wornish

Sky Safari started out many years (actually decades) ago and doesn't seem to be updated very often, but if people like it then fine.

But I have to ask whats wrong with Stellarium? It's free and you can download bang up to date databases of stars, comets, satellites all for free. It is constantly being extended to offer more features.

There is even a web based version now which you can access from any browser including a mobile phone.

Another free alternative is KStars which again is more than a match for Sky Safari.

I only pay for apps that offer me genuine benefits these days.

Can I ask why you need the effective focal length? 

What will you use the information for?

Feedback from someone is is still learning this planetary stuff. - Wow!

What gear did you use?  :  scope, camera, frames and post processing.

I am still struggling to get the focussing right

I wish I could get the level of detail you achieved. Well done.

Excellent capture..  I see you used the ZWO ADC do you feel it makes a difference?  (I think I know what your answer will be, but just asking.)

Unfortunately I have deleted the logs. My bad

I used Firecapture and the camera saved the video as a .SER file in 8 bit mono.

In PIPP I simply loaded the filename.ser video and then selected centre the object and crop the frame plus and use quality estimates and saved the best 50 frames as tifs.

In AS3 I then loaded the 50 frames saved and stacked the best 10.  

The seeing was awful have to say but the colours are all over the place.

Thanks for helping.

Here are the 3 masters.

JBlue2.tif JGreen2.tif JRed2.tif

What am I doing wrong.?

I have taken 3 separate videos first using  a Red filter, then Green and finally Blue using my mono ZWO ASI 1600 camera.

Then I processed each in PIPP and stacked a small percentage of the best frames from each set in Autostakkert 3, followed by wavelet sharpening in Registax6.

This created three files a Master Red, Master Green and Master Blue.

Then I have combined them to create a colour RGB image using PS.

But the resulting colour image is all wrong .  My Great Red Spot is just about visible but its certainly not Red?

I have tried various PS tools but can't get anything that looks like the images posted on here or elsewhere in terms of the colours.  

This is the output I ended up with!  ( please don't look at the detail its the colours I am struggling with.)

Any help greatly appreciated.

6 hours ago, dannybgoode said:

Which focuser share you using it with?

Sorry but I don't understand your question.

I have the Sesto Senso Focuser attached to my Esprit 100 and have used it for almost 2 years without any problems.

Its attached to the fine focus knob which is also a friction drive the same as almost all scopes.

I am just putting my toe in the water on planetary imaging.  Considering the seeing right now in the UK this is very impressive. Well done.

I have the Primaluce Sesto Senso it works great.

On 29/07/2020 at 17:16, FMA said:

HI Wornish,

whats the point about focusing in other object with different size-light-distance?

the camera focus with the zoom as I can do lunar photos. the problem is that I don't know how to get something fainter

was asking for some advice) probably im doing something wrong.....

thanks

 

As said by others for focusing purposes the Moon and Stars are the same.  The distance is effectively infinity as far as the camera is concerned.  Its just a lot easier to focus on the moon.

Or if you focus on a bright star in the region of M31 by simply turning up the ISO on your Canon to over 5000 and you should be able to see the stars in Live View.  Once you have the focus set then turn the ISO back down to 800 or 1600 and take the pics. 

I would try focussing on a bright star first, or better still the moon if its up.

For the capture and control side of things then +1 for KStars / Ekos It is one of the best applications available and is constantly kept unto date and adding new functionality.  Runs on Mac, Windows and Linux systems.  Oh and its FREE.

https://edu.kde.org/kstars/#download

For post processing PIxinsight and Astro Pixel Processor and PS are the leading packages IMHO but they are NOT Free.

If you want free then DSS, GIMP and a few others come to mind.

Catalina only allows 64 bit apps to run.  I am not sure but I think WINE Bottler and some of the windows programs it uses are 32 bit.

It will be the same with Big Sur when it comes out.

I have not updated to Catalina and I am staying with Mojave.

Doing processing of astro imaging is not the same as gaming.

I wish it was as simple as some suggest. It depends on the specific software app you want to use.   Has it been tuned for GPU or multi thread use?  There is no one right answer.  

15 hours ago, uhb1966 said:

@wornish you are totally right. For the same reason, i stick with 10.13.6. I have used Macs since 2008 for making a living but i´m not sure whether i'll buy another mac again.

........

I feel exactly the same and I have used Macs for 18 years. I remember OSX 10 (Cheetah)!

Apples decision to drop 32bit apps for no logical reason is very frustrating if you are into astrophotography. 

22 hours ago, Littleguy80 said:

Does it work work with most recent version of MacOS? I thought I read it stopped working since Apple dropped support for 32 bit apps

Not sure to be honest.  I have intentionally kept my iMac running Mojave 10.14.6 because the later releases seem to stop anything that is not an Apple approved app from working.  And with their latest announcements about moving to ARM that situation is going to get even worse.

Have you looked using Wine to wrap Windows programs so they run on your Mac.  It's not too difficult to set up.

https://www.winehq.org

I use PIPP, Registax6 and AstraImage all work great on my iMac. Windows itself is not required.

Congratulations.  Its a superb app.

You can get older versions of Kstars from here:

https://www.fosshub.com/KStars-old.html

Not sure if they will work on 10.11 but worth checking.

All mounts need manual adjustment to do the first polar alignment.  If you move your setup location then again a manual alignment is required. Using software tools like Sharcap or PHD2 or many others make it a lot easier.

If you want to do DSO astro photography then getting good polar alignment is very important.  If its just visual use then polar alignment is a lot less critical or in fact unnecessary for alt -az mounts.

Where did you get the print from.

@Star101 I think the SiTech Servo II Controller driver for your Mesu only runs on Windows.  Apparently there is a Ubuntu (Linux) version of the SiTech driver but its not even in a Beta form and is not officially supported or being actively developed, hence no one is using it.   So in your case the RPi is a non starter. 

Have a look at a Raspberry Pi4.  They are a lot cheaper, a lot more capable and just work great.

Running Astroberry on an RPi4 gives you all the astro apps you need for FREE.

There is a world beyond Windows if you take a look 😃