teoria_del_big_bang

There are indeed many options for sequencing software, but if you want to use a RPi 4 then I would also suggest the Astroberry package recommended by @BCN_Sean.
Depending on how familiar with software other than Windows based stuff, it can be a little tricky to set up (but not too difficult - I managed and I am hopeless) but it is really easy to use.
Also when it comes to it do not be afraid of setting up different targets, auto focussing, different filters, auto meridian flip and so on, EKOS handles then with ease and again s very easy to set up.

If you do use Windows on a laptop instead then as a starter I would recommend APT, that is reliable and again easy to use, a little more advanced but a really great piece of software is NINA. 
NINA is what I am using now after using EKOS for quite a while (and nothing wrong with EKOS but I struggled with Linux based software) and I love it, possibly turning out to be the best sequencing software I have used so far 🙂 

Steve   

I think without flats you will struggle to remove the vignetting totally. But there are tools to help remove it.
I am no expert but that is the single best way to do so.
I use Pixinsight and you can have a fair go at removing it but never as good as calibrated flats.

Is the image train still as it was when you took the images or did you dismantle it all ?
If it is I would take some flats now, they should do a fair job of removing the vignetting.

Also you can take darks anytime, but really should be same temperature so if the camera is not cooled then yes best to take same time. 

I will have a look later to see if I can do anything in PI to help, I might do better with the raw images though and there will be loads on SGL with more skill in processing than me but I will have a go.

EDIT:  Looks like others have now done far better than I could.

Steve
 

I am finding that these events (talking all star camps not just this particular one)  do get booked up very quickly, I think many are regular visitors and they know when exactly to book and often book the same pitch each year.
Also because of covid many events last year, maybe even two years, were cancelled so people very eager to go this year, and some even paid for previous events that were cancelled and just rolled their booking over to this year.

I have booked for Kelling in Autumn this year and booked a few weeks ago but that was the same only a dozen or so pitches left (and Kelling is a pretty big campsite) I had no chance getting in the Spring event.

And I think generally you do have to ring the campsites direct and book for the star camps, if you look at these dates on their regular website it usually says fully booked even before they start taking bookings, and to get a good pitch you may have to book well in advance. Always worth a ring though weeks before as there may be last minute cancelations (but again there may be reserve lists in place - I am not sure).

This is my understanding bit take with a pinch of salt as like I said I have booked twice, once for the SGL star camp two years ago that was cancelled due to flooding and also this one last year that was cancelled due to covid. So still trying to get to my first event ( maybe I am a bit of a Jonah).

Steve

7 minutes ago, gilesco said:

I was looking, not because I'm planning on going this year, but wanted to check on prices of hiring a Motorhome (which would need to large enough to hold various kit, and also small enough to be driven by a B license holder). I worked out it would probably be a 10 hour driving trip, so would probably have to break it up into 2x5 hour stints.

I also looked at the Camp Site website, and that looked pretty reasonable too. But I did notice that it appears fully booked. Do they generally blanket book this period for the star party, and you have to book your pitch by some other means, or is it actually full up? - I do worry about the weather, as I'm not a regular camper / motorhome user, so stars excepted I'm not sure I'd enjoy it in the cloudy and wet!! And it is certainly too early to judge what the weather will be like in two weeks time.

Regarding the Motorhome I have done this twice now but never actually got to a star camo due to covid or one time it was flooded.
But very much depends on where you hire from and what you hire.
I would say as a ball park figure you are looking between £600 to $1000 for a weeks hire.
You can get some campervans a bit cheaper, but still around £500 and even more for the genuine VW campers, and what put me off a bit was that if spending a week in them in generally coldish weather (as most events are not in Summer)  you are in a small space that more than likely you cannot stand up fully in and sometimes the bed is really in a tent in the roof.
So for a motorhome with some comfort there are websites that basically are hiring out private owners vehicles and tend to be a bot cheaper than the dedicated hire places. But I guess until you pick up the motorhome you do not know how comfortable it really is unless you check it out first s the pictures could be years old. Also I first hired mine from one of these sites and when the event was cancelled I lost all my money no refunds or transfers.

So for the second event (which was cancelled due to covid) I hired from a reputable local firm and they were great as I got every penny back when the event was cancelled.

Another thing to think about is whether to hire the motorhome locally or drive in your car and hire one local to the campsite. I tend to favor the second option for a couple of reasons:

• Saves a bit of cash on fuel as car usually far more economic than the motorhome.
• Used to driving car and saves a bit of worry driving a huge bus you are not used to and probably have something like £1000 excess you will have to pay in case of an accident.
• Makes the timing easier. Normally cannot pick motorhome up till at least midday and often not till 2 or 3 PM. Also need to return it usually for 10:00 am on last day.
  So if you have a long journey to campsite then you either have to pay for two extra days hire, to allow you time to load it up and get to and from campsite, or you arrive late at the campsite and cant get in if its dark (easily anyway) because its a no lights policy.

