endless-sky

I can relate. I have been saving money for the past few months to get an imaging kit (triplet APO refractor, guide scope, guide camera and a light pollution filter). When I finally was ready to call and place the order, the salesperson told me that the last piece of that refractor had been sold a few days before my call. Result: I now have to wait till the end of Summer for the new version of that scope to be available (the one I initially chose will no longer be produced). In this hobby it's all about patience and perseverance. Good things come to those who wait, they say. Sure, it sucks that I missed my scope for a few days, but I guess it would have sucked a lot more to buy something that was getting out of production and being replaced by a newer, possibly better version. Summer nights are short and hot (bad for my uncooled DSLR), anyway. A similar story of patience was about my mount: I have been looking in the used market for a HEQ5 Pro since October of 2019. Most I was willing to spend was about 700 Euros, as I researched the previously sold HEQ5's in that portal went for about that price. Every time I found one, it was either too far (wasn't going to risk buying something without going to take a look at it first) or it sold to somebody else before I saw the article. Result: I had to wait till the end of January of this year. But the waiting was worth it: I managed to find a NEQ6 Pro, instead, for 650 Euro, and 150 km away from where I live. Bought something better, for less than I was willing to pay for the smaller mount. I hope you find what you are looking for! Don't despair and keep looking!

I personally went with the dovetail and ball-head approach for my Nikon D5300. Even with my heaviest lens (70-300mm), I didn't have any problems. Just make sure the ball-head is well made and able to support some good amount of weight. This is the one I bought: https://www.amazon.com/Diameter-INNOREL-Panorama-Ballhead-Camcorder/dp/B07XXTL8K5 If you use the ADM adapter, yes it looks like the camera would be upside down, but it shouldn't matter. If you buy the clamp, make sure it is for the correct type of dovetail (Losmandy or Vixen, usually).

+1 for the Astroberry tip! I have been using it since April and in one or two months I should get my new refractor for imaging and the autoguiding setup (guide scope plus guide camera). I have been reading about all sorts of problems with the 120MM Mini version and Raspberry. Apparently the QHY5L-II is not doing any better, plenty of issues there, too. So I ultimately decided to go with the ASI 224 MC, a little more costly, but it can double as planetary camera as well. As for why color versions of the same camera models are less expensive, I used to wonder this, too. Then I read an explanation that made very good sense: the astrocameras "borrow" the same mass produced sensors that are generally used for everyday cameras. These sensors are mostly color (who wants a black and white only camera for everyday use - expecially when exposure times are so fast and converting color to black and white is merely a click away in post-processing?). Therefore, the cost of the mass produced color sensors - higher in supply - is lower than the cost of rarer monochromatic sensors - lower in supply - that have to be made specifically for the astrocameras. This explanation made sense to me when I read it, so I agree with it.

Well, I told you I would investigate and get back at you. I tried setting different custom slew speeds under EKOS, but no matter what I do, they only work for "manually" slewing (joystick or arrow buttons) but GO-TOs are always at maximum speed. I requested help in the INDI Forum regarding the issue, I'll see if anyone answer and has a workaround.

Even if you would be slightly undersampled, you could use dithering (which also benefits to reduce noise) and then drizzle integration (if you use PixInsight) which basically doubles your resolution. Coming from a full frame, what would worry me is also the field of view (how much or how little of the frame the object you are trying to capture would take up). Lastly, I would definitely go with monochrome. I won't go into much details, as I don't want to start a war between mono and color, but from what I read the mono version of the same camera model is pretty much always better. Plus you can do narrow band more efficiently. Good luck with your choice and clear skies!

Much better! Very nice and the background is much cleaner, too.

Unfortunately, yesterday, after talking on the phone to the salesperon of the store I have nearby, I received an email saying that they contacted Tecnosky and the scope is completely out of stock (last piece was sold a few days ago). They also told me that the scope will no longer be produced (in the current version / name) but will be available in a few months under a different / restyled version. So, back to waiting we go. Just my luck would have it that as soon as I manage to save the money for it, the scope doesn't exist anymore... Sure, from another point of view, it is also nice. Who would buy a car today, knowing than in two months the newer model is coming out and costing about the same amount of money? But, I am not taking pictures with the name and paint color on the tube, so lens quality / mechanics are all that matters. Oh well, patience is a virtue in astrophotography, isn't it?!

