MarsG76

On 19/08/2024 at 18:27, michael8554 said:

Hi Mariusz

If you're using ASCOM drivers to Pulse Guide, you don't connect to the "camera guideport".

You run a USB cable from the camera USB socket to the PC. 

And a serial connection from the PC to the serial port on the mount.

Michael

Thanks for the response, and sorry for the delay in answering... combination of life and poor weather...
Any way, I use ST4 connection for guide pulses.. I'm assuming that the signal sent to the mount via ST4 are also called "guide pulses".

I always used the ST4 method of guiding without issues, be it with my ZWO120mm mini or the GPUSB... everything was working great... the guide interval pulses were sent to the mount at the set intervals and there are guide pulse direction markers on the time line shown (when enabled).. unfortunately with the ToupTek G3M2210M camera, the guide pulse intervals are 8-11 second apart, even when the interval in PHD2 is set to 1 second... and there are no guide pulse directions shown in the PHD2 time line when enabled...

I suspect that this behavior coupled with the "memory error" I get when trying to connect using the ASCOM ST4 driver is a driver bug... when connection using the "on-camera" option, it connects.. although with the delay in guide correction I described.

I have been in contact with ToupTek, and there was a driver update, so I'll need to test it ASAP to see if this has been fixed...

Hello All,

Has anyone came across a situation where PHD2 connection to a camera guideport using ASCOM returns a "ASCOM Driver Problem during connection: (ASCOM.ToupTek) Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt." error message.

Connection of the camera using both the ASCOM and native driver for pictures both work OK, its only the ASCOM for guiding that causing the problem.

Reason why I want to try the ASCOM instead of sticking with native driver is that when I'm previewing the PHD2 window display, it seems to operate normally, but when I start to guide (or even calibrate PHD2), the refresh, guide pulse correction delay becomes around 8 seconds.. stop guiding and the interval is back to what ever the exposure time is set to, 1 sec, 2, 0.5 etc... normal....

Hopefully someone here has seen this and found a solution because ToupTek support is not interested in responding for about a week now....

I'm running Windows 10 in my observatory, camera is a G3M2210M....

CS,

Mariusz

What do 3 kidneys and 4 arms and a leg buy????

I finally got my Hyperstar kit... time to vaccum up those photons...

That looks great.. well done.

6 minutes ago, Ags said:

Yes 3.0.2 is working fine for me, but so did 3.0

 

And it works very well....

Good news.. version 3.0.2 of stand alone GraXpert is released which has AI 2.0.0 and, most important, the ability to turn off hardware acceleration for Denoising, which fixed the runtime error in the latest versions of Windows 10... good start... slow but better than nothing... thank you GraXpert team...

I'm quite happy with AstroSharp performance too... try Astro Denoise PY 0.5.2 for noise reduction....

Awesome...

Uninstalled 3.0.0 and installed 3.0.1 and still doesn't work.... AI denoise still end with a error dialog message.

18 hours ago, Dazzyt66 said:

Same issue, that’ll teach me to keep up to date! 🤣

Version 3.0.1 is available... I'll test it later to see if the bug/incompatibility was fixed...

I found the same AI Denoise problem with Windows 10 displaying the ”Runtime Error” on the stand alone version.
My PC running Windows 10 22H2 (OS Build 19045.4291), basically with the latest updates, and has the problem but my observatory PC, which never gets updates and is not online just the local LAN (and only connected to the WEB to download things like these AI models) is version 19O3 (OS Build 18362.535) very old, and GraXpert 3.0.0 runs on it without problems... goes to show that being up to date with Windows updates is not always beneficial… I’d say quite rarely so when Microsoft is involved.

This is a known problem to the developer so I’m sure version 3.0.1 is just around the corner.

I find that the app "Clear Outside" is accurate 9/10 times... down to the hour in my location... there are times where Clear Outside was showing cloudy than clear at a certain time and it might have not happened at the time shown, but 2 hours later, it was clear... I recommend to give it a go, out of all of the forecasts I experienced, there is no such thing as perfectly accurate forecast (unless you're a lefty and can forecast 100 year in the future.. apparently) this one was most reliable.

On 01/09/2023 at 01:17, Yoddha said:

Hello,

This is my second attempt at this target. The first one was 6 years ago, when it was a much more exotic project than now  Six years later the cameras and the software are much better and give more opportunities to explore the faint edges of the universe! Of course, the filters are of great help... I'm curious where we will be after another 6 years!

Here you can see the previous attempt - https://www.astrobin.com/316580/

The star Wolf-Rayet 134 (the brightest star in the center of the Ring Nebula) is a very hot star with temperature over 63,000 K and luminosity around 400,000 times than the Sun. Its radiation and very powerful winds are the reason to form the ring-shaped nebula in the mix of stellar matter and surrounding gas. Despite it looking like a planetary nebula, it is formed the same way as the Bubble nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars lose a huge part of their mass in stellar winds, which helps in creating the spectacular view.  The distance from Earth is ~6000 ly and mass of WR 134 is considered as 18 solar masses, which combined with its super high temperature is putting it in the path of becoming a super-nova when it reaches the end of life...

