symmetal

Have you tried running the program you want to use those old cameras with in compatibility mode. Right click on the program icon and click on Properties\Combatibitity mode. Select what Windows version you want it to run under and click OK. It should run in that mode every time you run the program via that icon. If the drivers won't install you could try running the driver install program in Combatibility mode too. This method doesn't always work but may be worth a try. 🙂 Alan

OK Olly. I think I'll give you that one.

But a single sub wouldn't be 4 hours so you'd end up with a hundred subs or more each with a short trail which would be removed fairly easily in stacking. 🤔 Anyone like to post a sub showing geostationary satellites being a nuisance? 🙂 Alan

OK, geostationaries wouldn't create long trails 'randomly' crossing the image, which was the reason for the topic. 🙂 I've taken images around Dec 0 and not noticed short horizontal trails, though it seems at the UK latitude geostationary satellites would be around Dec -7 degrees due to parallax. At the north pole they would be at Dec -8 deg 37 mins so would be below the horizon. Also, left or right of the meridian changes the satellite declination slightly too if you're not at the poles or equator by some complicated formulas shown here. Alan

They aren't stationary as they are in a low earth orbit around 340 miles up (550 km). They each complete an earth orbit in 90 to 100 mins depending on their altitude so are moving around 17,000 mph. (27,500 km/h) Their orbit inclination is 53 degrees from the equator, which is why there are none operational over the poles. Also that's why there are so many, so that any point on Earth (almost) has a satellite close by. If they were geostationary the signal latency would be excessive at 250mS there and back, compared to around 3mS in low Earth orbit. Also, if geostationary, they wouldn't create trails across your images. 🙂 On the website I posted the image above from, you can view their position in real time. Alan

That's bad Göran 😬 It's not so much the celestial equator but towards the horizon in general, where you're getting more satellites in your FOV. I use Astro Pixel Processor for stacking and must admit I haven't had a real problem with satellites, even when I stack just10 or so as i check the results as they come in. Though I haven't aimed close to the horizon for a while. Alan

The electrical resistance of the device being powered determines the current it will draw from a fixed voltage supply. As long as the supply is rated capable of supplying that current or more it will be fine. You can connect your dew straps, or anything else which requires a 12V supply, directly to a 12V car battery and they will only draw the current determined by their resistance, even though the car battery is capable of supplying 200 amps or more. 🙂 Ohms law states I= V / R (current = voltage / resistance) Alan

You've posted using gain zero. 🤔 Gain 100, offset 50 is the default setting and is most commonly used due to it's lower read noise, (and no loss of dynamic range), and is fine for all scopes and filters apart from possibly fast scopes taking luminance frames where the optimum exposure ends up being like 10 seconds so you end up with 100s of frames and spend as much time taking images as downloading them. I do this on my RASA 11 and ASI6200MM camera for luminance, but gain 100 for everything else. You wouldn't use offset 0 as that would mean black clipping your images which is the reason offset is used. If you're using the Ascom camera driver, check the Ascom driver settings for what the gain and offset is, if NINA isn't telling you. If you're using darks there is no need to take bias frames as the bias is already included in the darks. The lights and darks need to be taken at the same gain, offset and temperature. You should take separate dark frames (flat darks) at the same exposure duration as your flat frames though you can use the master bias instead of the flat darks. Again the flats, flat darks (or bias) need to be at the same gain, offset and temperature as long as the flats histogram looks good. This gain, offset and temperature need not be the same as used for your lights and darks, but it's more convenient if they are. Alan

It appears the initial flat you posted has been stretched by applying an STF in Pixinsight which is why it looks awful. You need to look at the master flat raw with no processing applied to see what it actually looks like. As vlaiv has said the AFR-IV should be fine with an APS-C sensor. If vignetting is too severe then the final stacked image after calibration will look noisy in the corners compared to the rest of the image as a lot more gain has to be applied to the corner pixels to get an even background brightness. Your image just posted has over-corrected the corners, as vlaiv has said, but they don't look any noiser than the rest of the image so the actual vignetting is quite modest and easily fixed with the correct flat frame. You will likely get some tilt with the AFR-IV, as the 2" nosepiece attachment isn't as mechanically stable as a screwed together system. I found this problem with my AFR-IV when I was using it around 8 years ago. Alan

I edited my reply after your quote. The aperture dimension is the size of the rectangular opening on the front of the camera. Alan

The AFR-IV with its 2" nosepiece has a clear aperture of 47.5mm reducing to 45mm about 10mm from the opening. Just measured mine. The adjustable 'back-focus' distance scale on the AFR-IV is only correct when the sensor is placed 55mm from the rear of the AFR-IV. The 2600 is APS-C. I haven't used the two together. The 35x26mm shown on the drawing is the size of the rectangular opening behind the adjustable tilt plate. Alan

Excellent image, and not one I've seen before. What caught my eye was the structure in the centre which looks quite solid with a smooth surface, different to all the other nebula structures. There's also a dragon stepping off it going towards the light. 😊 Alan

@Ouroboros Yes it does. If you watch his Youtube video describing how it works, he compares it to GraXpert and points out with some examples that GraXpert can remove some nebulocity which ADBE didn't. On areas with dark 'nebula' he recommends masking them out before running it, which is likely why is didn't work well on some of my images. Usually it's one-click and 10 secs to run. If it doesn't do what you want just click 'undo' in PI. 🙂 Better than strugging for 30 mins or more moving control point around to get DBE to work. Alan

His homepage does say 'photos & videos by franklin marek' and it's also the user name on his Astrobin page. 😊 I've used his Auto DBE script which works very well on most images with just one click without having to set any control points manually. Alan

Yes, that's the wiring of a Rollover cable. I posted the Amazon link for the Star-Tech Cisco Rollover cable in my first post above. 🙂 Alan