SlimPaling

Hi again ... 3 minutes later! Sorry! I am attaching a screen shot of what I got last night when inspecting one of my Lum flats showing two graphs in Maxim. What should I be looking for in these graphs? Are there other graphs in Maxim that would be helpful? Mike

Hi Paul ... thanks for your reply ... As usual I am stumped by certain things that you mention in the above quote 😞 Q1: what "standard tool in Maxim" do you mean???? Q2: when you sat "25,000 to 40,000" .... which window in Maxim are you looking at? Mike (PS: there might be more questions to come !)

I am getting a bit confused about the best way to make flat frames in Maxim DL .... there seems to be more than one way of doing it from what I have found on the 'net. Can somebody please sort me out at all? OK .... I have a f6 Refractor , Moravian G2 Mono camera and a flat field foil. I am using Maxim DL to make (hopefully) accurate flats. What is the best way to make a set of flats of the correct exposure in Maxim DL??? Mike

My computer is a Win10 (64bit) .... I have had no probs installing files

It now makes sense 🙂 In my rush to get a newer version of DSS I hadn't spotted that "Two Icons" had been placed on my desktop!!! I had been clicking on the "Live2 version". I think that I have now got it all sorted. Thanks for your suggestion.

It certainly looks like it !!!! It looks like I have really messed up DSS up on my computer now. I have just spent half an hour deleting v5.1.5. (LIVE?) a then trying to get my original version back up and I keep getting the very same screen 😞 I can't spot the "non-live" version of DSS on the web site. How on earth do I get back to a full working version that can cope with my Solar imaging runs???? I am totally lost now 😞

Hi ... I have just uploaded the new version ( I think that I was using v 4.1.1 before uploading the new version !) and I get a very plain screen when I open v5.1.5 up. I can't seem to get a "normal looking screen" that I had seen before. See my attached screen shot Am I missing something????? Mike

Hi ... I need to tweek the back focus between the flattener on my f6 APO scope and my Moravian CCD camera to compensate for my 1mm thick filters. I have seen on the 'net that some people say that I need to increase the back focus by 1/3 of the thickness of my filters = 1/3mm However when I asked the manufacturer of my flattener & scope ( APM Scopes ) he suggested that I need to add 1mm to my back focus. Before I start to take my kit apart ..... does anybody have any suggestions which of the above is correct? Mike

I am interested in also adding a camera to monitor my scope remotely during imaging sessions .... but I have a question that somebody might be able to help me with. My scope is controlled by a in10 mini computer in my observatory ... but I able to access this computer directly from my "House Computer" linked by an Ethernet cable and "AnyDesk". This system works great but I would like to be able to keep an eye on the inside of my observatory without the need to keep occasionally going down the garden. I don't really want to add a second Ethernet cable ( it was very involved to get the first one in place! ) and I don't have a mobile phone ( I am trying to avoid this ! ) So my question is ... what are my options to link a any one of the cameras, suggested above, in the observatory to my "house computer"? Will "AnyDesk" cope with it??? Mike

Well ... I tried my trusty B&D drill with hammer option and it did not cope when the bit hit to a stone in the concrete and it went way off line and it completely destroyed my masonry bit.. I quickly realized that my resulting 4 holes would not have lined up with the holes in the bottom of my pier ..... and I changed tack. ..... I got a "JCB SDS Plus Hammer drill" which went through my concrete like butter with all 4 holes in the correct place. The whole process took about 5 minutes :-))) Mike

You will almost certainly need to have access to a decent hammer drill to make the holes in the concrete. An ordinary drill ( even with a top quality masonry bit) will simply bounce off any stones in the concrete and go badly off course. Rawlbolts are fine.

I hope somebody can help me to find where I can find accurate coordinates for a Comet. After a long layoff from imaging for various reasons .... a couple of nights ago, after looking up the calculated coordinates on the "NASA Horizon's" web site and entered these into my tracking software I took a set of 11 x100sec images of Comet 29P. After starting to process them I saw that the comet was quite a long way off the center of the images. I am assuming that the coordinates that I had used were slightly off. Yesterday I did some searching on the 'net into accurate daily Comet coordinates I am faced with at least 5 slightly different sets of Comet coordinates and I don't know which to use. The "NASA Horizon" web page gives me two different sets of coordinates ..... (1) "ICRF RA/Dec" and (2) "Apparent RA/Dec" coordinates. The "COBS" web site shows another set of coordinates. In CdC, when I click on any Comet , I get two more coordinates (1) "Mean of Date RA/Dec" and (2) " Mean J2000 coordinates" again slightly different to all of the others. So it total I am faced with 5 slightly different sets of RA/Dec coordinates to choose from! Does anybody have any suggestions as to which set of coordinates are best for me to try out next time I am able to do any Comet imaging? Regards Mike

