-Joe_

I’d definitely trade you a bortle or two for a few of your clear nights ;o)

Clear Outside says Bortle 4. using 180s at 200 gain and 54 offset. Still experimenting to find where I want to be though.

Using the earths atmosphere as big lens.. (I’ve been watching these for a while, and only just found that the research group isn’t called the Cool Worlds Lab because they are down with kids, but because of the temperature of exoplanets they research)

First successful multi-night session, with narrowband, and my new (to me) 120ED. Work in progress, trying to decide whether to get more Ha or start adding some OIII or SII. Spent much of the time on both nights swearing like a trooper, reasons include: 1. Getting the EAF to actually work - easy in the end but not in the dark. 2. Polar alignment through ekos with the 120mm field of view is a pain. Next time might take the guide cam out of the OAG and put it in the finder just to polar align 3. After plate solving to the target, didnt realise that spending an hour twiddling with EAF might mean the target has moved a bit.... 4. After getting it all going and retiring indoors, notice the guiding is going crazy & star trails everywhere... go outside to find the cat using the tripod accessories tray to sit on and play with cables.. Anyway, it's all part of the fun.. here's what I got, best 4hr39min from about 5hr30min of lights. 120ED-DSPro, x0.85 FR, Baader 7nm Ha Filter

Yes, that’s where I got the info from.

Dont forget the eye has pretty awful resolution outside of the very small central fovea and relies on rapid scanning to generate an 'image' in the brain. Try staring at a single letter and reading anything without moving a muscle. If I was to guess, I'd say it is a example of binning, the bit you stare at is obviously not in colour, but the rest obviously is. I'm thinking the colour hatching outside the center of vision matches the resolution of the eye there, but not at the center. But I'd also guess at persistence of vision and other effects adding in as above.

Ahh, so thats what groups are for in DSS. I guess the process is (given my example above): Add darks & bias to Main group Add night 1 lights & flats to group 1 Add night 2 lights & flats to group 2 Then let DSS do it's business and should have a final stacked image. Hopefully will have two nights of Ha ready tomorrow morning to give it a try.

Good point, DSS. Happy to try something else if more suitable...

Hi, Just wondering if there is a 'standard' process for dealing with multiple nights (maybe even separated by months) imaging and stacking. e.g. Imaging a DSO, I get 3 nights on the target, but separated by a few weeks each. All, say, Ha. My current thinking is: 1. Produce flats for each session, darks & bias can remain the same (cooled camera) 2. Stack each session, with flats, bias & darks, to get a frame for the session 3. Stack the session frames to get the final stacked image Or is there a better way? The reason I'm not just stacking them all together is that the flats might change in between.. cheers Joe

I was watching a video on that paper just last night, I have to confess my woo-woo meter was pinging, but looks like a serious paper (I kept expecting someone to deny global warming or mention the ology) Any solar researchers on here? Wouldn’t mind know if this is the current state of thinking...

I was reading through Kiers 100 Best Astrophotography Targets today and the section at the back on guiding mentions the ideal guiding camera exposure is 5s, and that under 2s may cause guidance problems due to ‘chasing the seeing conditions’. How does that reckon with the consensus here? ‘I’ve been getting about 0.9” RMS on my guidance (with the 72ED), and setting the exposure to 1s, thinking quicker is better, as long I can see the star. What’s your opinion? I can sort of see the logic in Kiers opinion. is my 0.9 good/bad given the 72ed?

No I don’t.. been meaning to make one. this wasn’t slightly out of focus though - they were big doughnuts... must have knocked when tightening the locking screw and not bothered to check. i went and got hold of the zwo auto focus - was super easy to use. The next night out I had super focussed star trails (Don’t ask!) hoping the forecast holds for tomorrow night and I might get something useful ..

