Stickfarm8

TerryMcK, Your experiences sound like what I was struggling with two weeks ago. One of the very helpful replies referred to this tutorial - which was helpful - https://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorial-setting-up-and-using-astrotortilla-for-plate-solving.html You also might look back thru this discussion - Stash and Martin both jumped in to help me and included some screenshots of their settings which also helped. It was interesting that one had downscaling set to "0" the other had it set to "1", but both configurations worked. One suggestion as a starting point, is to take an image from the preview folder where BYEOS (I also use that for camera control) stores the images requested by AT and upload it to astrometry.net and see if it solves. My "stupid stick" error was I had a discrepancy between the settings of the -L and -H values in the option line, and what the settings were for the Scale Min and Scale Max. They are the same. I deleted the settings in the option line - they were redundantly "wrong" - lol. I did have some weird errors with AT after my laptop was upgraded Friday to Win 10 1903. BYEO had startup licensing issues, which I quickly fixed, but AT was just a mess. It was solving, but with the target off to the left of the BYEOS target/focusing circle. I completely deleted and reloaded AT Saturday afternoon and AT behaved perfectly Saturday night. It's a marvelous tool - when it works <s>. One other thing - make sure port 1499 is open in BYEOS - otherwise the two pieces of software can't talk to each other. Windows will ask you to confirm you want that port open. I am by NO means an experienced user - but it sounds like you have the same issues I was struggling with. It is very much worth the effort to get it working. A whole different imaging experience now that AT is working seamlessly with CDC and BYEOS. Rich

So far I've confined my imaging to the driveway in front of our house. I've not tried to add remote viewing to the mix yet. We live in a semi-rural part of KY, well east of Louisville. We've lived here for 28 years. At first the neighbors were baffled at what the heck I was up to now (crazy anal retentive engineer....) till 2 AM on my driveway...but after I realized their "curiosity" - I spoke to them about what I was getting into, and invited them to bring their kids over, etc. when they saw me out. My scope doesn't have a great focal length of viewing planets, but with the high magnification eyepiece you can get a pretty decent view of Jupiter, even Saturn, which really excited the kids - and even the adults. Now they cut their headlights when they see me out while passing the house - even the neighbor across the street, who likes to back is truck in, shuts his lights off while backing in. They also shut their porch lights off when they notice I'm out. So I'm pretty content in this environment ! It will be interesting how I feel when I finally do venture out remote ....... Rich

I did get out last night for about 90 minutes. AT behaved perfectly. I did reinstall AT yesterday afternoon - not sure that had anything to do with it Stash. Was able to get 12 subs of Pinwheel before it set behind the trees across the street. Eagle Nebula was still problematic due to the moon glow. The high level cloud cover started forming about that time, so the session was over. And finally - the rain has returned to KY - about 1/4 inch so far. A good inch plus set for tonight. One thing about all this - my setup procedure has become a "habit" now from all this "practice" - I don't need the checklist anymore - LOL ! Rich

Yep - I have been checking to make sure the EQMOD database it was clear when I first start EQMOD to do the alignment with Polemaster. And AT was clearly appending the database when it solved . It just wasn't "centered" like it had been last weekend or this past Thursday night using AT. Its looking like I might have clear skies early before the front comes closer with the much needed rain . Thanks as always Stash !

Julian - thanks for the heads up on updates. Supposedly it was complete in the afternoon - it wasn't. Stash - I check and if necessary clean out the alignment points everytime I set up - now that I have AT working. With regards to CDC - and syncing. Since when the plate solved successfully, noted that there was a update in the EQMOD data base - do I still have to click the sync btn in CDC? When I tried that once Thursday night, I had thought I noted two entry points in the EQMOD list and didn't think that was a good idea. I searched thru the documentation on CDC and AT - didn't see anything about telling CDC it was sync'd to that point. Thanks for the help ! Rich

