teoria_del_big_bang

I cannot see too well as the picture is quite small but from memory  (I do not have a DSLR anymore) it does not actually clip in but lays inside like you have it then when you attach a lens, or attach it to an adapter to fit to your scope that holds it in place more securely.

Steve

It sounds very versatile, looking forward to some clear skies to try it out for real 🙂 

Steve

Brilliant, thanks for all the help, I think I like this NINA and want to stick with it 🙂 

Steve

Just brilliant 🙂 

Steve

Well still playing with NINA, a few small things that doesn't suit me

• Small Font difficult for me to read - as far as I can see can alter font type and make it bold which has helped and selecting contrasting font colour and background helps, so still difficult but can live with it.
• Seems a lot of tabs and and combination of tabs on pages on those tabs compared to very few in EKOS, but I think that will be fine when I have learned to drive it and I can remember where everything is.

So far I have only really messed about with darks and flat wizard and some stuff I love

• Being able to use my flats panel to use the light intensity for flats to give me same length exposures on all flats to get ideal ADU rather than just altering the exposure time, all flats not 4 seconds with the DSD flats panel 🙂 
• The real flexible way of making directories with any amount of sub directories for saving files
• The real flexible way of naming image files automatically with a big range of criteria along with typed words letters etc.

So considering I have only scratched the surface of what this can do and so far only a couple of minor irritations I can easily live with and lots of good stuff so I might well be sticking with this.

Also seems to be getting developed very quickly as only a short while I first heard of NINA and now it is a real in depth bit of software.

Steve

20 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

My obsy is actually quite tight, especially around the far side where the back of the cameras are, so my issue is catching the wires where the plugs enter the camera, and maybe bending or damaging a port on the camera, so I think I am looking as something the same as the one @tooth_dr has made for his ASI2600, with protection around the cable ports,

I think it is a great design and will be using the same idea myself

22 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

I actually used a simpler approach for my 268 😂

 

Nice easy solution, I think I might just do something very similar now just with the filter wheel cable but I think that is perfect for @Stuart1971

Steve

1 hour ago, Stuart1971 said:

Excuse my ignorance, but what is the camera diameter….I guess it’s in the drawing, but an engineer I am not…😂😂

According to the QHY website it is 90 mm and I measure it at about 90.3 mm. It wasn't actually on that drawing so I have added it.

Steve

24 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

Do you have a drawing on the back of the QHY with measurements where the holes are, and size of the camera, as I could design my own, while I am away on my iPad as I have some design software on here…?

I used this drawing off the QHY website and blew it up till it was full side and measured from that.

I did this drawing which is pretty accurate I think

Steve

Everything connects now so just setting things up.

Any recommendations about the set-up ?

Also, I think when I tried it a few months ago but gave up one thing that put me off was the size of the font, for my failing eyes it was far too small, is there a way to increase the font size ?

Any recommendations on setting up the focusser, it did take a bit of fiddling about in Ekos but eventually had it working well, IF it was not too far from focus to begin with (if I accidently moved the focusser during transport always had to take a few quick images and manually move the focusser before using auto focus otherwise it really struggles), and there are so many options for algorithms and parameters n EKOS it was hard to decide what to try first, maybe its the same in NINA.

Regarding this I should 3D print something that is pretty much the exact length when at focus to put between two surfaces on the focus tube then I can always set it to that position first before coming inside to operate remotely, that way it should focus okay every time. 

Steve

14 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

That’s superb..

isn’t that the ultimate power box, not the advance..?

Oh yes your right it is.

Before I got this in 2021 I had the advanced so also have a 3D print model for that and had a USB hub piggybacked onto it.

I 3D printed this to mount my Pegasus Ultimate Powerbox  with a hard drive piggybacked for extra memory.
 

I didn't think I needed much in the way of strain relief around the box itself as there was no movement on them, I would like some for the camera though and am on with it.
I did a design as below to give you the idea for a QHY268M, needs some small adjustment and will print another.

Steve

That's a lovely image, and of targets I wanted to do a mosaic of, maybe end of this year I might get round to it.

Steve  

2 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

I like that, I don’t suppose you have one for the QHY268… 😄😄

I nearly do 🙂 

I did one but needs some adjustments and I will print another, so will keep you informed

Steve

17 hours ago, blinky said:

masterLight_BIN-1_EXPOSURE-300.00s_FILTER-Ha_Mono.xisf 62.54 MB · 1 download masterLight_BIN-1_EXPOSURE-300.00s_FILTER-Ha_Mono.xisf 62.55 MB · 1 download masterLight_BIN-1_EXPOSURE-300.00s_FILTER-Ha_Mono.xisf 62.55 MB · 1 download

Cheers, Only just seen this as I forgot to follow the thread, I will have a go in PI later, but looks like you have made some progress with some help from @tooth_dr

Steve

13 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

I tried NINA a few months ago, and never went back to Kstars, I love it, plus I was having a few issues with drivers in a Ekos so that didn’t help…👍🏼

I have the odd issue with EKOS but not much and put that down more to the RPi than EKOS, but I have no evidence for that.
I did try NINA a little bit last year but just found it had too much stuff in there, I find EKOS really simple, and I do really like it, but I didn't give NINA a fair trial.

