Anthonyexmouth

17 hours ago, Adam J said:

Exactly can it guide with short exposures as required by some modern harmonic drive mounts while using a narrow duel band filter. 

I think that the AA will work out just fine. But I would make sure its the latest version as rising cam have a new version of their camera and it will inevitably filter down to the clones. 

Adam

Yeah, I saw Cuiv's latest video on that. Whats the best option, AR glass or the IR Cut? RC give you the option. 

18 minutes ago, symmetal said:

I swapped over to using GSS a few months ago and have have no problems. It can be installed alongside EQMOD. Just follow the Quick start guide in the documentation and you should have no problems.

I swapped to it to avoid the issue of having to manually clear out the pointing data that is stored by Eqmod, each time it's started, which can stop it centreing on the target. A handy feature of GSS is the 3D model of your mount/scope orientation so you can quickly see where the weights are.

Alan

Yeah, I liked that 3d model plugin for NINA but it seems to have gone. Be nice to have it back in some form. I'll give it a go. 

Anyone here using this? Considered giving it a go during the summer nights as less to lose. 

Any issues installing it alongside EQMOD? 

1 minute ago, fwm891 said:

Re: Cooling. My AA 26C has kept very well to temperature even during this hot spell ± 0.1C with a pull down of circa  -20°C below ambient and the 0.1°C was only ever momentary

Ah, the cooling test in the review didn't really criticise the QHY, just happened to say the ZWO was able to get a little further below ambient than the QHY. 

What temp do you usually run the 26c at?

18 hours ago, tomato said:

I could be wrong but I assume the AA camera is essentially the Touptek item, as is the Risingcam version. I have the RC and QHY versions and you can’t put a cigarette paper between the quality of the images captured even though there was close on £800 difference in the asking price when I purchased them.

Just my 6 penny worth.

I did see a ZWO QHY comparison and although only a single sample of each the ZWO was consistantly able to cool better but I think that was the only thing. I was really tempted by the RC version after seeing Cuiv using one but wasnt sure if I'd get hammered on import duty. 

3 minutes ago, fwm891 said:

I bought the AA 26C in Jan this year and its a great camera. Currently selling only because I'm after a duo chip'd 2600MC.

Duo chip sounds nice but would want to see how the guiding copes with a dual band filter in front of it. 

Whats the 26c lacking to make it £600 cheaper? Or is ZWO just taking the P now they've trapped so many into the ASIair ecosystem? 

On 06/06/2023 at 13:32, Albir phil said:

I have a zwo 533 when I have finished imaging I just leave it and it will warm up on its own.Not sure but I think warming it up might cause problems.Best let it go back to ambient temperature on it's own.

The warm up in nina/APt and such doesn't actually warm it it, it gradually adjusts the cooling to allow a nice slow warm up. If its a warm summer night just switching off from -15/20 can cause a bit of a shock. 

Has anyone seen a good comparison for these 2 cameras? I've seen a few comparing the ASI to QHY but none directly comparing the ZWO to AA. On the face of it it's hard to justify the additional £600+ for the ZWO. Anyone know a good reason to spend the extra? 

15 minutes ago, neil phillips said:

Windows can cut power on a USB port if it detects a problem with the port. Mine just did exactly the same. camera wouldn't connect. I assume you've tried more than one port

yeah, i popped into FLO a couple fo weeks ago, its getting a new mainboard

5 hours ago, Adam J said:

so fan won't start unless you have both power to usb an to 12 volts. check the usb cable and that the port it's plugged into can supply sufficient current. If you have other things on the same usb buss the can drain too much power, so unplug other devices. 

I checked all that. It's a permanent setup, just stopped working. I dropped it into flo this afternoon. 

Pretty sure this is a return to ZWO situation but asking here anyway. My 294mc pro won't connect, red light comes on but fan doesn't start up and no usb connection in nina or device manager. 

Sent my 290mc for repair last year and was fast and quite cheap, anyone sent an out of warranty 294 back and what did it cost? 

My latest play around with processing some of my Horsehead data, trying out GHS in Pixinsight. Loving my SM90, just need to swap out the 294mc for something with an IMX571 sensor. 

2 hours ago, Lumos said:

I believe that your ICC profile is to help your printer match what you see in the monitor.  I was referring to the colourspace that the image exists in. There are several places for this to get mixed up, going from Pixinsight to Lightroom and especially going to your printer, you need to make sure that your printer is going to respect your colour space and not try and help out by doing another conversion. Here is what an sRGB image reports as in the bottom left corner of Photoshop

You may have to click on the little > sign to change what it is reporting. As this is only an 8 bit colourspace if you hand it a 16 bit colour image you have way more colours than can fit into 8 bits so it clumps groups of similar colours together, and that gives your banding. It also screws up the colour balance.

PS reports it as an RGB 16 bit image, can't find where LR reports it. 

17 minutes ago, Lumos said:

Often when I see results like that it means that I have screwed up the gamut, or colourspace. Usually I will be displaying and Adobe RGB image in an sRGB colourspace without having done the conversion. It looks like you have Lightroom trying to display colours that it does not have in its gamut so you are getting blotching as it groups your gradients into the dolours it has got.

I have LR set to my custom ICC profile, or is that something different?

