Padraic M

BTW, in case you're interested, the screen print is the mqtt processing endpoint for my sensor network. The nodes are annotated here:

Hi Gina - not sure what you're referring to here? The Inject and Text nodes? I was thinking about this again last night, and I see three possible entry points. 1. As you say, get the sensor to generate the date/time string. Then it's just a sensor reading that you want to display as Text on your dashboard. Pros: It's an accurate representation of the time when the reading was taken, not when the server received/displayed it. Cons: You need your sensor node to be able to tell the time, and to be properly time synced. If it's an ESP with NTP client on it, that's fine. If it's a simple sensor with a RTC, that may also be fine. You will have a different date/time string for each sensor, so should probably display the date/time for each reading/group or readings; or display the most recent timestamp only. 2. Generate the date/time string from the current time on Node Red when it receives the mqtt message. Something like this: Pros: Fairly accurate representation of the sensor time - shows the time the message was received by the server. Updates the dashboard every time a message is received; no more, no less. Shows the date/time the last message was received, so is a very good indicator of the dashboard 'freshness' Cons: Doesn't show the exact time the measurement was taken 3. As I posted earlier: Generate a timestamp every n seconds directly into the dashboard Text element. Pros: Very simple to do Cons: Is just like having a clock on the dashboard - doesn't actually represent the time of receipt of any message. Doesn't give any indication of dashboard 'freshness'. (so really not a good idea after all!)

Hello Thingy, once you have your HEQ5, you will have a very nice set-up. That's a pity, because you'll have no option to blame your kit for any poor results! To get the best out of it, this would be my suggested set-up. I would add that practice is all-important, as there are a lot of techniques that need to be understood and mastered and all of that takes time. Earlier in the day, connect everything together and make sure it's working. Set up all devices in your light path as they will be later. Focus on a distant object and lock the focuser. Make sure your PC has all drivers etc. installed and working correctly. Pick a target and create an imaging plan. It's easier to do this when you're not cold and tired. Be specific about filters - don't start the imaging plan using 'No Filter Change' unless you're absolutely guaranteed the correct filter will be in position. Check and confirm binning levels for all steps (just go with 1x1 for everything!). Put your equipment out well ahead of your planned starting time, to let the scopes cool down. Level the mount. Attach the spreader, adjust the tripod legs and check level again. Tighten the spreader, and the loosen it slightly again. Attach all equipment and cables, and balance in RA and Dec. Tidy and tie your cables to stop them hanging or dragging. Check your scope for orientation, to make sure that it won't hit the mount as it tracks your target through the night. Power everything up except the mount. Turn on dew heaters and camera cooler. Polar Align - I use Sharpcap and it works a treat. Tighten the tripod spreader fully as you get close to Excellent alignment (on the HEQ5 you can't adjust azimuth with the spreader locked). Don't forget to rotate your scope back to home position when you're finished. Power up the mount. Close SharpCap, and load Stellarium, PHD2 and NINA (I use APT, but I assume the steps for NINA are similar). Make sure cameras are connected properly (imaging to NINA, guiding to PHD2). Check that everything is connected correctly in NINA - mount, camera, filter wheel, focuser if you have one. Test everything to make sure they're responding. Take off all lens caps! Select a filter that is good for focus - clear, IR cut or Luminance - that has good light transmission. Adjust focus as best you can. A Bahtinov mask is practically essential. Take a test exposure through the main camera, plate solve and sync. Goto Vega (or some other bright star) and fine-tune your focus. Take the time to get it as close as possible. Plate solve and sync. Goto your imaging target, take a test exposure, plate solve and sync. Pick a guide star in PHD2 and start guiding. If calibration is required, let it run (takes quite a few minutes). You might also want to run the Guiding Assistant for 2 minutes to test everything out. Back in NINA, do a final check that everything is in order, then start your imaging plan. Go back indoors, boil the kettle, and wait! It's worth installing Teamviewer so that you can monitor your PC from inside, as the imaging plan progresses. Don't expect to get all of this done the first time you set up. You might even spend a few nights just getting polar alignment working, then the next few nights on focus etc. It can be very frustrating wasting all of that imaging time tinkering with kit, but there really is no point rushing your set-up to get some quick captures, as they will most likely be out of focus, blurred, star-trailed or off-target. It really pays off to take your time with the checklist, and practice each step repeatedly until you understand what you're doing, and know how to do it right first time. What's REALLY frustrating is waking up the next morning to realise you've just taken 6 hours of images through the wrong filter etc. There is a lot of science/engineering that really must be done before you can get to the art/creativity part. HTH, I'm sure everyone's checklist will be slightly different.

