thanks!

Plate solving uses a photo of a star field (from a guide scope or main camera, it does not matter) and searches in a catalog of stars to match that star field to the same pattern of star. You can easily test this by uploading a photo you already have and it will solve it and give you the name of the objects and coordinates http://nova.astrometry.net/upload You do not need to do a 3 star alignment. Plate solving is giving you the exact coordinates your mount is pointing to, so 3 star alignment is redundant. -> polar alignment is needed to prevent field rotation on long exposure and it helps guiding a lot -> 3 star alignment is to tell your software where the mount is pointing. Plate solving does the same thing as long as you sync when you get the platesolver solution -> guiding is not related to plate solving, it only keeps you mount from drifting due to bad PA or mecanical errors of your mount In my routine : (1) I polar align using plate solving. In my case I use Ekos and Indi (a linux set of tools and protocol a bit like ASCOM/Eqmod) (2) I then point my target using my sky atlas softaware (Kstars) and ask it to slew to that target (3) the plate solving tool takes a photo that is then solved using the astrometry index that I have downloaded locally on my machine (and RPI3 in this case) (4) When the exact coordinates has been "solved" The software updates my mount coordinates to that solution (4) The mount is then moved to get closer to the target and the process is restarted until it gets within a predefined acceptable range of my target (30'' for example) so without any 3 star alignment I usuall get my target smack in the middle of my camera sensor after 3 or 4 iterations So in your case you could use a photo from a previous session and ask the software to solve this photo and slew to the exact coordinates... that is possible as well. Or you could just point to the same target in your skychart software. Both methods are valid.

Great ! Thank you for your answer Now I just need to wait until the sky clears

Hello all, I want to sell my Sirius (HEQ5) mount but I've been asked if I could provide a "PE" graph. I have no idea how to do this. I know that ASCOM/EQMOD have some tools but I am not sure were to start and if there are other tools out there that could simply and efficiently create a graph that would mean something to potential buyers. I know that some shops provide the service of tuning your mount and gives you a periodic error graphs ... I do not know what software they use to do that though. I've hear of PEMPRO and K3CCDTools but they looked like very old tools. Any ideas ?

Yes this is part of my plan for a futur setup

Nice write up but there is a broken link when trying to get to page 4 😕 http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/tutorials/tutorial-setup-off-axis-adapter/04-tutorial-setup-off-axis-adapter.html

I usually solve under 10sec using the local installation. I can understand that people would be reluctant to use plate solving if every solution took minutes to get solved. To speed up solving, you need to have your FOV exactly right in the configuration and download only the appropriate index files. If not, you will need to go through all index files and there are a lot ...There are a couple more tips to speed things up in the documentation. To get the exact FOV you can do a blind solve and Astrometry.net will tell you. If I use astronomy tool calculator I get 2.49 x 1.66 deg FOV for my setup, a blind solve gives me 2.44 x 1.63 deg FOV. Not a big difference, but it is accurate. In my case, I only use plate solving. I never do any kind of star alignment, I just sync to the solution when on target. I even use astrometry to get my polar alignment right.

I just re-did my whole setup on an RPI3B+ using Stellarmate (the comercial version of INDI/EKOS) because I was to lazy to redo everyting I had done on a laptop running Linux Mate. So now I run everything from the RPI at the mount plugged into my power distribution box v.2 I can now connect with VNC over WIFI (the PI act as an access point) and I use a GPS dongle to provide location/time to the Ekos/Kstar and the mount. I would say that from the time I received my RPI, install the Stellarmate image and test my new setup it took around 1 hour it took some time to watch a couple of videos on the Stellarmate youtube channel and I was up and running in no time. I even got myself a GPS dongle for 15€ to setup the time and location since the RPI does not have an RTC onboard. So, all in all it works great, I only do DSO imaging so RPI3B+ is fine. As a precaution, I bought 2 microSD cards and, once the configuration was to my licking, I burned the same image on both cards, so if I am in the field and something goes wrong with my OS or INDI I can just switch cards and reboot to a clean setup... So now I only have one cable coming from the mount (power cable) ... until someone comes up with a golf ball size nuclear fusion powered power supply

