JonCarleton

I may have tried it in my run of trying everything I could find, but it doesn't ring a bell. I'll take a look at it. Always willing to try recommendations from another Linux user.

No. I am of the UNIX religion. I have evolved ever so slightly to Linux in recent years, but, "I don't do Windows." I have tried RegiStax6 in Wine (Windoze emulator), but it is a bit buggy in that configuration and smells funny. I do believe I have tried every Linux-capable stacking program there is, and my results among all of them seem similar. I use the same process exactly with moon shots stacking and nebula stacking and the moon comes out OK, but the nebula looks awful. As I said, the one I posted is one sub of 100, taken as FITS images (as were the moon subs). I converted it to JPEG for posting in GIMP..

Yeah...I like your image. I hope that =someday= I can get results like that.

I found an image in the trash. This is an example of an unstretched sub from an earlier session. Still struggling with focus issues at the time.

Alas, I am an avid disk cleaner and no traces of my failures survive for long. I am using a SVBony305, and used a 30 second exposure with about 60% gain. By contrast, I use 1ms with 0% gain for moon shots. This is the moon shot I stacked, though a bit overzealous in the GIMP post-processing. I might get another shot at the nebula tonight and will post the results.

I finally had a few clear evenings and got 100 moon shots that I was able to stack using Siril with very reasonable results. Things worked "as advertised." This more or less gives me a bit of faith in my ability to stack properly with Siril procedure-wise. However, when I tried a similar procedure with 100 subs of the Great Orion Nebula, I am back to making things worse by stacking. Since then, I have watched a number of stacking/astro videos and think perhaps I found a problem: When I look at the moon, I crank the gain and exposure down to almost the lowest setting. It is all I can do to get it low enough to avoid over-exposure. When I try the M42, I focus on the stars, then crank the exposure and gain significantly higher until I can see a pretty good image with full color in the nebula on the computer. Clearly, the main stars are over-exposed. In most of the videos I have watched, the sub images are not nearly as exposed or as high gain. In fact, most of them don't even show much visible nebula until stretching the photo in post-processing. Next try, I'll try lower gain/exposure for the darker, deep sky images. Am I on the right track?

This stuff is mostly nitrogen, I believe. Any contamination would ruin a harddrive. Not the same as you buy at the office supply store. OK..edit-edit: pure nitrogen, it says.

Thanks! Great content and the videos answered my question. By the way, the can of spray air I have is specially made for harddrive clean rooms and has no foreign elements to spit. Still, I will probably not use it and stick with the wet methods from the videos. They look fairly simple and straight-forward enough to get right.

It figures! First clear night in ages and the pollen is as thick as..well, something really thick. Up to now, I have been fairly careful to avoid dust getting down the tube, but pollen is going to be unavoidable for the next several weeks. So...what does one do? Are there some do and don't things I should be aware of? It looks like my mirror comes out fairly easy (SkyWatcher 10" ). I'm guessing "chuck into the dish washer on the pot scrubber setting" is probably a really bad idea. What then, is the plan? What chemicals/detergents should be used...or maybe all chemicals should be avoided? Is it a no-touch surface? Is there perhaps some magic spray that one uses? I do have a can of electronics air that I plan to use from a safe distance to persuade away loose pollen, and that may be enough for the present.

Thank you all. And yes, it does have the look and feel of making a cake and forgetting to put the sugar in the icing. I'll check registering and see if I can find a tutorial on YouTube. Sirilic sounds interesting, I may give that a look as well, though my French is not so good. I can manage German and Spanish but French (shudder). I remember the last time I had to follow French instructions was to compile a 1200 baud internal modem driver (yes, that means decades ago). It ended well, but I didn't want to do that again any time soon. Now we have Google Translate, so perhaps it is time to retry.

