Astrofriend

More nostalgica

Who remember the TouCam 840 Pro that could be used for astrophotograpy ?

At top of list:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/astronomy-photo/time-lapse/time-lapse-slideshow.html

Before the DSLR era.

Lars

Hi Dave,

It's very interesting looking back at what has been done earlier. Compare equipment and it was very different 25 years ago. But the light pollution is much worse today.

I up loaded my second video today: Comet gallery, 1996 to 2023.

Same page as earlier:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/astronomy-photo/time-lapse/time-lapse-slideshow.html

It's on the 2nd row.

Lars

I have my hard drives full of images. Especially the time lapse photos take a lot of space. To get some use of it I put together all these short videos to an overview of the years from 1999 to 2013. Mostly I have used DSLR cameras for this.Canon 350D, Canon 5D Mk I, Canon 6D and some other cameras. I have also made notes in the video of what equipment I use.

If you find it interesting, here it is:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/astronomy-photo/time-lapse/time-lapse-slideshow.html

It's the one on top of the list.

Lars

Glad to hear more than I have got a clean sensor.

Lars

I too feel that a 64-bit installation is a must today. The downloading of the Canon EOS file speed up ramarkable, from 9 sec to 3, and a lot of other things to of course.

I have done som updates of my setup:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-kstars-raspberrypi5/01-project-kstars-raspberrypi5.html

The only thing left now is to implement my special Custom Gear setup of EQMOD.

Lars

Thank for feedback. So interesting to see what much different ways there are to setup a Raspberry. I can't say it works all time, but most. The GPS is the most common problem, only use it when take the car out to remote dark places. At home it's connected to a LAN.

Lars

My RaspBerry Pi4 ages and I need one more RP. Now they sale the new Pi5 versions which is much faster. I bought one and it didn't cost much more than the older Pi4. But I had to chose the 4GB version because the 8GB was sold out.

When doing this I want it setup with the new OS with 64-bit. I have read somewhere that KStars/Ekos isn't developed anymore in the 32-bit version, or at least not much.

As usual it's much more complicated than I thought it to be. Mostly because I'm a Windows man. But I have good Linux friends 🙂

Here is my Raspberry Pi5 project:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-kstars-raspberrypi5/01-project-kstars-raspberrypi5.html

I got most of it to work but have problem with VNC, I add more information during the progress of this work.

How many of you have the Raspberry Pi5 and 64-bit OS with KStars/Ekos ?

Lars

When looking at my old projects I noticed that I have a lot of readers on my project about the EQ6 mount. I have gone through the text and correct mistakes and moved out some of the pages to separate projects/tutorials.

Here is the updated version:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-eq6-dismantling-rebuilding/01-eq6-dismantling-rebuilding.html

Let me know if there is something that is unclear and I try to complement the information.

It works very well nowadays, both on Windows ASCOM and Linux KStar system.

Lars

After many years I have now my TS130 APO refractor up and running again. The new push pull focuser I designed and the motor focuser controller for INDI made it.

One of the first test photos, it's taken from home with Bortle Class 9 environment.

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/astronomy-photo/galaxies/m51/m51-galaxy.html

It's very noisy but the focuser worked very well.

Lars

First outcast to add an off-axis guider to the filter wheel:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-filter-wheel/08-project-filter-wheel.html

Lars

Added a lot of updates to the project. I have 3D-printed the wheel and chassi and it looks like something that could work.

Project documentation:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-filter-wheel/01-project-filter-wheel.html

Lars

When having a 3D-printer it's a lot of thoughts about everything that can be 3D-printed. If I buy a monochrome camera in the future there is a need of filters and a filter wheel. It's not very dificult to design it in 3D CAD, the problem is more, will the plastic material be good enough ? At least I get it exactly as I want it.

Most people who do this buy a manual filter wheel and set a motor on it. Here I give it a try to do it all in the 3D-printer.

My filter wheel project:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-filter-wheel/01-project-filter-wheel.html

As a driver for the filter wheel I will use the open source project myFilterWheel.

Lars

Hi,

The last I did a couple of days ago was to replace the stepper motor with one with higher impedance.

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-motor-focus-driver/11-project-motor-focus-driver.html

Lars

Now when I almost finished the focuser project to my TS130 APO refractor there are a lot of small upgrades to do on the refractor and its peripherals. There are: Mechanical, USB hub, brackets, DC/DC converter etc. They all can be more practical, smaller and more energy efficient. To my help I have the 3D-printer.

Here is my documentation of what I'm doing:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-ts130-upgrade/01-project-ts130-upgrade.html

I soon hope that I can get the telescope up on the mount with a clear sky.

Lars

Hi,

Yes I read about all struggle people had with there old ASI120 cameras. My camera is not the mini as yours. But is there any difference in the electronics ?

