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I will check. Atm, it's sunny, with thin clouds. Also, since I'm 60 degrees North, the sun doesn't get that high here. I thought about that LED, but with the lens and lens mount I use, it's sealed off. You can always cover it with some black electrical tape. Or if you're bold, take it off with a fine solder iron.

If you only use 1 row of pins, you may be able to use v-board and make your own board mounted sockets. You could then even mount several next to each other on the same board. Just beware, some have pitch .07", others .1"

Combined with a longer fl, your guide camera is ok. I use the cooled version as my main imaging camera, but also a 1000 mm scope. To get a better match between guide camera and imaging camera, the pixel scales shouldn't differ much more than a factor of 2. With 1.2"/pixel for your imaging camera, a pixel scale of about 2.4"/px would be better for your guide camera. If you use an oag, the match between guide camera and imaging camera will be much better. Oags are not that difficult to set up, and since you already have ZWO imaging and guide cameras, there won't be a distance problem. The ZWO oag is a match to your cameras. In general, you can't expect better than a few tenths of a pixel guide RMS. At 4.8"/px, 0.2 pixels is almost 1". That's why I think your guiding is good. Also consider that guiding quality is determined by other factors than the mount, eg seeing, balance, etc. With my AZ-EQ6, I get guiding RMS from 0.6 - 1", mainly depending on sky quality (seeing, transparency).

Update. Tonight I compared my SQM with a Unihedron model L. I had already done a few tests indoors and "matched" readings. Pointing North, away from the full moon, my SQM measured 18.78, and the Unihedron 18.70. Pointing at zenith (closer to the moon which was at its highest point, almost due South), my SQM showed a somewhat higher reading than the Unihedron. It seems that mine has a smaller fov because of the difference in lenses. All in all, I'm pleased with the result.

That's three of us. Old school, or solid engineering background then 😋 I could see myself making one of these, but atm I'm in love with the Pegasus UPB which has dew heater controls. (Can't really justify to buy it though.) If I do go the DIY route, I will probably replace the arduino with an ESP32 to get both Wifi and Bluetooth control.

Neither can I, that's why I spotted it. At least this quirk makes it slightly easier to find any mistakes.

Soldering by the book, least sensitive components first. And you align resistors in the same direction, even though it's not needed. I like it.

Just looked at the log: you turned off guiding at 22.52 to run guiding assistant, before that guiding was actually very good. What you see during GA is the mount's periodic error in RA and some DEC drift due to polar misalignment (only 1 '). This seems to be guided out very well. Excluding the GA period, your RMS error is 1.38" or 0.29 px, about 1.1" in RA and 0.76" in DEC. MinMo is 1.1" in RA, and 0.86" in DEC (0.24 px and 0.18 px). As long as tracking deviation is smaller than MinMo, PHD won't apply any corrections. I don't think you can expect a guide RMS smaller than the MinMo settings. To improve the periodic error, you would have to hypertune the mount. You could try PPEC, but since most PE is guided out, I'm not sure you'll see much improvement from that. With your camera and scope (3.8 um pixels and 550 mm fl) you get an imaging pixel scale of 1.2"/px, assuming the 0.85x FR. Your guiding pixel scale is 4.8 or four times as much. You could try to reduce that by using a longer fl guide scope or a different camera (ASI120?) With the ASI174 as guide camera you could also consider using an oag.

Just to rule this out: was making corrections turned on? The plot should show phd2 trying to make corrections, and the checkbox to show corrections is ticked.

Have you posted that problem on the INDI forum? https://indilib.org/forum.html

Just for clarification: "T'wasn't me." I took the gif from a post (cited in my reply) on the PixInsight Forum. I think that satellite trails are more of a problem for professional astronomers, where the reflections can interfere with measurements. And as telescope time is expensive, trails are more likely to ruine a research project than a pretty picture taken by an amateur who can spend many hours collecting data. That would be the nr 1 method to avoid this problem. But be prepared to discard subs, even with kappa-sigma clipping So @tooth_dr, go and spend that money on a new mount. As long as you have the right tools in your arsenal to deal with any artefacts in your data. Imo, climate change and the prolonged overcast periods we've experienced the past years are a greater threat to our hobby. But to stay on topic, as I understand, Starlink isn't the only network planned in the near future. Other companies are preparing to send up their satellites. I wonder how many satellites are needed to fullfill the need, or if there is going to be an abundance of satellites when multiple companies are trying to make a buck? Who actually determines what anyone can put in space?