Looks like hot pixels. By live stacking, there is no calibration or rejection. You could try saving the single exposures and then stacking them with a stacking software that enables you to reject outliers (for example, DeepSkyStacker, available for free). This should get rid of the hot pixels, as they will appear in different regions of each frame (if you don't guide, or if you do guide but enable dithering).

Glad it worked! Yeah, I was pretty desperate when it happened: I was in the middle of a session, outside, in the dark. I said "Hey, let's try dithering!". So I looked for the guiding options and turned both of them on, thinking they both needed to be on to work. Dithering was working, every frame, like I wanted it. Then I did something that made EKOS crash and I couldn't get it to open anymore. Kept getting the error message about both types of dithering couldn't be on at the same time... I was losing precious capturing time! So I went online and looked for a solution. I knew there had to be a config file, I just didn't know where to look for it. It took me a good 30 minutes to find the locations of the config files from a thread in INDI Forum, but finally I got everything working again. From that day I keep the experiments during the indoor time! Outside, in the dark, I just stick to what I know that works!

Hi, the same thing happened to me, too: I checked both the guided and unguided dithering. Next time I rebooted, EKOS just kept crashing. I resolved by opening the config file in a text editor and removing the line about the guided dithering (as I don't have an autoguider setup, yet). After that, everything worked fine. The file should be kstarsrc, found under /home/astroberry/.config Open it with a text editor and look for this part: and delete the lines about guided dithering, then save it. You should be able to open EKOS again and set the correct options. Hope this helps!

Hi, I have been into astrophotography since young (late 90s), when everything was still done with film cameras and manual eyepiece guiding. Yeah, I know, I am old! After a long break, I picked back up in January of this year, when I managed to get my hands on a used NEQ6 Pro. Since then, I have been imaging with my Nikon D5300 (which I astromodified myself by removing the stock filter and installing a UV/IR cut filter) and a zoom 70-300mm lens that I already had for terrestrial photography. I am at a point where I know that this lens is not going to provide me with the quality of pictures I expect (from my camera, from my mount and from my own skills - both for handling said equipment and for post-processing). The lens suffers from abnormal tilting (if I put the star in the center of the camera at 70mm, when I zoom all the way to 300mm the star moves almost 1/4 of the frame...) and I am tired of seeing "comets" in half the frame. So, I am ready for a much due upgrade. I am thinking about the following setup: - Tecnosky APO SLD 80/480 V2 bundled with 0.8x reducer/flattener - link: https://www.teleskop-express.it/apocromatici-ota/4217-apo-sld-80480mm-v2-spianatore-1x-tecnosky.html It's a triplet FPL-53 APO f/6, f/4.8 when reduced. Seems a very good deal for the price, considering the 4 elements reducer is included in the bundle. The scope, from a purely specs point of view, should be similar to this: https://www.teleskop-express.it/apocromatici-ota/15-tlapo804-mk2-ts-optics.html - a TS Photoline APO triplet, 80mm f/6 FPL-53. The salesperson I talked to in the store adviced me, between the two, to get the Tecnosky, since the lenses are better quality, the focuser mechanics are better and it also has a self-centering clamping mechanism (instead of thumb screws). Plus the Tecnosky has the reducer included and the carrying case. The store sells both brands of scopes, amongst others, so I don't think he would advice me wrongly just to push me to buy one over the other, right? - 60mm f/4 guide scope - ZWO ASI 224 MC guide camera / planetary camera - Optolong L-PRO 2" light pollution filter I live in Italy, so the scopes I have readily available from the various physical stores around here are Teleskop Service, Artesky, Tecnosky. Unfortunately I have not found many reviews (pretty much none, except from somebody that was talking about that scope for visual use). I have seen some very beautiful pictures in AstroBin taken with that scope, nice round stars, no chromatic aberration (that I can see), but we all know post-processing can do miracles in the right hands. While I was setting aside the budget for the kit, I have been reading a lot of articles about 80mm doublets/triplets, in the same focal range and budget, and most people involved in the conversations seemed to agree that in this price range the lenses are pretty much made by the same (Chinese) manufacturer and then picked, tubed, and rebranded accordingly by the various resellers. The same people seemed to agree also on the fact that you could get lucky and get a fantastic set of lenses, or you could be doomed and get a "lemon" - being the quality control almost non-existent. Any of you had any first hand (or second hand) experience from Tecnosky and their products? Particularly the scope I am choosing to buy? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have invested and I am investing a lot of money in this wonderful passion - more than a mere hobby - that for me is astronomy and astrophotography, and I would gladly be stopped before I buy something I won't be happy with. I would even be more glad if my choice proved to be a good one and I would receive the green light! Thanks for reading! Clear skies!