My laptop upgraded to 1903 yesterday morning. I was expecting some issues when I went outside - although I had at least tried Astrotorilla before setting up, having it solve one of the BYEOS images from Thursday night. It seemed to solve just fine. It was a drop-dead gorgeous night - crystal clear, low moisture in the air. I was excited. Well, once setup, had no issues with Polemaster getting polar aligned, I wasn't disappointed <s>. Had to reactivate the license registration for BYEOS for starters. Then for some reason had to do a reboot, at which time some other minor updates were applied before I could BYEOS up and connected to the camera. CDC started up ok, slewed to Polaris first, plate solved fine. But Polaris was not in the target circle on BYEOS image view. It was slightly to the left of the circle - not even in it. Repeated solving did not correct. Very different behavior from Thursday night. No mention of errors in the log. Slewed to Vega - this time no issues. Slewed to Denab - and got a error after solving the first pass, that it could sync because of the distance it was off (~28 arcminutes). Repeated plate solving - same result. Went back to Polaris - same result as before, slightly to the left of the target circle after solving. Slewed to Eagle Nebula and after solving it was spot on. Unfortunately the Moon was right near the Eagle, causing funky rings in the image so that option had to be abandoned. Slewed to Ring Nebula, and plate solved. But there was no Ring visible. Went back to Polaris - same position as before when plate solved. Went back to Ring Nebula but before solving looked at BYEOS live view and the Ring was off to the left - a little further that Polar was off after AT had plate solved. I manually adjusted the mount to get the Ring centered and imaged for over an hour. Guiding was good - very good. I wanted to finish up the night with some more images of Triangulum - same issue with AT. Solved and this error that it could not resync because of the distance. Went back to PARK position. Shut everything down, restarted and this time Polaris was spot on in the center when AT solved. Went to Triangulum, it solved and was in the BYEOS target circle. When I finished, told the mount to PARK. Then went to disconnect the mount from CDC - and noticed that EQMOD was already shut down and I got an error from CDC. Very weird. One other note - I do clear the alignment points in EQMOD every time I start up - now that I had plate solving working. Keep in mind - I'm still very new at all this and the issues could be purely due to "pilot error". Anyone have any ideas of where to start troubleshooting ? Chalk it up to "just one of those nights"? Any help is most appreciated. I may not have much of a window to image tonight - long needed rain coming for Sun/Mon. Rich

Thanks David for letting us know about the Beta - and for your hard work on this product. Rich

All, I did get out to image Friday night. Astrotortilla worked perfectly! What a difference not having to struggle with that first alignment. After the polar alignment, I activated all the software, slewed to Polaris just to see. Told AT to solve - 12 seconds later bingo. I could then hear the mount shift a bit, and the click of the camera shutter again. Polaris moved from left of center, to dead on. Went to Vega - same drill. Then Vega, Jupiter and Denab. When I then went to my first imaging target, there was Andromeda right in the middle of the camera screen. I was able to get the camera on the scope from the beginning and get it focused right after I did the polar alignment. Later when I went to Triangulum, CDC nailed it without any additional slewing by AT after the first solve. It made the whole session so much more fun without the aggravation of the manual 3-star alignment. I told Steppenwolf - I put the importance of plate solving up equal to good autoguiding. It just makes the evening so much more enjoyable. Next target - Eagle Nebula !! Hopefully we are finally going to get Fall weather and clear skies this coming weekend instead of this blasted 90+ F weather we've had since last week. Rich

Stash - I see what you mean on the exposure time/star count. I had some images in that preview folder taken at 10 seconds/1600 iso. The star count when solving was ~550 objects. Solved in 26 seconds. Then ran the image of the shot I took right after polar alignment , and one that included Jupiter to see what that would do. Both solved in less than 30 sec. My scope has Jupiter about 1/4 of an inch, and was curious what that would do. It solved just fine. Three images solved - I'm ready, and anxious, for clear weather so I can finally try the whole package together. This will make finding and centering Triangulum (M33) a WHOLE lot easier so I can finish getting those subs. Thanks again all of you for the help. It is most appreciated. Rich

Stash/Martin/Catbuglar - Haha - solved with both your settings. As Catburgler pointed out - there was a discrepance between the min/max settings and the custom options line..... another Stupid Stick award for me! Both sets of settings worked - although mine took 49.9 sec to solve I suspect because of all the extra data sets from Tyco I had loaded. Thanks all of you for the help - its very much appreciated. Now if the darn Kentucky weather will cooperate tomorrow night .............. Thanks, Rich

