malftobe

Same answer as Clarkey above. I use the smaller wheel without issues - I am very new to filter wheels and dedicated cameras though.  
 

Just to add that in Asiair (and I assume in other software) you can select the filter wheel to only rotate one way. I read somewhere that this was best way to reproduce filter position . (I haven’t experimented with rotating both ways to see if it’s better - I just blindly follow others with my limited imaging time !!).  

33 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

As a belt and braces approach I use the WO ring to support the lens and then the ZWO camera ring to support the camera itself; a bit of shimming is required to get it all lined up but it has made for a really solid, non-flexing image train.

 

Using the same rings - can't think where I got that idea!  Looking forward to getting the callipers out and rummaging around to find something suitably sized to pack the height difference out....

37 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

 

By the way I also use a 49 mm step-down-ring which gives me about f2.6 - I find it much better than stopping the lens down using the f-stop ring on the lens itself and avoids the diffraction spikes - which I prefer.

 

 Hoping to achieve similar, I already have the 49mm ring from my reading on here, may eventually end up with something around 43mm stepped down as I already suffer a bit of vignette as my filters are undersized for my camera!  So hoping to find a good compromise on that front.

Just a quick question - to work out your f ratio above, rather than the "advertised 135mm", do you use 129mm from the plate solving to calculate your f2.6?

Thanks for everyone's help on this great thread, it is a fantastic resource.  And an extra shout out to spacing expert @Adreneline!

After my third night of testing with the Samyang, I think I'm getting closer!  Last night with the new m42 adaptor, a 3mm extension and 2x 0.1mm spacers I got much nicer stars across the frame and focus is about 1mm before the end of the focus travel at L.  Should all add up to 44.7mm backfocus (I think).  This is with the lens stopped down using the aperture ring to f4.

The night before yielded this effect when I attempted to get to f2.8 using a 49mm step down ring on the front of the lens with the aperture ring set wide open at f2.  This with nearly the same spacing setup as most recent above, but with an additional 0.1mm spacer, so my focus was much better than the first night using the m48 adaptor.  I assumed the crescent star shapes at the left side of image was due to droop as it is a heavy camera, and the short extension only threads in to about 2.5mm of the 4.8mm thread on the camera, so I have ordered a zwo camera holder as many others on this thread use - hopefully this combination of holder and step down ring will get me right where I want to be. 

Hopefully further tests tonight!

Good evening,

I’ve finally in the samyang 135 club (but not quite imaging just yet!). I was lucky to get one second hand with the m48 adaptor. 

I’m having a problem with backspacing. After a quick test on Thursday at f2.8 I can’t quite achieve critical focus or go past infinity focus with my setup. 

Will going (quite a way) under the backfocus distance of 44mm still achieve infinity focus, but simply  result in infinity being somewhere else on the focus ring? @Adreneline talks of his focus being 3mm before the L with one of his spacings.

From front side of filter wheel back to sensor I have 39.5mm. To get to the 44mm backfocus, This should leave 4.5mm (or 5.5mm as I use 3mm thick filters). 

I have tried an m48-m42 adaptor, which has an external size of 4mm, but when added to the thread on the camera side adaptor the total extension is 5.8mm. This puts the total back focus at 45.3mm which I think is where my problem with focus lies. 

I’ve been in touch with The seller of  the 42mm samyang bayonet replacement, which should solve my problem. Threading it directly into the filter wheel would give me back focus of 39.5mm. 

I have a 3mm and 5mm m42 extension and shims. But I may be in same position as before  if I try to add an extension piece as the minimum length will be defined by the thread length on the bayonet replacement (4.8mm).  

Will going with a backfocus distance of 39.5mm  still achieve infinity focus?

4 hours ago, alacant said:

We'd choose the gso over the SW. TS and omegon resell them. Better focuser, build quality...

But remember that at this end of the market, both would need -albeit simple- modifications  to bring them up to reliable imaging standard. 

HTH

@alacant Do you happen to know if the focus tube would need cutting on the GSO version when adding a coma corrector?

