johneta

Yeah I may do. Mines got a curved threaded rod and a $2 stepper motor and Arduino driving it. Im just starting to use it again, hoping to get some wide landscapes with around 18mm - 25mm lens

Thanks again for your interest. It helps to keeping pushing on to find an answer. Hey I also had a look at your Barn Door thread you made a while ago. Looks cool. Ive got one of those too (wee bit different). Its amazing what you can shoot with those.

Problem solved ! I had ->Cosmetic Tab - Detect and Clean Remaining Hot pixels ticked and set to 1px and 50% threshold. I think I have always had this ticked 🙄. I think I thought it made very little difference ages ago and I have just stuck with it on. So I un-ticked it and the stack just looks normal, None of that fuzzy stuff. I stumbled across this on another thread. I'm surprised it makes such a big difference! Oh well I would recommend to always disable everything in the cosmetic tab.

I did a stack in Sequator and it looks fine. A little different than the stack I did in PS but similar and good quality as you would expect.

Thanks for your interest, I appreciate it 🙂 Hey whats the best way to share the images with you. Is there a mechanism on SGL? Also I'm not sure how much use it would be as the images I look at in the DSS image list before they are stacked have already been deteriorated just by bringing them into DSS. So its understandable that the stack output would also be poor. I will do a stack in Sequator as you suggested-but I also did a proper stack in DSS of 50 of these images (Converting them to Tiff first in PS)and a process in PS and I'm happy with the result. It's as I would expect.

Sure. Will do tonight

Also, what type of lens/ Telescope is that photo taken with? I checked and the effect is much less pronounced on telescope type focal lengths (around 800mm in my case). Still there, but is worse on wide angle shots say 20mm.

Yeah, not sure what to say. I have always been a little dissapointed using DSS and have noticed this lack of clarity, but do my best to work around it. Also I'm Having a wee bit of trouble comparing the 2 images since they look a bit different from each other. I trialed APP and Pixinsight a while ago and noticed an overall improvement in the stacking clarity amongst other things. I intend to buy Pixinsight at some stage. So I would like to understand what is going on in DSS because I haven't seen other people discuss it 🤔

DSS 4.1.1

Update. I checked the options, Raw/FITS DDP Settings on DSS and found that made a difference to how DSS converted RAW's to FITS (DSS uses FITS while stacking I think??) I tried the settings out under 'Bayer Matrix Transformation' section and they did make a difference. But none of them were as good as converting RAW to Tiff in Photoshop first. So, I'd still recommend this. Anyone else got an opinion on this.

I went to try out your suggestion but went down another path. I usually never look at the subs in the image subs list on DSS - as I have inspected them closely on APT or windows Photo Viewer before I load them. I decided to have a close look at the images in the DSS image list. I found that the individual images already looked smudged and messy before I even started stacking!! I usually load RAW's (Canon CR2 files) to DSS thinking they will be better quality. But maybe the RAW converter in DSS is poor quality. I cant believe I haven't noticed this before. So I converted the images in Photoshop from CR2 to 16bit Tiff before loading them into DSS. And they looked virtually identical to the original RAW images! (looking at them in DSS) So, I stacked the 4 x CR2's , then I stacked the same 4 images that had been pre-converted to Tiffs before loading them into DSS. The Tiffs came out a lot better. This really surprises me. I haven't noticed other people mention this before. I'm either missing something simple or this is a really important issue that people should be aware of with DSS. Below is: First the Tiff stack, then the CR2 stack. Then very cropped in images of them both,-First Tiff stack, then CR2 stack. Although pixel scale is poor (stars consist of only a few pixels due to wide angle lens) you can see there is a lot sharper detail in the Tiff images.

OK thanks. I'll try that and report back.

Yes agrees loosely with PHD Guiding assistant. Sharpcap can report down to a few seconds off perfect polar alignment (dubiously optimistic I'm sure). The PHD guiding assistant usually will show less than 1 minute of Polar align error. Loose agreement as far as I'm concerned.

