Rusted

I was bombed by ASCOM error notices last night after getting PHD2 to work earlier. It didn't seem to like running PHD2, SharpCap, CduC and HitechAstro DC Focus all at the same time. Though it was non-specific as to which. I'll try again in daylight when I'm not so busy. I was trying to capture a "jelly" moon before it went behind a chimney. So just kept going and killing the error notices. Waste of time anyway. I was a martyr to the "thermals."

Slight worry if your dehumidifier drain freezes solid. Foam pipe lagging? A bit naff? Is the drainage warm or cold? I imagine cold as it is condensate.

An Update: I have managed to connect ASCOM to PHD2 [or vice versa] and connect the camera. Hint for The Day: ZWOs don't work without the USB3 cable as well as the ST4.

Dust?

The assumption [for breathless respect and unbridled awe] being that, despite paying 2 x £50 for commercial, AWR-ASCOM drivers, the system still misbehaves. Even after all this time, extensive research and endlessly repeated alignment, my mounting still can't find The Moon. Nor The Sun. Nor any other object in a first Goto slew from the very same parking position it always forgets overnight. Once Synced on an object it still can't find the next with a Goto slew. This despite being a fixed observatory. Whose coordinates are known [and entered] to within one second of arc. Coordinates which AWR/ASCOM/CduC [All for one and one for all!] arbitrarily change at intervals. I must be easily £2k out of pocket on these drives and control software by now. If they were commercial objects I'd have the Trading Standards Goto after them. I can't quote from memory but the last message I had from a first download of PHD2 said "Can't connect to AWR-ASCOM." I had read [I'm endlessly naive] that using my ZWO120 + PHD2, in auto-guiding mode, would overcome many of my present difficulties. Yeah, right!

So, basically, ASCOM is alien technology. Which nobody understands except "the gods who live in the sky." And, they won't deign to come back down to earth to explain why it doesn't always work for we "mere mortals." As in: No speekee dee P H D 2-ee. Or, "It's Friday, so we are going to [arbitrarily] reverse the Declination Drive direction of rotation because mere mortals don't deserve our highly advanced technology!"

Would it be a stretch to suggest that ASCOM is a universal translator for manual workers around the globe? With the universal translator being carved in stone by Gloogre/Alfibetto. Brought down from the mountain, at hideous expense and put on display in a museum of antiquities. While the "foreign" workers are proving to be of highly variable quality, skill level and ability. Many of whom use figures of speech, colloquialisms and slang in everyday life. As in: Me no speekee dee P H D 2-ee.

You didn't mention which capture software you are using. SharpCap has active screen, zoom adjustment to improve your focusing. I usually use 200% but other options are equally valid depending on your image scale.

Sorry. Haven't tried anything but HitechAstro DC Focus in SharpCap. If yours is a DC [gearbox] motor, rather than a stepper motor, then absolute positioning is impossible. [Checking online suggests your system does indeed have has a DC motor.] Though the HitechAstro system achieves a close approach to repeatability of position... they themselves warn against too high an expectation of perfect precision of focusing with a DC motor. I imagine the same is true of your system. Nina is probably expecting a stepper motor, position report. EDIT> Just checked. NINA is expecting an absolute focus position. It provides suitable motor steps to achieve autofocus.

Success! The New HitechAstro DC Focus Suite 1.4 software works a treat! https://www.hitecastro.co.uk/index.php/support/category/hitec-dc-focus Just be careful to choose the HitechDCfocus1 Focuser in SharpCap/Files/Hardware/Focuser. I have emailed HA requesting a "daylight" version of screen control panel. 😎 Now, if I could just have the sun back, please?

Sorry. I thought it was a typo! Found it! Thanks.

Thanks. Do you mean Corona Renderer?

We get a good couple of days and then it is back to endless grey. I suppose I should be grateful. Because it lets me work on the practical issues. I don't get much done when I spend the entire day [imaging] in the observatory. It's a good job it gets dark and I can go back indoors.

Thanks Pete. I usually cover only the area of interest in spots. Registax usually likes to add too many spots in blank areas. So I usually reduce them in number so that Alignment doesn't take too many long minutes. It regularly falls asleep on me during alignment! It's not because my laptop is slow. Anything but with W10, i7 and SSDs! I repeatedly try Autostakkert but still find it completely opaque and can never discover how to find the finished "still" afterwards. Trying to re-send to Registax for Wavelets has never worked for me. Presumably because I don't have a finished still. I keep trying iMPPG too but it remains stolidly "unhelpful." It is the processing which is denying me the detail I can see steadily on my 25" HD monitor. Registax often displays a stacked image far worse than any single frame! How is that even possible? I scrap loads of attempts at Registax and have to start over. What I badly need is a "Processing for Dummies" which doesn't tax my remaining 1.5 brain cells. I repeatedly watch the YT guides and have forgotten half of it by the time they have waffled on and on. [Much like I do!]

