AstroMuni

23 hours ago, Mr Thingy said:

in the problem session I was closer to the zenith at about 70 degrees. Not sure why that would create an issue though...

It could be a balance issue as suggested already. I have same mount as you without belt mod and there are a few areas close to zenith where the mount struggles. Good luck finding the exact cause

On 27/02/2022 at 16:37, alacant said:

Oh, and a call-out for Siril, which reached the milestone of version 1.0.0 recently.

+1 to siril. Nice image too

22 hours ago, GazK said:

92 x 15second subs (being cautious) @ISO1600, 23mins total. Darks, bias and flats also used, flats were a bit iffy as zoom kept shifting. Canon 80D, 70-300 lens @ 150mm f5.6, on a Star Adventurer on a video tripod.

Nice shot. And an excellent one for a first attempt

The areas to improve over and above what has been said by others is the bottom half of your image has oblong stars, while top half is quite round. So thats one to get to the bottom of. Good luck

will try this as well. thanks

2 hours ago, Manuka said:

Sorry guys I really struggle to understand this;

First and foremost select a guide star as suggested by @alacant, increase cal step to 2000 as per @michael8554. Give it a shot and then post logs here. Good luck

On 22/02/2022 at 23:44, jbruckshaw said:

I took about 80 lights in the end

Hi,

Here is a suggestion: Process only the lights without darks, flats etc. and compare the results.

Also upload a single lights image here (unprocessed) preferably in fits/tiff format so we can all see how bad or good it is.

What tool are you using to stretch the image?

55 minutes ago, tickmatrix said:

so when you adjust the focus knob you're moving the eyepiece focal point closer to the telescope focal point, where they meet is the point where the image is clear.

 Do I have this right?

In this there are 3 lenses in play - the large one at the far end of the scope (objective), the eyepiece near your eyes and the lens in your eye itself So together the focus needs to be at a point where your eyes see a clear image. Remember that the eye is capable of adjusting the focal length of its lens. You will hear the term called eye relief as well and thats to do with how close you need to bring your eyes to the eyepiece to get focus.

Are there no linux experts in this forum

They are all at default settings

11 hours ago, Jjmorris90 said:

I’m using a skywatcher 130pds with an asi183MC pro and ASIAIR 

Thats great progress indeed.... I find that the hard part is learning how to use the various software tools to bring out the best from your images and that takes time.

I would suggest you try processing your older image and see if you can achieve better results with what you have learnt so far.

If you see even the hubble images its not very colourful. Its filled with these dark areas and your image captures those well. 👍 You may wish to crop the image so you can bring out the salient features better.

10 hours ago, tickmatrix said:

Could someone tell me what is happening when I turn my focusing knob and an image becomes clear (in focus) 

In a nutshell the lens or mirror is bringing the light gathered through the various portions of the lens/mirror into a small circle. This is what you see depicted in the various science papers. So think of it as a collector of light, hence the larger the lens the more the light gathering power. Here is the basic science as explained in BBC bitesize https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zt7srwx/revision/1

If this is too basic then let me know

To make it more complex, various wavelengths of light bend at different angles so they will not end up in the same point in the small circle. And this is where comes the need to use multiple lenses to correct for the various errors you hear about (coma, chromatic aberration etc.)

bump

20 hours ago, Deepblue12 said:

Thanks I am already aware of the cables that are available but the question is what’s the difference between direct connection to the mount or through the sync scan controller?

In a nutshell......If you are using a driver such as EQMOD you dont need the Synscan in between, as it has all the functionality built into it. So folk (like me) who have switched to using the laptop to control the mount via RPi dont use the Synscan at all

On 16/02/2022 at 16:25, cesco said:

How can I evaluate whether a 0,45 pix movement of the guide star is an excessive image movement in the imaging scope?

Check out this video, which might answer some of your questions ......

Need help. The kstars crashed on my MacOS and I had to reinstall. Now for some strange reason the star sizes when using alignment tool (in simulator mode) are so tiny that its hard to spot them. Is there a setting for this?

22 hours ago, cmitran said:

My intention is to schedule the telescope to take photos by itself through the night. To program it to track and take multiple photos of same target without me being there to do this manually. Using, for example, my raspberry Pi 4 to control it.

