Anthonyexmouth

5 hours ago, Carbon Brush said:

As it it was borderline range for the wifi I fitted an external high gain antenna to the shed.
This is a 30cm square plastic housing on the shed side. The signal improvement means I get reliable fast connection to the house.

 

 

+1 for the external antenna. Even better is to get a directional one. They dont cost any extra but helps filter other signals in the area. Just point it directly at your router or nearest access point in the house. Should be able to get one for £30-£50 

I'd try a mains power supply. this is textbook undervoltage power supply issue. find a 13.8v - 15v power supply to try before ripping it apart again. 

Just now, Victor Boesen said:

Yes, I'll be using it for the Evostar 72. I just figured FLO would have the screws?

They probably do. All my skywatcher rings are metric

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F233157007898

No, should be just M6 bolts. Is it skywatcher rings you're attaching? 

Ok, slide the dovetail in then bolt the scope on

2 minutes ago, Victor Boesen said:

The only problem is the screw head will be protruding not allowing my to slide it onto my mount or am I missing something?

Doesn't need to slide in. Just open the saddle and drop it in. 

you just need longer M6 bolts to make up for the non-countersunk dovetail. Your better option is a slotted dovetail as it gives more adjustment

7 minutes ago, fwm891 said:

Anthony - I have two drivers loaded:

ZWO_ASI_Camera_ASCOM

ZWO_ASI_Camera_Driver

Ah, I'm using APT and in the ascom setting the offset is locked at 30. Was told this is what it's locked at in the latest drivers. 

On 16/08/2019 at 11:00, fwm891 said:

Thanks - What I've found with this is that shorter exposures really seem to work. M27 image with only 15x 30s subs shows a lot more detail than I ever expected. The M16 image is mainly 2 min subs...

Definitely need to pursue this further. Couple with dither between frames and that seems an easy way of reducing background noise.

yeah, the shorter subs work well with this super sensitive chip. i think this is where a lot of the early compaints for this camera came from, people pushing the sub length too far.

what driver are you using? i thought the offset was locked in the latest driver. 

how hard is it to defork a c8 and fit it with a vixen dovetail?

9 minutes ago, Steve1984 said:

Thank you for all your replies. I feel you are right Adam, tired and tested could be the way forward and with this being my first astro-cam, getting the ZWO would likely mean it will be easier to find advice and help with it when I get stuck!

Thank you for the info on Altair's 294 Bobinius. Yes it was Sharpcap Pro I was taking about. The case does seem nice and would be useful to me for securely storing the camera when not in use/travelling.

So after all that, I think I have settled on the ZWO ASI294MC again!

 

Thank you all.

The ZWO comes with a very nice padded case. Not a hard shell but still very good.

14 minutes ago, wimvb said:

You can also use the calibration process to calibrate the flats and make a master flat. 

1. Integrate dark flats into master

2. Use this master to calibrate flats

3. Integrate flats to create master flat

all a bit brief for me.

whats the process of integrating the d/f into a master

how do i use that master to calibrate the flats

how do i integrate the flats. 

I'd be more inclined to look for a used SW ED80, unless its a portable/travel setup you're looking for

can someone explain in a simple step by step how to use dark flats in pixinsight. every other one ive read gets a bin in depth as to how its doing it and not what to do. 

thanks 

Was just reading that thread. I think if the tension is right then the motor works and holds focus. I could be wrong so that's why I posted. Manual focus is such a pain and so last year

Ok, so now I have a permanent pier in the garden and get to sit in a comfy chair inside the only thing bugging me now is the focuser on my ED80. The thumb screw shifts focus when tightened. Now do I upgrade the focuser or will adding the zwo auto focuser be the best upgrade

not had the camera very long but no issues so far and couldnt find any others who had issues. 

being able to buy from FLO was a selling point for me too. 

i went the zwo route because it came with all the adapters needed to get the correct back focus with the flattener i am using. the altair doesn't. i also didnt need a power supply and its never going in a case although it does come with a very nice padded case. as for sharpcap i already have it and its only £10

no experience with astro stuff getting wet but being a roofer and working on boats ive had plenty of electrical gear soaked and survive. if its running and plugged in it can cause issues. ive dropped drills/grinders/skill saws in the sea before. none actually plugged in/running though. my goto is to rinse well with deionised water, luckily i keep a marine aquarium so have gallons of RO/DI water on hand but it can be easily bought at halford. all have survived after a rinse and extended drying time. 

I think there might have been an issue with early models, and that did concern me but most everything recent i've read says its all good. 

58 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

@Anthonyexmouth

No wonder you have trouble stacking and processing your image. Data is rather poor. A lot of subs is just high altitude clouds and LP reflection of them.

Here is a little gif that I made - it's red channel binned to small size and linearly stretched to show frame to frame difference. Some of the frames contain nothing more than LP glow and only brightest stars.

Stacking such data will produce poor results - both in terms of SNR and with significant strange gradients.

I will try to get the best out of this data using my own "sophisticated" algorithm designed to handle such cases where there is significant SNR difference between subs, but I don't expect much from this data. I will need to remove at least couple of frames that are very poor.

I thought i checked them. This is why i miss pixinsight, the blink module makes weeding out bad frames. 

6 hours ago, vlaiv said:

 

Best approach in that case is to take set of flat darks right after taking flats - just cover your scope after you've taken flats and do another set with same settings - exposure length also being the same. Flats / flat darks don't take much time to complete, you should be done with them in about 10 minutes or so (depends on download speed, exposure length and number of subs you take).

As a flat field generator is out of the question at the moment, motorised focuser is next on the shopping list. Would a flat field app on my tablet be a better way to take uniform flats? am i right in thinking i can lower the light to take slightly longer flats and then take the flat darks right after with the same settings?

what would be a good number of frames to take?

1 minute ago, wimvb said:

Yes

cool, i'll get to work on the dark flats tonight. forecast is promising so i'll uncover the scope and maybe get some imaging done too. 

4 minutes ago, wimvb said:

 

Long story short, if you don't scale your darks, and take dark flats, you don't need bias. Otherwise you do.

I hope this makes sense.

so as long as i have a library of darks that correspond to the various exposure times of any subs i take then a single library of dark flats is all i need, and dark flats are the same exposure length as my flats?

ok, a little confused now. a few say i don't need bias frames and some say i do. Also, whats the difference between bias and dark flats?