25 minutes ago, Adam J said:

No it is a real issue as if you had to do more panels then you are effectively slowing down your data gathering as you now need to do maybe 50% more exposure time. 

The 294mm (IMX492) is not so good a sensor as the 533 and so if your target fits on the 533 sensor or requires the same number of panels then you are likely better off with the 533. 

Adam 

@Adam J I'm in a similar position to @scotty38, with the 294mm camera tempting me - although it would be my first dedicated astro cam. 

The new camera 533mm has piqued my interest / thrown yet another spanner in the works! 

I have an Esprit 100 and have looked at the astronomy tools field of view calculator and the ccd suitability.  I think the field of view would be more to my liking with the 294 than the 533, but as scotty said I suppose I could do mosaics.

What advantages do you think the 533mm would have over the 294mm?   

32 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

In my case I use regular filters, in particular the Astronomik 6nm Ha and SII (both 2") and the Baader 8.5nm OIII (2"). I intend to replace the Baader with another Astronomik not because I am unhappy with the results but because being a different thickness the focus point ends up well before the 'L' on the lens. The Astronomik Ha and SII are very nearly parafocal and although I don't expect the Astronomik OIII to be "as parafocal" I hope it will certainly be better than the Baader. [Tip: Stick with one brand/type of filter and don't mix types or brands as you will make finding the optimal spacing really difficult if not impossible].

I am sure you already know this so apologies if you do but the spacing is incredibly sensitive. I currently have a 0.1mm spacer between the camera body and the 11mm spacer provided by ZWO. With the spacer in position the lens focuses almost exactly on the 'L'. If I remove the 0.1mm spacer the lens focuses about 2-3mm before the 'L' - if I add an additional 0.1mm spacer I cannot achieve focus at all. The Astronomik filters are 1mm thick - the Baader filters are 2mm thick. If I introduce spacers to achieve optimum focus with the Baader I cannot focus the Astronomik filters. In my current configuration (photo above) the OIII focuses about 3mm before the 'L' but at least the Ha and SII both focus "within the 'L'".

HTH

Adrian

 

Very Helpful @Adreneline.  I've been window shopping filters for a while and noticed the  Astronomik filters are thinner than most.  Really interesting about the spacers for the different thickness for the filters and achieving focus.  May have to rethink using different brands for LRGB and narrowband.

This thread had led me down an interesting path this morning and I learnt a lot from @Phillyo's M42 widefield thread too.

There are some absolutely stunning images on this thread.  A question for the mono camera users -  with the lens being f2, are you using regular (for want of a better word) filters or do you use filters for high speed systems?   

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/baader-filters/baader-high-speed-65nm-narrow-band-filter-cmos-optimised.html

1 hour ago, deanchapman2705 said:

Yeah I came across that and was like yay! But it comes to £1,149 after VAT. I think I'm sticking with the paying the extra and getting the ZWO ASI294MM-Pro just because I'm still quite new to this hobby as well - so I imagine with everything going to be ZWO with my setup, that should also help make things a lot easier to set up and use.

I could have written your first post @deanchapman2705!

It would be my first dedicated astro camera, so I would also need things as simple as possible.  I am already in way over my head with the equipment I am using at the moment!

I think ZWO have a good ecosystem (and good marketing) to be able to command a higher price for a very similar product using the same sensor, but  ultimately I think that I will go down the ZWO route too and pay the premium for perceived ease of use!

Just with regard to controlling the QHY camera ASIAIR style, there is astroberry and stellarmate which support a wide variety of manufacturers.  I initially ran a QHY polemaster on stellarmate, so the drivers for the QHY 294m may be supported - or could be in future. 

39 minutes ago, SamAndrew said:

I'm weighing up the 294 vs another IMX571 camera. 

You can get it for £957 from astrograph.net - they are UK based:

https://astrograph.net/epages/www_astrograph_net.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/www_astrograph_net/Products/AGQHY294M

I've bought a 268M and a 163M from them. 