I'm not a dashboard expert, but a couple of suggestions/points/questions: - What timestamp do you want to show? The current system time on your node-red server, or the time a reading was generated on your sensor ESP? I assume the former. - I've created a simple Text element on a blank dashboard, and injected a timestamp into it. - You would need to do some Javascript formatting in a Function node to convert the timestamp into a readable date/time format. Also, I think change the Inject node to a repeat interval every x seconds to align with your dashboard refresh period. If x is less than the dashboard refresh, the timestamp will never be too much out of date. - Actually, I just set it to repeat every 1 second and it forces a refresh on the dashboard every second. You probably don't need that level of precision! Would that work for you?

Is this for doing your stretches? Careful you don't pull a histogram.

Looking forward to trying out this little fellow!

Hi Steve, The Esprit 80 is designed specifically for high-end astrophotography. The EQ3-2 Pro is not, so you've got a miss-match of expectations there. If you look at weight vs mount payload, the total weight of your astro set-up is likely to be in excess of 5kgs: I assume you'll use a guide scope of some sort, I've assumed an AA Starwave 50mm but regardless, you need to account for it. You could reduce weight quite a bit by gettingone of the ZWO Mini guidecams, they are around 50g weight so would bring the total above down to 5.6kgs. The EQ3-2 Pro is rated for 7kgs. I know that Celestron quote 5kgs for imaging, but the generally accepted rule of thumb is to use 50% of visual payload as the target for imaging, so that's 3.5kgs. Given that you've got the EQ5 tripod, that may improve matters. The EQ5 is rated at 9kgs for visual, so assume 4.5kgs for imaging. The truth may be somewhere in between 3.5 and 4.5. This is still too low for your setup weight of 5+kgs. In addition, I don't know how smooth the tracking is on the EQ3-2 head, but I doubt it's up to the levels you need to get the best from your Esprit. The pro imagers on this forum generally advise to spend money on the mount rather than scope or camera. The only reason to go for the Esprit over the ED80 at half the price is to get quality imaging, and with that mount, you won't get it. Why not upgrade your mount to a HEQ5 (minimum) or a EQ6-R first? Then either get an ED80 for a good quality set-up, or save your money for an Esprit to get an excellent quality set-up? fwiw, I've had to pull out lots of stops with my HEQ5 (fully tuned and belt-modded) to get usable results from an Esprit 80 and the ASI1600MM Pro camera. I'll accept that mono capture and processing is an additional layer of complexity and also requires a filter wheel, but I find it quite challenging.

I think he would have been in his element. However if we sent back the full stack of even a basic astro set-up including a tracking mount and a red-dot finder (and some batteries!) it might have completely stopped him in his tracks - too much to try to understand that was well beyond the standards of the time. Even he might have started to believe in magic or the Devine! I passed a few hours in the Galileo Museum in Florence and was stunned at the rigour of his method. So many precision instruments built to prove the fundamentals of distance, angles, acceleration, etc. Everything taken from first principles and based on proven fact. He got excommunicated for his troubles. Some things haven't changed eh? I always think of him when I see Jupiter and Saturn through a 'scope.

We get into astrophotography to take trophy images of distant galaxies, huge nebulas, spectacular double star systems, wide-field milky-way panoramas, Jupiter storms, Saturn's rings etc. etc. etc. But then we realize that the real achievements in astrophotography are accurate polar alignment, sub-arcsecond guiding RMS, pristine focus, optically-matched accessories, plate-solving, narrow-band bandwidth in nanometers, Goto dexterity and a fluency with terms like Right Ascension, backlash, Kappa-Sigma clipping, apparent magnitude etc. etc. etc. It eventually occurs to you that you have been collecting lots of expensive equipment but you haven't actually taken a photography in years. Crazy!

Thanks! Not discouraged at all, just pondering what best to attend to next, of all the various aspects of AP. Lesson #1 learned already: you feel under pressure to start capturing as soon as possible, to make the best use of the limited clear skies time; but better to spend an extra hour on getting the basics of alignment, tracking, focus etc. spot-on than get an extra hour of so-so lights. But I am surprised about the focus. I used a mask and the APT Bahtinov aid and the figures seemed good. I need to tune up my own eyes to assess what is actually good focus in the image.