Main reason for trying it is because it uses Windows which I am more familiar with than Ubuntu and also I can use SharpCap to help me with determining the correct exposure lengths for different targets easily within a session whereas now I have to take a laptop out and plug camera into laptop and with the RPI controlling the mount I have no real easy way to platesolve (I guess I could use the guidescope camera) and have SharpCap taking images to control main camera.
A bit of overkill doing this maybe but with NINA I can do all this without any fuss and its a bit more scientific than picking an exposure time out of the air and just hoping it works which before all these latest discussions is really what I was doing.
I think these past week or two I have learned a lot with help from this forum and realised some of my shortfalls when imaging, okay some of the maths is a bit over my head but I get the jist which is enough, so been a good week or two 🙂 

Steve

13 hours ago, scotty38 said:

Oh I'd recommend using BETA 2.0 of NINA by the way. might even fix the issue too.

Brilliant, worked a treat, thanks so much for the help 🙂 

Steve

My God, how many of these threads with similar instances have we seen over the past few months, its terrible.
I know this is a bit different but we have a pretty big garden and I find a 20W LED light that just comes on with a PIR plenty for safety purposes without making my house stand out like a sore thumb to burglars, it does fine.
Obviously I turn it off when imaging and would do for anybody doing the same, so why on domestic properties some people make them like Elland Road on a night match I have no idea. Looks like the more dark skies message is not getting through to non astronomers 😞 

Mark I hope you find another property soon with some better imaging prospects.

Steve

44 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

I have one of these flat panels on the way….so I hope you get it sorted, have you asked on the NINA discord site….? Also,you should really update to the latest Beta NINA version..👍🏼

I currently use EKOS and KStars so this is a bit of dipping my toe in the water test while the skies are cloudy to get it ready on another computer to test on a clear night.

I originally had a few issues with the flat panel on EKOS but had lots of help from Pavle of DSD, he really went out of his way even though the error in the end was down to the INDI files but he contacted Jasems and eventually sorted out the bug.
I have been really happy with the panel.

The only downside I would say is that I would not rely on it being shut with light off to take darks as it will not seal from light fully and you have to remove it then fit the proper cap, but as you can take all your darks and keep the library for months this is not something you need to do very often and not a massive job to remove it.

I have joined Discord but late last night did not really find my way round to ask the question.

One thing I have learned in this hobby is everything gets sorted eventually, people with the knowledge you do not have always come to the rescue so we will have them working (it may still be me but for the life of me I thought I tried everything I could).
The panel is a real Godsend  being able to add the flats to the end of the sequence and it shuts the flap turns the light on and away it goes al flats all done automatically and the scope capped at end of session as well help keep the lens a bit cleaner.

Also what I have done is to go through and find out what light intensity you need to get all flats at 4 seconds and that is then done automatically as well so that all flats are the correct ADU, or there abouts, and you can use the same 4 second dark to calibrate them with for all of them without needing PI to scale the darks, maybe a small thing but I like it.

Steve

Thanks, I can try both suggestions and see later today 🙂 

Steve

Hmm, settings look okay as far as my knowledge goes.

Does the EAF focusser move if you use the INDI panel to move it ?

And the crashes do not look good but beyond me I am afraid.

Steve

I am just trying to set up NINA for the first time.
I just cant seem to get the DSD flat panel working which needs to use an ASCOM driver provided by Deep Sky Dad.

I downloaded the ASCOM file and in ASCOM it looks to be there and set up okay

But I cannot see any ASCOM flat panels in the drop down list in NINA

I have pressed the rescan several times, powered down and up again but no joy.

According to the DSD manual for the flat panel it should work in NINA

But I just cannot seem to get those two ASCOM options in the drop down list.

Any ides from anybody ??

Steve

Can you post a screen shot of the focusser module / tab in EKOS

15 minutes ago, Richard_ said:

Hi Steve. Let me preface this with saying that I have no experience with narrowband imaging. I'd recommend checking out this video from Adam Block which may help in the removal of halos from your OIII data. In his video, Adam explains how you can replace signal from one channel into another with the use of masks, linear fit and pixel math. 

I tried this approach for my above issue on reflections, but unfortunately it didn't fix the issue as the signal was present in all three RGB channels so there was no clean data for me to replace. 

I wonder if this would be useful for the halos you saw in the OIII channel,  perhaps substituting with data from the HA or SII channels could reduce or eliminate them? 

 

Cheers, thats is exactly what I intended to do using Pixelmath but this will mean I don't have to work out the maths ha ha , cheers 🙂 

TBH I have no idea but any chance you can allow me to download the 3 images and I would like to give it a go in PI.
Mosaics are on my list of things to try this year if I get the chance so would love a go at it and if I get anywhere ai will certainly let you know 🙂 

Steve