Nice that you could manage to record the curve! Yeah, I agree, it would be nice to have everything under one system. Unfortunately with KStars/EKOS we cannot have PEC, but we can polar align with the DSLR. In Windows it's just the opposite. To be honest, I have been polar aligning my mount using the polar scope and an Android app that shows me the position to put Polaris in the polar scope (if interested, the app is PolarFinder). I have managed up to 4 minutes exposures with no field rotation, at 300mm focal length and a DSLR. The few times I tried using the polar alignment feature in EKOS, the error according to EKOS was so great that if I corrected for it, Polaris would be off almost by the whole diameter of the circle in the polar scope. I blamed this problem on flexure of the DSLR plus the heavy 300mm lens on the ball head that everything was mounted on. Since then I always polar aligned manually and everything went fine. If your imaging focal length is in the same ballpark as mine, I wouldn't worry about switching systems just for polar alignment and stick with your Windows setup. PEC would probably benefit you a lot more than a superior polar alignment. You could try polar aligning manually and then taking a few test exposures under Windows - if the stars are nice and round in all the field of view, then you are good to go!

If you just use KStars/EKOS to polar align, then I guess parking the mount in Linux and restarting it with Windows/EQMOD could work. But, as you pointed out yourself, the two parking positions (the one in EKOS and the one in EQMOD) have to be the same, or you will end up with an offset between when the PEC should apply the correction and the motor position that is actually getting that correction (ahead or behind the correct one of the curve). A workaround could be parking the mount in EQMOD (after you record your PEC data), turning the mount off, starting EKOS, turning the mount on, and before doing anything (unparking, tracking, anything that moves the mount from the EQMOD parked position) saving the current position under EKOS parking configuration setting - I think this should be doable. Then you should be pretty sure that the two parking positions are the same. A way to check if this worked could be: 1) park the mount in EQMOD, take note of the motor positions 2) set the current parking position as EKOS parking position, before doing anything that moves the mount from where EQMOD left it (no tracking, no unparking, no slewing, etc.) 3) still under EKOS, unpark the mount, slew randomly a few times, park the mount 4) go back in EQMOD, see if the motor positions are still the ones you recorded in step 1 If they are, then you can be sure that the two parking positions are exactly the same and your PEC curve will be correctly applied even if you switch between the two systems. I hope this makes sense - and that it works!

Hi, if your mount - like mine (NEQ6 Pro) - doesn't support PPEC (Permanent), then unfortunately you will not be able to use it with KStars/EKOS. I was using a Windows machine and I managed to record a few correction cycles using EQMOD and then save a PEC curve and load it in EQMOD every time I wanted to use sidereal rate plus PEC. This almost doubled my unguided exposure times. With EQMOD all you had to do was park the mount before switching it off, and the PEC curve was always synchronized with the motor positions. I had to make the switch to a Raspberry Pi 4 and KStars/EKOS, because Windows laptop died, and since then I haven't been able to take advantage of PEC anymore, because with KStars/EKOS only permanent PEC mounts are supported for the PEC feature to be available (nobody developed a PEC synchronized with motor positions option for that suite). With Windows/EQMOD, there was definitely the option to train the PEC even without a guide camera: when I did it, I used a joystick (plugged in and configured in EQMOD) to give corrections to the mount and a cross-haired eyepiece with a 2x Barlow with my C8, to keep chosen star in the center of the eyepiece. So, you can do this without a guide camera. But only with EQMOD, under Windows.

Well, there is hope, then! I am going to do some indoor testing with KStars/EKOS and play with the mount settings. I don't use EQMOD (since I had to switch from my Windows laptop to a Raspberry Pi 4) anymore, so I'll have to see if I can find an equivalent method that works in EKOS.

I don't know about WiFi mounts - mine is an old model - but I was talking about USB controlled mount, hooked up to the laptop or - in my case - the Raspberry Pi 4. I think as long as the planetarium on the laptop sees the mount as connected, it shouldn't matter if the connection is wired or wireless, though.

This thread prompted me to do a little research about setting custom slew speeds at least with a planetarium software. If I find anything, I'll let you know here. As for the price of the planetarium softwares, you shouldn't worry: there are plenty free ones and they are all great (Cartes du Ciel, KStars, Stellarium, for example).

