brenski

i've a hunch that although the power is reaching the handset - it may not be transferring it to the motor.

apart from the Axis lock being tightened, how are the clutches and gears setup/tightened?

yes, locked in place.

I've tried 32x > and even after ten mins of watching it the two marks I made have not changed position

and there's no noise from the motor unit at all

7 hours ago, Franklin said:

Should have turned about 30 degrees in that time.

yep, but hadn't moved at all.

first image shows that power is reaching handset, second image shows mark on motor unit indicating no movement has occurred

58 minutes ago, Franklin said:

I had a battery pack that took 8 x 1.5v D batteries and it supplied 12v DC to a GP mount. Is the Bresser tracker 6vDC or 12vDC?

Does the light come on the hand controller?

the Bresser Photo Mount takes 8x 1.5v "D" batteries or 6v DC power via a plug (I don;t have one). I'm using 8x 1.5v "D" batteries .

The Red Light on the controller is illuminated, but the controller buttons have no affect at all. The mount does not move - even after a couple of hours!

i've tried the thing today with the 8x 1.5v "D" batteries - as per the manual.

After 2hrs with it powered on it hasn;t moved at all.

3 hours ago, Franklin said:

Most 6vDC gadgets can be run off a 5vDC rechargeable Powerbank. I believe the Bresser unit has a micro USB port so it should work fine.

thanks, will check this out

Hoping someone can help with this. I've just grabbed a

BRESSER Photo Mount [with tripod] from ebay: 

https://www.bresseruk.com/Astronomy/Accessories/Mounts/BRESSER-Photo-Mount-w-o-tripod.html

However, I now need to source some rechargeable batteries or a 6v DC power supply for it (United KIngdom)   

Anyone any ideas?

thanks guys, some really good pointers (pardon the pun).

for Andromeda what would be good exposure/gain settings for Sharpcap (the Star Adv 2i is unguided) 

thanks, will try that.

@vlaiv @tomato thanks for that really useful information.

Can I ask a couple more questions:

1. Backfocus - I currently have an extension tube in place which adds (5mm 10mm 30mm) 45mm in total. Is that enough? Or do I need more?

2. For a Target like Andromeda that fills the 72ED FOV - what is the best way to manually locate the target correctly? Or is there a simple way to do this with the Star Adv 2i that I'm not aware of?

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

I'm not sure.

DSLR has larger pixels and 72ED has about 3 times as long focal length, right? That must be 5-6 times higher resolution.

Light is much more spread over pixels.

I would expect image like above to be possible after stretching 8s sub - but not without processing.

I do already have a Optolong UHC Ultra High Contrast Light Pollution Filter 2" - would that help? or is the IR/UV cut filter the only solution? Can both be used together?

3 hours ago, vlaiv said:

You will need to add IR/UV cut filter to that setup.

As far as M31 in our frame - 8.5s is too short exposure to be able to tell if there is something there without very strong stretch (and even then, faint targets won't show up on such short exposure).

 

thanks for your advice, however your reply re: 8.5s is not strictly true., is it?

my DSLR with a 135mm lens attached managed to acquire the image below from a 10s exposure, so a Zwo 183MC Pro with a 72 ED should be able to capture something "recognisable" no?

(image is unprocessed)

Equipment:  72ED Pro, Zwo 183MC Pro Cooled, Star Adv 2i

Sharpcap Pro, 8.2s exposure time

I'm definitely doing something wrong here:

1. I think focus is out

2. I think my aim was out too

attached files are 18.3% and 100% crops of actual stacked tif file. Had the scope pointed at what I thought was Andromeda, but clearly not.

Any help appreciated

Hi

really hoping someone with knowledge of the above can help.

StarSpikes Pro and AstroFlat have decided they don't want to work anymore.

System: Windows 10 home 64-bit, 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz   2.42 GHz. 8gb ram, SSD HDD
Photoshop CS6, Atsroflat 1.4.11 & Starspikes Pro 4.6.12

Both filters load in Photoshop CS6, and even apply the effects to stars - in preview mode, but the minute I click OK it crashes Photoshop completely.

This is a new occurrence and everything was fine until this weekend. No changes to PShop or Astroflat/Starspikes had taken place.
I have this installed on more than one PC at home, but completely puzzled why the plugins have suddenly stopped working on this one machine.

I've even tried reinstalling both CS6 and the plugins - but still the same outcome on the one device. my other devices are fine. wondering if i need to buy an additional license to fix this?

any help/advice appreciated

Been using Sequator quite successfully for last few weeks, but last night and this morning it's behaving oddly.

So last night I captured some images of Orion's Nebula. All look fine in Windows Image Viewer, all load into DSS and PShop CS3 so there's no issue with the images themselves.

Imaging Detail
♦ Captured Using Skywatcher Star Adventurer Pro 2i Wifi, Skywatcher Evostar 72ED DS-Pro and Zwo ASI 183MC Pro (cooled)
♦ 90 x17sec uncompressed tif files @ 5496x3472, 
♦ All images are nicely located centre frame, with crisp round stars.

♦ Load Sequator > Add files to Star Images > select Base image > name Output image >click Start and Sequator starts doing its thing. It gets to the end having reported no file errors, a very brief "Done" appears at the bottom of the actions scroll window then the whole application disappears/crashes.

I've also tried re-running the process with reducing the stack to around half/quarter and even 6-10 images - same result every time.
Note, regardless of which settings are On or Off -  the program still crashed after the brief appearance of "Done"

this is a weird one. I've even uninstalled and reinstalled Sequator to exact same results.

8 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

As I said before, this isn't coma, it's star drift.

The exposure that works depends on the Focal Length of the lens, the longer the focal length, the more the star drift is "magnified".