I made my first attempt at stacking with Siril last evening using an AVI file taken as RGB24 containing 100 images, each of which looked pretty good by itself for what it was. At the end of the apparent process, the resulting stacked FIT image looked like it was a long exposure shot taken by a person with severe Parkinson's disease. Now, I know "operator error" when I see it and this episode features me as the contender for the post of operator error poster child. Clearly, Siril is a multi-faceted and very feature-rich piece of software and there are lots of ways to get from the start to the end. Apparently, I have identified one of the very wrong ways. If there is a "Siril" maven out there, perhaps that individual might kindly scribble down a process map for Siril starting from AVI to stacked image for the simple-minded. A few hints for do's and don't wouldn't go amiss either.

Which eyepiece are you using in the focuser? I'd start with the weakest first....probably a 25mm or something larger than 15mm at least. For that Crayford focuser, things should start being close to focused with the focus tube cranked out (toward your eye) about 3/4" from fully in with the stock Plossl 25mm eyepiece that usually comes with that scope.

I took the easy way out and just bought the Harbor Freight furniture dolly. A 4 wheel, rectangular dolly with carpeted top for under $20. It works, but it isn't fancy. https://www.harborfreight.com/1000-lb-capacity-movers-dolly-38970.html Then too, I am only rolling it from the storage room, through the house and out onto the wood deck. No "off-roading."

May fault entirely. We haven't had a clear, dark night since I bought my scope back in January. My apologies! I may change my nickname to "CloudJinx." That said, I did get a glimpse of Venus last evening. I was having real problems getting the focus right remotely when I went outside and realized that I couldn't even see the planet through the clouds. I was amazed the scope could pick out anything through that mess.

On my unit (SynScan), you manually set the first star, then it slews to the second star at a default speed of 9 until the Center on Star prompt, where it drops auto-magically to 5. On my unit, 5 is almost not moving and often gives the impression of being off, I dare not go to settings 2 or 3 as I may not live long enough for it to get to the target. I frequently have to change the setting to 7(+/-) if the slew ends up more than half a FOV away from the target just to get the job done in a timely manner.

So far, so good. These are the kinds of things I was hoping I would hear. Alas, I am the "Anti-Windoze" type (Unix/Linux), so APT is off the table, but I expect that I can get similar results with Ekos/INDI under Linux. Someone please put their hand up if there is a better Linux alternative. I probably could run APT under Wine, but complicated software seems to get wonky when you take it off of its home turf.

OK, I get plate solving (maybe). Your camera takes an image through the scope or guide scope and sends it to an Internet resolver that returns a message identifying where you are pointed. If I have that more or less correct, then these questions remain: 1. What is the format of the return data? 2. If one wanted to view the return data, where does it "live?" Assume KStars/INDI/Ekos 3. This may seem a really basic question...but...What does it get me from an operational standpoint? For example, does it update the pointing mechanism in some way or is it merely a verification? 4. What would you answer to complete the following statement: "You should use plate solving if you intend......" or : "You should avoid plate solving unless....." There is an equal probability that I have the whole concept wrong. That is also OK, because I feel I am starting at the beginning with this particular concept and would rather be corrected now before I accumulate to much supposition on a flawed premise. So...no answers too basic!

There is a very good series on YouTube called "Learn The Sky." They go constellation by constellation and do a very good job. They also recommend Orion as a "roadmap" to the other winter sky constellation. Just got to youtube and search "Learn The Sky"

No, there is enough chatter and complaint in the forums for Canonical to know that their X64 Ubuntu Mate product is "down" with respect to the Pi4 and the only option for the Pi4 in X64 mode is Ubuntu Server. There was originally a problem with even that running, and Canonical fixed it after a user pointed out the specific issue and a recommended fix. It will run Ubuntu Server in X64 mode, but it gets wonky when you try to add a desktop on top of Server. The key, as far as the SV305 is concerned is for Svbony to provide/release a 32 bit SDK for the camera, then it will at least run in Raspbian. It is unclear presently whether the X64 version of AstroDMx_Capture will run in a ARM X64 environment, even if there was a stable instance available. A X64 ARM version of the software has not been released.