Just some things to think about but price wise (which was your question) I would asy between £600 to £1000 for the week with refundable deposits of certainly a few hundred quid, maybe £1K.

Steve

I am sorry I do not have the knowledge to answer your question but I certainly do not think it is a stupid question whatsoever.

Steve

Should see you then all being well

Oh that's the Spring event then, the one I am going to is in Autumn in September.

That's a cracking image Paul 🙂 

Skies must be clearer in the South than North 😂

Steve

11 minutes ago, Anne S said:

Depends when you're coming. We're arriving Sunday 27th.  Altair normally arrive on the Thursday. It's easier to ask Ian questions at the shop than when he's at Kelling. We normally cycle down after we've set everything up.

It can be expensive seeing al the toys!

Sunday 27th ? 
The events Tuesday 20th to Tuesday 27th September or is it a different event at Kelling you are going to ?

This is an target I have come to love past couple of months but only managed a few hours and that in partial cloud.
Also I have made the newbie mistake of trying to get Ha, OIII and SII and now realise I should have just concentrated on Ha and get a mono image like your wonderful image. I have sme data, although the halos I have on the two bright stars with my Baader OIII means I am discarding that data and wait till I get a Chroma or Astrodon OIII.

This image really shows what can  be achieved I think that is a wonderful image in it's own right but look forward to seeing it with some SII and OIII even if I do have to wait a year 🙂  and it has really inspired me to get this target under my belt even if that means waiting till next year.

Thanks for sharing 🙂 

Steve

Ha Ha, Thats a bit closer, I had no idea that was so close, yes that's a good idea, could get expensive mind 🙂  

3 minutes ago, jacko61 said:

Rother Valley Optics own brand 12v Dew Heaters are very good. Come with both RCA and 5.5x2.1mm plugs and their own voltage controller.

RVO Heater Bands With Integrated Controller - Rother Valley Optics Ltd

Graeme

+1 for these they are excellent dew bands.

Steve

2 minutes ago, badhex said:

Thanks Steve! It's a great scope and I was glad to be able to have its first real workout under much darker skies than I normally "enjoy". Since I wrote this it is has been on quite a few more adventures to other dark skies! 

It is a great scope, this was my first imaging scope as with a flattener is great for imaging too 🙂 

Steve

Ha Ha, I would need a Tesla for that and I only have a Ford, sorry 🙂 

Steve

15 minutes ago, Joacim said:

My grab & go setup, and the reason I need one 😀

When I saw this I said nice scope and the wife said nice pram 🙂 

Steve

30 minutes ago, Anne S said:

And you've transport when you need stuff. We have to cycle which is fine when it's dry. It's too much hassle to get the motorhome off the pitch!

Hopefully it will be dry 🙂 
But if not give me a knock I can be a taxi for the day, I owe you one.

Steve

I would think a filter drawer placed as close to camera as possible would be the best option.
Of course yes use the tool mentioned above to confirm this, but I would be surprised if you could get away with 1.25"  in the flattener as more usually require 2" (but I do not know this for sure with your setup) but besides this you also then have the option to change filters easily and quickly and  without disturbing the angle of the rest of the optical train and so keep the FOV at the same angle.

Steve

14 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Beware of U-tube tutorials, many of which are exercises in aimless floundering! The moment you hear the perpetrator say, 'I just play around with these sliders till I like what I see,' switch them off and delete them from your hard drive.  As you learn processing, make it a rule never to use any intervention you don't understand. Work out what it's doing to the data and think it through. Begin by being crystal clear on what's going on in the histogram, in levels and in curves (or whatever name these are given in your program.) This 'stretching' is what it's all about in AP.

What a great bit of advice.
I spent a couple of years trying my best in Pixinsight following some of these and never learned a thing in two years, yes I got some images processed doing this,  but could I do the next image the same way, no, had no idea what these sliders and parameters were doing.
I bought a really good book on PI and followed some good tutorials by Adam Block and learned more in a few months than the previous two and still learning but at least when I press the button now to change the image I know what I have done.

I now love Pixinsight and you will find many do love it and many hate it.
And the short time I spent with Photoshop I discovered the way PI works and is presented is so totally different from Photoshop and I think most other major contenders out there and takes a bit of getting your head around, and I can see that those well familiar with PS or similar applications may not get on with PI at all.
I really got into PI very early, and whilst following the rubbish tutorials had a bit of a love / hate relationship with it but once I stopped watching them and decided to learn what some of the processes do and stick to sing the ones I know .
There are so many processes in PI but honestly knowing how to use around a dozen of them well is enough to get your processing done, so stick with them and learn them well and you will get the most out of your images.

