endless-sky

Hi, I, just like you, recently started my journey into astrophotography. I can't answer all your questions, but I'll try to tell you what I can / figured out along the way. As you said, the mount is the most important piece of equipment, when it comes to astrophotography. The best optics in the world would be useless if the mount cannot support them and track correctly. The minimum I would buy is a HEQ5 or equivalent. But with the HEQ5 you really cannot go wrong. I was searching for one in the used market, but I got lucky and I found a NEQ6 Pro for the same price I was willing to pay for the HEQ5, so I went with that instead. I don't think buying in the used marked is a bad idea: people in this hobby are pretty careful with their equipment, knowing how much it costs and cherish it quite well. Just watch out for scammers - unfortunately they exist in every field. As far as portability goes, sure the NEQ6 Pro is heavy, but I was able to take it in a dark site in the mountains without problems. The only problem is having a power supply source - like a car battery or similar - but this problem is not specific just to the NEQ6 Pro, but you will have it with every motorized mount. I have been very happy with my choice of mount, it can track without star trailing for 2 to 3 minutes, at 300mm focal length, with a D5300 DSLR. As far as the telescope goes, I can tell you what I have read so far on many forums and the same route I plan on going: a fast 80mm apochromatic refractor (f/6 or lower). So far I have been imaging with my Nikkor 70-300mm, but being a zoom lens it suffers from all sort of problems (geometric and chromatic aberrations, tilting, slow lens). I pretty much exhausted the possibilities this lens can provide me. I first thought the problem was mostly mine (not being able to process the images, once acquired, mostly), but then I tried with a prime 50mm lens and the results - despite being a larger field of view - were light years ahead (excuse the joke...) of all the other pictures I took with the 70-300mm @ 300mm. Stars perfectly round, no aberrations whatsoever. So, I decided that my next step will be to buy an 80mm f/6 apochromatic, so I can finally take the quality of pictures that I know my mount and my processing abilities are able to deliver. I think, if you go this route, a "must" is also a field flattener or a flattener/reducer, otherwise stars will lose their round shape the further they are from the center of the image. Personally, I will go with the flattener/reducer, because I don't mind trading some focal length in order to make the telescope faster (with a 0.8x reducer it will become f/4.8, which translates into more light collected in the same exposure time, or, another way to put it, less exposure time for the same amount of light). Unfortunately the good for everything telescope, as far as I know, does not exist. So at the beginning you will have to make a choice: do you want to capture wide nebulae or small and distant galaxies? You cannot do both with the same focal length telescope. With the tool provided by this website - https://telescopius.com/telescope-simulator - you can input the focal length of the optics and the size of the camera sensor and it will give you an idea of how much of the framing each object you type in the search box will take up. Personally, I mostly like wide nebulae, so the 300-500mm focal length range gives me the best options. The scope I have in mind is an 80mm f/6 (480mm focal length), reduced by 0.8x to 384mm. Combining that with the D5300 sensor size gives me nice framing on a lot of targets, so this scope will keep me busy for a good while. Galaxies will have to wait, as the longer the focal length the more difficult imaging becomes (everything is magnified, including the tracking errors - you will need guiding, in this case). With a short refractor and a good mount you can get away without guiding. For the camera, I have a Nikon D5300, so I really cannot help you about Sony. I am very pleased with this camera, the noise level is very low, it has high dynamic range, and it is "isoless", so I can image at 200 ISO, taking advantage of the dynamic range. I have to point out that I "astromodified" the camera - procedure that I undertook myself, but there are some companies that can do it for you, for a price - by removing the stock filter placed in front of the sensor, and putting an IR/UV cut filter in its place. This is pretty much necessary if you want the camera to have a good response in the H-alpha line of the spectrum (which is pretty much every other nebula...). Natively, these cameras, meant for daytime use, are not responsive enough to this part of the spectrum, which means you would need to integrate longer exposure sessions to get the same results. Time and clear skies are a rare commodity as it is, so I preferred to modify the camera, to use it to its full potential. So, you really do not need to start with a dedicated astrophotography camera. But if you think about buying a new camera because of the problems you have with your Sony, it might be worth it looking into one. I would advice for a OSC (one shot color) camera, though, not a monochromatic, at least from a beginner's point of view. There are a lot of things to learn and sort out at the beginning, adding the complications (and the expense) of a set of filters, and having to image for multiple nights on the same target - remember, clear skies are a rare event! - to compose a color image would just increase the level of difficulty. I hope I could help you in your choices! Whatever you decide, clear skies! Matteo