I've taken two courses thru distance learning programs - getting ready to start a third that is series of four courses total. None lead to degree credit - but helped convince my better-half that I was indeed serious about getting into this before she consented to the out-pouring of funds for the "toys"<lol>. There are two organizations - EdX.org and Cousera.org that have on-line offerings. Some can lead to degrees (on Coursera) but most don't - they are on-line, non-credit. The first course I took was thru EdX.org and unfortunately it is no longer offered. It was a lot of work - and one can either do the work or coast thru it depending on what you want to get out of it beyond qualifying to get a certificate. The second course was, to be honest, absolutely fantastic. It is titled Astronomy - Exploring Time and Space and can be found here https://www.coursera.org/learn/astro . The instructor, Dr. Chris Impey ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Impey) is a fantastic lecturer and has put a tremendous amount of effort into the material - written and video that you can download and keep. I never would have guessed he was from Scotland - he's lost his brogue completely after living in Arizona since the mid-1980's. They are - or have - updated the program but I have not had a chance to look at the new material. I was amazed to find out that they are casting HUGE mirrors at the University of Arizona - in excess of 9 meters in diameter. I grew up in San Diego, CA and my family visited Mt. Palomar several times so I've always be interested in large scopes. But this course really broadened by knowledge of space and astronomy. I highly recommend it. As a side benefit, you will be invited to attend his biweekly 1 hour on-line Q&A's which are very interesting. This winter I'm going to back to EdX, and take this program https://www.edx.org/xseries/astrophysics . Brian Schmidt is one of the instructors - he received the Nobel prize in physics for his work on dark energy. I've seen him on some science shows on tv, and he appears to be dynamic lecturer. Neither the Coursera program or the next one at EdX are live lectures. The Coursera program had a 14 week schedule - but you could work ahead. The EdX Xseries program appears to be self-paced. Beat's watching reruns !

Martin, I will try when I get home tonight - I've got your settings and Stash's settings to use when I try. Someone else also pointed out that I'm needlessly restraining my choices to AT because it integrates with Backyard EOS (the software I'm using for camera control). If I'm still unsuccessful with AT, All Sky or Plate Solver2 may get a turn at bat <s>. Thanks for your help, Rich

Stash, Thank you so much doing all this. Steve (Steppenwolf) had recommended SGL as a very good place to seek help and exchange information - and he was spot on. I do really appreciate the time you took to do this. I've not tried the simulator mode option - I always have gotten the mount set up with the laptop - no scope on it. But I will try that tonight. If I can get this image to solve, there were others that I had taken at less exposures and perhaps I can get a feel for the right exposure setting before the next time I can get out (darn Kentucky weather has really sucked this month!). That's what I am loving about this hobby - so much to learn not only the various software tools, the hardware, the imaging, but about the universe. Just seeing the images that I have managed to get so far (M33 and M31), seeing the planets thru the eye piece gives one a different feeling than looking at pictures or videos. The Coursera program I took this past winter, Exploring Time and Space, taught by a wonderful instructor, Dr. Chris Impey, really got me fired up about the universe. Best $50 I have spent. Dr. Impey is originally from the UK, but has been at the University of Arizona since 1986 (we've managed to scrub his accent - lol). I had no idea they were making mirrors there, 9+ meter's in diameter in a facility under the football stadium. He is quite an accomplished educator who has a passion for teaching that is refreshing. I'll let you know how I make out tonight. Thanks again ! Rich

Stash, I uploaded the image to astrometry.net. It solved - and was right where I had it pointed. A screen shot is below. I also included the image below. Something I learned tonight - BYEOS saves all those images as jpgs in the preview folder. In the config file, the timeout for the camera is 10. It was too cloudy to set up tonight so I could try resetting the downscaling to 1. If anything comes to mind after you look at the image and results from astrometry.net - please let me know. Everyone's help is most appreciated. Rich

Billy, ‘Thanks. The site you linked is the instructions I used. It was very detailed and well written. Stash - I confirmed with Sky-watcher that the flattener does not alter focal length. Their value for the FOV width was a little different - 2.45 degrees. But everything else was confirmed. Rich

Stash - Thanks for the reply. When I get home, I will run the image from the above screenshop thru astronomy.net. The number of stars was varying from the low hundreds when I had the exposure down to 5 seconds to the thousands at the 30 sec. As far as the equipment info, here is the result which I used as the FOV (don't remember what site this was from - so forgive me there). The only uncertainity I had is the Sky-Watcher field flatner. I've searched the manual, their website, forums to see if there was any information on it that indicated it was less than 1.0. Next opportunity I will change the downscaling to match your value. The image below is not mine - its what came up when I input the equipment info and what target I was interested in at this site - https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/astronomy-field-view-calculator/ . But I will try astronomy.net when I get home. Thanks for your help - I'll try it again - and post the last image I taken during on the plate solving. I'll have to convert it to a jpg - its RAW . Rich