I also bought the right angle finder for my Sirius mount (HEQ5) and found this thread for the 3D printed adapter Thanks for sharing, it works perfectly ! I printed all the pieces from the second file and glued them together. I just need to spray paint them black and I will be the star of the party next time I go out

Good news on the update front. INDI and Kstars have had both new releases this week. If you are still on old version you may want to upgrade as there are a lot of new features and bug fixes. Some of the new features I found interesting are : + New Celestron Nightscape 8300 CCD driver. + New INDI FFMPEG-based Webcam driver. + New ZWO USB2ST4 driver. + New Arduino ST4 driver. + New Weather Watcher driver. + MacOS improvements + Ekos Auto Park Timer + Revamped Ekos Scheduler You can find the whole list of fixes and improvements here: INDI v1.7.4 KStars v2.9.7

I did the upgrade (Rowan belt mode) on my HEQ5 in 30 minutes without any issues and I am all thumbs! Just make sure to get the "Pinion Gear Extractor" ... It was well worth the price ! Here is a noise comparison I did in mid-ugrade...

Altitude can be a problem but, apart from breathlessness from time to time I had no issue. The age of the group ranged from 30 to 70yrs old and noone reported issues. It is possible to visit the observatory, from the village it is a 2 hour hike in the beautiful scenery of the French Alps. Those on the mission are mandated to act as guide for tourists who stop by. We had several groups of hikers during my stay and they were all able to visit the observatory. There is also the possibility to spend the night but you have to pay for that and book the stay well in advance. There is a smaller dome that is reserved for the visitors and you spend the night with a profesional from the observatory. We had to submit the project to the association who manages the site and then there was a selection process. We had the chance to be selected but from what I understand it is not that hard to get accepted. They only ask for the mission to be well managed, have a scientific goal. We were all amateurs and some on the team did not even own a scope

November, it is raining, so I thought I'd post my setup in a different environment ... sorry for the double post These were taken in August at 3000m in the Alps, we spent a week on a mission to detect exoplanets using the transit method. We used the 620mm 9m focal lenght telescope (seen in the background) One of the clearest sky in Europe and the highest observatory. This site was selected in the 60's to host the second larget telescope in the world but it was decided to put it in Hawai, it is now known as the CFHT (Canada France Hawaï Telescope) It was a real treat, a bit wasted on a simple noobie like me I guess, but I had fun spending 7 days with 10 other people sharing the same passion Part science mission, part star party in superb conditions. Good times.

I already have a SkyWatcher Auto Focuser and the HitecAstro DC focuser control in hand but I'd like to switch to a stepper motor... This thread got me thinking. Would it be possible to replace the DC motor in the Skywatcher enclosure so I can use the brackets, RJ11 connector and cable ? I could open up the Hitecastro controler case and fit in the arduino (?) This would look better than making my own bracket and case ... I guess this is just a question of form factor for the motor and size of the arduino board... Anyone knows the type of motor used in the SkyWatcher Auto Focuser and if there is an equivalent size in the stepper motor world ?

Some great news on the INDI/Ekos front ! Problem statement: on a RPI3, in the field without access to the internet, I want to be able to retrieve GPS coordinates and time to synchronize my mount. Solution: (1) buy an external antenna and module for RPI (current method) (2) use my iphone/andoid to get the information. This was not possible until today There is now a new panel in ekos where you can enter the IP address of your iphone and get that info from an app installed on your phone. I am pretty impressed by the time it took between identifying and reporting the need to do this, until the time it became a new feature.... 2 days ! This again shows the power of open source

we can add Astroberry to the mix Astroberry Server is a ready to use astronomy desktop system for Raspberry Pi 3 It is a standalone system for controlling astronomy equipment supported by INDI server. The system features: Ubuntu Mate 16.04 Desktop Virtual Access Point (VAP) allowing to access the system without external wireless network Remote desktop accessible over VNC at astroberry.local:5900 or a web browser at https://astroberry.local KStars and Ekos with all available device drivers Astrometry with basic index files PHD2 for autoguiding Gnome Predict for satellite tracking StarPlot for 3-dimensional positions of stars in space oaCapture and wxAstroCapture for planetary imaging Astroberry PiFace drivers for a relay and focuser control Samba server sharing Pictures directory for easy access to captured images Quite easy to install as you just need flash your microSD card (minimum 16GB required) with the image and then boot up