@ollypenrice thanks for that insight - the camera is the camera (just invested so I'm not going to change!) so if it's an issue there, I'll just have to work with it! There are lots of folk on here taking mighty fine pictures with that model so I'll research how they've dealt with it. It looks like the hard-edge halos are indeed a result of the microlensing 'feature' of this camera, so nothing to be done about that. I also notice that this particular UHC filter is VERY reflective on the camera side so that may be exacerbating the problem. I might try without the filter, but I'm in the city for the next few months with lots of light pollution so not too hopeful there. I love your solution for the Deneb beam. I'll get some frames the next clear night to use for patching. Clone/curves/smudge are only so good, but when you know where the beam was, you can never un-see it. Possibly worth adding that there's very little else in the light path - Esprit 80 (quality a given?); Esprit field flattener (ditto); filter and camera. Nothing else. So if the scope, FF and camera won't change in the medium term, the filter is the only point in the light path open to experimentation. Which brings me on to @alacant's suggestion - cheat! That's a great impression of the Pelican/NAN but you may have obliterated the home-worlds of countless civilisations! Two whole stars just gone. I'm going to save that away and use as a reference for future processing.

Thanks Bryan @assouptro and @kirkster501. Report card says 'Must try harder'. There are so many factors to get absolutely right in this game. I'll check each of the subs for anomalies. DSS scored them all fairly equally; there didn't seem to be any cloud/fog on that particular night, but just because it was the best night for weeks at the moment doesn't say much. I've been considering a set of narrowband filters, or at least a good quality Ha, but it would be nice to find a problem that I can solve without spending lots of money (again) on kit. Maybe focus is an area to spend some more time on, in the next clear spell.

Hi all, I took some luminance frames of the Pelican Nebula last weekend while waiting for Pacman to come into view. Got 1.5 hours mono with a Thousand Oaks UHC filter, stacked in DSS and processed simply in Gimp. SW Esprit 80 w/ff; ASI1600MM 1x1 @-20C, gain 139; HEQ5 Pro unmodded, guiding with PHD2 and achieving 1" total RMS (imaging scale is 1.9"/px). 18x300s lights with darks, flats and dark flats calibration frames. The result is #1 below - not bad for my current stage of development, but the nebula itself is a bit noisy - possibly I've over-stretched what's there. Some questions on exhibit #2 below - including two artefacts that I've masked out roughly in the first version: - The 'tapioca' stars to the Pelican's left and right (56 and 57 Cygni I believe). The circular halos are present in the raw lights and become apparent early in the stretching process. Any idea what's causing them? All of the rally big stars have them, but they're not obvious on the smaller stars. They also don't look like the usual star bloat that comes from over-stretching. I have a dew heater on the imaging scope but not on the camera/filter wheel. - The sun-beam coming in from the edge at 1o'clock. I am assuming that this is stray light from Deneb which is just out of frame in that direction. Any suggestions as to how to avoid this? I am using the stock dew shield on the Esprit 80.

Ordered mine in May and it arrived in August... field flattener followed only last week, so yes but slowly!

That's a good looking pelican! I had a short look at that while waiting for Pacman to clear the trees on Saturday, it's still on the queue for processing. Shame about the dew heater, you don't get away without one around here! I'm not big into to-do lists, but the APT check-lists are useful for the last-minute reminders in the early hours 🥱

@mackiedlmThanks David, I'm really missing those west-coast dark skies!

Skywatcher Esprit 80 with field flattener ZWO ASI1600MM Pro, gain 139, -20C; ZWO Mini 5-position efw AA Starwave 50mm guide scope with ZWO ASI290MM Mini guidecam 48x300 luminance 1x300 each R,G,B 50x dark frames 50x flat frames 50x dark flat frames No bias frames APT, PHD2, DSS, Gimp Sharpcap polar alignment 16 arcsec Guiding total RMS 1 arcmin

I finally managed to get some clear skies over the weekend to test out my new Esprit 80 w/ FF and a tuned and balanced mount. Was very pleased with my focus and guiding, and Saturday night in particular was stable and very transparent all night. Unfortunately I'm back in Bortle 2 after a summer in Bortle 8 and the difference is immense. I managed to get 4 hours (48*300) of Lum data using a Thousand Oaks LP2 Narrow Band UHC filter. Stacked in DSS and post-processed with Gimp. I also shot 1 each of RGBx300. The composite LRGB result is #2 below - not as sharp, because the stars start to get very blotchy. Maybe 5 mins of colour data just isn't enough? Why are the stars so much bigger in the Red channel than in the others? These are fairly basic efforts. I'd be very grateful for advice on how to get these to stand out more - I would imagine that more must be possible with 4 hours of data.