Thanks to both of you for pointing me in the right direction 🙂 I have now found two of Marty's videos covering how to use Flats on the "fly" in FireCapture which explains it all very clearly. If anybody else needs to find these videos made by Marty .... look up " Wise Imaging" on YouTube. Mike

Hi ... can anybody please point me in the right direction? From what I understand it is possible to include pre-saved flat files automatically while doing solar imaging using Firecapture. However .... I have spent the last couple of days trying to understand how to do this and failed. I can't seem to find any information about this on the 'net ... including in the great video tutorials on the FireCature website 😞 Before I part with hard earned cash to purchase a "Daystar Flat Cap" can some kind person give me some clues .... or point me in the right direction? Mike

Hi ..... can anybody help me to confirm the true orientation of my CCD Camera? I do not have a rotator fitted I need this information when I set up "Astrometrica". When I upload images to "Astronomy.net" it tells me that the orientation of my images are all " 179.9 degrees E of N " ..... and when I check my images with "Aladin" I can see that my images align up very well with the image on "Aladin". Am I correct in thinking that the my images are almost exactly horizontal .... but upside down? Does this mean that my CCD orientation setting in "Astrometrica" is 180 degrees??? Cheers Mike

I have now posted ( Hopefully!) a jpeg version of one of the files ...

Hi .. I recently did a short run of 6 x120sec exposures (using the Lum filter) of Comet C/2020 R7 using a scope at a well known facility in Chile. I knew that the Moon was quite close to the comet but I just wanted to see if I could spot the comet on the resulting images so I expected some interference from the light of the Moon but the wasn't a major concern for me. However, when I did some initial basic stretching of the resulting images I could see some very strange dark patterns all over each image ... to me the look like some tracks left by wold animals. All of the images had the exact same defects. Does anybody have any idea why the glare of the Moon should produce these strange patterns? I haven't bothered to even try to remove them in PixInsight as I don't think anything will work. I am attaching one of the images to show what I mean.LUM 1.tif Cheers Mike LUM 1.tif

Thanks for this suggestion .... I will give it a try Mike

Hi David .... Some of my cables are direct connections to equipment and others go via a HiTech Powered hub.

Hi ... I have several USB cables linking up my scope, camera, focuser, etc. to my computer .... and I would like to check if all of these cables are working 100%. I have been having some intermittent problems with my set-up and I suspect that I might have some iffy USB cables. Rather than just buying a load of new replacement cables willy-nilly are there any simple USB cables testers available out there???? I can't spot any so far 😞 Mike

Hi ... I am trying to find ways to cut down on condensation in my Roll Off observatory .... my kits seems to get pretty damp in the winter months despite there being plenty of ventilation. I am currently using a couple of greenhouse bar heaters controlled by a standard timer switch during the nights which seems to help a bit. A friend has suggested that I might try to incorporate a humidity controller ( like : https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B083BRFK3R/?coliid=IAPJC7W3RZGA1&colid=2QHVF4PDG6ZPZ&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it ) which could then switch on or off the tube heaters. Before I go ahead and spend any money .... does anybody have any experience of using one of these contollers for this purpose? What “Relative Humidity” setting do I set the controller to to give me some chance of success??? Mike

Well ... I am interested ... especially if you get the time to do a version for my Win10 PC and my Moravian G2 camera 🙂 Mike

Hi .... this is interesting. I am not a computer geek .... my computer has a Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 .... do you know if these changes will work on it? If I make a mess of it can I go back to the original settings? Mike

Recently I have noticed something which bugs me when I open up TIFs ( LRGB and HSO TIFs) into Photoshop after them being previously processed in PixInsight. I have noticed that, despite carefully adjusting the histogram of each file in PixInsight before saving, when I load them into Photoshop I see that the histogram needs to be seriously re-adjusted again before I can do work with them in Photoshop. The files are way off before I have to re-adjust them😞 Is this normal or am I doing something wrong??? Mike

My first attempt at a two pane mosaic .... took a long time to sort out how to use APP but I am impressed in how it stitched the two panes together. 12 x 600sec HSO images processed using a combination of PixInsight, APP and Photoshop