Given the near £500 price difference, the ZWO camera isn't a contender for me.

Also weighing up differences between the qhy and zwo 294. 
 

@SamAndrewI think the astrograph prices are excluding VAT, but still a big price  difference between zwo and qhy version. 

52 minutes ago, astrojon77 said:

@Budgie1 thanks for the links to Mitch’s tutorials. I’m going to give them a try right now. 

@malftobe I have only spent a few hours with Pix Insight so far. I’m still getting used to the UI… the developers have chosen different icons and paradigms than I think is the “norm”. (For example, it came as a surprise to me that the tools don’t preview automatically. You can create preview windows.)

Noob error: I spent some time looking for the BatchPreProcessing script (AKA “BPP”) that was mentioned in lots of tutorials, but was missing from my version. I found reports from people who seemed to have a similar problem and followed the steps to reinstall scripts. No luck. Then it dawned on me that the BPP script might have been retired and replaced by the Weighted Batch Pre Processing (WBPP) script that appeared at the bottom of the menu… and spent another 10 minutes Googling to prove that to myself. 🤨 Off to a good start. 

I also watched some rather discouraging tutorials for PixInsight on YouTube… they seemed complex, with lots of steps, lots of magic values in the tools… and honestly, the results looked a bit “meh”… And I got rather fed up of people saying things like “I don’t really know what these parameters do, but they work for me and my images”  

I came away feeling that PI has the appearance of a serious, scientific tool, but that in the tutorials I watched some of the people were just trial-and-errroring their way through it. At which point I thought, “why aren’t you just doing this in Photoshop?!” (Or Affinity Photo or Gimp)

Then I sort of came to the opinion that once your image is calibrated, registered, stacked, background calibrated and stretched*, you have finished the rigorous “science” phase and are starting an artistic phase. And maybe PI is not the best artistic tool.

I don’t doubt that PI has a wide range of tools and a lot of configurability, I’m just not sure that I need them - or can make good use of them. Yet.

I’m by no means a Photoshop guru, but watching someone create a star mask in PS and then apply noise reduction to the background… well it makes sense to me and the UI paradigm is more familiar.

But then I also watched someone spend a while doing star minimisation in PS and I preferred the image beforehand. 😝

Jon

* part of this investigation has involved me trying to learn the correct sequence of operations (workflow) and which software packages do them well etc.

Cheers for the update Jon, really interesting and amusing insights. You sound similar to myself, I know my way round the basics in photoshop from general photography - I have much to learn on the astro side and PI does look complex! 

For some reason I thought it was a 7 day trial for PI, but I had a look after I posted and it’s  45 days, so a bit more relaxed timeframe to get head around the software before the trial would expire! The complex tutorials gave me pause for thought hence the question.

I like your idea of the separation of the science phase and artistic phase.

Your investigation into what packages do well at what has certainly opened some different software options up that I was not aware of before you started the thread, so thank you Jon. 

@Stuart1971 and @Tomatobro interesting to know about the 12v power for the nuc’s. Hoping to get things over to a dark site at some point, running off battery, so really useful information.
 

I have a buck converter for the pi but am yet to use it. I have little clue on the electric / power side of things, so really appreciate the insight in case I go down the nuc route. 

26 minutes ago, 7170 said:

@malftobe for remote control via VNC I now use UltraVNC on my windows laptop. It is opensource/free and I have found it to be much more stable/reliable (not dropping connections) than TigerVNC that I used before, or using the Astroberry web browser remote control option. Maybe worth trying this as I assume UltraVNC will work with Stellarmate too.

On my iphone I use the "VNC Viewer" app by RealVNC - it is free, and it works very well too.

Also I note you had an issue with meridian flip with EKos and EQMOD and re-centering on the target. Sometimes that can happen if you have lots of sync points from previous sessions still in the mount model. My approach now is to clear the mount model at the start of each session from indi control panel (clear model/sync points). I've not had that problem since, also check the mount limits and status messages in Indi control panel at the time of having an issue like this as sometimes they will give a clue . I once had it where RA would not change, and it was because it had reach a limit I had set and not realized it was still on but EKos was not saying this in its status window at the bottom.