If you're happy with the 12 seconds results, that's all that matters.

To improve requires taking say 20 exposures in quick succession and "Stacking" them together to make one improved image.

Then using Photoshop or equivalent to enhance the contrast and colour to your satisfaction.

You might need to merge one image of the landscape into the Stacked image.

Michael

thanks Michael. there's a little bit of a mind-bend happening here. i've read so many articles/tutorials/books etc on this and they all claim the same thing:

500/focal length = max exp (before drift appears). therefore with a 15mm lens, this should give around 20-22secs before drift becomes noticeable. In truth, I've just been looking at two different books: (Night Sky - Jennifer Wu / Landscape Astrophotography - Mike Shaw), both confirm untracked imaging with a cropsensorand 15mm lens, should be fine around 21/22 seconds. 

so, this has me utterly bewildered.

thanks guys. One of the other images I'd take was around 12secs - it still has some coma - nowhere near as much, but it is there nonetheless.

Attached image is  shortest length exposure taken: F/2.5, 12.5sec, ISO6400

Do you think it's any better?

Much of what I've read suggests 30secs untracked for Milky way shots, but that's appears to be not possible. So, how with <15secs do I capture enough to be able to get decent Milky Way detail? what exposure time can I reduce to and still obtain reasonably-detailed Milky Way shots?

What about processing? What do you do to bring out the best of an image?

I'm really hoping someone can help with this one.

A little bit of background: Initially, I thought the issue was build quality of Samyang 14mm lens. However, I've now purchased a better lens and been to a dark sky site to take his latest batch of Milky Way images.

Equipment: Canon 200d, Irix Firefly 15mm F/2.4 lens, tripod, shutter release cable.
Settings tried: ISO 800-3200, shutter 20-25secs, aperture F/2.4-and various stops down.

Issue: Stars are dashes (even in centre image). This was the same issue with the Samyang (previously). I'm now struggling with why the Irix is producing the same results. Could it be the Canon 200d has a problem?

Note: I've also tried OFF/ON settings for each of the following (in different combinations):

• Lens Aberration
• High ISO NR
• Mirror Lock

Results do not change.

Does anyone, have any ideas that may help me resolve this?

thanks

I've an SV Bony Sv205 planetary which I'd like to try using as an allsky? is this possible? I can't seem to locate a suitable adapter for the lenses I have.

Here's the equipment I was hoping to get working together:

8MP SV205 USB3.0 for Planetary 
https://www.svbony.com/sv205-astronomy-camera with either of the following two lenses:
https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/zwo-13-2-1mm-150-degree-lens
or
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/402026850723
IR Board HD 5mp 16mm Lens For Security IP Camera
standard M12x0.5 thread

is there an adapter that will do this? 
I'd like to try and rig this up with sharpcap for the Perseids in 3 weeks' time

the stars in the crop are from the centre of the image

the distorted effect is consistent across the entire image

the images are centre-ish of the image.

this evening i've tested the Canon 18-55mm kit lens - it produces nice round solid stars @ F/3.5.

so i'm veering toward this definitely being another Samyang issue

I’d had a few issues with my Samyang 14mm F/2.8 lens. the “trident-shaped” glare to images (on my Canon 200d). (see image 1) prompted me to contact Samyang.
So, off it went to Samyang’s (Intro 2020) Service HQ UK. After inspection they concluded that there were problems with the lens – but as it was out of warranty, they could replace it with a shiny bright MkII version (complete with focus lock) for a reduced price.

However, after play-testing, images appear to have a curious (different) mis-shape to them (see image 2). I was assured by Intro 2020 that the MkII is a great lens, and I have contacted them, but while i await their reply, is there anything else i can try to be sure. could this be the camera itself? or have i just been unlucky with two lenses?

seems that even stopped down to F/4  (see image 3) there's still something going on.

am wondering if any of the following Canon 200d settings are likely to help, and if so, what should i opt for?

♦ Mirror Lock
♦ Lens Electronic MF
♦ Lens aberration correction ► Peripheral illum / Chromatic aberr / Distortion / Diffraction
♦ White Balance
♦ Colorspace
♦ Auto Lighting Optimizer
♦ Long Exp Noise Reduction
♦ High Speed ISO NR

or anything else "on camera" that may help?

Note: crops (below)) are not taken from edge of image.

On 22/01/2021 at 22:51, Albut said:

I have one of these and it’s not your camera it’s the Hahnel captur timer module. I also have a hahnel giga t-pro and with same settings it works. Bottom line the captur timer module requires  interval 1  to be set to 4 or more seconds for it to work as above. Obviously a bug. Wish I had bought a different make. I have raised the issue with hahnel and await a reply.

agreed, but I also think my Canon 2ooD could be part of the problem.

I've tried with the following settings:

With the camera in Manual Mode and shutter set at bulb.
I'd set it up to take 77x   2-sec shots - at 1sec intervals.

Hahnel Captur (wireless) settings:
DELAY: 00:00'00"
LONG: 00:00'02"
INTVL 00:00'03"
INTVL1 N 77
INTVL2: 00:00'01"     <<< i cannot remove this setting, even removing batteries the value returns when powered up
INTVL2 N:

I don't think the camera can process the images at that rate, the reason I feel this is that a wired intervalometer I also use (with identical settings) also produced the same outcome:

Basic Cable Intervalometer settings:
DELAY: 00:00'00"
LONG: 00:00'02"
INTVL: 00:00'03"
N 77

In both cases the results are 2 single shots - and not the 77 as input. what am I doing wrong? or, is there some 200D setting i need to change?
Camera is NOT in Drive Mode.

my 3rd and 4th attempts - lots of activity - ISS? and other satellites?

second attempt - camera replaced with: Zwo ASI190MC