Tangoringo

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31069790512&searchurl=kn%3Dsky%2B%26%2Btelescope%2Bpocket%2Bsky%2Batlas%26sortby%3D17&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title9 There ya go £294.... baragin. Apparently they do a jumbo edition which is a bit bizarre for a pocket atlas but hey ho. :-))

Hi folks, Having just had one of those really frustrating nights with driver issues while looking at one of those beautiful imaging, clear sky nights I was hoping that you goodly folks may be able to assist. I have had a summer sojourn from AP and in the meantime have introduced a Primaluce Eagle in to the equation. After struggling with the infamous QHY drivers and in particular an overscan issue on the driver panel I seem to have everything working on APT however on NINA which I was hoping to migrate to I keep getting a frustrating 'Value Cannot be null Parameter name: this ' message every time I try to take an image plus what seems to be quite a wait with the message 'waiting for camera' in the status bar. I've checked all the settings and everything appears ok but just wondered if anybody has encountered this before? I'm using the Eagle 4 ( Win 10 ) with NINA using the 32 bit version ( for aforementioned driver issues ) and QHY10c. Any help/advice really greatfully received!!! Thanks all. Ian PS Mods Not sure if this fits here or in the software section but feel free to move if necessary.

I’d be interested to hear how you get on Simon as I’ve had the same issue. Keep us posted. 👍🏻

Can I recommend the book Mastering Pixinsight by Rogelio Andreo? It’s available as pdf and/or hard copy and it’s a very good way to get in to and, more importantly, understand the Pixinsight processes. Mastering Pixinsight HTH’s Ian

I’m in...😂😂

That’s good to see and pretty amazing for just 16mins. Where the appetite nicely. 👍🏻 Quick Q. How do you avoid the reddening if the stars which I’ve noticed in a lot of L-enhance images?

I'm in exactly the same boat as my view to the E from about 080 to 130 azimuth are out of bounds below about 60degrees. I have been trying the Heart and Soul,the Iris, the Elephants Trunk etc to the N but with the fairly bright Northerly horizon its been a bit of a struggle so have been largely concentrating on views to the S and galaxies around Ursa Major, that kind of thing.

I have recently been running my set up with individual power supplies form a 4 pt extension lead thereby forming a great spaghetti junction. I now have in my sticky mitts a HitecAstro MountHub Pro V4 with a power supply cable with no cigarette lighter style or other type of adapter fitted thereby giving me the option of a power tank with cig adapter or a fixed 12-13.8v DC power supply. Having spoken to Dave at HitecA he recommended a Rapid switch mode power supply rated at up to 25A. I intend to use a QHY 10, an HEQ5pro and 2 dew heaters. Would this be a bit of overkill or would a Powerbank style battery be a possible and more flexible option? Just exploring options and looking for advice before I commit. Second question is how could I attach a fuse on the DC input to protect the Mount Hub/equipment? If anybody has a similar set up or any top tips/recommendations with definite do's and don'ts I would be eternally grateful for any help. I have next to no electrical experience so please treat me like a five year old with your answers...the more specific the better! Thanks in advance, Ian

Coolio. Thx for the reply CM ( love the name! ) I've been trying to avoid the largely Northern ( light ) skies over the past few weeks and have spent a bit of time on M27 coincidentally. Looking forward to experimenting with the L-enhance to see how it ( and I ) perform. As I mentioned, its my first filter so a whole new world awaits.

Hi folks, Just a very quick question. I have an L enhance filter on order from FLO. While I'm waiting for it to arrive I was just wondering if there is any benefit to using the filter during these 'not quite so dark' nights? I appreciate all the light/moon pollution properties they offer during regular 'proper dark' night time imaging sessions etc but I wondered if they would increase the 'effective night' time for imaging at this time of year if working on nebula? I'm guessing the answer is no as you would still have the same background light and taking it to the extreme you wouldnt be able to use the filter effectively in broad daylight for example but with this being my first filter ( I'm an OSC heathen ) I know very little about the hidden advantages they may be able to offer. The main trigger for the question was last sundays chat with Nik who offered the possibility of using narrowband filters when imaging the moon for increased sharpness which was a benefit I hadnt even considered. Thanks for any hints/tips in advance. Cheers, Ian

Wow. Nice work and its great to see what is possible with the new tri/quad band filters. Great stuff. Only comment is it may be worth cropping the L and R edges a tad as there seems to be an unmasked area or just an area which has had different processing from the rest. ( I say this as a complete newb so take it with a pinch of salt. I'd be over the moon producing an image like that.

Haha. You spotted my deliberate mistake there then. It did confuse me a tad initially when I was referred to by my wifes name.Glad to hear I wasnt the only one or do AP'ers have a certain penchant for cross dressing? 🤣

Thanks Craig and Thank you for being so restrained with your reply to my completely numpty question.🤣 Cant believe I went straight past that post....not once, but at least three times. Doh!!! Off now to wop myself around the noggin with vol1 of Burnhams Celestial Handbook in shame.

Any news on login details yet at all? Sorry to nag but I'm just checking I havent missed something somewhere. Really looking forward to this and top work organising this series.

Would whole heartedly agree with this. Although, as mentioned you will need to hook up a computer to the Polemaster this little camera is worth its weight in gold. Not to mentioned saving the sore knees, cricked neck, minutes/hours of cursing and fiddling etc etc. Set up is a breeze and can be done in 5-10mins tops and it can be carried out during those dusk hours thereby not wasting viewing/imaging time. Good luck in whichever route you choose.

