rubecula

Camera's on its way to Starlight Express. Fingers crossed!

Alan, There are a few comments on-line concerning problems with the mini usb port so that maybe the problem. I'll approach SX tomorrow to see if they will take a look at it. Typical to have an issue when the nights are getting longer. Thanks for all your help with this I really appreciate it. Best wishes,

😢😢😢

I'm not sure what it's telling me but I've just plugged a cable into the other socket on the Lodestar (ST4?) to the USB hub and the PC made a sound.

I've just tried a third cable, it didn't help.

When I plug in the other devices connected by the USB hub the PC makes a sound but not when I plug the Lodestar in! Waggling the connection has no effect.

PC runs Windows 10. There's no USB devices section. ASCOM Profile Explorer shows details of the camera but there'n no port option in the list. I've tried connecting directly from the Lodestar to the PC and that didn't work. When connected the red light on the Lodestar doesn't light up. I'm hoping that the Lodestar hasn't died.

Thanks Alan. Tried a different cable - no different. I checked in device manager under USB controllers and the Lodestar isn't mentioned. The only thing mentioned by name is the Atik camera.

Looks like I've done a silly thing! I'm trying to tidy up the mare's nest of cabling and to find a better position I moved the Lodestar X2 USB cable to another port on the USB hub. I checked the connection by trying to connect to the camera in PHD2 and got the ASCOM cannot find camera message. I moved the cable back to its original port tried again and still got the same message. I ran ASCOM diagnostics and nothing seems amiss. I re-installed the Lodestar driver and re-booted the PC. It still won't connect via PHD2. Any ideas? Thanks

I've had mine on the scope for three or four weeks now. It was very easy to fit and the software loaded easily and works well in conjunction with SGPro via ASCOM. However (and this all may reflect my lack of abilities!) in fitting it I completely lost focus and being unwilling to remove the imaging gear I had to regain focus by taking lots of Frame & Focus images in SGPro. That took quite a while. At that point I could get very close to a good focus by fiddling with the SGPro settings manually. That was a great improvement on turning the focus knob by hand. It's then taken me a while to get autofocus working well so that it happens automatically between filters. I've had some useful help from people on the SGPro forum getting the right parameters (backlash, step size, etc.) for the EdgeHD. The unit is quite heavy and I had to resort to adding strips of lead at the front of the scope to balance it. After recommendations in this forum I purchased a long Vixen V-bar that has allowed me to move the scope forward on the mount and remove about 5Kg of balancing weights I had on there! In summary I'm very happy with the purchase.

Thanks all for your help above. I think I'm beginning to get a grip of developing narrowband images. Obviously still a lot to learn but I'm much happier with these first two attempts at HOO. Now to think about what to do with the stars 🤔 Thanks

One more thing (I promise I won't keep pestering you) how do you keep your stars so tight?

Mmmm......I don't know how I managed it but I've obviously done something seriously wrong (embarassingly so) in PS as this is what dropping the stacks into Trichromy in AstroArt on the laptop produced: So, it's me not the data. I'll have to work on trying to produce something like this with PS as I'd rather not have to buy yet another product unless I can help it.

Dave, it seems our processing is quite different. I stack in DSS, in this case didn't do gradient removal, load into Photoshop (on Mac), stretch - these had at least 5 gentle stretches using the Curves tool, then load into new three layer file. At this point things look quite good, but when I add adjustment layers and colourise the 3 layers (red, blue, blue) it all goes wrong. I see that AstroArt is a windows app only. That means I'll have to give it a try on my observatory laptop rather the Mac with a much larger screen. Still, if the results are better then that'll have to be the way of it! Cheers,

There is more data in the subs than those stacks show but when I first developed them I had even more trouble with blue in the background sky, so in those above I held it back a bit. I even tried just selecting the nebula to stretch and colourise but that didn't look right either. The more I look at your images the worse mine look. I'm still surprised to see how much OIII there is in the background sky, it doesn't appear to be there with either of your examples above. I'm going to go right back to the beginning and re-stack in DSS and try again. I also may download a trial copy of AstroArt and see what that makes of them. Thanks all for your help,

Ah Dave, I do like your image, I wish mine looked something like that. Here are the two stacks stretched before I tried to combine them, Ha first: Then OIII Have I stretched them too much> Thanks

This is the first time I've tried to create an HOO image. I'm not that impressed with my result after the third go at developing the images. The subs taken with an Atik 383L+ were: Ha 15 x 600s; OIII 22 x 600s and SII 15 x 600s all at -20C. After stacking in DSS and a preliminary stretch in PS I decided to forget the SII as there was so little data in it and so I went for HOO using Steve Cannistra's technique. Here's the result: I've not tried reducing the noise and I know that I have some eggy starts which I'll have to try to sort out. Having looked at others images of this subject and trying to get an acceptable colour balance using Channel Mixer and/or Selective Colour in PS I am quite disappointed. I've struggled to get any distinction between the Ha and OIII. I'm surprised how much blue there is in the background and stars so that when I try to bring up the blue in the nebula the background gets all too blue. I don't think that either the red or the blue is right. I'm hoping for a pointer as to whether the problem is my lack of development skills or lack of sufficient data or probably both? Thanks

Success!! All in focus now, which I suppose means the end of clear nights, Thanks all,

Carole, I binned it 2x2 last night but when I try again I'll set it to 4x4 and see if that helps. Although I haven't used the scope for 6 weeks or so the GoTo looks fairly good. I aimed at Cassiopia last night and it was certainly pointing in the right direction. Next time I'll try for the moon to begin with. I'll get out a bit earlier to make sure it's still visible from the garden.

Thanks all for your help. Helen, the moon had just gone behind trees when I went out but tonight or tomorrow it should be better (if the forecast for clear skies doesn't change). Vlaiv thanks for your input, I'll increase the exposure when I have a go again.

I seem to have got myself in a bit of a mess. I've added a motor focuser to an EdgeHD scope. In doing so I have moved the mirror somewhat and lost the focus position. Is there any way of getting the scope in focus without removing all the imaging gear and using an eyepiece? I've tried using Frame and Focus in SGP, moving the mirror with Focus Control using coarse steps of 500 and 200 but failed to find any stars in the region of the Milky Way. Hopefully there is something obvious I've failed to think of. Thanks

Thanks guys, that's given me plenty of ideas. I really like the look of the Baader counterweights but at the moment I have 2.5kg of gym weights plus lead strips so it must be well over 3kg on the front of the scope. If I can find a long dovetail bar that will allow me to slide the whole rig forward then I may be able to reduce the overall weight on the mount. In the end I think it will take the longer bar plus some counterweight. More money! The dovetail on the 8" Edge is 13" long (330mm) and runs the full lenght of the tube so I'll have to find one that will protrude out the back. So far 14" is the longest I've been able to find in the Vixen style format. But I'll keep looking. Thanks again for your help.

I've had to resort to gym weights and strips of lead tied on with bits of wire in order to balance the EdgeHD on the EQ6-R mount. I have the scope pushed as far forward as I can get it on the dovetail but the weight of the camera, filter wheel and focuser needs a lot of weight to counterbalance it. I'm wondering if there is a more elegant way of balancing the set up.

That's an amazing result Olly! From your description I can understand what you did, but not how you did it. Oh, I've got so much to learn.

4.5 minutes! Amazing!