Hi, the only advice I could give you is to upgrade the mount to an HEQ5, expecially if you want to do astrophotography. Considering all that you will load on it (main scope, main camera, guide scope, guide camera, eventually power box, mini pc, cable management, etc.), I would say do not skimp on the mount. It is the most important thing for an astrophotography setup. The best optics and camera will be useless if the mount shakes at every breath of wind. Also, an HEQ5 will be future proof if you ever wanted to upgrade your setup! Good luck and clear skies, Matteo

I have to agree 100% on this statement. The Load and Solve option is really awesome, it can make imaging the same target on multiple nights (something I had to do recently, due to "nights" only lasting 2-3 hours in this season) a breeze - provided you do not change the orientation of the camera from one session to the other. I will definitely try doing mosaics using this feature, when I get my new refractor!

Hi Steve, for some reason, I didn't get notified of replies on this thread, so I didn't respond sooner. I am glad that you are getting your guiding with the 224MC working, as I think that would be my camera of choice when I will purchase my guiding setup. I know you probably figured it out already, but what I do to see images overlaid on the KStars planetarium is this: I click on View, HiPS All Sky Overlay and I check DSS colored (see attachment). You may have to download extra data for it to work/appear (see other attachment). I found that using this and plate solving (which displays on the planetarium the exact framing coming from the camera plate solved image, including angular orientation of the camera) I can nail the exact framing I want for each subject. Plate solving really is an awesome feature! Cartes du Ciel is included in the Astroberry package ("Start" menu, Education, Skychart), but I find it somewhat slower to pan and move around on the planetarium. KStars has some nice features (they should be on by default) where it turns of most of the stuff (stars over a certain magniture, DSS overlay) while you move around with the mouse, so each movement on the planetarium responds much quicker, as it doesn't have to redraw everything as you pan. I haven't seen the same feature on Skychart - I don't even know if it has it - so I use KStars. Anyway, if you still using the Pi 3 and plan on buying the 4, just wanted to give you a heads-up: they just released the 8 GB version and it shouldn't cost much more than the 4 GB. I have the 4 GB, as I bought it 2-3 months ago, and I haven't had any problem with RAM yet - only if I try to zoom in too much in the FITS Viewer, things get a little slow and RAM usage grows up to 50-60%, but it goes back to 20-25% as soon as I zoom out to more reasonable levels. But if you plan on making the investment, it might be worth it to buy the higher end version, just to be future proof! Clear skies, Matteo

Hi Steve, nice, I didn't know you had an ASI 224MC! Let me know if you manage to make it work ok for guiding, because that's exactly the camera I am thinking of buying for my guide setup. If it works with your Astroberry - fingers crossed - it should also work with mine. As I told you in the messages, I want to abandon the 120MM (Mini or -S), as too many people are having problems making it run with Pi/KStars/EKOS. The 224MC seems a better choice in all respects and it will also double as a planetary camera. Let me know! Clear skies, Matteo