@7170 I’ll have a look into realvnc and ultra vnc. The vnc bundled in with stellarmate is ok, but I do struggle a bit on the ipad with the screen not quite fitting (I assume I’ve set the resolution incorrectly somewhere), so if you can use reavnc on a smaller screen on your phone it seems worth a try. 
 

Very interesting about the meridian flip issue. I’ll have a look at clearing the model and sync points. That’s very helpful. I’ll see if I can navigate to the status window also. 

2 hours ago, Tomatobro said:

The NUC's I have are i3 versions with 4gb of ram and 64 gb of memory.

The voltage input is marked as 19v dc but all mine rune quite happily on 12 volt (actually 12.9v)

All run Remote desktop via windows 10 pro and have excellent  WiFi range

Runs Sharpcap 4.0 sequencer, Cartes du ciel, PHD, Baader focuser, 2nd version of Sharpcap 3.2 to run observatory camera, Pulsar dome software and EQMOD all at the same time. I did a trial run with NINA and it worked OK but I prefer Sharpcaps Sequencer.

The USB port connects to a Startech powered 7 port 3.0 unit

The most I paid for a used NUC was £79 and its 8 years old

Thanks for all the specs on the NUC’s and your thoughts on different software. 
 

When you mention the 12v - Are you connecting it directly to a 12v battery or do you use a step up converter to 19v?

23 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi

Maybe even better, do a few nights real time sitting next to the telescope with a laptop. A €100 refurbished Dell from eBay is fine. You can then always vnc into that if (when?!) it gets too cold.

 

 

 

Great idea, it can add to the  frustration with the little icons on the iPad! 

Ultimately I’d like to ditch the laptop entirely. My laptop is too old for the latest kstars, but I can try to borrow a newer laptop for a few evenings to learn my way around. 

45 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi

We supply remote and some our own stuff on the ground. We use mini-pcs at the telescope running Ubuntu 20.04, Kstars and EKOS. It's as bulletproof as we know, especially over the network.

Maybe give yourself a bit more umph with a decent pc rather than the pi?

Very good to know alacant. That is a strong recommendation from yourself for the reliability for kstars and Ekos on multiple systems. 
 

I think my first course of action before I upgrade the hardware is to get more familiar with using kstars / EKOS through vnc rather than using the stellarmate app itself. 

10 minutes ago, Tomatobro said:

That was my experience also. Switched to a Minix pc and later NUC's and never looked back. The Minix was new but the NUC's were all purchased used. All had Windows 10 pro.

@Tomatobro I’m probably going to persist with stellarmate a while longer, but I have had my head turned looking at mini pcs after reading other threads.
 

Are you running apt / Nina or something similar on the NUC? Are you able to Remote Desktop into it and control it easily through a tablet?

1 hour ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Ah, actually (should have mentioned this 🙂 ) I never used the app. I do not have an IPad and I tried on my phone a little but my eyes are not too good these days so never relly got on using my phone as everything was just too small. I always used my laptop or my desktop so I could use my dual monitors and used Teamviewer or Remote Desktop.
It may well be the app is more of a problem than the RPi and stellarmate or Astroberry.
The RPi 4 with 4Gb should be absolutely fine foe either of these.
So many people use either of these it cannot normally crash otherwise they would not be using it.

Steve

Cheers teoria, the app for me is definitely extremely sensitive. It can crash when pressing any button. I’m used to it crashing and closing back to the iPad Home Screen on my first click on preset or edit in the Ekos alignment module and hangs quite often. I wonder if there is a way to clear the cache for the app somehow - or I may reinstall it entirely. Unfortunately I don’t know any way to roll back an app to an earlier version on iOS, so will have to wait for the next update.
 

Unless of course my next session proves fruitful - in which case I’ll never update!!

