cjdawson

Great start. It's really easy to see that you are taking a photo of the large Magellanic cloud. Just kidding. It's a good orion shot. Keep going. The better that you get with wide field, the easier it will be when you ramp up the focal length.

Best ship that out express delivery. With all those FLO boxes, there is sure to be dense cloud attraction.

The SharpCap method needs a camera of some sort, it doesn't really care what you use as long as it can get an image with enough sky to platesolve. I've been successful using various cameras using this method, DSLR, ASI290MM, ASI1600MM and Starlight Xpress Superstar. I tend to use my guide scope to perform the polar alignment rather than the main scope. That said, it doesn't really matter as long as the guide and main are fixed relatively. I'm sure that you could use an OAG as well. It's more a case of try it and see.

@RadekK I'm glad that Astroberry runs on Raspbian buster. However there are somethings that I'm doing a different way. The main difference so far is... Astroberry Wireless Hotspot allowing to access the system directly i.e. without external wireless network eg. in the field Rather than using the hotspot that you provide, I'm using a different project called RaspAP. This allows the PI to be a hotspot whilst connecting to a network as a client over wifi at the same time! This makes it more flexible when as I don't need to choose whether to be a hotspot, or have it connect to a network, it can do both at the same time. I'm also using the image for other non-astro related stuff, so need to have full control over the install. Astroberry is a great starting point for those who don't have specialist needs, in fact I'd still recommend that people look at it as the first port of call to see if it does everything they need, it most likely does.... and more. (Just I'm very very picky)

It won't save me any hassle at all, as for my needs I want to run software and configurations that are not part of AstroBerry. There are things that are not standard at all so I really do not want to start from anything other than the complete official raspbian image. (I have reasons, and don't want to elaborate) besides, I think I already solved the problem just before I went to bed last night and anything else now will be a setback.

ooo, that's interesting. I'm going to take a look at that when I have time. Especially if it autostarts the server on boot. Might be easier than the indiserver program that I already tried. As for Astroberry. I thought it was based on ubuntu, but that is obviously wrong. That will explain why it was easy to install some of the software direct from the astroberry repos. (saved me a lot of time and hassle)

@Gina thought of you when I was putting thinking about posting this, and knew that you use ZWO cameras, just like I do. The Altair cameras are a friends and I'm helping him get a PI4 up and running. @Avocette I tried the AstroPI script, it installed alot of stuff, but in the process wrecked a load of settings that I'd already made. That said, last after making the post, I did try running some of the bits from the Astroberry setup, which as you said now uses buster, and it looks like it's installed everything. I just need to figure out how to connect to cameras via indi. I'm going to play with that today using one of my ZWO cameras, but I want to connect via indi and not direct to the camera. (so that I can mimic the altair camera setup)

I think I just cracked it. Seems that there's a program called indi starter that you can get from the CDC people, once installed, that gives me a gui to tell it what drivers to use. I think that will give some progress

I think the main problem is that I'm a bit of a noob to indi and may not have started the local indi server part properly. As for installing oacapture, I installed it after installing indi. it works out of the box on rasbian buster.

I'm unable to connect to the altair cameras via Indi. However, oacapture does work

Astroberry is based on Ubuntu, and there are altair drivers for indi that work with ubuntu. I'd prefer to see if I can get this working with Raspbian though. This is the thing that I like least about linux, too many distributions each with their own quirks and that makes software hard to install.

Hey all. I’m in the process of setting up a Raspberry PI to run PHD2 with KStars/EKos withi two Altair cameras. So far I think we have everything installed, but can’t seem to get indi working with either KSTARS or PHD2. I’m pretty sure that something isn’t installed yet. The PI is running on Raspbian, so the ubuntu install instructions doesn’t work. Can anyone point me in the right direction to be able to get this setup working please?