Very nice! I got the shivers when I saw where you left your eyepieces though... I know what would happen to me! I finally took delivery of the field flattener for my new Esprit 80. Apparently supply chains are still in chaos.

Hi Guy, I'm still a relative beginner to this game too, and I also use a HEQ5. I was very confused at the start with all of the various procedures to get set up properly but I'm getting the hang of them well over time with practice. I would recommend getting the hang of PA with the HEQ5 polar scope before you look for other methods. It sounds like you have your Dec axis rotated through 90 degrees and you have a clear light path. I second the advice above about trying this out during the day so that you have focus at 'very far' if not infinity. Anything that is more than a little out of focus whether it's through the polar scope, guide scope or main scope can mean that you see nothing..... coming closer to focus will give you the famous donut and from there on it's easy. Then on the next clear night, twist your neck so that you're looking through the polar scope with one eye, and keep the other eye open, looking at Polaris. You'll have a good gut feel about how to bring Polaris into view in the polar scope, and once you see it in the scope, you can align it to the 'Polaris position in polar scope' time value. One last suggestion - adjust the polar scope LED brightness using the handset so that you can just see it clearly but it's not outshining any stars in the field of view. I now use SharpCap and a guide camera to do PA, and it works very well, but it's not necessarily any easier than using the polar scope. I'm happy that I know how to use the polar scope as a fall-back position if needed.

Nice new power supply to power the whole setup. FLO wouldn't ship to Ireland for some reason, so bought direct from Nevada Radio. Works a treat!

This chap arrived today. 10A through the cigarette socket, up to 30A out the back. With all equipment connected, mount slewing in both axes, three dew straps on, camera cooling to -20c, I'm drawing around 4A. Voltage output stays solid at 13.8V. The handset on the mount shows 12.8V at rest, down to 12.5V when slewing. No more flashing leds, and a nice bright orange handset backlight!

Hi Gina, We really don't like nested interrupts, so even if your do3sjobs() routine may work from within the ISR, it is bad practice to do much other than set a flag (or exit low-power mode if you were doing that kind of thing) in the ISR, and then get out of there before the next interrupt arrives. I'd recommend your 3sjobs, 1mjobs and 3mjobs should all be called from loop(). Bearing in mind that you'll get an ISR 'ping' once every second, I'd add three incrementing counters to count to 3, 60 and 180 isr pings respectively - or you could use one counter and some fancy modulo code if you prefer. Or even use your old code where you calculate the duration since last doxjob was done, which will remove any potential lag or jitter in the ISR timing. Then, you can loop within loop() waiting for the ISR flag to set, which frees you up to do your jobs. Something along these lines, using the 'interrupts' var as a flag rather than a counter: void loop() { if (!client.connected()) {reconnect();} client.loop(); while( interrupts == 0 ){} // will spin here until the ISR sets the flag // ISR has triggered - proceed and perform the jobs long now = millis(); if(now - lastP > Ptest) {++PulseCount; lastP = now;} if(now - last3s > P3s) {do3sJobs(); last3s = now;} if(now - last1m > P1m) {do1mJobs(); last1m = now;} if(now - last3m > P3m) {do3mJobs(); last3m = now;} interrupts = 0; // Reset the flag } I'm mulling clearing the flag at the end or decrementing it. If there's any possibility that your jobs could take more than 1 second to complete, you will have multiple timer ISRs triggered in the interim. Do you want to process each interrupt without fail, or just process the latest one?

Aha @newbie alert. Definitely worth a try.

@spillage camera name can be changed in the APT settings, but only one camera name per APT instance. This name seems to be applied to whatever CCD camera is connected. So, regardless of whether I connect to CCD #1 or #2, it will call it whatever is set in APT settings. I believe that's why the APT log says 'Connected to camera ZWO ASI1600MM' and then shows the sensor dimensions for the ASI290. Funny that when you disconnect, it uses the actual camera model name e.g. ZWO ASI290MC, not the name from settings. @newbie alert using ZWO drivers for the cameras. ASCOM for everything else.