1 hour ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

I am actually in the process of changing over to NINA from EKOS but nothing to do with EKOS I just want a windows based program.
But I have run both Astroberry and setellarmate without any major issues.
I have had a few crashes but all have been when setting up and I was messing around with things and clicking on lots of things pretty fast. I never had an issue once it was sequencing and I just left it to do its thing.

What RPi are you using ? 

Steve

Hi teoria, how do you find the stellarmate app on the iPad?

I too am hoping the crashes will be behind me once the set up is done properly - I’m tempted to experiment with  a fresh install on a new sd card without all the pentax drivers to see if that was conflicting with some other things. 

Running stellarmate OS on a pi4b 4gb using the official 3 pin power supply plug. 
 

2 hours ago, wimvb said:

Yes. I have the traditional non-StellarMate, non-AstroBerry installation of INDI + Kstars/Ekos on a Raspberry Pi 4 and connect to it through MicroSoft RDP, running XRDP on the Pi. Both the Pi and my laptop are connected to my home network through an ethernet cable, no WiFi. This setup is stable and has been this whole season. But I have learned the hard way in the past to never ever update the Pi during astro season. (In all fairness, that experience was from the days when there was no distinction between stable and nightly builds of Kstars.) I leave updating for summer recess and have a backup micro SD card before I do update.

I run  Ekos/Kstars on the Pi with the local StellarSolver and internal guiding, and it just works.

@7170 and @wimvb Brilliant tip about not updating during the season.

Really good to know that you’re finding Ekos and kstars just works and will happily go on for hours.  I’m hoping I can get to that stage with it soon. Bypassing the stellarmate app using vnc to access Ekos seems much more stable  in my very limited experience.  
 

The day after I posted, I ran  a simple set up of just guide camera and eqmod mount connected with eqmod cable to start with the basics. I got a good few flawless hours after a few initial hiccups. But then tried to goto the same target  after the target had passed the meridian and the plate solver would not re centre on the object - it got somewhere near but would not do further slews / iterations. A reset of the pi worked and plate solving did its job and  it re centred then carried on (although I forgot to then restart the guiding) until I packed up, so a good result for me. I’m waiting for the clouds to clear for another go, but could be a good few days here!

Hopefully I can get a good configuration and shy away from updating for a good while.

On 20/01/2022 at 15:45, astrojon77 said:

Hi,
Has anyone got a summary / comparison of the various image processing and stacking software, with (perceived) advantages and disadvantages?

I started off using DSS and Gimp and was fairly happy - for my basic ability level at the time! 
 
Recently I’ve tried Siril and found the photometric calibration and background extraction are great tools. (But for now I still stack in DSS as I’m used to that…)

Then I saw that lots of you are using PixInsight, so I’m trialing that - and trying to get over the learning curve. 🤪

Then I see others use Affinity Photo, others StarTools etc. 

So back to my question: has anyone got a nice summary / comparison?

Thanks,
Jon

How are you getting on with the  Pixinsight trial Jon? Are you finding it easy enough to pick up? I hope to trial it one day when I have some decent data!

Interesting to know about Siril and the additional tools! I may give it a whirl. 

On 21/01/2022 at 10:15, teoria_del_big_bang said:

My scope is pretty heavy too so fitted a handle, which is essential for safe loading of scope onto mount in my case at least. and then swapped the short dovetail that scope came with for a much longer one and added that small red clamp, shown in close up in lower image.
So very much like @Saganite, the added advantage with this clamp is that  as I have changed the setup (heavier camera, new rotator, different guidescope) when I move the rig slightly to achieve perfect balance I just move the clamp and when I fit the scope onto mount it just slides down to the clamp and it it is in a balanced condition each time.

 

Steve

I know just what you mean Mr niall!

teoria, I like the dual purpose clamp for balance and safety. Is it possible that you have an image of the handle on top of your scope, I can’t quite work it out from the images on my phone. 

Currently fighting a fair bit with Stellarmate - it's occasionally brilliant, but frequently frustrating.   