WR 134 is one of the first three stars with unusual emission lines in the spectrum which lead to forming a new star's class - Wolf-Rayet stars.

Total 15h 10 min, in 130x420s, William Optics ZS110, ASI2600MM, Ha and OIII filters, APT, PHD2, PI, PS

That is a fantastic image.... to answer your question of where we'll be in 6 years?... I suspect up to APT version 7.2... Full AI integration 😉

The answer to your frustration is a permanent setup... ever since I built a mini observatory that takes me literally minutes to start astronomy, you'll be able to take advantage of every moment of clarity... when theres a break in the clouds, open up and you're looking up.. if the clouds return, shutdown is just as fast... no setup and pulldown frustration or guess work...

I had many moments like that, but the clouds will pass... think of all of the great astronomy nights you had while it was clear, and they will return.. but if you give up, know this.. the moment you sell your gear, it'll seem like it's crystal clear nights every night ... want to risk that?

Hi All,

Sharing another of my completed southern sky object images.... The nebulae in this imaged area are is not a popular group of objects or area of the sky being imaged by amateurs... located in the constellation Corona Australis, between γ and ε Coronae Australis and features NGC6726, NGC6729, NGC6727, NGC6723 and IC4812.
I suspect that the lack of interest is area is dark and not as vibrant as other more well known and popular objects, but the combination of reflection nebulae crossed by dark nebulae made an interesting image IMHO.
I imaged a close up on the blue reflection nebulae back in August 2020 and wanted to expose it at a lower focal length to see what surrounds the blue nebulosity.

This image was exposed with a QHY268M through a simple doublet 80mm refractor (at 500mm focal length) over 2 and a half nights, as a 2 plate (heavily overlapped) mosaic so that I would only need to crop out the most distorted edges, retaining the whole original frame size... exposures started just after midnight on 10 July and being completed on the morning of 12 July 2023, for a total integration time of 17 hours and 20 minutes, 8 hours and 40 minutes per plate.

Thanks for looking, Clear Skies,
MG

It looks great... doesn't look over processed at all.

Awesome details... love it.

Hi All,

Sharing with you a quickie image of my Jewel Box Cluster. It is a open star cluster located in the constellation Crux, given the designation "Kappa Crucis".

It's windy, and the seeing is horrible, BUT the sky is crystal clear, so I picked a easy and bright target so that a clear sky wasn't wasted... it's a bit soft, but the best guiding I was getting was according to PHD2 was between 1.9 & 2.2" RMS.

Imaged on my C8 at f6.3 with the QHY 268M in LRGB.

3hours and 50 minutes of luminance subs and 59 minutes of RGB color data.

Clear Skies,
MG

VERY NICE

9 minutes ago, pipnina said:

Aside from the atmosphere attenuating light exceptionally fast as you move through the 400-300nm range, sensor sensitivity falls off too as a double whammy. And for most commercial amateur telescopes you have a triple-nail in the UV observing coffin where most mirrors are dichroic coated (not aluminium) and have very low reflectance outside the visible spectrum, as per this chart from a listing of the GSO 6" RC you can see that the reflectivity to UV light falls off to only 40% by the time you hit 388nm, and seems to fall very rapidly thereafter. These three factors are likely the reason why any UV image is faint. I suspect venus is only possible to image so readily in the near UV is because it is so very bright.

Also the coating on the C8 corrector plate rejects a lot of UV wavelength, so we're upto a quadruple whammy.

1 hour ago, Paul M said:

Very nice image. It's a well known object but not one we see here very often!

I could google this, but I'm off out to work...is that a jet bottom center or an artifact?

I guess, not an artifact on an otherwise pristine image!

It's in other images online, including photos imaged by pros on pro telescopes, so I guess it's a jet...
It's also clear as day on my HAlpha stack, so I say it's not an artifact but a jet/some nebulosity in the FOV.

39 minutes ago, symmetal said:

Great image with fine detail in the galaxy, which makes it look like a 'Shredded Wheat' 🙂

I think you got your sums wrong on your f2 1280mm focal length scope though, which would have an aperture of 640mm or 25". 😉

Alan

 

Yes... I stand corrected.... thanks.

27 minutes ago, Elp said:

I do have a HS6 and tried Thor's Helmet last, you do lose resolution but gain in the pixel saturation. I've noticed at f6.3 there is far more detail but it's far dimmer so would require more exposure when using reduced.

Ah, so there is a trade off in resolution for brightness... I guess it depends what's more important for a particular project... speed or detail... either system has it's advantages and disadvantages. 

That is SO cool... the animation of the clouds definitely makes this the best earth based imaging work of Venus I have seen in a very long time...