So far I'm not too worried. As mentioned, good pixel rejection can repair the damage (in this case, PixInsight). (Animated GIF from PixInisght forum ) But it's always better to avoid the problem. As @Ouroboros noted, the sattelites will be in lower orbit, so mostly a nuisance near dusk an dawn. Also, Musk has (kind of) listened to objections and done a Rolling Stones on the newer versions: I see a red door Starlink and I want it painted black

Most of the information of interest in astro images is in the low part of the intensity scale. So you normally slide the mid-range control to the left. You can either slide it at once, until you get good contrast, or you can set the slider at a certain position, and apply it multiple times. For example, set the mid-range control at 0.25 and apply this a number of times until you get pleasing contrast. Then reset the controls and slide the blackpoint to the right, just to the very foot of the histogram. You can use either way, but imo you should try both methods on copies of an image, and compare the result. Ie, do one aggressive stretch until it looks ok in a preview on copy A, and a multiple "soft" stretch on copy B. Then compare the images. The multiple stretch method takes a little longer, but gives you better control. Which ever method you prefer, you should always strive for getting a good separation of shades in the middle and lower parts of the image, while avoiding large patches of total blackness and excessively bloated stars. This part of astrophotography is very much an art and up to your liking. But as in any art form, there are guidelines/rules as to what makes a pleasing image. What we do with sliders on a computer is very similar to what photographers like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston did with b/w film. If you study their methods to achieve contrast and a high dynamic range, you will learn much that you can apply to your astro image processing.

Have you checked out the new kid on the block: starnet? It also does a good job of removing stars in an image. It's a plug in module for pixinsight, and a stand alone tool for PS, as far as I know. https://www.astrobin.com/397290/

In any program that uses "levels" or histogram, the dark slider determines what will be totally black (0%) in the result. The light slider determines totally white (100%) The mid-range slider determines what will be mid-gray (50%). Normally you can't avoid the brightest stars to be white, but you should try to avoid a totally black background. There should at least be some noise visible, as this will give a more natural look. I don't know about other programs, but Pixinsight will show how many pixels and how many % of the image will get clipped when you move the black point and white point sliders. When stretching dso images, the mid-range slider needs to be moved to near the black point in order to get good contrast. In images of the moon, there is already a good amount of contrast, and you may have to use other means of enhancing it.

Me too. There are even cad programs for veroboard. I've used this one. https://veecad.com/ Otoh, having a pcb made is also cheap nowadays.

But also with a fat hard drive, full of nice astropix. I hope the physiology was just as rewarding as the cosmology.

Thanks, Göran. I will have my revenge eventually. I think for our conditions, and especially on a south facing slope, the Hole design is superior to a traditional ror. Yesterday we had a clear night, but with the moon out and strong winds. I've ordered a wind speed meter to add to my weather station, because it can get very windy locally. Probably the ridge funneling air currents. I at least should have gone out to do a sky quality reading, but totally forgot. It will be clear later this week according to CO. I'll do a reading then and send your meter back. So far, this winter has been unusually mild, with almost no snow. Yes, please.

🎅 When I learned coding (centuries ago) we were taught that you can't fully test a non-trivial program (kind of Rice's theorem). In other words: there can always be one more bug.

Light_master.xisf has better defined Ha regions and less noise. But it is more difficult to get the colours right. Both PCC and standard colour calibration result in a too red/magenta galaxy core. Also, since the stars are over exposed, colour calibration will give false colours in the star cores that need to be repaired. http://pixinsight.com.ar/en/info/processing-examples/28/maskedstretch-stars-sores.html Probably the best exposure is between 60 s and 300 s.

The main reason that ratio will go to 1/1 is that you'll start to collect more data as you learn. 😋 Most of us start as astro-tourists; we point and shoot to get as many targets in one night as possible. But as we progress, we learn that quality does take time and shoot one target over several nights, sometimes even months.

Not a surprise really, quality takes time. (Although, at least for me, so does crap sometimes.)

Thanks, Gina Thanks, @Swoop1 Thanks, Steve. I've already started to plan for that. For one, the plugs & feathers I bought to deal with that large boulder will come to good use on the rock that busted my knee. Revenge! 😁

Processing takes at least as long as data collection for me, but it's a lot more fun.

V3 and the mono image for me too. Also, Holmberg IX shows very nicely.