I corresponded with the folks at AstroDMx_Capture recently. They are very actively developing the platform, and if Svbony cooperates, may have a Pi version working with the SV305 sooner than later. It is, at the very least, not a dead issue. They also mentioned future INDI hooks, so perhaps that is a software package to watch. I liked the user interface and it worked well with the X64 AMD-based Linux laptop I used with the SV305. I don't know what's wrong with Canonical. They just can't seem to get something going with the Raspberry Pi4. Their solution so far is to install X64 Ubuntu Server, then add a desktop after a complete server install with all the junk you really don't want running in background. I tried it. A very inelegant and ultimately unstable solution. It is a shame to have to run a 32 bit OS (eg: Raspbian) on a 64 bit platform for the sake of stability.

Excellent! Lots of good stuff as I expected. Interesting that the consensus seems to be to target a smaller area of the sky. I have been doing the exact opposite. I have tried to encapsulate the entire sky with my star choices with the widest possible distance and angular variance. I'm going to check that "enable aux encoder" thing as well. What *IS* an auxiliary encoder and what does it do? Weight may be an issue. I'll have to be careful with that. It certainly doesn't take much to override the motor clutches. And yes, the reticule eyepiece seems a good idea as well as defocusing the star. Very clever stuff. THANKS!

I know I am getting picky, and have really had pretty good luck with my scope for the little time I have had with clear skies since I got it. But, my alignments aren't as rock-solid as I'd like them to be. For example, on a bright night (moon), I can do my typical align and then look for a deep sky object..some galaxy or nebula...and it -nearly- gets it right. On a dark night, I can fiddle around and find the objective, but when it is bright, if it doesn't land "slap on it," I'm in trouble. And, it doesn't. Most of the time it is fairly close, but never the bullseye. The routine I use, as carefully as I can is: 1. Level the base of the Dobsonian mount with shims. 2 . Point the scope True North (not magnetic) and level the tube (bubble-level). 3. Turn on the Synscan unit and enter exact data for time, date, Lat/Lons and etc. I am a pilot and am used to being careful about these data. 4. Perform a 2 star alignment with the hand unit (sometime I use the 3 star with the Android App, but it doesn't seem to matter), being careful to select stars at least 90 degrees away from each other in the sky. 5. On "Alignment Successful," I proceed with selecting a target for it to find. I am careful to center the object in the eyepiece at each stage, using the remote controls of either the hand unit or the App. I try not to touch the scope at all once I start the alignment process and after it is aligned. As I said, it gets pretty close, but never the bullseye. I use a 25mm lens for aligning and have tried moving to a 10mm to make sure of centering, though that didn't seem to make any difference. Any suggestions, tips and tricks would be most welcome.

I have the 10" collapsing model SkyWatcher Dobsonian with Goto. You can easily use it as a straight Dobsonian and push it manually. You can also, for moon-watching, manually find the moon and then turn it on and set it to Lunar tracking so you don't have to chase the moon. The motors have clutches that override manually with little effort. Of course, if you align the scope and then move it manually, you will have to align it again. However, anything larger than a 10" would start to be a bit of a handful to operate manually.

There is some noticeable minor edge distortion, but the wide view field of a 2" eyepiece coupled with the long relief makes it almost uncomfortable to look that the extreme edges of the field of view. At that price point, it is still better than a few I have seen that dug a bit deeper into your wallet. And yes, mine was recently shipped from China. I choose not to lick it.

OK..received the SVBony 34mm 2" eyepiece and tried it last evening. With nothing similar with which to compare it, I can only say that it does what I intended. Tough to beat the price, but it performs well and I see no problems for its use. It has very good eye relief and no abnormalities that my limited experience can detect. I am very pleased with the field of view, especially compared to using a stock 10mm with a reducer for sky scanning and "just looking up."