wimvb

I see it as a sign that INDI is becoming a mature alternative to ASCOM. And even with several commercial products coming to market, you still have the option to buy a Raspberry Pi and install free alternatives, such as ekos/kstars, astroberry, CdC and CCDCiel, etc.

Very similar software, but different hardware. The extras are in the HAT that Atik developed. Probably also custom drivers to control that hardware. Not necessarily so. Zwo have the same concept, but locked out non-zwo cameras, afaIk. So it depends on how open the Atik software is.

If you examine the specs and images of this product, you'll discover that Atik put some thought and engineering into it. 12 V power input, so no need for 5V, plus 12 V outputs to power stuff. ST4 guide port, built in focuser interface. A Raspberry Pi with a custom HAT, based on StellarMate, and codeveloped with Ikarus (read, Jasem Mutlaq). All that should be worth the higher price. Imo, it is competitively priced when compared to similar products. The real question is, will it support other cameras, or only Atik?

I'd LOVE to see it, but hate to lug it.

Is your dither working as it should? If you create a movie from your unregistered but calibrated subs, you should see the stars moving in roughly the same pattern as your dither movements. If they still move in a linear pattern, even if that pattern consists of forward and backward steps, your dither doesn't work. (In PixInsight you'd use the Blink tool for that.)

Make sure that all the gears are optimised (trade off between smoothness and backlash). Then use a large enough dither step so that the mount moves past the backlash. You can also dither in a spiraling path: ra+ dec+ ra- ra- dec- dec- ra+ ra+ ra+ dec+ dec+ dec+ etc. This sequence traces an outward spiraling dither pattern.

Have you tried cosmetic correction in PixInsight? Then while stacking, you can set an aggressive clipping factor. What exposure time did you use? Your image looks under exposed.

No surprise really. This thread is interesting and at times very entertaining. (Much better than telly 😉) I'm enjoying it a lot, and I appreciate that you take the time to write it. It certainly has given me inspiration to start on my own build. So, thank you.

I've installed indi on several raspberry pi's and two rock64 sbc. The rock64s are controlling an AZ-EQ6, a zwo as120 guide camera, a zwo ASI174MM-cool mono camera, pegasus focuser and zwo filter wheel, and have for the better part of two years. I use Ekos/Kstars on windows. A while back I had a friend over who has an HEQ5, SW 80ed and a Moravian g2-8300 camera. His pc broke down, so he was dead in the water until I dusted off an old Raspberry Pi. We were in business within 15 minutes, but had problems with platesolving (astromeyry.net). Last time he was over, we downloaded index files and ran his complete setup from the Raspberry pi, including platesolving, connecting with Remote Desktop on his Mac. I would say that this is a working solution. On a Raspberry pi, once you have Ubuntu installed, it's very straight forward to install the standard indi and ekos software. If you use the stable production version of indi, you shouldn't have any problem. And since the indi team started releasing production versions, there haven't been any problems with updates breaking things, afaIk.

I think so. The fewer cables that hang from the scope/mount, the better. Cables can get stuck or drag, affecting the guiding performance. Just make sure that you can do a meridian flip without the cables snagging. I use one larger cable tie as a loop to hang a over a dovetail bolt; the looms hang loosely in this loop.

I use cable ties. I bind the power cables together, and the the data (usb) cables. Then I hang the looms over the mount. The dovetail bolts come in handy for this. Nowadays I have a semipermanent setup, so I can leave everything connected. But when I had to dismantle every night, I kept the looms together as much as possible.

No problem. Bigger is better.

Late to the party, but you obviously need a dome obsy and make it look like a giant mushroom.

To keep in the spirit of earlier replies: "Rows and floes of angel hair. And ice cream castles in the air. And feather canyons everywhere. I've looked at clouds that way."

No, no: "One night with you*, is what I'm now praying for." *"you" being the shed of course.

Those pods that are common on domes comes to mind. ?

For an upgrade from a sw 150pds, I considered both these scopes. It seems that they are very similar, but with the Lacerta there is a choice of different mirrors. The thing that appealed to me was the choice of a quartz mirror with less thermal expansion than bk glass. The scopes also have different focusers. Both Jens Zippel (who's a member here) and Tommy Nawratil use the Lacerta. Both produce stunning images. Just have a look on astrobin.

Have you tried the indilib forum for this? I solved a similar issue by changing the focus calculation algorithm. It should be available in the focus section of ekos.

One of those nights?

Only after you drop that one little screw down there, you realise how important it was. ? I'd also avoid rockwool in that gap. It's itchy and generates dust when handled.

Looks like it's about time to do a flip. ?

My more or less standard workflow consists of: - Crop - Dbe (- Colour calibration of rgb data) - Deconvolution - TgvDenoise with a 50% mask or mlt with a linear mask - Stretching - Contrast enhancement and sharpening - Noise reduction, either tgv or mlt. But I only use noise reduction when it's absolutely necessary. Usually if the data is good, it doesn't need noise reduction. The best noise reduction is to collect more data.

Looks good. But, is that moisture I see in the corner between the conduit and the counterweights? Or maybe just miscoloured wood?

The faster the scope, the more critical is collimation, squareness and focusing. So, if you find f/5 a handfull, f/3.9 will be more so.

That's a new approach to collimation. Just 2 questions: 1. How is your collimation now according to the Cheshire? 2. Can you post a pic taken down the drawtube, showing how the secondary is aligned to the focuser?