As others have already said Astroberry  (free) is the easiest way to start off on RPi. There is also StellarMate OS which sells for around $50 which also does the same. Stellamate is run by the developers of INDI, Kstars, but the software is also available for free. I use Astroberry on the RPi.

Ekos has a scheduler that allows you to automate the tasks of startup, align, track, focus (if you have autofocuser), guide, capture and shutdown once the object of interest is out of view. It can then restart the following day to continue where it left off. There is plenty of documentation available online. And ofcourse there are plenty of users here who can help too.

I am struggling to install TensorFlow that is pre-requisite for getting Starnet++ to run on my old Dell N5040 with 3GB RAM and running Linux Mint Una. The laptop does not have NVIDIA hence tried to install the GPU version with no success. My CPU does not support AVX instructions hence proving to be a challenge. I am not a Linux expert so will need detailed step by step instructions.

Any help is appreciated.

49 minutes ago, Steenamaroo said:

Fair enough. It might reveal something interesting.
Thanks for the suggestion.

On the days platesolving hasnt worked for me its generally due to very high level clouds that reduce the number of stars its able to recognise. They are hard to spot but when comparing images from a previous night, its obvious. In my case I use the ASI224mc as my main camera on a 130/650 scope. The guidecam is ASI120mm on the Astro essentials 32mm guidescope. I prefer using the internal Ekos Stellarsolver to external ones. I run Ekos from my Linux based laptop and the RPi just runs the INDI server & drivers.

As your problems seem to have started after a software install, I am guessing some config has changed in that process. What would help us is if you post the solver settings esp the Options profiles that you have chosen eg: 4-ParallelSmallScale. And I am guessing you have downloaded all the recommended Index files for your FOV onto your RPi.

16 minutes ago, Steenamaroo said:

- Yes, I'm trying to polar align and platesolve using the guidescope and QHY camera, which is what I've always done.
Main scope, guide scope, and finder scope, are all pretty well trained on the same point.
I have imaged before with this rig - Not much, admittedly, but enough to know.

My main scope is a 130pds, since you asked, but it's not a part of the platesolving/polar alignment chain.

Next time try doing platesolving with main scope as well to see if it has the same problem.

11 hours ago, Steenamaroo said:

I should add, when it does work it tells me focal length is 188, so I'm confident the specs I'm inputting for the guidescope are correct, or close enough.

Are you platesolving with guidescope? What is your main scope?

Per se there is nothing wrong in doing it this way IF both guide and main have been aligned to same point. Using guidescope for PA should work even if its not aligned with main, but when it comes to actual imaging, it could lead to the main object not being correctly positioned in FOV.

40 minutes ago, alacant said:

Native mac? kstars, siril and startools.

Sound advice.

@Martyn A E My laptop is Linux based and I use Kstars & Siril. The MacOS is after all Linux under the hood so most software that work on Linux are likely to have a Mac edition.

On 11/01/2022 at 10:38, Ian McCallum said:

Looking at the ZWO cameras,  I incorrectly assumed that for DSO stuff a USB 3 port was essential.  I also thought that DSO's required more resources, due to the very long exposure times I was seeing quoted.

I use ZWO cameras as well and primarily capture DSOs. My laptop is an old i3 with 3GB RAM and 256GB HDD running Linux Mint. I also use an RPi as it gives me the luxury of being able to sit inside my house on laptop without having to run wires to scope etc. The RPi runs the INDI server and drivers and comes with 2 USB3 ports + 2 USB2 ports. I changed to Linux when my laptop was struggling to run windows 7, 8 and I couldnt be bothered to buy a new laptop.

Ref long exposure times most of the hardwork is being done by the camera and it only calls upon computer resources when it saves the files. I tend to use a combination of 30s and 120s exposures as my camera is just a good old uncooled ASI224mc and I figured out that light pollution in my area anyway contributes a lot, so I can get away with short 30s exposures. See the video by Robin Glover on optimum exposure.

9 minutes ago, StuartT said:

I'm looking for a high quality UV/IR cut filter for planetary use with a ASI224MC Pro. Any recommendations?

Have you considered the filter from ZWO? I use that with my ASI224mc

Awesome picture. So many galaxies in one shot