Hi Steve, as you know, I have a setup running Raspberry Pi 4 and I use the Kstars/EKOS suite to run my equipment. I will try to help you on some of the issues you encountered, as I have encountered them myself! As far as GPS is concerned, I do not have a physical GPS device to attach to the Pi. The way I used to do it was to set up a home location on KStars and have KStars configured to update all devices. This would correctly pass the location information to the mount, but I could not change the system clock. Therefore the pointing accuracy of the mount was completely off. So I tried a different approach: I give priority to the network connection on my home WI-FI 100, to the Astroberry hotspot -100, reboot the Pi. The Pi now syncs the system clock correctly, while KStars takes care of the geo coordinates. Since the WI-FI connection is not superstable, I re-edit the connection options to give 100 to the hotspot and -100 to the WI-FI and reboot again. The clock is still correct, but now I VNC to the Pi through the hotspot, which is very stable (never dropped on me once since I started imaging with this setup). All this gets very tiring and time consuming, though. Fortunately some time ago I found this thread on the INDI Forum: https://indilib.org/forum/astroberry/6389-write-a-guide-astroberry-and-gps-rtc.html This was a life saver. I can use NetGPS on my Android phone, connect it to the Astroberry hotspot, set up a GPS NMEA as an auxiliary tab on EKOS, connect it to the IP address and port of the NetGPS on the phone and GPS NMEA feeds the geo and clock info to KStars, which in turn feeds them to the mount. Everything is synced perfectly and I do not need to start the Pi connected to the WI-FI anymore and then change back to hotspot, only to sync the system clock. I only connect it to the WI-FI when I need to update the system, but I do not have to do that during an imaging session, wasting precious time, anymore. The system clock still does not get updated, with this method, but the important thing is that KStars knows exactly what time it is and has the correct geo coordinate to handle the mount slewing without any problem. Using the phone as the added advantage that if there are not WI-FI connections available, you can do everything with your phone. For copying and pasting, I noticed that with the terminal I have to right click and then click on Paste on the drop down menu. I never managed to copy and paste from the laptop to the terminal in Pi, but I am sure the suggestions given by Radek work (I have not tried, yet, though). As far as setting up guiding, I do not know much, yet, as I have not purchased my guiding setup yet. All I can tell you is what I know from reading in the INDI Forum: the ASI 120MM has problems with EKOS/Raspberry (some people have problem with the Mini, other people with the -S, some people do not have problems with neither. Nothing definitive about this subject and too risky to consider buying those camera models. As I anticipated you with the private messages, I will most likely go with the ASI 224MC. More sensitive, less noisy, USB 3, less issues, better all around. Plus can be used also for planetary/lunar work). Another thing I can tell you about guide cameras is that sometimes they do not work because the Pi is giving power to too many things: buying a powered USB hub seems to solve many issues people having with their cameras. Another issue you pointed out was concerning the differences between running everything on the Pi and accessing it with a remote desktop or using the Pi as a server and running all the applications on a remote computer. I use the first approach: everything is connected to the Pi, I run KStars and EKOS on the Pi, and I remote desktop on the Pi from the laptop using VNC Viewer. VNC Server is already installed on Astroberry, so setting this up on the laptop is super easy (all you need to do is use the IP address of the hotspot for the VNC connection and connect the laptop to the hotspot of Astroberry). The pros of this approach have already been mentioned: even if the connection between the remote computer and the Pi is lost, the Pi keeps doing its things and nothing is lost. All you have to do is connect again and VNC again and you will see the Pi still running (sequence, guiding, everything you programmed it to do before starting the session). The cons are that all the applications are running on the Pi, which might be a little slower approach. I have the Pi 4 with 4GB and I have not run in any issues, yet. The applications run smoothly, I can even use DSS colored sky overlay on KStars to touch up my framing and it handles it very well. Sure, platesolving is a little bit slower than if you used a pretty recent home computer and also downloading the images from the camera to the Pi slows down things a bit (I use a USB 3 stick for the images, so I do not shorten the life of the SD card, but I am sure that if I used an SSD hard drive things would improve). But I would not risk losing an imaging session because of a lost connection just to improve a couple of seconds on platesolving and image downloading time. My laptop is barely good enough to run Lubuntu and VNC Viewer, anyway (which is the main reason I abandoned Windows and bought a Pi to begin with... much cheaper than buying a new laptop = more money to dedicate to astrophotography) so I would actually lose more time trying to run all the applications on the laptop and just use the Pi as a server... For the dual monitor I cannot help you, but I can give you a pointer: under the EKOS part of KStars configuration check the Independent Window checkbox. This way you can go from KStars to EKOS to FIT Viewer without having to minimize one or the other or move them out of the way. Saved me from many issues with windows overlapping whenever I wanted to go from one application to the other. As already mentioned, always check that your cameras are configured with the correct number of bits. Seems like a recurring issue in the INDI Forums... For the meridian flip I cannot help you, but I am sure what was already suggested is the way to go. I have not had to do a meridian flip, yet, as I do attended astrophotography sessions and I have never stayed up long enough to have the need for a meridian flip (since I bought the Pi, I have been imaging in the North-East part of the sky anyway...). I had KStars crashing on me, too, on some occasions, but the crashes were always triggered by me doing something wrong (expecially in the autofocus module, which I use as a manual assisted focuser to calculate FWHD values, as I do not have a real autofocuser, yet). Once I figured out clicking what would cause the applications to crash, I have not had any issues since. One last suggestion I can make is this: in order to rule out if the guiding does not work because of the guide camera model, I would try using the 1600 as a guider. Of course you would not be able to take any pictures with it while you test it, but at least you would see if you can get the EKOS guiding module to work. I think that is it for now, sorry for the lengthy post, but I hope I was able to help you getting your setup to work. I agree, it is a steep learning curve. I had to go all at once from Windows to Linux and from APT to KStars/EKOS, so I had to figure out a lot of things at once. The quarantine time surely helped: if I had been working during these past couple of months, I would not have been able to dedicate all this time to troubleshooting and I would still probably have a lot of problems, so the home time helped, in a way. Once I figured everything out, though, the combo Raspberry/Astroberry/KStars/EKOS is really a fantastic suite and I could not thank the developers of this system enough. I even managed to setup unguided dithering, which is an awesome feature. I know soon I will have to face new problems, too, as I will be adding a guide camera to the mix as well. But I have faith that at the end everything will run flawlessly. The only thing I miss from my old Windows setup is the EQMOD ability to run PEC even on non permanent PEC mounts like mine (NEQ6 Pro): it would sync the motor positions to the PE curve, provided that I always switched off the mount in the Park position. It was really nice being able to take almost twice as long exposures without trailing. With EKOS I cannot do this as this type of synced PEC is not supported. But this will be solved soon with the guiding setup, so I am sure I will not be missing this feature in the future. Hope this helped. Clear skies, Matteo