Haha. Thx for the reply. Glad its not just me then. TBH it was one of those things I hadnt really noticed until today. Would it be the flattener causing this as apart from that its what I'd consider a 'standard' light path to the CCD? Guess I'll just have to do a bit of flipping in the meantime. Cheers, Ian

I can only echo the above comments. I initially baulked at the price of Pixinsight but its worth every penny if you are wanting to AP seriously IMHO.

Please bear with me with me with this question as I'm sure theres an obvious answer alas my newbie brain cant quite fathom it just yet. I finished processing my first galaxy subs today ( a limited 80 mins or so caught through my WO90 ( with 0.8x flattener ) and QHY10c ) I am still taking baby steps but having got to the end of the workflow and being reasonably satified with my first go I took a step back and admired my handiwork while comparing to other images to see where improvements could be made. The obvious thing that jumped out at me was the mirroring of my image of M51 to the 'normal' ones I'd seen online. I appreciate its an easy job to flip the image but I'm just trying to get my head around ( while APT is whirring away on my latest imaging session ) why this has happened during the initial imaging . Just wondering if anybody could offer an explanation. Thanks in advance for any help/advice

Good evening folks. Just a very quick question. I'm using a QHY 10 with APT for image capture with all settings entered from the QHY website. When I open my image files I'm getting a border on all files ( including flats,darks and bias ) Any ideas why this border is here, and if there is no obvious fix, can I leave it in situ until images have been stacked and then crop when all the stacking and processing is complete or will this have a negative effect on the pre process? Please find attached an example un-debayered single sub taken last night ( saved as a tif ) with the offending border. Any thoughts at all? Thanks in advance, Ian Example.afphoto

I just wanted to pass on my thanks for all the help and advice offered here over the last few days. Although I missed the clear skies on Friday night I managed about an hour last night before the clouds unfortunately rolled in. Not much time for experimentation but with a very rough ( 20' accuracy ) polar align I was getting semi reasonable'ish guiding to within 1.5" without any tinkering. The deviation graphs were a bit spikey buit compared to where I was just a few days ago it was a comletely different world. Removing the ST4 cable and increasing the pulse guide setting to 0.9worked a treat and also seemed to partially solve my USB overload/slow mouse symptoms as well bizarrely. I'm wondering if the cable was increasing the mount-laptop traffic somehow? Plenty of fine tuning to come but a hugely positive step. One of the best bits of advice which I hadnt quite taken on board ( as I'd done the initial profile ages ago ) was in the video that Malcolm mention regarding using the set up assistant. If in doubt run again as its amazing how simple thi ngs can be picked up as a result. Either way, although time was limited I was still able to get a few 90sec subs of the Beehive as reward which will never win any monthly competitions on here but are at least a couple of steps up the long ladder. With everything all up and running wrt Stellarium/ASCOM/EQMOD/Plate Solving/APT and PHD at least I've got a decent platform to work from so standby now for a hoard of questions on debayering/flats/darks and general image processing!!! Thank you all once again for your help. I cant tell you how useful all the posts and advice were and what a great resoiurcew this forum is. Cheers, Ian

Thanks. Will give it a whizz 🤞🏻

ASCOM/EQMOD etc all up and running. Will try the other drivers later to see how it goes. I think QHY do a generic ascom guiding driver now as part of a 3 driver package. Will give that and the specific ascom 5 L ii driver a go later. Thank you.👍🏻

That’s another thing worth investigating as I’ve never been able to get Sharpcap ( 3.2 or 3.1 ) to work with the regular 5L driver as it always shuts down ( trying to write over protected memory was the message if I remember rightly ) Will give the ascom driver a whirl. Unfortunately I only have one USB port on my laptop which precludes me from ditching the hub but I could try it direct to narrow down the fault, Will report back.... Thank you.

Hi Michael, Sorry, I missed your post before posting my last. The guide assistant picked up on this last night. I wonder if you may be on to something with that? Certainly one avenue worth investigating. Many thanks.

Thank you everybody for your replies. Further to the above I had another try last night but again with no success with PHD. I seem to have everything working together ok with APT in addition to Stellarium,All Sky Plate Solver and PS2 for alignment/solving and Polemaster for Polar Align. Mount balanced and checked free of snags. QHY 5LII attached to 400m ST80 scope with no apparent flex.Cable from QHY to autoguider port and from QHY to hub. Laptop linked to mount via Star Tech powered 4USB hub and HEQ5 Pro hand controller port ( no HC fitted ) First night ( above ) HEQ5 ascom selected for mount in settings whereas last night I tried ST4 with 'On camera' selected for mount but with similar awful results. Attached below are the debug files from 2 nights and guide assistant recommendations... Questions from this ( its the first time I've used the GA) - 1) Why is the polar alignment indicating such a big value (59.2 arc min ) when it was deemed pretty much spot on with Polemaster ? 2) Could it be the min move which is the issue or is it a somehwat bigger problem? 3) I'm assuming using the ST4 cable plugged in when using pulse guiding would have no issues if not selected in the mount settings on set up? 4) Fundamentally, what am I doing wrong???? 5) One thing I did notice using ST4 was the more rapid refresh rate on Live view through my imaging camera although I still have a very sluggish touchpad on my laptop with everything connected. Could this be a sign of the USB being overloaded with traffic? Thank you all so much for the help/pointers so far and apologies for taking up your time. SGL is such a great community with so much knowledge and expertise and so many helpful souls and I cant tell you how much I appreciate every word of help that is typed. I can only apologise for my hamfisted and rather bungling approach! :-)) Hope all the attachments below make sense......no laughing please! Cheers all and stay safe. Ian PHD2_DebugLog_2020-04-09_201624.txt PHD2_GuideLog_2020-04-09_201624.txt