Rustang

5 hours ago, michael8554 said:

Correct, I misread the question, my bad.

Michael

We both got confused !! 😊

1 hour ago, alacant said:

No.

My bad, miss read it! 

29 minutes ago, rickwayne said:

According to the PHD troubleshooting doc, the best practice is to calibrate on a star near the equator/meridian, as has been noted. If your setup tells PHD the mount position -- as yours does -- it can work out the correction factors for other parts of the sky from there. In fact if you don't change anything (e.g. orientation of guide scope or camera), you should be able to reuse the same calibration for quite some time, no need to shift-click every night.

It is a good idea, however, to run the Guiding Assistant pointed at the target. This will read the actual behavior of the mount while it's tracking (but not issuing guide commands) so that it can fine-tune the parameters. I've had it tell me some surprising things. One night the seeing was particularly good and it advised that I could use a 1-second exposure for the guide camera; I had always gone with the conventional "don't chase the seeing" wisdom and selected something in the three-second range. Bang, the performance went from 2-3" RMS to under 1. At my image scale, that's plenty good enough.

Does the orientation of the imaging camera make a difference then? Why is this? I calibrated with the imaging camera vertical yesterday for the Soul Nebula, so I'm guessing I will have to re do it next session if the camera is horizontal. 

Cheers, I definitely need to start running the guiding assistant, I keep forgetting! 

Thanks again guys, took on board your advice and things are going well so far for tonights session. Another thing learnt and understood! 👍

Cheers guys 👍

Also to confirm that when you say DEC 0, from this screen grab, do you mean the area in the Sky where it says +0? Just below where Mars is? 

Aplogies, I'm still very much learning at an embarrassing level! 

4 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

Like I said, at Dec 0 and near south.

But you can Cal at Dec 60 if you really want too, but at Dec 0 PHD2 can work out your RA and Dec guide rates more easily.

Michael

So do this just the once then each new session just press guide, or calibrate at that position still, every night? Also, once it's calibrated it starts guiding so how does it work when you calibrate in a different area then slew to target!? 

7 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

If you don't have a connection to the mount that gives PHD2 the Dec position of the mount, typically a basic ST-4 connection, then you have to carry out a Cal "On Target," every night, every new target.

If you do have that connection, you carry out a Cal at Dec 0, the Celestial Equator, and near south, and then PHD2 will compensate for whatever Dec you subsequently go to.

The Soul Neb is at about Dec 60, so if you Calibrated there, I'm not sure what that message was about.

I do see a reminder that if you WANT to ReCal, you press Shift as you press Guide.

Michael

So every session, every new target I press Shift as I press guide and it asks if I would like to force calibration to which I press yes, I've never had any issues with this, but I'm guessing this is wrong though!? I'm connected to the laptop via a direct cable. 

5 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi

I think that the error may have been not calibrating near the equator. Please tell us what mount you are using and how it is connected to phd2. If you want to know exactly what went wrong, then post -a link to- the phd2 log files.

Cheers

My mount is the HEQ5 Pro which is connected to the laptop via a EQ DIR cable. Your probably right, I forgot to right down what exactly the error message said. So I was pointing fairly high up around North East at the Soul nebula, the message came up when I tried forcing the calibration at target. I would say my guide issue was due to ignoring that message and calibrating in that area. If it's best not to calibrate if that message is given, where do I calibrat then!? 

Ditched tonights session of imaging, too many issues right from the start! Part of the issue tonight was star calibration in PHD2. I was going to image the Soul nebula tonight even with the bright moon as it is a clear night so why not! . When I pressed calibrate, it came up with something to do with possible errors due to calibrating near the equator!? So whats this all about? Also when pressing shift click on the green target it always says do you won't to 'force' calibration which led me to think am I do it all wrong? Why 'force' calibration!? Its been working how I've been doing it but it's made me think. My process each session is to chose a star, shift click to force calibration when at target then it does what it needs to. Do you always re calibrate every single session and if so where, at the target? Because if tonight has thrown up that warning in regards to the equator, what am I supposed to do!? I ended up giving up because the guiding was crap so need to understand what the correct process is or why I'm going wrong/miss understanding. 