If the noise my mount makes - and pretty much all the Sky-Watcher mounts I heard on YouTube videos - is indicative of it being a constant, despite the higher or lower end models, taking it back won't be a solution. The only mounts that I have heard on the videos that do not make that kind of noise are the ones that have been "belt modified" or that have belts to begin with.

My NEQ6 Pro is pretty loud, too, when slewing. It's always been a concern of mine, as well, from the neighbours point of view. Unfortunately, whether I use the hand-controller or a planetarium, the slewing rate of the GO-TOs is always chosen to be the highest possible, completely disregarding the rate I chose (in the hand-controller or the planetarium). I guess the chosen rate is only accounted for when making the adjustments with the arrow keys. "Plan D" seems the only solution, for me as well, I guess...

Hi, it doesn't really matter what object you intend of imaging. Being an extreme widefield object (like the Milky Way) or a close up of a single nebula, the tracking rate of the mount will always be the same: sidereal rate. The important thing is a good polar alignment (it matters less for extreme widefield), pointing the camera in the right direction, making sure the tracking of the mount is on and set to sidereal, and you are ready to shoot. For widefield taken with an 18mm you won't even need to guide, as the exposure time of the single sub will be short enough and the magnification low enough that you won't notice any star trailings. The mount you chose should be plenty good enough for all the lenses you listed and even for some small refractors, should you wish to upgrade in the future. Good luck and clear skies! EDIT: for Milky Way shooting, what you might want to do is also take a "still" photograph, without traking, of the landscape, exposing for it, instead of the night sky, so that then you can combine the integration of the tracked shots of the Milky Way (where the landscape will inevitably be blurred and "moving") with the single image of the landscape and make a nice final composition!

Nice! Glad you got your kit and started sorting it out. I think the reason why your WI-FI information was lost after you installed Astroberry is because, from how I understand it, when you flash the Astroberry image to the memory card, it completely wipes it and overwrites the new image. It's not like a regular software installation that goes on top of the operating system, Astroberry IS the operating system (Raspbian) plus all the packages needed for astrophotography that the developer of Astroberry pre-intalled and configured in the image he provides on his website. Now that you got everything installed, the real fun begins! Getting KStars / EKOS configured and working with all your gear! We are here to help, in case you need it! Clear skies!

Nice! You won't be unhappy with the Raspberry/Astroberry package! Sure, it will take some getting used to, and the learning curve, as with everything new, is quite steep, but once you figured it out, it will work very nicely. If you need advice on it, follow this thread: Plenty of good tips in there! Clear skies!

Forgot to mention: I have a Nikon D5300 and it works with EKOS, even bulb mode with any exposure length. With the D90, I could only get it to work up until 30s exposures. To go past that, I needed an intervalometer directly connected to the camera. If you look at this page - http://gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php - both the Z6 and the D7500 are listed to be supported by the gPhoto driver (which is the driver EKOS uses) in all the same functions as the D5300, while the D90 (along with other models) specify PTP mode. So you shouldn't have any problems controlling them with EKOS. The same goes for the Canon 700D.

Hi, I also would advice you to go without guiding, at first. There are a lot of things that need to be sorted out and guiding just adds to the difficulty level. Once you manage to take some 30-60s exposures and learn how your system works and the various components interact with each other (optics, mount, software), you could add guiding to the mix, but you will at least start from an "everything I have is working good so far" point, instead of a "I have so many things that can go wrong in a night, I will be lucky to get an image done" point... At least, this is how it felt to me at first. Now I feel ready to add a guiding system. As far as the PC to control the equipment, I personally went with a Raspberry Pi 4 4GB and the Astroberry suite. Takes some getting used to, at first (I have almost only used Windows for my software needs, up until I got back into astrophotography), but once you figured it out, it works like a charm. And it costs next to nothing - I didn't really see a point in buying Stellarmate (which is basically the same thing) when Astroberry is free and has the same exact software. Clear skies, Matteo

Another thing: I just remembered you said you have a lot of lenses you would like to sell in order to fund buying your setup. You could always buy the mount first, get your feet wet - like I did - with some of those lenses, to see what results they are able to give you, just using your Sony. If you don't like the results, then you go replacing piece by piece. The more things you add to the mix at once, the harder it is to sort out what is causing the problems. Beside mount, optics, and camera, there's also the software perspective to sort out. It is a very steep learning curve, at the beginning, when you have all these things at once. But it's worth it. When that first picture you took - despite all the defects it may have - will show up on the screen of your PC, it will give you an immense joy. YOU took that picture, with YOUR equipment, and YOUR skills. And, as the last two improve, so will the pictures!