Hi your procedure looks good to me. Others have said don't bother leveling the tripod, however my experience is different. Whilst it's not vital that the tripod is level, if you get into the habbit of doing so, you will find it much easier should you transition to using a polemaster or camera via PHD2 or SharpCap Pro. This is because the correction they will need you to make will be in the form of Up/down/left/right, so having a level tripod will help here. If it's not level, an up motion will have side motion as well, which will confuse the situation. As for not being able to see polaris in your polar scope. I think the problem here is that you don't have the focus set right. Rather than using a piece of paper on a wall, try focusing on something as far away from you as you can get. I typically use the buildings on the horizon (about 10 miles away) which then gets me close enough that I can then do final tweaks when I have polaris in view. (The same trick works for my cameras as well)

Here's a quick overview video from ZWO on ASICAP I personally prefer to use SharpCap Pro for planets, and Sequence Generator Pro for deep sky. SharpCap where I would start though, as unless you are fully automated, SGPro or similar would be overkill. Hope that's helpful.

It’s the great Orion Nebula. Glad you liked it.

Here's the thing, looking at what you are asking, I think you are asking for trouble. Here's what I mean.... 1. A good starter scope for astrophotogaphy is normally a small but good refractor. A telescope like that will have a wide field of view, and fast optics which will mean it will be great for capturing large DSO's like the Orion Nebula, Horsehead and Flame, M32...the list goes on. 2. For plantary, bigger is better. You'll have to work with long focal lengths, I think about 8000mm is what I use (that's a 2000mm scope, with a 4x barlow) when working with figures like that, you'll be wanting the biggest aperture that you can get your hands on. I've got an 8" SCT, but in this case bigger is better. 3. Goto mounts are not cheap. for astrophoto's for most gear, I'd suggest something like a HeQ5, big heavy, stable mount. But, that will eat your budget before even getting the other bits that make things from "ok" to good. You won't even have a scope to put on it! I'm not trying to put you off, just trying to help you see what you are asking. Hopefully this will help you figure out what you are really after and can work from there.

Good, I like that it's an informed decision about balancing rather than something that wasn't thought out and is the cause of the mount wobbling under the weight.

This looks like a lot of unneeded weight hung off the SA. Have you considered hanging the computer and associated power bits off one of the tripod legs instead?

With my ASI Air, I simply turn off the "mount" which is only ever set to "on-camera". Then take a preview and hit the plate solve button. Once it's completed, I can then plug the RA and dec into Sky Safari and hey presto. I know where the scope is pointing. I'm currently thinking about trying a hack by setting the mount to the demo mount and seeing if I can connect SkySafari to the ASI Air and have it auto download the cooordinates. I would love for the On camera mount of the ASI Air to be able to keep track of the RA and DEC from the last plate solve. That would make like easier - of course, it shouldn't then be given to anything other than SkySafari. (that could be confusing)

I'm not sure how heavy the NexStar 90SLT is, I'm wondering if it's a little on the heavy side. If you have it already, try it out can't hurt if it's costing nothing for the attempt. MY SpaceCat51 is all aluminium case so it's quite heavy, especially when I have the 70D and battery grip installed. The way that I use my camera's with my scope gives me a double hit that makes for better results. Firstly, using the guider to do the polar alignment, means that the error is normally less than 2 seconds of arc! Then over the session, the autoguiding keeps the image steady. (more on this below) Yes. The Star Adventurer only has an RA motor, which means that the mount will only allow auto guiding in RA. Any DEC error will cause drift over the imaging session. My setup was to use a wide field scope. i.e. the SpaceCat 51 which has a 250mm focal length. So when you pair that with an APS-C DSLR (Canon 70D in my case) or a ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro (and EFW) you end up with "under sampling" which means that the camera is capable of taking more detail than the lens can provide. This has the benefit of loosing some of the guide errors in the fact that the pixels are covering a larger area of sky due to the short focal length. The other side effect of this is that you can take longer exposures before you need to guide. For the length of exposures that I've been taking, the stars are round and stay that way for the whole session. In the worst session that I've done with this setup so far, over 4 hours, the image did drift quite a way, it's noticeable after stacking, but each sub frame doesn't look too bad. As I was guiding on RA, the only shift was in DEC which also meant things were not as bad either. I'd still have pefered to have had the DEC closer. I agree with this. After getting the PA done, without guiding a couple of minute exposures should be possible. And with the ISO turned up, you shouldn't need exposures that long either. To give some idea, here's an LRGB image that I made last week of M45. I did have a problem with it. I think I have sorted out the problem of the diffraction spikes (it only happened on the L Channel) This was my first attempt at taking the horsehead and flame. I'd also not completed a full LRGB image before. I've left it uncropped, so that you can see the amount of DEC guiding error that I had over the 2 hours This image of M32 is a colour image taken with my Canon 70D from Kielder forest... on a misty night! The transparency was rubbish, but the atmosphere was stable because of all the water vapour. Lots of people had given up trying to do anything, but my plucky little Star Adventurer had a go anyway. This was the result. This is a set of 120 * 1 min subs at IIRC iso 6400. Next time, I think I should turn the ISO down a little. I think my experience so far with the Star Adventurer boils down to this.... 1. make sure that you have a good tripod. I use a steel one from Sky Watcher. 2. make sure that you don't overload the mount. My SpaceCat, GuideScope, RedDot finder combo is the heaviest setup that I plan on putting on it. 3. Take you time setting up, That polar alignment is all important. Get that right and the rest becomes a pleasure.