PROBLEM RESOLVED FURTHER DOWN THIS PAGE - IN SHORT DISABLE EVERYTHING IN COSMETIC TAB IN STACKING PARAMETERS. Can anyone help me with settings for DSS on wide angle images. I have stacked with DSS successfully with scope focal lengths of 800-1000mm for a while now. But I want to do a few wide angle milky way landscapes, but I find that DSS stacks them poorly. Maybe I've got the settings wrong. Does anyone have suggestions. I have included below a manual stack via Photoshop of 10 images, then a stack of 4 images on DSS. (No significant difference with a 12 image DSS stack I also did) Then I show a way zoomed in crop of each image. Images taken with a Canon 1200d (Rebel T5i) and a stock 18-55. lens set to 25mm. Single subs are reasonably good quality. You can see that the DSS looks OKish at a distance but as you zoom in it seems to make a total mess of the stars. They are all mushed together and look a bit cartoon like. The PS sack still retains the stars as reasonably sharp and as individual stars, and looks similar to the single subs I had. Anyone had success with DSS and wide shots? An example of a good quality stack from DSS is here- https://youtu.be/yACQ3x5dTko on an Astrobackyard tutorial. You can see his stack is quite smooth as he zooms in, - unlike mine. Thanks John

I use Sharpcap and find it so easy to use I Polar align every time. It usually agrees with PHD quite closely

I also did Astro EQ with an EQ5. I made a post about hardware/software choices I made, if its any help.

Also for what its worth my advice on processing would be the following; Have a go with Pixinsight. Learning curve is steep but worth it. I got a trial version of it and started with these 2 videos They will get you a great result out of the box. I cant afford the software at the moment but intend to buy it soon. My biggest improvement in processing came after Getting trial Pix and following along with these videos. In the mean time I am following the steps and concepts he introduces with Photoshop. (You can do most of the steps to a degree with various tools in Photoshop.) Good luck, you're certainly off to a great start. John

Hi smr, I agree with the others. Very nice images . I woulda been super proud if that was my first attempt 😔. The last one where you try and get rid of the reds is maybe going backwards from the earlier ones. You are lucky to see Andromeda. Im in New Zealand, Andromeda only rises above the horizon by 3degrees at max. Its a dream of mine to catch it. I had my first go a couple of weeks ago but only got the core. There was a 1/3 moon in the sky. Seeing is also terrible at that low altitude. Hey I also wanted to have a try with rnc Stretch. Can you help me with the install of it? I have installed Davinci and have put the LaunchConsole.bat in the Davinci Folder. When I click "download "rnc-color-stretch-v0.975" I am directed to a page of 'C' script. Do I copy and paste this?? and make it a file and put it somewhere? I assumed rnc-color-stretch-v0.975 was the program to install, but as I say, I get a web page of code. Sorry , I dont mean to hijack your post but hope you can help. Thanks