Good afternoon ! I'm still climbing a learning curve - and while I've gotten some of the 3-star alignment issues resolved that I was having, I really want to get plate solving working. I am using CDC and Backyard EOS, so Astrotortilla seemed like the best option. I am controlling the mount (EQ-6 Pro) via a PC laptop using ASCOM (EqMod). Some background - I installed Astrotorilla 0.7 per the instructions on lightvortexastronomy - https://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorial-setting-up-and-using-astrotortilla-for-plate-solving.html , including all the index files that fit the calculated FOV and the 20% FOV. I have made sure that all three pieces of software are using the same EPOCH settings - JNOW. My start up process, after polar alignment, is to power down the mount, start CDC, power the mount up, connect to the mount. Start up BYEOS, connect the camera. Start up Astrotortilla (AT). I pick a target in CDC and slew to it. Go to the AT screen, connect to the mount, click on setup for the camera and set the iso, then the exposure time. I check the two boxes in the Action blco - to sync and reslew to target. Then click on Capture and Solve. Looking at the log it goes thru a whole series of FITs looking for the match and can never solve. Its tracking as you can see from the image below. I looked at the images that BYEOS was taking - you can clearly see the star field. I tried various exposure times from 5s up to 30s. Two different iso's - 800, 1600. I am using a Canon 5D MkIII. I have tweaked the settings per the tutorial, including trying the different options the author suggested, including going back and installing the Tycho 2 indexes for FOV over 3 degrees. Nothing seems to work to arrive at a solution. Here is a screen shot from last night - I've tried several different targets. This one I think was on Vega. Any help or suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks so much ! Rich

I had a similar problem when I was first getting my equipment setup. The video trick worked with the Polemaster camera, but did not help with the Orion Pro guide camera. It flat out didn’t work at all. Plugged the Orion into my sons ASUS laptop - bingo. Worked just like it should. Turned out it was the USB ports on the DELL G7 laptop. It has a Thunderbolt port as well that uses different hardware . Bought a Thunderbolt USB 3 docking station the plugs into it - both the Polemaster and Orion Pro cameras work perfectly. Some Dells apparently have issues with USB 3 ports when using the monochromatic cameras.

Stash, Thanks for the suggestions. Epoch data base pointers were both the same., and the secondary encoders was disabled. I have a hunch my issue is "newbie ignorance" in not verifying that the scope is indeed pointing at the NCP. As I was trying to search thru the threads for the checklist, I came across a thread "C du C Not Playing Ball" that hit me like a brick. I'm going to visually verify the scope and the view scope are centered on the NCP the next time I setup and I suspect my issues will be resolved. Several comments emphasized that (almcl and Steppenwolf's) . I had used a technique that I saw in a video from AstronomyShed which I thought was supposed to gets things positioned correctly - assuming the tripod was perfectly level and a good polar alignment using a level on the weight extension rod and the mount saddle to set the home points but I'm not so sure its doing that - or that I'm not botching it up somehow. There is a TON of good information on this site - I could read through it for hours and hours. At some point I need to dig into plate solving as an alternate but I want to get these fundamentals down pat before I add anything else to get in trouble with <s>. Thanks, Rich

Three no imaging nights now - VERY frustrating. Last night was clear at the start - the haze-humidity of the previous two nights gone - but the three star alignment, again took over 45 minutes to get done and by the time I was ready to start capture, the high level thin cloud layer was building. So I tried getting the placement of the mount and OTA exactly where it had been Friday night. The polar initial polar alignment thru the scope on the mount required no adjustment (time was close to the same - Polaris at exactly 10 oclock), and very minor adjustment required when I ran Polestar . I took that as a hopeful sign. The alignment data was definitely present in EQMod when it was fired up for Polestar rotation, and by CDC when I restarted it and connected to the mount. A little better last night - but not by much. I know distances on a PC screen can be relative depending on zoom - but once I've got the object centered in the eye piece, that first alignment might be as much as a half inch different on the laptop (with the view in the default - not zoomed in or out). Putting it another way - at times, when aligning to that first object, it won't even be in the finder scope. I'm using a keypad to slew with, but it can still be time consuming getting that first object sync'd. The second is always much closer - but not always. The third is usually very close. My question to everyone is one of expectations. Am I expecting too much on that first slew to an object for alignment of CDC - i.e., is this your normal experience? If not typical, i.e., when CDC is slewed to the first alignment object, is the object at least in the finder scope, does anyone have any suggestions where to start troubleshooting ? Thanks - any help or suggestions would be most appreciated ! Rich

