Laurin Dave

Hi Steve... came across this recent thread on Cloudy Nights.. uneven illumination of the OPs flats panel causing a very similar embossed dust bunny to those you had... Dave https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/661557-flats-not-correcting/

Wow Gav, that is absolutely brilliant... well done! ...more like a Cosmic Masterpiece! Dave

Looks good and looking forward to seeing more of your French adventure. Dave

Must be Drogon..

Oops got your scope confused with Olly's Dave

Very nice Peter.. like the faint fuzzy which looks remarkably Saturn-ish . Is that with the twin TECs? Dave

Maybe it couldn't find the guide star after dither.. that's why increasing search region may help. Next time you do it just watch the PHD screen and see how far the star moves when it dithers and then what's going on as it searches for it. Dave

Hi Alan Hopefully these screen shots will help.. Dave

Hi Alan Very nice and well done... you're getting there... in PHD2 you may need to have "Enable Server" clicked in the Tools menu... another thing you can try are is to increase the "Search Region" in the "Brain" "Advanced Setup" "Guiding Tab".. I have mine at 50.. Dave

Very nice.. to get the jet to show in the stretched image you can use a curve stretch with just the lower bit raised.. ie a straight line with an upwards bump on the lower 25% or so using the picker to set the appropriate points, then just use this as a layer over M87

With my Mesu I have mine set to 10 seconds and 1 deg.. not sure the mount will make any difference to this. The setting I had most difficulty with was GEM offset.. ( @PhotoGav helped me out there) to get it to work and position the slit correctly when the scopes were looking up I had to set it to 800mm … much larger than the measured distance of 350mm. Might be different with your mount but if you have an issue I'd suggest playing around with that... At least you can check it all in daylight Dave

I was meaning the cooling fan on your 428ex... this was the thread... ASI071 not ASI1600 https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/613410-star-ovalization-with-asi071mcp-psu-or-fan-issue/

Hi Alan.. good progress.. with that mount it’s best to have the balance set so that rising side is slightly heavy and the camera end slightly heavy.. keeps the worms engaged and in particular can tighten up Dec guiding Dave

Maybe try swapping out the usb cables.. bad cables have been known to cause this issue.

Just seen a thread on CN where the OP had a cooling fan vibration issue on their ASI1600 that was causing odd shaped stars and curly wurly satellite trail. Maybe same issue here.

Hi Tom.. try going into PHD connect tab click on camera and it’ll show a list of cameras, does it just show ZWO ASI Camera? If so then maybe you need to have the AScom drivers installed for ZWO so that you have a choice of two.. that’s what I have and it works for me. Same in SGPro Dave

Hi Steve... did you figure out what was causing the embossing? Dave

Because the Skywatcher focuser sags slightly with a big camera.... SX-46 and FW... why waste that lovely flat field! (well mine does)…

Hi Alan Not the end of the world... if you're imaging you really only need one alignment point on a brightish star near your target.. which you can find with the finder! Sync on that, then slew to your target and it should be pretty close. If you are doing visual do the same but just add each target as an alignment point as you go.... Simples .. I have SGPro plate solving etc but still start this way if for any reason I've moved the scope and lost alignment (which I do quite frequently to take flats or fiddle with something) as its quick and easy. Dave

Hi Alan... if the mount rocks side to side with the AZ adjusters tight it sounds as if either the "peg" has come loose on the tripod head or like my AZEQ-6 the round bush on the base of the mount is somewhat smaller than the hole in the tripod head that it fits in.. to cure this I cut up a thin plastic bottle and shimmed out the bush. Assuming its not already fastened down another thing you might want to consider is fastening your tripod down to avoid it accidently being knocked out of alignment... U-bolts around the legs fastened to a block of wood attached to the floor would work. Dave

That’s great news Tom.. Dave

It will be.. its only slightly larger (at 14mm by 10mm) than the 694/814/834 chips (12mm by 10mm) and smaller than the ASI1600 (17.7mm by13.4mm) which works with 1.25" so long as they're close enough Dave

Hi Steve... very strange, somethings moving, I'd work out how close to the sensor they are using CCD Ware dust donut calculator (my rough guess is 7mm which puts them on the sensor protective glass so maybe that's come loose) Dave

Hi Goran.. I guess so, two windows each running SGPro, one, the main one, connected to the mount, CdeC, PHD2, focuser and the imaging camera on the Esprit150, the other to the imaging camera and focuser on the Esprit100. PHD2 also running and connected to guide cam and mount. The main one controls all the dithering, meridian flip, target plate solve.. HTH Dave

SGPro allows you to run two instances.. so you can control mount guiding camera with one instance and another camera with the other.. all on one laptop, as I do.. Dave