It's a feature in light room, you can turn it on to show both over and under exposed areas of your image, blue being under exposed. So the red in the middle of the stars is over exposure! It's a very useful feature so I always leave it on. 

5 minutes ago, StuartJPP said:

I used a combination of PixInsight and PS.

The data as it stands isn't terrible but not knowing your kit and skies I can't comment further. For 3 hours I'd have possibly expected a bit more nebulosity and a bit less noise. 

Kit is SW80 ED DS pro, SW HEQ5 Pro mount guided through PHD2, camera (a weak link! ) Canon 600D modified. I was hoping for more nebulosity as well considering its better but not that much better than my first attempt when I first started which is posted above. Bortel rating 5/6.

I'm always happy to see where I stand with my gear and if I'm getting the best of it and taking into consideration the light poluted sky. 

3 hours ago, StuartJPP said:

Here's my quick attempt. Could definitely do with using flats, there's a few dust motes in there.

 

Thanks for having a crack at it, great result. I had flats but again they Haven't worked even though they had before, it seems a continuous issue so need to look into it again. How did you find the data besides that? You managed to keep the stars down a little, do you use photoshop? 

There's some good processing there, I definitely need to continue with learning some more processing techniques. 

Thanks everyone 👍

I guess if I'm honest I'm a little disappointed in my data, here's my first ever M45 attempt when I first started. This was from memory an hours worth of 1min subs. Compare that to 3hrs worth of 5min subs, I'm a little disappointed not to see more nebulosity. I had some strange coloured anomalies in that image too! 

13 minutes ago, Seelive said:

A very quick process just to see what's there.  Glad to see I'm not the only one to suffer from light pollution gradients, I'm not sure I've removed it completely but I wasn't looking for perfection.  Apart from from the dust bunnies, their appears to be a green 'smudge' between Alcyone and Atlas/Pleione that may prove difficult to remove.  And thanks for letting me have a quick play with your data.

 

Looking good, those stars are very difficult to tame arnt they! 

52 minutes ago, AKB said:

Yes, that worked for me (PI on a Mac read it, and saved it.)

Here's a 16-bit TIFF... @Rustang, hope that's OK by you.

Tony

SS.tif 103.17 MB · 0 downloads

No probs 👍

I can re post a 16 bit file later. I save a 32 bit and then change to 16 bit in PS, I remember reading somewhere that's what's best to do but please correct me if I'm wrong and should just be saving and editing a 16bit file!

Sorry guys, not sure what's going on here then. Its a 32 bit tiff, could that be the problem?

Thanks alacant, what did you make of the data, any issues you found!? You have controlled the stars better than me, what was your method?

Thanks for having a stab, yeah the dust bunny seems a regular thing now I can't shift, might be flats not working. The green annomerly I'm not sure about either. The blue/green background haze (not the little green spot we know about!) is that supposed to be there? It came through very strong on my edit which I was concerned was another issue!? 

If any one fancies a stretch it would really help me out. Ive been struggling with this data all night, I have never done a star mask before to help tame the stars but I just cant seem to get a good result. I'm not sure once again if my flats have worked either! On the plus side, the guiding went really well after doing some cable adjustments and some setting tweek's so I'm really pleased about that.

The data contains no Dark's as I'm hoping the dithering has worked this time! It's only 3hrs worth so not expecting miracles but hopefully something nice

TheSevenSisters2.TIF

14 hours ago, gaz81 said:

I have one and works well

i got a different one for my guide scope and didn’t realise it will only switch on for 10 mins at a time... doh... so will have to get another Coo-Woo one. 
 

I power off the mains as well. 

I just wrap one of the amazon ones around my guide, works well and keeps it nice and warm.

Just to say I continue to be impressed with these, last night had the worst dew I've worked with, things got damp all over the shot but both scopes, absolutely fine! 😊