AstroNebulee

It's still guiding well on the multistar guiding and picked out around 10 or so stars to guide on plus the main one. You could always try a lower gain on yours and see how many stars it picks up. With your gain at 250 are the stars quite bloated? This screenshot is from a few weeks ago and before I refocused my guidescope so the stars are a little off and the hfd of the star a bit high but this is with gain 60. Note only using one star to guide in the screenshot but using multistar now. The guidestar in the box in top left should have the red graph bit at a point and not flattened off. Cheers Lee

Good luck for tonight 👍

Really pleased you got your az gti out at last and that is a long time since it's last outing but sounds like you had a really good tour of the night sky last night indeed.👍😊 I don't use stellarium for my mount though.

Ahh sorry Steve (I'm a bit thick anyway haha) No I'm using my zwo asi120mc-s for guiding on the zwo 30mm f4 guidescope. My gain is around 60 and exposures are 2 secs. Though my gain can range from 50-70 depending on the quality of the sky. Cheers Lee

Hi Ray Thank you. My camera is a zwo 294mc pro. There are plenty of threads on here about choosing a dedicated astro camera on here. I was umming and ahhhing about those 3 until I got the 294mc pro. The thing that swayed my choice was the larger sensor. The amp glow doesn't bother me as its very easily calibrated out with darks. I'm really happy with my choice and suits my scope stats. Do your research and ask on here what would suit your setup and how you want it. That is the best guiding I've ever had, no wind and the meshing of the Dec motor gears proved this. I must do the same to the RA motor. I shall share screenshots of my settings pages when I'm hopefully imaging tonight. I do my guiding calibration on the target I'm imaging and multistar guiding, choosing a guide star around 3 hfd and my guidescope nicely focused. My guide speed is 0.9x, generally RA aggression 40-45 and dec is 55. Gain of guidescope is around 60 and exposure is 2 secs. I'll double check my calibration step settings but think it's 2000ms, max Dec & RA duration is 500ms. I believe my guide stability settings are 4" for 3 seconds. Will take screenshots later (hopefully) Cheers Lee

Thank you, though my guiding was more generally around 1" but kept lowering to that value, so well happy. With my zwo 294mc pro I was using 120 gain which is the unity and 180 sec subs.

Thank you. That isn't 2 hours on M101 it's just a screenshot from one sub on the asiair app. I should of added it was just screenshots, sorry. I'm hoping to get more on it tonight if it stays clear, no wind again. Would like to get more on it, there's some interesting galaxies around it namely ngc 5474. Like you say more integration time in Ha will get the results youd like, good luck 👍

Brilliant reports Ags and love how they turn the lights off too. Hopefully you can source the cable you need over there, good luck 👍

Just got in from grabbing 2 hours worth of data on M101 tonight, so pleased to be back out under a moonless, windless, clear night sky even if the transparency was rubbish. Couldnt really make Virgo out atall and Leo was washy. And quick couple of screenshots, guiding was very good too using multistar guiding. Hoping to grab more data on it moro night if it stays clear.

Same here Ray👍, I use star tools and when in the shrink module, classic mode works quite well for that for a quick fix but I've still a lot to learn in star tools too, I'm no expert honestly 🤣 I'm still learning so much in star tools that I even printed off the manual at 284 pages long 🤣 and you'll all notice I can't spell too (fingers to fast for ickle keyboard and I don't look at what I've typed.)

Gorgeous Ray and lovely colour in the rosette and stars 👍, if you can reduce the stars in processing it'll make the rosette pop even more. 😊

Has the set up moved a lot since took your data tonight or focus moved? You maybe be able to get away with taking them the next day after. As they should generally be taken after an imaging session. Some people take the morning sky for their flats if the setup hasn't moved. Best is to do it straight after imaging that night and retake them after every session. I use a flat panel light box I made. Using the flats tab in AAP autorun, I set it to 2 sec subs and try to get the hump of the histogram just under half way on the histogram. If it's to high up the histogram I add another sheet of paper or to low I take a sheet of paper away. I have perfected it so now I just pop the flats panel over the scope and fire off 30 flats whilst packing up at the end of a session and the hump in histogram is just under halfway (sorry don't have an image of this) You could just stretch a t shirt over the end of the scope, use a tablet screen or phone screen set to white as long as it covers the whole aperture of the scope and use the auto flats option in the AAP autorun will work.

I dither between each frame and it has to be under 4 for 2 secs to start the imaging again. I also set it to dither 5 pixels. I have found that since doing the mesh mod on my dec motor its so much quicker as I used to waste so much time dithering and settling. Now it's around 12 mins for every hour of imaging which for this mount is pretty good I think. You can dither every 2 or 3 frames I've read but every frame works for me, it's worth experimenting on how many frames then dither any fitheting will be an improvement. My images are so much better for it. I'm no expert by any means on imaging just saying what works for me and what I've learnt 😊 Also what set up were you using at the time Ray?

165 gain could be good it's all about experimenting, I wish I could image the monkey head but after meridian no good, look forward to seeing your results 👍

Just on having a quick look people say the unity gain is 111 for the zwo 183mc and some using 180 sec subs. You coukd always try 111 gain at 60,120 and 180 secs subs.

On e you got the hang of it it's definitely worth dithering, makes a huge difference to the subs. I know my set up is different scope and camera but my 294MC pro I use gain 120 and normally do 180 sec subs and dither between each one. I haven't tried longer subs yet as I find a good balance in guiding and images with 180secs. I'm sure on the charts for your camera it will have an optimal gain to use. I'll have a look.

The guiding can vary from mount to mount and depending seeing, transparency, wind and mechanics of the mount. Mine will guide admirably under 2 " generally and can get as low as 0.7" at times from North to south then if I try to guide after the Meridian all hell breaks lose and throws a strop. The mount does perform very well considering its really an alt az mount in EQ mode and not intended for AP. Worth looking in your guide log in the asiair when you upload images to laptop, it's quite interesting to see how the guiding went. Do you dither too?

Good luck, I hope you managed to capture it again 😊

It's all great experience and it's a cracking image for the evoguide. I'm still quite blown away by the versatility of it. What is your guidecam and scope? Ignore that I can see it now I zoomed in on the guidecamera doh! How ate you finding the guiding of your set up, any issues?

She is a thing of beauty 😍, nice work Steve. Very tidy indeed. These evoguide scopes are really proving a stellar lightweight setup. Enjoy it and clear skies to you. Look forward to all your lovely images with these clear skies. 👍

Until someone with more knowledge comes along. The milky way isn't so great at the moment for us in the northern hemisphere by late April early May it will start to become more visable for us. The core around June July August time will be best. What times were you shooting the milky way?

I've learnt a new word today! And still baffled which isn't hard, so I'm going to blame my nomenclature for not guiding well after the Meridian 🤣

Thank you, I shall give that a go moro, before I hopefully can get the scope out, first in a long time.

Thank you 😊, I really think reading into the star tools software helped me understand the different uses of the modules better and that the stars aren't supposed to be just blobs. it just needs a star reduction on it and in photoshop I can alter the purple easily with a colour balance on the stars. The nudge screen in the filter module was a very useful tool after using the fringe killer and the synth module (settings for my scope). As I said before it looked so much better on the laptop than on devices.

Had another quick tweak tonight, basically moved the entropy module up, used the synth module and then used the second shrink module as a final step. Not sure where the purple hue has come from (looked good on the laptop) but yet to tweak in photoshop, but ok I think. Also reduced the green bias slider in colour module.