teoria_del_big_bang

8 hours ago, Geoff_L said:

FWIW, my power pack would probably last a couple of days between charges. However, I have solar on the motorhome roof and 220Ah of leisure batteries to top it up. That said, Kemble Airfied has 240v and so recharging should be possible. That said, it was only a suggestion in the absence of better venues...

And a good suggestion, I guess it is going to be difficult to get somewhere with enough pitches, hook ups AND no trees as a lot of camps like the trees for some privacy.
And I guess if people have to survive without permanent hook ups then they can ensure they are set up with sufficient battery packs but I think for many images over a sustained period it may prove difficult.
I have not yet been to a star camp as flooding and Covid put an end to my last 3 attempts to get on one so maybe not a much idea as yourself to what is possible but I would prefer a  hook-up, just one less worry.

Steve

On 20/03/2022 at 19:30, Geoff_L said:

Sorry, I didn't understand that.

FWIW (and albeit that I'm a novice imager) my imaging rig runs entirely off a 12v power pack and a USB power brick -- even when I have 240v available. I know that Kemble Airfield has 240v because the Bluegrass festival had mains-powered PA and lighting and mains was provided for business stalls and those who needed it for medical reasons (e.g. rely on CPAP etc.) So it probably would be possible to at least recharge battery packs.

Will the power pack last best part of a week without re-charging ?

I too have a large power pack but I would only get one night out of it. 
Also if the imaging rig takes a fair bit of power then it is just so much easier to use mains power supply via an RCD (although the supply on a cmpsite I have no doubt will alreay be RCD protected.

Steve

9 minutes ago, Bukko said:

I can only think of a catastrophic failure of the satellite rocket sending it wildly off course. I am pretty certain it is one of the satellite cluster as the trajectory starts off parallel.

I hope no-one minds, especially Steve, who posted it, but I emailed SpaceX to ask them if they could help explain what happened.

Gordon.

I have no issues with that 🙂 

Steve

It couldn't be condensation on either a lens or the camera window could it ?
The anti dew heater in the camera couldn't have got turned off by accident could it ?
It has been a bit more humid lately ?

Steve

That's pretty much like my background was when I last tried a few days ago, albeit with a mono camera, and after trying various things gave up and put it down to the near full moon and just bad seeing as even by eye with little LP  I could not see many stars at all, even away from the moon, only the very brightest, and also it just looked hazy. I know that when moon is bright it is very difficult to see stars by eye but looked more than that.

I know the moon is now fading but could it still be just down to a hazy upper atmosphere and the viewing conditions ???

Steve

6 hours ago, Xiga said:

For anyone interested, here is what the Ha stack looked like, with zero processing other than gradient reduction in APP and saved as .jpg. 

Nice one, yes I can see how that adds detail now to the final image, well worth adding.

Steve

10 hours ago, Stuart1971 said:

Interesting….🤔🤔

Yes that's what struck me, so used to seeing multiple sat trails these days on single subs I do not usually take any notice, or even airplanes which are obvious what they are, but never saw anything like that before.
Probably @vlaiv's explanation may explain it ?

Steve

9 hours ago, SamAndrew said:

Aliens!

There's no way a satellite could perform that tight a change of direction.

I was thinking the same but no expert in this field (about the change of direction not necessarily the Aliens bit 🙂 )

Steve

10 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Could it be a trail left by a bright star as the scope was slewing? 

The scope was tracking and guiding, and was not the first image in the sequence so it did not slew there then start taking images it was in the middle of several images.

Steve

Maybe a silly question but is the curved sat trail in image below actually a satellite or something else ?

Steve

I guess first thing would be to email FLO and ask about repair, it maybe they will look at it and maybe suggest what the cost of repair maybe then you can decide.
If the cost of repair is far less than a new camera then it would be worth repairing but if not worth it then you can either leave it with them or get it returned and at least only cost a fiver or so postage so maybe worth the gamble than just throwing in the bin.

Steve
 

No but was repaired (or replaced) just for cost of postage, more than I actually expected, maybe because of how long it took not sure.

Steve

Not great is it, bit I have had single frames with much more sat trails but always come out using some form of sigma clipping during the stacking.

Steve

I had a ZWO 290mini that was faulty recently and had it repaired through FLO.
I would contact them first and ask if they can assist.
They said if the repair was minor they could do it themselves but in my case had to be shipped back to China so may not be a quick fix. In the end they actually replaced the whole camera for a new one.

Steve

6 minutes ago, kirkster501 said:

I do both equally.  I use the 300P Dob whilst the imaging rigs are running.  On some nights I simply CBA to be imaging.

I still have my Dob and think I should get back into visual as well as my AP.
Without an obsy one thing it has over imaging is that with imaging by the time you get going with a sequence you are happy with, scope out, cooled down, target framed etc and then the clouds roll in you could have had a good half hour or more observing and also a bit easy when the clouds are about to doge them as you see them approaching.

Steve

7 minutes ago, johninderby said:

You probably see more posts about AP as they need more help than visual observers.🤔

Think it’s probably about a 50 / 50 split between AP and visual.

I think this is very true.
The OP states there are more threads related to imaging than visual but I bet if you break the posts down into two piles, ones that show actual images or give descriptions of what they did last evening etc and the other asking what went wrong, or how do I do this etc then visual reports would beat the images pile hands down.

