david_taurus83

APT is the best astro software for the beginner. Even advanced users still use it. And as you say, cheaper than BYE.

A little bit of a learning curve but once you get the hang of its excellent.

When you get a bit more confident you can set up for platesolving:

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/334568-setting-up-platesolving-in-astrophotography-tool-apt/

I have one of those RCD ones with the trip switch. Has USB for phone charging etc

I bought a small oil filled radiator for my last camping trip. Kept the tent nice and toasty while the rain battered down last October!

What software for capture? Sure it wasnt set to region of interest?

I'm sure the 178 is a larger sensor than the 120 so confused as to how you can get full disk with the smaller chip but not the larger?

I have just sent an email to confirm for the Saturday night.

I think that aluminium dial is meant to be able to rotate. It was the same on the 2 equatorial mounts I owned. An old EQ5 and the same AZEQ6 as you have.

1 hour ago, Allinthehead said:

Thanks David. According to clear outside it's bortle 4. I do have to battle against public lighting in the housing estate. Some targets are off limits for me as I'd be imaging directly above the lights. I keep the exposures short to limit the  influence of light pollution. Typically 150/180 seconds at a low gain.

I'm originally from Roscommon, just outside a small village. Light pollution map puts it at bortle 4 and theres bortle 3 close by. If only I appreciated it before I moved to the UK! 6/7 now and I do have to shoot directly over streetlights!

@AllintheheadThose images are fantastic! What are your skies like?

Are there any example images taken with these?

Seems to me that the mount works as it should with the handset and the Synscan app. You appear to be having issues with Kstars so I would question the compatibility in the first place? You should also ask on the INDI forum as you will probably get a better answer there.

https://indilib.org/forum.html

In the INDI control panel, what mount have you selected?

Does Kstars/INDI support control of a dobsonian goto setup?

Those are excellent captures! What kit did you use?

I'm still up for it.

Is it all available to watch or weekly episode? Free for Prime members?

Whoopi Goldberg will also be appearing in the second season.

I've just looked at it on my phone and it looks a lot smoother as opposed to my laptop screen so may not be as noisy as I thought?!

Fantastic image! Great detail in the galaxies! A small criticism from me is the background could do with a little noise reduction. In pixinsight, I would extract the Lum from the image as it is above and apply it as a mask inverted so the galaxies and stars are protected. Then run MLT with these settings and it gives the background and dark areas a more smooth look and hides my own processing mistakes lol. Its really subtle and you can apply multiple times to personal taste.

Still a great image as it is!

Why develop a software like that in the first place when, as pointed out, there are various tried and tested 3rd party apps that are free and work with a broad range of devices? Maybe just the cynic in me, but it looks like they are heading in a direction where eventually the hardware will only work with their own software..

Maybe their time would be better spent actually sorting out an auto focus routine for their auto focuser? It's only been out, what, a year? But as I said, maybe just the cynic in me...

13 hours ago, Howie_Oz said:

The big issue for many will be it only works with ZWO cameras, ZWO e focusers, ZWO e filter wheels, ZWO guiders.

This is starting to put me off ZWO as a brand if I'm honest. It's not in the spirit of the hobby. Imagine if Skywatcher designed a new mounting system where only their scopes fitted their mounts?

I've posted in another thread about having issues with getting an error message upon mount connection : here https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/347246-eqmod-overflow/?tab=comments#comment-3777347

Another issue I was having was some syncing issues after a platesolve, especially after a meridian flip. After digging around i noticed on the EQMod website that the AZGTi should have a custom gear ratio. Up to now I was simply using the HEQ5/EQ6 option in EQMod. It was working, tracking and guiding so never thought it was an issue. Might explain why the mount was rejecting some platesolving syncs?

Custom settings for AZGTi :

Total steps 2073600

Worm steps 14400

Tracking offset 0

http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/reqindex.html

Tbf, I cant see North America in the North America Nebula!

11 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Looks really good. Still not seeing a monkey though! I don't know where these names come from...

Yay or nay?

I uninstalled everything Ascom and EQMod related off my imaging PC. Even the EQDir cable driver. Reinstalled again from fresh and no change. If i try and connect to the mount from CdC first, I got a similar message but it says something like "Ascom driver problem.(Overflow)" Even more confusing, if I connect first via APT, it works fine with no warning message. Connecting the other software after this also works fine?!

More importantly, upon my digging around the EQMod website I noticed that the AZGTi should have its own custom gear ratio configured. I was simply using the standard settings under the HEQ5/EQ6 tab. This might explain why I was struggling to sync after a flip. Strangely, after setting the custom ratios, the error message above doesn't pop up regardless of which software connects to the mount first? Bizarre! Perhaps its simply teasing me as I'm doing daytime testing. We'll see next session I suppose.

Hi Anthony, sorry if I've confused things talking about a different camera!

As Alan mentioned, most software can tell you the ADU value of the pixel under the mouse pointer. Your camera is 12 bit (2¹²) which means the pixel values can be from 1 to 4096. Think of these values as a simple brightness level of a pixel. 1 being the darkest black and 4096 being the brightest white. In an ideal world, the histogram on the camera should correlate with the ADU values. In your example above, the peaks are just to the left of centre so you would expect the ADU values to be just under 2000. That would be perfect for your flat frames. The point I was trying to make though, is that it may not correlate with the ADU values. Not on my Canon DSLR anyway. So I need to inspect my flat frames in an image processing software to make sure I am taking the correct exposure.

Theres a few things you can do during the day to find out how your raw files are output. Firstly, what image processing software will you be using for your images? Are you shooting in raw mode on the camera?

@symmetalYes your right, i meant about half the available ADU count. Just seen the OP has a Nikon so possibly completely different to my experience with Canon. But for sake of others who do use a Canon and may read this, don't rely on the histogram for accurate exposure of flat frames.