Anthonyexmouth

7 minutes ago, OK Apricot said:

Only two, three needed. The thing that bothers me is that this all worked really well a week ago in the garden - maybe not quite as cold or humid that night though. 

Have you tried with the mount and guide cam into the camera hub? sorry if its in an earlier post, reading on a phone and not got my reading glasses.  If there is an issue with the camera hub I'd be inclined to get it sorted under warranty. 

11 minutes ago, OK Apricot said:

PA with SharpCap was 0.07“. I calibrate PHD2 each time I use it. Was all going well with first hour of subs coming out very nicely. Hub to laptop cable is 20cm. Guide cam, imaging cam cables 2m, EQDIR 5m.

I'd put it down to the hub. I take it you don't have enough usb ports in the laptop. 

4 minutes ago, OK Apricot said:

So last night was another frustrating one. Crystal clear, really great transparency. I managed one hour 15 minutes before things started to go mental again. 

Same location, similar conditions - 8°C with 8-9°C dew points. Differences were I was using a separate USB 3.0 hub (unpowered), had the laptop hot-spotted to phone for WiFi and it was nestled in an old blue bin with cables coming through a few holes in the back. As the night went on it was clear the blue bin had really settled the dew issue on the laptop, it was dry whereas before it was... Wet. 

First part of the night was fine, guiding maybe a little questionable but had round stars so not to worry. Started a sequence on the second target and the mount stopped tracking, had disconnected from NINA but EQMOD still showed it as tracking sidereal. My kit would keep disconnecting, PHD2 would keep prompting "star lost - low HFD" etc. When it would "guide" for a couple minutes I was getting 60' of error, huge spikes in RA. My subs would have stars as clear cross shapes. 

I had zero issues a week prior in the garden using it all the same as last night. I don't know what else really. I brought the laptop inside the van and warmed everything up, plugged it all in again running cables through the window and tried again but was still giving the same issues. I don't get it - it was fine, then it wasn't. It got worse as the night went on so thought temp and humidity were the killer but sitting the laptop in a balmy 20°C van didn't change anything. Laptop? Mount? USB hub? I'm struggling to pinpoint what is causing the trouble. Focus was good, dew straps doing their job (sigh). 

Any ideas? It's got to be related to the weather conditions 🤔

What was your PA like?

Did you run a PHD calibration?

How long was the cable from the hum to the laptop? cheap usb hubs are a nightmare outdoors, colder they get the worse the are. 

8 hours ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

I keep getting the same error tonight at this very moment.
Had it several times now and it always happens when I dither and star is lost due to poor seeing or clouds passing so not sure if that could be your problem too ?

Steve

Maybe it was. Never seen it before. I was in bed when it happened so could have been cloud. 

7 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

What is your timeout set at ?
I think it may need to be long enough to allow for a re-calibration - just a thought.

Did you see if it was calibrating or not when it failed.

Steve

40 seconds, but it's always been set at that. 

1 minute ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

Have you gone through PHD's calibration routine ??

Yeah. 

No calibration. It's a permanent setup, nothing gets moved. Been running fine. Came down last night early hours and a raft of the same error on the Nina screen. Never happened before

Anyone here know why I might have started getting this error all the time. Started last night, haven't changed any settings.

"Timed-out waiting for the guider to settle"

16 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

I'm all for buying stuff and if it's going to be permanent I don't see the point of an AM5 so I'd be looking at EQ8 or CEM120 or MESU or Trident.... But I have to ask why a RASA? Focal length will be same-ish as what you have now although I get it will collect data faster so why not a longer refractor? If you've not worked it out yet I'm sharing my upgrades with you 🙂 🙂

 

Well, the plan would be to put the heq5 back to mobile duty with the SM90 at some point or just to use on a tripod in the garden to capture 2 targets at night. I want to go bigger so I can eventually have a RASA and a RC of whatever size I can afford. 

So now I've got myself a nice triplet, I think my next upgrade will be a bigger mount to allow for a far future purchase of a RASA.

It's a garden pier that's left setup all year. 

I'm thinking an eq8 or cem70 but is that over kill? Would an am5 be an appropriate upgrade for a permanent pier or is that more of a mobile mount. 

35 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

Personally I'd have no problem having another colour 294 but I do appreciate that some folk have a hard time getting them set up 100%

I have the mono QHY 294 which by all accounts is not as finicky as the colour versions but even so I still had to tweak getting the flats as I wanted them.

If you want an almost guaranteed easy life then I'd probably suggest either the 533 or 2600. Downsides there are, respectively, sensor size and cost......

I mean would you pair an l-Extreme or enhance with a 294? I have a 294 and had 3 good years with it and find it a nice camera with the right calibration frames. 