Don't get me wrong I am an outright imager these days (when skies allow which is not often in Gods own county 🙂 ) but on the occasions I do read some of the visual reports then I take my hat off to many of them, the descriptions and the sketches are superb and you can often feel their excitement in the wording of the reports, and I suspect a lot of visual astronomers do not share their reports or are even on any forum.

Steve

Nice image, far better than any of my galaxy attempts.
Thanks for the great detail of the acquisition and processing 🙂 
How much detail does the Ha add ?

Steve

9 minutes ago, jjosefsen said:

There is a bit of internet drama here, basically Juan added this really annoying signing check that will break a lot of peoples scripts.

The general consensus is he did this to break NSG, because apparently there is some bad blood there..

https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-disable-entitlement-checks-added-in-1-8-9.18211/

 

With that being said.. the new WBPP and normalization seems to work really well, even if it is still hella' slow compared to Siril fx..

Cheers, I gathered there was some bad blood about NSG and that PI had gone out of its way to block it.
Anyway I have downloaded NSG script and using it again.
I still think it is better than anything currently in PI so hope the next issue of it doesn't try to break it again 🙂 

Steve

Okay so I have managed to download NSG scrips as PI no longer include this as standard but I am still confused.

Originally NSG was created because the way PI naturally weighted frames did not work and NSG was a far better method of evaluating weights.
This I understood and after trying it out totally agreed with  Adam Block that PI was  not using the best method to stack calibrated frames as the weights were incorrect, and I was happy with this.

Now it looks like PI have updated the way they weight frames but still using a different method to NSG, so do we still need NSG script, or has PI overtaken the method NSG script uses and is that the best method ??

I am currently going to use either method and see if I can see any difference but just wondered what other PI users had concluded.

Steve

1 hour ago, AstroKeith said:

50% of the time I come across this problem - its the cable.

Servo and stepper motors try to draw significant peak amps, but only for milliseconds as they are pulse driven. The resistance of most common cables is enough to drop the volts as the pulse is taken. No regulated supply can overcome that. Using a voltmeter won't show the issue as the pulses are too short.

Often this is overcome by using a 13.5 Volts supply. This will usually work, but its not solving the actual problem.

Thicker copper in the cables. (a lot of 'cheapo' cables are thick but that's the pvc sheath.)

Makes sense and sounds the most plausible explanation of why some people have this issue.
And I agree with using thicker wires but so difficult to get any decent size cables when using these 2.1 / 5.5 mm plugs I have no ide why so much astronomy gear uses them, apart form the confusion of some having 2.1 and 2.5 mm centres which some people do not realise and often force a 2.1 onto a 2.5  connector on as they are sure it is the correct size OR using a 2.5 on a 2,1 and getting poor connection they are just poor connectors for any sort of current applications.
There are far better connectors about.

Also I notice that many of the cables (generally cheapos such as amazon or Ebay) are not even copper strands which will add to the voltage drops.

Steve

Just make sure you get one for computer monitors they also do some for TV's that work very similar but it is a manual think telling you what to adjust so not sure they can work so well on computer monitors.

8 hours ago, scotty38 said:

That sounds like it may be a very good idea. Never having used one how do they work basically and can they work for dual monitor setups plus laptop with/without external display?

Yes, and very easy to use you just hang the thing over top of your monitor somewhere in the middle and press go basically.
To be honest it never seems to do a good job on my laptop monitor, colours do seem different on that but I always have a 2nd monitor plugged into Laptop (unless using it outside just for polar alignment) as with my eyes I struggle to see the small screen anyway, but the 2nd monitor and the two on my desktop seem to calibrate the same and with what I think are pretty much true colours.
Before I got one of these I think I was totally unaware f the issue till I entered a SGL competition and somebody remarked about the background colour, then I looked at one of my pics on a monitor at work and saw how different it looked.

Steve

Yes and Yes.

The first one did have a blue green tint to the background the second one doesn't.

In early days I found monitor calibration a real pain and my images looked different on all my monitors and laptops till I got one of THESE.

Steve


 

That is a great power supply I use one (in a weatherproof box that is big enough to allow plenty of air around the supply as they do get hot).
But I cannot believe all three power supplies are faulty.
I do use this power supply but to run many bits of kit not just the mount but at times I have also used nominal 12V supplies on both my HEQ5 and IOptron CEM60 and even at 12v I have never had an issue with them, they should run fine at 12V, even down to 11.5 they should run okay, unless using some really long or thin cables to the mount.
Yes the voltage will drop slightly when slewing but unless the mount has a fault it should not drop over 0.5V from 12,2V as they should have some regulation.

But if you do go this route and want a cable with colour coded ring terminals drop me a PM I can make you one up as not sure there are any available off the peg so to speak, I have the ring terminals, crimper and 5.5/2.1 plugs, I might have some cable or may have to buy that.

Steve

2 hours ago, Anne S said:

I thought I'd try the Abell 31. Couldn't see anything other than stars on the pc. Stacked 2 hours worth and got the image below. I'm trying for another 3 hours tonight.

I can't believe ha is so weak!

No processing other than calibration and stacking.

Pretty much just like my attempts last night

Steve