I thought I would layout what I did to complete my ASTROEQ upgrade. I found there was a lot of different suggestions and opinions out there on what gear to use, and what software to use. I personally found this very difficult to wade through, when I was struggling to understand what was involved and to take an educated guess at which setup would work well. Especially when a lot of suggestions in various threads trailed off into silence when the person didn't post on there completed project. So maybe people would be interested in laying out their own Hardware and Software choices, and how successful they were. Here's mine -- My setup I started with a: Skywatcher EQ5 (which I had recently torn down, re-greased and tuned up) Motor Drive on it was a dual axis motor Kit same as this one--- https://www.astroshop.eu/drive-motors/skywatcher-enhanced-dual-axis-motor-drive-for-eq5-mount/p,46068 I removed it and began the Astro EQ project ---- AstroEQ Hardware: Circuit Board: purchased Toms pre-made circuit board Processor Chips (Pic and ATmega): purchased 2x Toms Pre-programmed processor chips ...... (available on his site) All components on the circuit boards were purchased from element14. (I used a plastic box I had lying around) Motor Drivers: DRV 8825 -cheap aliexpress copy of polulu board (Current sense pots set to around 0.4v giving a current of around 0.8Amp)-Actually this surprised me when I measured the current setting I had when I was finished. I didn't realize it was a bit higher than the max rating of the motors, but it seems to work well and the motors don't get too hot. Motors: 2 x https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32586088729.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.9b374c4dJCkxfd Manufacturer Part Number 17HS24-0644S Step Angle 1.8° Step Accuracy 5% Holding Torque 60Ncm(85oz.in) Rated Current/phase 0.64A Phase Resistance 15ohms Voltage 10V Inductance 32mH±20%(1KHz) (Inductance seems very high compared to Toms recommendation to choose a low inductance motor, but it worked well!) Weight 500g Motor Pulley: MXL 15tooth. Bore- 5mm(suits motor) for 6mm wide belt Worm Pulley: MXL 40Tooth. Bore- 6mm(suits SW EQ5 mount's brass worm shaft) for 6mm wide belt Belt: 2 x MXL Belt, B66MXL, Closed-loop, 66 teeth, 6mm width ( this was a bit short to fit and the motor ended up very close to the body of the mount. Needed some filling and messing about, but ended up quite compact and neat. But I would probably prefer slightly longer next time - maybe a 71tooth belt. They are cheap enough to get a couple of different sizes to give yourself options. Motor Bracket: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32960658308.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.9b374c4dJCkxfd a cheap right angle steel bracket which saved me having to bend my own. It fitted well and enabled a compact setup. I still needed a couple of other bits of Aluminium to mount brackets on. Power supply for AstroEQ board: 12v DRV 8825 Fast decay Modification: --NO! ( did not seem to be required). Toms AstroEQ Config settings for my setup; Firmware: Astroeq V4-DIY Board (Including DIY) ST4 Rate: (x Sidereal): 0.95 Advanced HC Detect: Enabled Motor Drive: DRV882x ustep Gear Changing: Disabled Motor Microstep Level: 32 ustep RA Axis: Forward Dec Axis : Backward (this depends on which way round you mount the motor) Step angles etc, same for RA and DEC as below; Motor Step Angle (o): 1.8 Motor Gear Ratio (:1); 2.666666666 Worm Gear Ratio (:1): 144 Goto(x Sidereal): 115 Hand Controller: XBOX cheap generic handset with USB cable -setup in EQMOD EQMOD software. (Note you have to install Ascom on the PC as well) EQMOD Main Settings; Ascom PulseGuide RA rate: x0.30 DEC rate: x0.50 Minimum Pulse width (msecs) : 20 DEC backlash (msecs) : 0 (not used) Guiding: PHD2 NOTE- I have measured my RA backlash at ~3 seconds and DEC backlash at ~ 7seconds(yuck!). Also Unguided Periodic Error is around -Tot. peak to peak 20 arc seconds. Its the best I can get out of the mount. (Guide Scope; 300mm guide scope(old 75-300mm zoom camera lens) with a QHY5L II-M camera.) Settings; Mount: Choose "EQMOD ASCOM HEQ5/6" - this is what EQmod calls the mount Algorithms; RA: 'Predictive PEC' -default settings except Minmo = 0.10 DEC: 'Resist Switch' Mostly around - aggressiveness 100 Minmo 0.16 Backlash Compensation: - OFF PHD says to only use Backlash compensation if your mount's DEC backlash is 3secs and below DEC guiding: Auto (works fine even with terrible backlash I have) Max RA duration: 2500mSec Max DEC duration: 4000mSec. GOTO software; 'Stellarium' 'Stellarium Scope'-(this is to connect the mount [AstroEQ] to Stellarium) Capture Software (I use a DSLR); Astro Photography Tool -- APT. Polar align with Sharpcap. -(Cant recommend this highly enough!) Telescope Orion 8" F3.9 Newtonian Total payload on EQ5 ~ 11kg! -so way overloaded for imaging END RESULT; I get guiding total RMS of 0.7 - 0.9 arc seconds most of the time, which I'm very happy with, given my mount is overloaded. Accurate GOTO's and reasonable GOTO speed. Please share your own setup 🙂 .. Also Thanks Tom for a great idea and the follow through to make it happen!

I tried ppec again. I had a mechanical problem with my RA pulley which maybe messed up my previous try of ppec. Fixed that. Mount is now running ~20" pe. Found ppec maybe a slight improvement. On hysteresis I had .85 - 1.0" tot RMS. And later in night with pprec on I was getting .75 - .9". So probably better unless conditions had changed

I tried the Predictive PEC. Early on I thought I could see a small improvement but over the night the guiding wasnt settling to what I normally get, so I went back to my default Hysteresis Algorithm for RA and got back to the RMS figures I normally get. Im happy enough with that setting at this stage

Actually it is there in RA algorithm, Ive just never seen it or heard anyone else talk about it. Looks interesting. What do you normally set the retain model percentage to?

Oh right. I must be running an old version. Thats not there in mine. I'll upgrade and have a look. Thanks 🙂

Thanks Alan re PEC, I have certainly seen mixed comments about it on many threads and even EQMOD documentation is pretty wishy washy on whether it helps or not. It sounds so great to be able to send the reverse signal to the RA motor and cancel out that PE,- maybe Im a control freak but its very appealing to me, but I have had my doubts about it. Especially when you do the math and consider how slow the rate of change that the PE amounts to - surely easily managed by normal PHD guiding. Stub Mandrel- I will look into that predictive PEC on PHD. I hadn't heard of it or noticed anything like it in the menus/documentation. Where is it hiding?

Alan - wouldnt it only slew in DEC, if I GOTO an object in east or west that happened to be perfectly lined up with that arc of the DEC? if it was off just a bit , it would have to also turn the RA axis as well to get to it ?? uh oh.. not understanding again 🙂