don4l

Very nice write up! It's a fantastic spot. (The photo in my avatar was taken a hundred yards from where you were set up.)

Ok... I give up! What are the negatives?

I've seen the pixel size reported incorrectly in "IndiGui". This has fed through to CCDCiel and killed the platesolving stone dead. As Han has suggested, I hard set the pixel size in the Camera Tab, and I haven't had any problems since.

This subject came up recently and @vlaiv explained why it was better to stack in a single operation. I did an experiment and the single stack came out visibly better. From now on I will only be doing a single combine. My stacking software "CCDStack" seems to allow for differing exposure lengths and it also seems to cater for differing quality. I couldn't get my head around the maths, but the difference on the screen was obvious.

They are both excellent. I do have a slight preference for the new version.

I must admit that I felt that the noise reduction was too strong. I've already reduced the effect, but I'll have a play to see if I can learn how to use it properly.

The reason that I am not collecting SII is twofold. The first reason is that my SII filter produces terrible halos. I haven't upgraded yet because the internal filter wheel in my camera only has 5 slots. They are, OIII, G,B,, Ha and empty. The second reason is that I cannot change filters easily. The threads on the adapter that connects to the reducer are very worn and I cannot be sure that I will get the camera back on if I take it off. I have recently ordered a new camera which has 6u pixels and a 7 position wheel. So, a new SII filter may be on the cards. I have been wondering if an hours worth of Green data would add anything??

Thank you, Rodd. If you have any advice, then I am all ears. The Ha in this seemed very strong, so I didn't see the point in gathering any more. I cannot see that 110 minutes revealed more than the first 30 minutes. The OIII was the opposite. I suspect that I would need many, many more hours of data to make any difference. However, this is new territory for me, so I am very happy to take advice. One thing that disappoints me is that the "trunk" seems a bit blurry. I guess that more OIII will help???

Here is a HOO version of IC1396. It is 110m of Ha, and 150m of OIII., total 4 hours 20 min I have the impression that I could do with a lot more OIII data. I found an add on for Gimp called GMIC, and used "Iain's Noise Reduction". This seemed to work magic. STL6303 on FSQ106ED af F3.6. Acquired with CCDCiel, Indi. Calibrated and stacked in CCDStack. Finished in Gimp.

You're not the first person to have this problem, so you should be able to find some good suggestions easily. I've been very careful with mine ever since I bent one of the altitude bolts. On the plus side, it just seems to carry on for ever, and it doesn't seem to matter much if you forget to balance it properly.

That's a good night's work! Your set up must be working well. I would be very happy to get an image like that in a single sitting.

Neither was my last attempt.... or my previous one! It's an iconic target, and it's a great feeling to capture it from the UK.

I've used one of these in the past without any problems. However, be very careful to make sure that you don't get the polarity the wrong way around.

A bit harsh, I think. I'm sure that most people post the best images that their equipment, skills and location allows them to produce.

Well Spotted! I haven't a clue how to process it properly. So I just created a new layer in the Gimp and colourised it. I then added it to the rest of the image that I took last year. This has meant that the stars inside the squid are the result of the OIII data added to the original. The rest of the OIII image has been masked out. It is definitely "Art" rather than science.

It would be a shame not to. That looks like a lovely "Lum".

Here is my version of SH2-211 "Flying Bat" nebula. I tried to capture the squid last year, but it was completely invisible with my 12nm OIII filter. I've since upgraded to a 3nm filter and I was very relieved to see that it makes a huge difference. Exposure: OIII 490m 2x2, Ha 145m, G 20m, B25m Camera: STL6303 Mount EQ6 Pro Software, CCDSoft, CCDCiel, CCDStack, Gimp Comments and advice very welcome.

Another thumbs up for CCDCiel from me. I've been using it for about 5 months now. I upgraded last night and everything went very smoothly.

Now got 490 minutes of OIII on the squid. I've never done anything like this before. I'll process it tomorrow and see what I have got. I'm now relaxing with a bit of Ha on Cepheus.

Unexpectedly clear here tonight. Grabbing more data on the squid. If it stays clear then I might finish tonight. I started this a few days ago thinking that it could take a couple of months to get 10 hours of OIII. So I am really pleased. Anybody else out tonight?

The PI is Linux. Raspbian is just a flavour of Ubuntu Linux. I used a PI3+ as a testbed before setting up my current system. The differences between the PI and my current Ubuntu 16.04 system are mainly cosmetic from a software point of view. There are two reasons that I now use a Linux laptop. The main one is that the PI couldn't transfer the image data quickly enough. (I believe PI4 is much improved). The other reason is that I find it useful to have a screen beside the mount. Especially when I am manually focusing a helical focuser.

I'll have a look into the logging options next time that I am out. I am getting a message along the lines of" EQMOD - failed to connect on /dev/usb1". This appears at the bottom of the IndiGui window. I'm fairly sure that I had the "auto connect" switched off when I tried Ekos. It doesn't really matter now because I am getting on very well with CCDCiel.

I've started to have some problems in the last week. As far as I can tell, the only change in my system is that I upgraded to the latest version of Indi. The problem that I am seeing is that the Eqmod driver seems to die after my Robofocus driver starts. Shutting the Indi server down and restarting each driver "manually" from IndiGui seems to sort things out. I can then get CCDCiel to connect to everything. I tried out Ekos some months ago, and I don't think my solution would work with that version of Ekos. The problem is that Ekos insisted on starting the Indi server and all the drivers. It might be that a short time gap between connecting each of the USB devices is fixing the problem. If Ekos is now allowing you to connect to a running Indi server, then you can test my theory. Use IndyStarter to start the server, then use IndiGui to connect to each device. Then start Ekos and see if everything works. I can test this next time I have a clear night. I gave up on Ekos because it didn't allow Indi to run "stand alone". I think that I have recently read that in fact there was a bug in one of the Ekos releases. I must have had that release.

That sounds good. I was wondering if you had a dodgy ccd in your camera.

Cloudy here. I had a couple of fantastic nights earlier in the week, and I am chomping at the bit! That's astrophotography for you. It's always a case of "just one more clear night!"