Shibby

Nice work! Good to see you managed this with budget equipment. I've been trying my hand a photometry recently, although I haven't posted anything on SGL. (Photometry normally goes in this forum though: https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/52-observing-and-imaging-double-and-variable-stars/ ) I've been using this transit finder: https://astro.swarthmore.edu/transits.cgi

I agree with the above - I suspect you have "Apply adjustments to the saved image" selected in DSS. It's a radio button in the "Save As" dialog. If you're lucky, you may find the original (unadjusted) stacks on your HDD named "Autosave.tif".

Well, yes, you can virtually never have enough data - 5 is very limited. 16 is a good starting point, as that enables you to stack with sigma rejection in DSS, which really brings the noise down. Other than that, careful processing can bring out more details using iterative curve adjustments. Aim not to "clip" the levels at the black end, otherwise the faint nebulosity gets lost. There are plenty of good tutorials out there, so it'd be better to read some of those than have me ramble on about it

Thanks - I shall give that a go this evening to see if it helps! I feel a reformat coming... Although, I dread making things worse while it's (sort of) working!

Simply amazing! The Ha has added so much extra, fine structure - it just looks stunning.

Good luck! Hopefully the issues are limited to Win7 64 bit. I did contact them on Friday but as yet have had no response. I'm not too concerned at the moment anyway, having got things working okay-ish with the old software.

It certainly did! Brilliant work, well done. Best viewed at you original size on Flickr.

Awesome image, especially considering how very faint it is.

Ridiculously good for you first attempt at astrophotography. It took me a long time before I got images anywhere near that quality!

I'll definitely give APT a try (would this use the ASCOM drivers?) I used to use APT when I imaged with a DSLR some time ago and liked it then! I've also been meaning to try out NINA at some point, which is developed by a member of an Astrophotography Discord.

So I uninstalled everything and reverted to the software/drivers on the CD. I think it's named "Atik Software 2.5". Now Artemis Capture recognises the camera again! It still refuses to recognise the EFW2, but I am at least able to control it from FilterWheelRunner still. Not sure I dare tinkering any further..! Bit of a shame I can't use the latest software or set up sequences with different filters, but at least I'm back in business! Thanks again for all the help.

Okay, I think I'll be coming back to this tomorrow! The good news is, my laptop is now booting and I've sorted out my power cable for the FW. Everything now shows correctly in device manager, but Artemis Capture is still failing to detect both camera + FW, even though the FW is detected elsewhere such as "FilterWheelRunner" I've already tried 3 different versions of the Atik software, so I'll try another (older) one tomorrow and see if that helps. Anyway, thanks for the help - I'll update if I get any further.

All my kit is powered from a bench supply, the cable from which runs to the mount. From there, I have DC distribution with everything fused separately. It's all worked flawlessly until now! (The old FW was USB only). Good idea...

Well I wish I'd left the software alone, now my laptop won't even boot! ?

Hi Carole, Yeah everything seems fine and correct with the camera until I open up Artemis capture, so I'm currently in the process of installing an old version of the software/drivers. The software is all that's changed in respect to the camera. The FW doesn't seem to rotate when I connect it, no, so chances are the power cable I made up is faulty, or the fuse - I will test it with camera's power cable, after I've (hopefully) got that working again! It's pretty painful as this step seems to take forever, each time I install the Atik software. It's already been about 10 minutes:

Hi Carole, Thanks so much for the information, it's a massive help! I'm currently sat in the obsy trying to figure everything out. The EFW doesn't appear to show at all in device manager like it does for you, so I reckon there might be something wrong with my cabling. The camera is showing correctly, but Artemis still cannot detect it - I've found somewhere on the web with previous versions and I'm going to try gradually rolling back the drivers until something happens! Thanks, Lewis

That's brilliant - thanks @carastro and @tooth_dr Hah, so they are - about 35 minutes away from me. I should do that!

Thanks @red dwalf. I should have been a bit clearer, the EFW2 is an Atik FW but still isn't being detected in Artemis. I'll try rolling back the driver for the camera, though, and hopefully at least get that working again...

Having acquired an EFW2 and finding that Artemis wouldn't recognise it, I updated to the latest Core software. Now, it won't recognise my camera (460ex) OR filter wheel Perhaps I should really post on the Atik forum, but I was wondering if anyone else has encountered these problems? The laptop has Win7 64bit. The camera shows up in device manager under "USB Serial Bus controllers" but isn't detected in Artemis. I can't see the FW anywhere - where should this show up in device manager?

Good job! If this is only your second time out imaging, then incredible job! I particularly like your Pleiades image. The added spikes on Orion look a bit strange as they don't align with the natural spikes. As for focusing, it's always best to focus first on a bright star (preferably with a Bahtinov mask) before slewing over to your target.

Really nicely done. I very much like the natural look from your processing.

Well, it's nice to image something a bit different, right?

Hi. I'm partly commenting to agree with others about your flats, these dust rings are almost certainly from the camera's sensor window judging by their size and they should calibrate out no problem. You can always take a blower to the window to try and reduce them. The first flat does seem to have a separate issue, though. Is it the refresh of your LED panel? Secondly, I just wanted to say that your observatory is a real beauty!

As you suggest, it's probably down to field distortion due to your optics. I can't think of any easy way around that, other than cropping or avoiding the flip when using a particular filter. I'm not sure about your concern with registar - you may get away with it, because even in order to rotate an image the stacking software will surely be messing with the pixels of each sub and that seems to work okay? Why don't you give it a trial and see what happens?