Like I say I an very much still learning and a fair way to go 🙂 

Steve

On 13/02/2022 at 12:02, Anne S said:

Norfolk Caravans or something like that.

Thanks for the help, hopefully got sorted, it was Norfolk Caravan Hire but they have almost their entire fleet already hired out for this very event. However there were a couple left so should be all set.
I think the caravan option is a little cheaper than hiring a campervan, much more comfortable and means I can drive my own car down which is cheaper and easier to drive.

Steve

Certainly for starting out my vote goes to Nebulosity.

It will do all the pre-processing and calibrating and has some basic post processing capabilities, enough to stretch images and do some basic noise reduction. Certainly enough to get some half decent images pretty painlessly.

Also some very good tutorials on the web.

Nebulosity Tutorials

It is not free though, I think around £60 last time I looked  Apparently it is thanks @fozzybear 
It is a great introduction to the processing techniques and is easy to use.

Steve

Congratulations, a perfect image for Valentines.

It certainly is a superb image and it sticks in my memory from when you posted it on SGL originally.
As soon as I saw the image I recognised it but amazed that was 2 years ago I saw it on SGL, seems like yesterday (well almost 🙂 ).

Steve

Glad its working, I was just about to give you those screenshots after taking all morning to get my Stellarium working again (if you wondered what was wrong its on a thread HERE ) but looks like its not need 🙂 

Happy days are here again (well they will be for me when these clouds disappear 🙂 )

Steve

Thanks but after all morning I seemed to have it running.

Just in case anyone comes across this thread with similar issues:-

• Stellarium is running on a mini computer (a pretty powerful fast computer) on the scope itself and I am using RDP to view the computer remotely from my desktop or laptop over wifi.
• I eventually plugged a screen, keyboard and mouse into the computer and found running it directly worked fine, no issues whatsoever.
• It only seemed to fail when using RDP.
• I searched and found many threads stating they had issues running Stellarium over RDP just like myself but none really offed a solution that seemed to work for me.
• I tried uninstalling and re-installing Stellarium and that had no effect.
• I tried reverting to earlier versions of Stellarium and that had no effect.
• I updated all drivers for graphics cards both on the remote computer on mount and my laptop and desktop (they did all actually need updating to have the latest drivers.
• I updated the Direct X versions on all computers and that had no effect. and that had no effect.
• By chance I tried starting Stellarium not in the full screen mode but a windowed mode (so you can see the max min and close screen icons in top RH corner of window and that works fine.
• It only seems to give the issue if it is running when opened from RDP and in full screen mode.

Steve

15 minutes ago, powerlord said:

prob them then. Ive not measured the filter thickness. that'd mean I'm only .3mm off though. Doesn't seem likely that that amount of image aberations could be due to  that small amount of difference, especially with a wee asi1600 sensor ?

Maybe more likely focus tube is a wee bit tilted or something ?

stu

Yes I agree 0.3 mm error in BF should not be really noticeable, but if you go on the manufacturers dimensions for spacer and FW dimensions from experience you could be over 1mm in error, you shuld always measure these things yourself (not the filter I do just go on manufacturers spec for those and add 1/3 on to BF.)

I must admit I only read your OP and did not look at the images myself, if the stars are elongated or teardrop shaped in some corners and not other then yes that will be tilt but if all four corners are comparable then it is BF (my understanding anyway 🙂 )

Steve

14 hours ago, powerlord said:

yeh they all measured/verified. yup my expectation is filter is 1mm thick, so need 0.3. just seems weird ZWO should recommend a full mm.

i was thinking I replace the 16.5 with a 15mm and then screw it out a bit and start taking test subs at slightly different distances out. find what works and then measure the distance I've screwed it out.

Which filters exactly are you using, I have seen ZWO filters at 1mm thick but most are 2 mm thick but I do not think any are 3 mm thick..

So that would mean a BF of 55.7 mm is required.

But as mentioned on previous posts above do not rely on manufactures specification of either FW thicknesses or the spacers. You need to measure with digital verniers. I have found filter wheels to be over 1 mm different to the thickness they specify and spacers certainly 0.5 mm. I think the ASI1600 was pretty accurate on mine anyway.

Your idea of screwing one spacer out a bit sounds a bit risky at what if the weight of the  FW starts the whole thing unscrewing even more. I prefer to get a set of thin (sub 1mm) spacers and keep adding them and moving camera out bit by bit until you end up past the optimum BF and then look at stars in corners and see when they change from looking too close to too far away and hopefully one will be just right with round stars.

I bought a couple of sets of THESE

Steve