Anthonyexmouth

I also have the 294 paired with an ed80. not sure i see the reason or benefit of a narrowband filter. I get that a dual/tri band filter can be useful for a OSC but an Ha filter is surely just going to strangle the ability of the camera. You'd be better off with a good LPS filter. 

8 minutes ago, Philip R said:

Ok @Anthonyexmouth, next sunny day, we're all coming down with our floral garlands, Hawaiian shirts, etc and ukuleles. Can you supply the Mai Tai's?

It's always sunny in devon.. 

how cold is it likely to get?

22 minutes ago, Star101 said:

Very nice Anthony. I like the simplicity. very cool 

certainly future proofed by being a 300mm wide concrete pier, not sure i could ever afford a telescope to overload it. 

heres my concrete one . 600mm cube under the deck and rebar up through the duct. all cabling internal. I figured i needed a concrete block whatever i was doing so easier to knock up a little more and make the pier as one big 1 ton lump. all in i think it came to £150ish with the concrete, stainless fixings, plate and duct

31 minutes ago, fwm891 said:

Just ordered one from FLO so interested in your thoughts on the RASA 8 and it's images. I'll be fitting a Celestron motor focus to mine (I bought that for an Edge HD 8).

f2 has to be a focus job best handed over to motor focuser 

10 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Did you change anything between master dark and lights like exposure time, temperature, gain, offset?

Another thing that can cause issues with amp glow would be dark optimization - you need to avoid it in stacking / calibration, so check if you have it turned on in software that you are using.

Didn't change anything. Only thing different were the lights. I made sure optimisation was unchecked

As I get more adventurous with processing I've started to notice the amp glow more in my images, well one to be precise, M31, but cant replicate it in older images. 

Is this just me and some bad habit i've learnt or is it the calibration frames im using? Or can amp glow increase with a faulty/failing camera?

I'll include a light frame and my master dark for anyone feeling helpful

light - L_2019-09-19_23-03-34_Bin1x1_240s__-10C.fit

Master Dark - MasterDark_ISO0_240s.tif

3 minutes ago, Laurin Dave said:

I use a tracing panel and enough sheets of A4 writing paper to get to the right exposure..  5-10 seconds for my camera.  An iPad set to a white screen would also work. An ADU of 25-30000 based on 16 bit works well

Dave

ah ok, cool

does the fact the 294 is 14 bit make much difference to the target ADU?

Been reading a few threads on my asi294mc pro and it seems people are saying very short flats are not great for this camera and 2-4sec flats are an advantage but i cant find any chat on how to accomplish this. 

i was using the t-shirt method and the flats wizard in APT and an ADU of 25000 which gives an exposure of .00596s according to APT

anyone know what my ideal APT would be for this camera or how to work it out? also how do i get my exposure length longer? do i need a flat panel? Is anything i've been reading true. 

thanks

19 minutes ago, Dinglem said:

I've recently had similar issues, thought it was because I'd changed my scope and I have missed some setting. Tonight my Goto++ just would not solve any subsequent image even though the target was almost in the middle of the frame. It's out there capturing subs so not going to stop it now. I'll have a play with the latest beta version tomorrow. It's also stopped doing AMF's always fails to platesolve image, I presume it is associated.

yeah, same issue with the AMF , worked fine last week then stopped working. i've just tried the newest beta and still not working. i hadnt updated anything so really unsure what happened. 

APT is the only one i have set to run as administrator. Its APT that causes the issue, I got pointed in the right direction after going on the APT forums. 

Try running APT in administrator mode. 

just downloading the new beta version of APT, release notes mention pointcraft failing after initial solve

maybe this fixes it. 

similar problem, it'll do the initial solve, then fail to solve after that. proper odd. 

Ah cool. I let apt manage my flats exposure length then used the same settings for my dark/flats. Only using a osc so not as complicated. Are the subs of any use after the masters are created? 

3 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Which master? If master dark, then yes, as long as it's the same exposure duration, gain and temp as your next set of lights, you can just use that single master in the darks tab.

 

The same applies to the master dark flat. As long as it's the same exposure, gain and temp as your next set of flats, you can use that master dark flat by itself.

what do you mean by using the master dark-flat  by itself?

just started to have a problem with APT and platesolve2 not solving. blind solving is working fine but when it comes to goto++ its falling over and timing out, not always but more and more. on checking platesolve2 window its not showing the pixel scale, not sure it ever did as never had to check it, could it be APT isnt handing this info over?

anyone else getting this?

1 hour ago, newbie alert said:

Just seen this..

 

if only i had the money on hand now. 

1 hour ago, david_taurus83 said:

DSS has a tab for flat darks/dark flats, whichever you want to call them. Just put all your flats into the correct tab and all your flat darks into the correct tab and DSS will do the rest. It stacks them into a master flat dark and subtracted that master from all your individual flats. Then the newly calibrated flats are stacked into a master flat.

 

If you wanted to do it manually, like in Pixinsight  for example, you would create a master dark flat in ImageIntegration and then in ImageCalibration you would use this master dark flat as a master dark to calibrate the individual flats. Then use ImageIntegration again to stack the calibrated flat files into a master flat. At that point you dont use the dark flats or master dark flat again. You just use your master flat and master dark on your light frames.

i just noticed that DSS does that. didnt see the master at the bottom of the directory. does that mean in future i just use the master when stacking my future lights?

5 minutes ago, JamesF said:

This was the basis for Robin Glover's talk at PAS this year (eg here: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/332167-talk-by-robin-glover-sharpcap/)

I think a reasonable summary might be that the point at which returns are diminished to nothing of value really depends on the individual situation -- camera, location and conditions: if you have a very dark sky and/or a camera with higher read noise then longer subs may become more worthwhile whereas from somewhere more light polluted or you have a low-noise camera then you reach the point where greater sub length doesn't improve things sooner.

He's done a load of work in Sharpcap to try to estimate optimal sub length, though it might only be available in Sharpcap Pro.

James

whats the process you use in sharpcap? i've only ever used it for PA but i would like to try and get more out of it. 

29 minutes ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Thought it would be a good idea to control NEQ5 pro mount synscan V5 via Stellarium. Downloaded the EQMOD platform plus relevant drivers. Bought the EQMOD usb cable for 35 quid from FLO, connected everything, ran through the set up procedure, all the com port stuff and frankly the computer talks to the mount, the mount refuses to talk back.

I got on here for answers, and basically windows 10 doesn’t work with EQMOD yet. The thread is on here under software and frankly to get it to work would turn me into a pasty computer geek instead of a pasty Astro geek. I would rather look at the night sky than a computer screen

Marv

Win 10 most certainly does work with eqmod. 

Just now, Marvin Jenkins said:

I have an eqmod cable, chopped into pieces because it doesn’t work. You are welcome to the bits, perhaps you could make the perfect length cable out of it and spend a week of your life playing with a computer instead of looking at the sky like I did.

Marv

wow, i've been known to rage quit a game before but never chopped anything up in anger. lol. yeah if you dont want it i'd happily try and make use of it..

what happened? what was the issue?

OK, just redone my flats and dark flats. 300x each

when i look at tutorials on making master flat files they only mention bias frames and then lose me in what they are doing

Can anyone give me a step by step on making master darks and flats please. Can i use DSS or do i need something else?

I shot the same target last night. Didnt quite nail the processing though, never do.