Likwid, Welcome to the newbie curve! I chuckled when I read Olly's comment - This whole darned business is far from easy! I've been battling similar issues but the enjoyment when you capture those images the feeling just can't be beat ! If you haven't seen this on the phd2guiding side - its worth taking the time to read thru - https://openphdguiding.org/phd2-best-practices/ When I was having trouble last weekend - I had apparently rotated the guide camera more than a few degrees - I watched this video on the Astroimaging channel - youtube.com/watch?v=LXFGRta98rs . One of the developers Andy does a good job walking thru all the initial setup and has some good recommendations. After I got everything recalibrated last Saturday night, I was even able to finally use dithering in the capture process. You also might consider moving from the hand controller to a PC if you have a laptop that can be used. That enables you to use programs like Cartes du Ciel instead of the handcontroller. I ordered the cable needed to go between the laptop and the mount - in my case a FTDI EQMOD cable from First Light Optics and it has worked well. I'm still trying to learn EQMOD's plethera of options. I have been setting up "from scratch" each time. Getting the three star alignment has sometimes taken me a lot of time when I initially point to the first star - I like to use Vega. Last night I marked the points on the driveway, and saved the points in EQMOD. I'm hoping that helps speed me into imaging tonight. I hope your viewing has been better than mine the past two nights - the humid haze hanging over KY has been awful. It looked like I was imaging thru a snow storm when viewing the captures in Backyard EOS. Two nights in a row I have set up only to be disappointed. Tonight looks promising. Rich

I had seen this earlier when I searched. But let me ask what might be a stupid question. I have to completely taken down my mount/OTA setup each time I finish imaging. I have the spots marked on the driveway for the three legs. I had ASSUMED I could not save the 3 point alignments - that I had to redo that each time. Can I keep them and count on them finding the points the next time I set up ? Any help is appreciated ! Rich

After a lot of stumbles, dealing with mechanical issues (most of which were my own making), I finally have an image of Andromeda M31. This a stack of 48 images, ISO 1600, 160 second exposures. The light frames were a little underexposed - but I'm still learning to trust the histogram in Backyard EOS rather than my eyes looking at the captured imaged. The images were processed with 35 flats, 35 darks, 35 bias using Deep Sky Stacker and the resulting TIFF processed in GIMP (I'm still working on getting my PS skills back). My appreciation to Steve (Steppenwolf) for ALL his help - and patience with my many questions he has been so kind to answer. Rich

I learned a painful lesson (in terms of lost imaging opportunity!) regarding the image camera on my mount and thought I would share my rectal-cranial inversion experience. The guide camera is an Orion Star Shoot Autoguider Pro in a Orion Deluxe Mini 50mm guide scope. At the time I was using PHD2 V2.2. I wanted to "tweak" the focus a bit before I got started image capture. When I started trying to autoguide after image selection, it would appear to start ok, then the RA and Dec curves would diverge. After trying a number of things, I gave up and packed everything back in the house. The next afternoon I went to the PHD2 website, downloaded the newest version, 2.6.6, and installed it. Since it seemed to take all the information from the previous install, I thought I was all set. Nope. Same result. I tried running the guiding assistant and accepting its recommendations. Still no joy. Finally I clicked on the option to reset configuration on the global tab - which reset everything, rebuilt the darks, etc., went thru the calibration process, and bingo. Apparently without realizing it, I must have rotated the camera more than a few degrees when I was fixing something that wasn't broke. There is a nice download - PHD2 Best Practices written by the developers that was helpful. Page 8 discusses when to recalibrate. So I lost two nights of imaging, but learned a valuable lesson - and even read thru the manual for PHD2 which was well worth the time spent. It is well written. Having the autoguider and PHD2 working properly is so important. Rich

I wasn't sure this is "normal" when starting the 3-star alignment process or not. I am relatively new, having been imaging (or should I say attempting to) since early July. I have a Skywatcher EQ6 -R mount and a Esprit 120 ED scope. I do not use the hand controller - everything is done via laptop PC using a Lynx ASTRO FTDI cable and EQMod software. After the initial polar alignment using the scope in the mount , I use Polemaster to fine tune the polar alignment. I always park the scope in the home position before shutting down EQMod. I start CDC up. Connect the telescope. Unpark it. Then start the alignment process. When picking the first object to align to, and telling the scope to slew to that object it frequently isn't close. I have to spend quite a bit of time getting that first object positioned and sync'd. The second is usually much better; but occasionally not. When the moon is out, that makes it easy as the first object. But when it's not, it can be very time consuming on that first object. I have check the setup information - it is all correct. Is this normal - or is there a better way or other settings I can adjust in CDC to make that first alignment go quicker? Thanks for any help, Rich