Now I'm waiting for a clear sky to do a real test how it behave.

Lars

I setting up a second astrophotography equipment, to make it practical I bought a second camera for auto guiding. It's a used ZWO ASI120mm with the old USB2. It will be used with a Raspberry which use Linux. Bad chosie because it didn't work with Linux and all say it's very complicated to get it to work correctly.

I gave it a try and collected all information from INDI forum and others and got it to work.

Here is my documentation if someone else has the same problem:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-asi120mm-upgrade/01-project-asi120mm-upgrade.html

Note, I havn't tested it under a clear sky yet.

Lars

Today I could do a load test of the focuser. I loaded it with 5 kg and there was no problem for the stepper motor to handle that load.

Load test:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-motor-focus-driver/10-project-motor-focus-driver.html

Lars

A good working motor focuser is important to get good quality photos. I make small improvements year after year. But now starting all over from the beginning and make a focuser that I have designed. It's a 3D-printed focuser and now I'm building the focuser controller based on the open source project MyFocuserPro2.

Here is my project:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-motor-focus-driver/01-project-motor-focus-driver.html

Maybe I can do some desk test of it this week. Looks promising.

Lars

I did this modification to both my EQ6 and HEQ5 mount long time ago. To have the risk that the DC connector slip out during the night is an experience no one want.

Lars

Hi,

I have an EQ6 mount with timing belt drive, it doesn't follow the standard gear ratio. It wasn't a problem with Windows and ASCOM drivers. But when I changed to Linux and INDI driver I got problem.

I had to do some modifications to my INDI EQMOD driver to let it accept custom gear ratio. Difficult but with help from a friend I could managed it. I have written down how I did it, these instruction can be used for other INDI drivers too.

Here it is:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-indi-drivers/01-project-indi-driver.html

Hope it can be of some help.

Lars

Now at last I can control my EQ6 mount with custom gear ratio from EQMOD Indi version which I use with my Raspberry computer. Lot of work and lot of help to modify the Indi driver to accept custom gear ratio.

Here is some instruction how I made it:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-indi-drivers/01-project-indi-driver.html

Note: The gear ratio must be setup for one fixed custom gear ratio. It's done in the source code as it's now.

The driver can distinguish between an EQ6 mount with custom gear ratio and a HEQ5 with standard gear ratio. I use the same control computer for both mounts.

Lars

One more photo with the Pentax 645 300mm lens:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/astronomy-photo/galaxies/m86/m86-galaxy.html

Fully open at f/4 and only a very tiny crop around the edges. Look at the full resolution image and scroll around, look at the corners, not bad.

/Lars

Hi Mark,

Yes it's very interesting. I added two more pages, more to analyze how well it flat calibrate and if there is any difference if I replace my MasterDarks with a constant. In this case I can't see any difference, maybe because a Bortle Class 4 environment isn't good enough and mask the problem. In that case I also used Fitswork to analyze the result.

Look at page 4 and 5:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/tutorials/tutorial-siril/01-tutorial-siril.html

/Lars

The last year I have ben using the Siril software to pre processing my astrophotos. It replace somewhat AstroImageJ and Fitswork I used a lot earlier. Siril is based on Iris which I used 20 years ago, very advanced at that time. Siril is today a 32-bit processing software and in these days an updated version 1.2.0 beta 2 is out. My tutorial isn't very deep and I'm still learning. There are already a good homepage with examples how to use Siril, my page is more how I personally use it.

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/tutorials/tutorial-siril/01-tutorial-siril.html

What I like is the color calibration and the new function to desaturate overexposed stars. Much to learn until it work perfect.

For post processing I use the Gimp software which also is a 32-bit software and very advanced.

Both Siril and Gimp are free to download.

/Lars

Over the years I changed my how I work with astroimage editing.

Today I use Siril for pre processing (earlier I used AstroImageJ a lot), try to do all process which are closly related to stars before going over to Gimp for post processing.

https://siril.org/

The last thing I learned is how to color calibrate the images in Siril. When that is done it's much easier to handle the post processing in Gimp. I made a short notice about it on this page at bottom:

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/tutorials/tutorial-gimp-astrophotography/03-tutorial-gimp-astrophotography-levels-rgbload-rgbimage.html

I have also done some minor updates of the other pages. The combination of Siril for pre processing and Gimp for post processing is awesome.

I also use Irfanview, https://www.irfanview.com/

One important thing is that I can extract my Canon DSLR temperture with this software, I use the temperature in the file name, very practical when doing dark calibration.

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/tutorials/tutorial-darkframe-dslr-canon/tutorial-darkframe-dslr-canon.html

See note 2 how I rename the file name with temperature included.

/Lars