Thanks Pete. Not as good as I'd like. With good seeing the "smoke" of the prom is exquisitely detailed. Really good seeing is like the proverbial "out of the window of a space ship." It is only when the seeing is good enough that one really tests the true capability of any instrument. All the rest of the time I'm gnawing on what to buy next to make the "seeing" better. I went for years without seeing real detail on Jupiter and Saturn from the lawn in my secondhand 6" refractor. Then on one particular night, with an inversion layer, Saturn was an "out of the window" experience. It was high overhead and I was standing on snow on the lawn in bright moonlight. A light breeze was carrying the thin smoke from the dying wood stove horizontally away from me. Saturn was so incredibly detailed it looked pixelated. As I described it at the time. Colourful banding, polar shading and a polar cap to die for. The Crepe Ring etched in palest blue. The Enke Division and Cassini were razor sharp all the way around. I stayed out well past 3am at my formerly "hopeless" CR150HD. With a maximum power [at the time] of only 120x from a no name Chinese Plossl. The real experts, on another forum, denied I could see so much with only 120x. So I went on a quest to see how low I could go and still see Cassini clearly all the way around. Reliably at 46x in a secondhand 26mm. Though at times it felt as if my eyeball was being sucked out! That same night, Jupiter, much lower down, remained typically "muddy" to a fault.

Pro glass cutters I've seen [many years ago] tended to work on firm surfaces. They'd place a small wooden item under the very end of the cut glass and press down each side to "bend" the glass apart. The cut would open up away from them with a nice zipping sound. I've tried the tile pliers myself [on tiles] and found them hard work. When I was cutting 3/8" glass for tools I'd make long equal strips first and then cut across at intervals. I only ever used the cheapest form of glass cutter. [with bicycle oil] Confidence seems to help when cutting glass. Submit it to your will!

Thanks Pete but I'd like a lot more finesse. It's my lack of skill with Registax mostly. I can see the fine detail on the computer screen during the capture. Getting it show in the final image still eludes me.

Does your ASCOM talk to PHD2? Mine won't.

An update [at last?] HitechAstro DC Focuser software suite 1.4 has finally appeared on their website under Support. I have been using the tiny and painful push buttons since purchasing the DC focuser controller only to discover it terminally crashed SharpCap. Thereby rendering SharpCap unable to recover and unable to respond to any button press without a complete computer restart. Only setting SharpCap to an ASCOM simulator prevented an instant computer crash. Being a simulator the ASCOM simulator doesn't actually move anything. It is only pretend. I have downloaded the new HitechAstro software onto my laptop and will report back tomorrow on its efficacy. [Or otherwise.]

Only if the equipment and/or drivers will talk to each other under ASCOM. But whatever the problem if is NEVER EVER ASCOM's fault. It is ALWAYS user error because ASCOM users are ALWAYS drooling idiots. Or the independent and/or commercial driver authors [expecting something to work under ASCOM] are ALWAYS drooling idiots.

First day of imaging with my new ZWO ASI174MM-S. Fitted on the end of the modified 150/8 + internal D-ERF + 1.25 GPC + PST. The morning was taken up with watching clouds. Cleared after lunch. First image without and then with a 2x WO 1.25" Barlow on the nose. The Barlow image was very heavily cropped and then resized. This was a mistake because it severely coarsened the prom detail. Another lesson learned. SharpCap + Registax + PhotoFiltre. Still struggling with blackening the sun neatly in PhotoFiltre. I'm using the Fill Tool and it [usually] wants to overlap the edges. Even when I draw carefully around the limb.

Thanks. I should have asked them when I was ordering a 174. Now all I need is a 5x Barlow to see the tiny, little sun on my huge monitor. First light, half an hour after it arrived from FLO.

Far more sensible than drinking the contents on a chilly evening outdoors.

Welcome Gimboid. Get yourself an old, down/duvet jacket, salopettes [insulated skiing trousers] and fur lined boots. These are the perfect accessories to a thick, fleece, cap with ear flaps and a "foreign legion" neck warmer. And that's only in summer! Sensible amateur astronomers, from chilly Cardiff, look around for their observing attire in charity shops because nobody can see you in the dark! People go on one skiing trip, break a leg and decide to give away all their lovely, warm skiing clothes, before they break the other one.

Thanks and good luck. Highly variable seeing conditions here despite a mostly cloudless sky.