Jasem was extremely helpful helping me initially set it up a few months ago, but not really had much chance to use it since.   I'm sure problems are down to user error and my inexperience, but I just wanted to check in with experienced long term users how stable you find it.  

Do you get a full night of imaging from it? Or a fair few crashes? Find it buggy? 

Recently dusted off my gear and updated the app and stellarmate operating system to the latest versions (1.61) which caused three full nights of frustration, just when motivation had returned and was high! It just wouldn't plate solve, whatever I tried, so couldn't get past stage one -  polar alignment and spent clear moonless nights problem solving.  User mistake #1 - no backup before update.

The last few nights I have been trying an older version of the operating system which seems to work better (1.58), but is quite finicky.  I have developed some workarounds (possibly superstitions!) that get me some of the way toward it doing great things.  

For example I have to check the correct GPS coordinates have been saved in site management in ekos through vnc and that I'm not in Nova Scotia today!

I have to edit an existing preset and save it again on the ipad app (but without making any changes), so it uses the guide scope details for plate solving for polar alignment and plate solving rather than the primary scope if the workaround is not applied.

Guiding works very well if it works first time (asi120mm mini with skywatcher 9x50 finder). If calibration fails, it fails again and again.  Restart OS and start again after recentering target.

Same thing for the camera module with settings not being added to the sequence.  Seems to work for a few exposures but then crashes the operating system.  I suspect this could be due in part to using a pentax k70 camera.  I can get round this when I find my old intervalometer as I don't really need the camera attached to the pi, but the larger previews are great to have along with the sequencer and nicely named files.

Dedicated camera is on the distant horizon - ZWO mono model is the eventual dream, but more likely an astro modified canon.  I would hope different well supported equipment would iron the imaging issues out.

The ipad app itself seems to crash / hangs syncing more than the operating system itself on the pi.  Bypassing the app to vnc into ekos / kstars seems a lot more stable, but is less user friendly - however I have become a bit more confident with using it this way since the nights of total frustration a ways back. 

That turned out a bit longer than I thought it would!  Back to the question for experienced users - once you have it nicely set up, do you find it reliable for a full night of imaging?

12 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

I realise you did not ask me but I have a 365 cover and it's great but I am quite random with regards to my kit being left out. What I mean is if it's out and it's likely I'll be able to use it in the next day or so I'll leave it all out. I also have a pet heater pad type thing that I will then wrap around the mount just to keep the damp off. If the weather is "nice" I won't bother with it, like today for example I just covered it over with the 365 this morning. As David has I too have a Pegasus powerbox so I can keep my eye on the temperature and humidity so will revisit and add the pad if needed/adjust its temperature if it's all getting too warm as it were. I can also just leave the normal dew heaters on too if it's just a bit of heating I need or it's just short term.

If the weather looks anything like ropey or there is no sign of imaging for a few days I'll bring it all in.

I only recently bought the cover to give me this added flexibility and I'm also hoping to build an observatory this spring but I'll still use the cover in there so not a wasted expense....

Thanks Scotty,

That’s good to know about the cover.
 

I wish I’d have thought to leave at least my tripod legs still set up outside last night to give me a bit more precious learning time tonight. (Clear nights are spent trying to get my head around stellarmate at the moment). 
 

1 hour ago, david_taurus83 said:

Yes, I just leave a spare dew strap turned on 24/7. Turned inside out and wrapped around the Dec axis. Since adding a Pegasus Powerbox I just set it to auto dew but prior to that I just turned it up to full on the dew controller. Either way, no more condensation on the mount, scope etc

That’s a great tip using  the spare dew strap.
 

I don’t think I’d be brave enough to leave the whole setup out permanently where I live. 
 

Did you go for the telegizmo 365 series? How is it?
 

Does it flap around a lot?  I ask because I have had two barbecue covers (for barbecues, rather than repurposing them for stargazing).
 

The kettle bbq cover - simple shape-  is a great fit (virtually flap free) but the gas bbq cover - a more complex shape in a lighter material can’t   be restrained for love, money or gaffa tape!