10 hours ago, Budgie1 said:

I had a bit of a play with your image and managed to get more of the dust to show by using a Luminance Mask. To create this is clicked on the button under "View" marked "Extract CIE L* component" and then use HistogramTransformation to highlight the parts I wanted to exclude. Then I used a blur mask to come up with this mask:

This was then inverted, so I could work on the background and increase the RGB/K in Curves and this is the result:

Thanks, I'll try that myself later. 

Working on a Horsehead image and wondering if anyone can tell me if there's a process in Pixinsight that can help me bring more contrast and colour into the dust below the horsehead. If I boost the curves it's there but it blows out everytrhing else. I tried a range mast and inverting it but couldn't get that to work. May not be possible but wanted to see if anyone had any technique they might suggest. 

Horse_ABE.tif

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

What's your difficulty in cropping and sizing in Ps? Maybe we can help.

Olly

I don't know really. It's just LR has a nice representation of the layout with borders in the print module. I've zero experience with PS and only slightly more with LR. 

If I knew how to use PS I'd probably do a little post in there too but clueless on its workings. 

19 minutes ago, sharkmelley said:

32-bit data is always treated by Photoshop as linear and will be displayed with a linear profile.  It therefore displays differently to equivalent 16-bit data unless the 16-bit data has an embedded linear ICC profile.  In general, if you want your image to look the same in Photoshop as it does in PixInsight  then do not export it from PixInsight in 32-bit format.

Mark

Thanks, Any idea on odd LR vs PS issue? 

46 minutes ago, alacant said:

Thanks everyone.
As the tingle is always there, I think I can rule out static. So, coming back to the car-battery-or-linear-psu advice, can anyone recommend a substitute for a cheap 12v 5A model?
@Anthonyexmouth thanks for the specific psu (exactly what I need) but I think the link points to a switching model of 13.8v.

So, anyone any recommendations for a 12v 5A linear psu?

TIA

Switch mode is fine. 99% of setups out there are using one. 

Edit: Also worth considering more than 5A rating. Start adding dew bands or other accessories and you'll soon need more. Cheaper to invest now in something that'll grow with you. 

Ok, hoping some lightroom or PS nerds are out there for this. I tried printing an image in lightroom but the colours printed were nothing like the screen and it was super blotchy and harsh transitions. had the correct custom ICC profile. Was getting very disillusioned with the whole thing and decided to have one more go with PS, completely identical settings but totally different print. colours on screen almost identical to print. Any ideas? I'd like to use LR as its easier to frame and border the image, at least it is for me with very very little LR or PS knowledge. 

PS left - LR Right. I highlighted the blotchy area. Really harsh blue 

1 hour ago, alacant said:

Hi everyone

Well, not exactly a shock, more a surprise 'tingle' when touching the metal part of the mount/telescope/focuser/camera. Happens with most mounts.
I have tried two cheap 12v 5A switch power supplies, one with a three pin and the other with a two pin mains lead.with the same result. 

I'm told I need either a car battery or a linear power supply to lose the leak. I don't want the former so, having a look around, I found this:

https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005004349595403.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.113.6844356e6DaLnO&algo_pvid=ce93851a-1906-4092-85b6-be4e2e6d8410&algo_exp_id=ce93851a-1906-4092-85b6-be4e2e6d8410-56&pdp_ext_f={"sku_id"%3A"12000028856749257"}&pdp_npi=3%40dis!EUR!102.1!66.37!!!!!%402100bc5c16787906922808092d0737!12000028856749257!sea!ES!168948195&curPageLogUid=YICs6qqBuMUx

Would that be any good? Alternatives you have tested personally?

I've no idea about electrics so any help or guidance anyone could give would be most gratefully received.

TIA

Seems too close in price to a well respected and well built PSU. 

I've always used Nevada units and never had a single issue. 

https://www.nevadaradio.co.uk/product/nevada-psw-30h/

As someone else said, the clue is in the word "cheap"

New to the printing of my images and wondering if I should be saving as 16bit or 32bit Tiff. When I save as 32bit the image is super over exposed when I open in lightroom or PS but 16bit looks similar to the image in Pixinsight. Any hints on how I should be doing it?

I wish they'd made a good after market wedge for the HEQ5

Anyone here know of a decent looking bracket I can mount under my dovetail so I can mount my asi290 looking forward to use as an all sky cam when imaging? Yes, i could use a little metal bracket from B&Q but wondered if there was anything a little nicer looking and made for the job. 

17 hours ago, sinbad40 said:

I got tired of missing the odd bits of clear sky taking everything out and setting up followed by cloud, so got a cover 365/24/7, a bigger version than the one i really needed just in case i upgraded the scope.  Couple of times it was damp inside but was given advise to get something inside just to keep the temp up under the cover, and that would sort it, and getting it off the grass would also help.

So my wife was not happy with me building a pier with the 8" galv ducting i had, didn't think it would look right or nice for some reason, couldn't be bothered arguing about it, so I just bought one.  Now installed, with everything setup under the cover.  I leave the mini PC running with the dew heaters on minimum setting, and its been like that for the last month.  I give it a check every couple of days if not getting used, and its been nice and dry.

Reading this has made me realise why I've probably never suffered with damp under my cover, I'm on a raised deck with the pier block and column isolated from it. Got 250 between the deck and the ground below so plenty of airflow and no moisture to evaporate up. 

I clad my pier in some reeds, change it every couple of years, thought it would be better than flaky paint to manage.