Hi and welcome to SGL. The key to getting the alignment right is to not rush. Accuracy in everything is what counts, the better your accuracy, the better the alignment. This goes for every scope that I've used or helped with. The same basic things work for me every time. 1. use Polaris (I've no experience in the southern hemisphere) as the point to set your tripod up, making sure that you align the north so that is points to polaris, that's always good enough. 2. setup the tripod, and make sure that it's level "BEFORE" adding the EQ head (if it's an EQ scope). Getting the Alt-Az platform level will help when it comes to the polar alignment phase. 3. Add the EQ Head, and if you have a polar scope, now is the time to use it to get polaris roughly centered in the FoV. (I use a guide scope to do PA, so there's still no need to 100% perfection at this point) 4. Add Telescope, and other stuff that you are going to be using for that session. Balance the scope at this point. For Manual equipement only (no camera and computer involved) 5. go back to the polar scope and make sure that the hour angle is set correctly. 6. use an app on your phone to figure out where polaris should be in your polar scope FoV, then adjust the mount. 7. put the telescope into it's correct home position. 8. do a 2 star alignment (or whatever works best for your scope) I personally have two telescopes one is a goto scope, which I control from a laptop. For this I use SharpCap Pro to perform a polar alignment. For the other telescope I have an ASI Air, and use the polar alignment tool in that. Both ways work roughly the same way. 1. turn on guide scope camera and attach to the software. 2. use the PA tool in the software. 3. the software will platesolve the camera location. 4. rotate the scope manually 60-90 degrees 5. platesolve the new location 6. move on to the correction phase 7. use the alt-Az knobs on the mount to shift the scope by the distance indicated to correct the PA error. 8. Repeat this, to double check that it's spot on. 9. use the scope for the rest of the night without worrying. With my two scopes, (one is a 51mm refractor, the other is an 8" SCT) following these steps gets me great polar alignment every time. Actually until I switched to using SharpCap or the ASI Air to do the PA my aligments were generally not good. The software has improved things no end and makes life so much easier.

I have both a Starlight Xpress Superstar and an ASI290MM and use both for guiding. Both work really nicely as guide cameras and from what I've seen so far, I don't think there's much to choose between them. I use my Superstar via a SkyWatcher ST-80 as guide scope for my 8" Meade LX-90, and the ASI290MM through a ZWO mini guide scope for my Spacecat 51, on Star Adventurer. Whilst I'm not really pushing the ASI290MM hard in it's guiding duties, I can tell you that there is no RA drift over my entire image session. (Dec drift depends on the PA accuracy) As for the sensetivity. I get the impression that the Superstar is more sensetive (but can't quote figures). I've not tried switching the cameras about (and have no intention of doing a direct comparison, they're working for they're roles and I don't wanna break anything). All in all, I don't think you will regret whichever way you go.

The M45 is a WO SpaceCat51, with ZWO 1600MM-Pro and LRGB Filters.

Glad that your box of bits has the answer I've been managing to get some Imaging done, actually. I've bought a new scope and have got some excellent results from it. Here's a couple that took recently. Wide field shot of the milky way from Kielder. M45 taken from my font garden on sunday Looking forward to doing some great images.

light leakage or amp glow maybe?