Just wondering if its worth spending on the dual band filter for it. 

8 hours ago, scotty38 said:

For me, using a gain of 200 eliminated the flats issues. I'd also had some issues with offsets but that aside moving away from gain 121 seemed to work ok.

So is it something you'd recommend, or do again yourself? On the fence now whether I should get one. 

Well, things just get easier and easier. Sideloaded Microsoft Remote Desktop onto my bedroom firestick. Can check on progress in bed on the TV.

11 minutes ago, iapa said:

This is 30 x 180Sec exposures with MasterFlat/BIAS/DARK_FLAT/DARK applied.

The Histogram shows very jagged curves, and I've not found a process yet to smooth these out.

All processing in PixInsight

Any ideas anyone?

Can you post the tiff file?

1 minute ago, inFINNity Deck said:

I see that you have fixated the batons both to the outer slab and to the central concrete square on which the pillar stands. This more or less nullifies the effect of having those two parts separately pored. Why not creating a framework that does not touch the central concrete?

Nicolàs

You beat me by seconds on that comment. 

A slide base would move my guide scope closer to the centre of rotation on the mount and off the finder shoe. Other option which might be cheaper is getting the fixed 50mm rings, not the adjustable type and seeing if my sw 9x50 at 53mm od without fit in them. 

6 minutes ago, Skipper Billy said:

I noticed a significant increase in guiding accuracy when I upgraded from a converted finder to a WO guidestar 61 - probably because it was much more rigidly mounted but also the focus mechanism is so much better. Standard Lodestar in both cases

I also noticed another increase when I added a UV/IR block filter

And again when I upgraded to a WO Zenithstar 73 III and again when I upgraded to a Lodestar Pro.

In decent seeing I am now routinely getting guiding around 0.25 p/arc" (milegae on other mounts may vary!!)

Is it better - yes!!

 

With my current load out I'm kinda limited to 50mm, I was using my st80 until I got my new triplet. A 50mm slide base would be more rigid but as mentioned above, so far I haven't seen much difference in guiding yet. 

7 minutes ago, Varavall said:

There is a thread on this over on Cloudynights https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/782348-william-optics-slide-base-guide-scopes/ 

I used to guide with the SW finder that you are currently using and it gave good results. I went for an 80mm TS finder/guider; so many stars! It also gave me a better camera/guide canera pixel ratio. Pay your money and take your choice.

Up until last week I was using a skywatcher st80 but when I got my new stellamira triplet I took that of and left my ed80 that was my dso scope on the side by side next to my new SM90, which meant I had to go back to my 9x50. So far I haven't seen any degradation in guiding but maybe I'm just enjoying the better quality images from the triplet. 

The advantage of the wo slide base would be it would sit between the ed80 and sm90 better and have a more rigid fixing. 

I've never had any issues with my skywatcher 9x50 but I kinda like the idea of the William optics 50mm slide base to clean up my setup. Is there any performance bonus with the wo option? I don't want to spend money on something that's only going to neaten up the rig, bit of there's a noticeable increase in quality then it might be worth it. 

4 hours ago, newbie alert said:

Agreed, why do the star alignment first as it surely won't be accurate after you've polar aligned, also there's a question why you're star aligning, plate solving will be far more accurate anyway 

Not so sure why you want to use the CPWI and Nina both together, Nina is quite capable of running it on its own, why use 2 tools to do the same job

Yeah, zero reason to star align if you're using Nina. Plate solve wins the day every time

1 hour ago, M40 said:

That was my thoughts, lay the base, add a membrane, fit the dome, then do whatever after using spacers between dome and inner base former to create the shape you want. Flexible ply or even a bit of hardboard would probably work. I wonder if a piece of white plastic trim would be flexible enough.

No, fit the dome, lay the membrane inside and lay a screed that then gives you a guaranteed dry internal base to lay a carpet if you wanted to add a little fall protection if you drop anything. Only place you need any shuttering is the entrance and only then if there isn't a raised threshold. 

11 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

USB- powered dew strips and any powerbank to power them are also quite low effort and easy ways to keep dew off optics. Not very expensive either, if you already have a powerbank you could use.

My dew bands are usb powered. £20 each from amazon. No controller needed. simple.

Sorry to resurrect this, but what's the final outcome here with the 294mc and dual band filters? I was just about to buy one but holding off now. For info, my filter drawer is right against my camera so probably 16-18mm away at filter face, if that makes any difference.

On 23/08/2022 at 15:01, Dr_Ju_ju said:

In answer to your question, it easily covers this:

 

 

A fellow air con ducting pier. 

Surely the easiest thing would be to have a flat slab, fix the dome then lay a screed inside over a membrane. Little bit of shuttering across the entrance if there isn't a raised threshold