I have the PPB, Indi just couldnt see it. It was getting late, i was tired and probably making mistakes. I'm going to head back to a pi3 with UbuntuMate and install indi from the ppa. Stability is my main concern - will get that working and then play with my pi4 at leisure. I'm runng the p4 inside a vented case (open sides) and with a fan .. have had no problems, installed the firmware as well.

Yes.. the errors stopped me using it. From what I can see is indigo is mainly built by Peter who flogs cloudmaker software for it, and Ekos is built by Jasem who flogs stellarmate .. i quite liked the look of the cloudmaker software, but lack of polar alignment means i’d need an indigo compatible tool for that. I built indi from scratch yesterday, and it all ran ok, apart from the pegasus driver.. need to look at that. Have you tried the pi4 firmware update - it’s meant to help a lot with heat and throttling.

Been playing with indigo, since they provide an image to use, seems to have problems working with ekos - might be the driver for my mount as it just wasnt acting right (park/unpark). So I downloaded a copy of the coundmakers apps on trial - but they don't do polar alignment... I'm heading back to building indi on raspbian and see how that is.

What process do you lot use for cleaning the various optical components for my refractor? (I can see the post on the diagonal., so thats covered). I'm amazed how dirty my objectiove has become in just a couple of weeks, the flats I am taking are shocking!. I will also need to clean the filters, reducer, & glass cover for the camera sensor at some point... just a blower & lens cleaner? Do it differ from cleaning normal camera lenses? thanks Joe

Nice, will give it a try. Do any of the Ekos alternatives do polar alignment ?

Could you expand on that? I'm currently using the internal guider .. is it worth me trying PHD? Does it improve guiding, or something else? What RMS are we talking about?

Debian vs Ubuntu: I never really got on with the Unity interface.. Mint is certainly an improvement, and has all the ppa goodness. I did try Kubuntu for about 6 months as my main work laptop, but ending up killing it in a fit of rage as it just wasnt as stable as mainline Ubuntu (I like to hate Ubuntu, but normally use it as it is the nearest to a MacOS of 'Just works') Trying it: Yes, I'll pull the plug one night when I'm not sp desperate for imaging time... Building: There is a script on the indi forums that I used, just cloned the master indi repo and ran the script... seemed to work, but I need to test it over the weekend, actually hooked up to my rig. script: https://www.indilib.org/forum/development/5379-update-for-indi-drivers-for-raspberry-pi.html , 3rd post indi repo: https://github.com/indilib/indi

png would be my preference normally, for the reasons you give. Star Tools just gives the option of fits or jpeg (with no controls) output... a bit strange, but will save fits in future and use gimp to produce a png/jpeg/whatever

I sat down today and got it up and running with raspbian. I prefer debian to Ubuntu, so happy with that. I compiled indilib from the master repo, went all ok, and installed indi Web Manager, that all seems to be good, it starts, report everything is good with the drivers I need. That's as far as I need right now - I want to run Ekos from my MacBook inside, connecting remotely. Will play more this weekend. I did try installing kstars from the debian repo, as this is the latest, and it installs and runs, but looks buggy - mainly interface issues, and missing drivers. I do like Ekos, just wish it were seperate from kstars. One question, for someone who knows: If I run against a remote indi server, how much is being done locally, and how much on the indi server? For example, if I queue a set of 20 L,R,G, & B frames, and then lose connection, what will happen at the server/telescope?

Had to throw the Ha frames away... all out of focus, just enough to look ok the small preview. Not sure how I messed that up, but there’s a lesson to be learnt... I did consider PixInsight, but settled on StarTools as its workflow gelled with me when trying them all out...

Just looking at the frame again for Ha processing. There is detail in those dust lanes, but Star Tools has dropped them quite severely compared to how they look in Star Tools. I was quite suprised by the lack of options when you output to jpg, so probably need use something else (Gimp? reccomendations?) to convert from the final fits to jpg..

Not yet - will get some free time later this week to give it a go.

I thought it might be just the dust lanes obscuring background stars, but will give it a bit more attention tomorrow when I have the Ha frames...