Vroobel

I wouldn't think about the Iris Nebula as a kind of test in your place. It is the most difficult object I ever processed, it may be because of LP.

Its a nice picture and the object is explicit. Could you try subtract a little of saturation? 

I would suggest monitoring the clouds here:

https://www.sat24.com/en-gb/continent/eu

A wider context (Europe scale) allows predicting situations like yours.

That's it! That's why I'm impressed! 🙂

Here is my first and the only picture of Jupiter taken using a dedicated planetary 102ED F/11 scope and an atmospheric dispersion corrector. It's not the best, but you know, it was a proper planetary imaging. Taking it into account you can be proud of the quality of your device. 🙂

On 18/06/2024 at 18:57, TiffsAndAstro said:

Occasionally but my Virgin media router is 🐕 💩 

It's not like I'm gaming on it

I experienced plenty of times disconnecting all devices at night, of course my RPi with Astroberry outside as well. It looked like the Virgin uses a DHCP server which is located on their side. As a former IT pro, I know how DHCP should work: even if the Internet access is lost, the devices should see each other based on a DHCP server located on the LAN side. I investigated it a bit widely and bought a well-featured semi-pro WiFi 6 router in result, so the sh.tty Virgin router works as a modem since then. No more IP loses, WiFi transfer is literally twice faster across all the house. Highly recommended, works 1.5 year flawlessly. 

Cuiv showed how to set Win Pro to log in without typing the password each tine, he uses an RDP. I made the same and it works in my my case, the AstroPC is ready to work in a few seconds after powering it on. I used Win 10 as the client earlier, now I use Ubuntu. The RDP client works great, but I have to type the password before I join the RDP server. It's OK anyway, Linux is faster. I hope I solve it on one day. 

 This is an additional heater, but doing the same job. Some brands cams have it built in. 

Another important thing. Cuiv mentions that different brand cameras cool the sensor faster or slower. ZWO cams are slower, it's better to cool the sensor slower. I found that it's recommended to warm the sensor up after the session to avoid thermal stress.

5 minutes ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

Might as well do them now I guess.

Why -10c btw? It see lots of  graphs of read noise v temp which really almost negates cooling so I was thinking it must be to reduce thermal noise but hard to find graphs for that. I would go +1c to avoid frosting but thermal noise must be a big thing? 

The -10 is doable, so why not?  

Does the camera have a window heater? I'm not sure if it's needed in the UK... 🤔

14 minutes ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

It's not quite as bad as it looks....but hopefully the spaghetti will improve when I get a nuc or mele quieter pc where the usb hub currently is.

Can confirm camera works with just the immensely thick and long nice feeling usb c/printer cable. I need a shorter one, uncooled though.

It's warm out but even so using 65% max power to hold -5c. Not great, but ok, I think. Just need a hole in the cloud.

Taking some darks and biases atm and about to follow Cuiv's offset video....

65% is not bad, I reach more as I work with -10. But your -5 is OK.

Observe Amazon, the Mele 4c is often for less than £200. I fight with myself, but presently I don't need it, my AstroPC still works and is OK.  

Take 60 bias and 60 dark frames for each exposure time you think you will work with: 300s, 180s, 60s, 30s and stack them, it will be faster later. Also, take some generic flat frames (with clean optical path, with filter(s) and no filter) and stack them - they will be useful during a night, e.g. after the first 20 subs you can check your results.

Asiair sets the offset as 50, I use the same with NINA, also I use 101 gain with ASIair and NINA, for both MC and MM cameras.

It looks really good! Tidy up the spaghetti though...  😆

It's really surprising, I found it right now. Jupiter, M5 and M57 look at least not worse than some quality pics from the Seestar S50 or from beginning imagers using typical equipment. 👍 I like the idea of the flip mirror, the device gives colours, which is rare for visual astronomers.

I would recommend to focus on something smaller than the M31, there is a lot of smaller galaxies. If you do something wrong you will not know what exactly is wrong. 

1-4 sounds OK. 

After proper leveling, you can lift two rear (South side) legs a bit using the same thickness spacers. It will cause the scope to aim lower, regardless of the real limitation. You can find an opinion that the EQ mounts can also work well without the levelling, it's just enough to perform a proper PA. You can check if I'm right, lift the two rear legs and check if the PA allows for the proper tracking and guiding.

Two drawers! That's nice! 🙂

Finally you have your camera, but what about the dual-band filter? 

So, now we expect much better data from your sessions. Don't be impatient, spend on imaging as much time, as you can, even if it takes days, weeks, months. I means the multi-nights sessions. 

Good luck! 

I have a similar kind of problem, but I think it's opposite. I added the OnStep GoTo to my EQ5 and I lost the ability of quick moving the scope, like manualy. Now I think about a StellarMate platform based on Raspberry Pi as it offers an app working on a smartphone. I already have the fully working RPi which I used with Astroberry before I bought an ASIAir, but I'm very reluctant, I don't like it's INDI, Ekos etc. too much. I look rather towards an ASIAir mini with its very comfy interface and stability. It would be great for observations with bino and also useful in planetary/solar/lunar imaging, even if I use a fast laptop for that purpose.

It looks like a picture! 🤩 You are very talented. 

24 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Siril image looks particularly green to me

While the Siril Without Flats doesn't. 

Guys, you made a great job by writing the posts above. But there is written "However, the Siril one does not look right", so I understand that the DSS looks right. I didn't want to answer the question which wasn't asked... 

OK, your pictures aren't stretched. After doing it they look like the following:

MilkyWayDSS:

SirilWithFlats:

SirilWithoutFlats:

So, what is your question about them?  

I doubt if anyone can open FIT files using a smartphone. Could you please present all the pics as JPG files? 

Hi,

Isn't it easier to place the pictures here instead of in an external cloud storage? 

I thought that my FMA230 looks small on the CGX... 😁