Glad I could be of help, Steve! And thanks again alacant, that gives me hope that both cameras are of equal choice, as they both work. I will be doing some more research, as I have to wait some more time before buying the whole setup, anyway. Thanks again! Clear skies, Matteo

Hi Steve, if I can, I will help you gladly! Nice to hear that you are getting a setup similar to mine, at least in the hardware/software point of view. Going purely from Windows, it was kind of a very steep learning curve, for me, as I did not have much prior experience with Linux, but at the end of the day it's not really impossible, after you learn those three or four commands necessary to keep the system up to date (in the case of Astroberry, is Raspbian based, so you'll use the typical "sudo apt-get update" followed by "sudo apt-get upgrade", and that will do all the work for you). Astroberry is really awesome, too, as you don't have to build your installation from scratch, you just burn the image on an SD card, plug it in the Pi, power it up and it's ready to go. You won't even need to use a keyboard/mouse/screen with it, as it boots up and starts the hotspot by default. You just need to instal VNC Viewer on the PC/laptop and connect to the Pi using the default hotspot IP address provided by the author of Astroberry on his site. KStars/EKOS require some configuring/tuning: I strongly advice you to use the Simulator profile, first, to have an idea of what every single module does. And do everything indoor, a few times, before trying it on the field for the first time. Clear skies are a rare event as it is - as we all know - and you don't really want a clear night to turn into a configuring nightmare... 🤣 But we are going off topic... If you need help with Astroberry, let me know, I will gladly tell you all I know! As far as comments on the various versions of the 120MM, I found mostly topics about them on the INDI Forums. It seems the 120MM Mini only works in 8bit mode, with EKOS and it seems it has to do with the size of the packets going from the camera to the Pi that Linux Kernel is not able to handle, because it expects a different size of packet. It also seems that the 120MM-S does not have this problem, because it has a USB 3.0 port and that seems to work fine. It just is unfortunate that the form factor of the 120MM-S is a lot bigger and most likely will not allow it to be used on a OAG... Also, you say that you already have a ZWO as a main camera. Another problem that you may encounter under EKOS is that using two cameras of the same brand at the same time might cause issues... That's another thing I read on the INDI Forum. Apparently there are workarounds, as connecting one first, then the other, and making sure the correct model is listed under the Imaging Module and the Guiding Module of EKOS. Other poeple report no issues at all, so I don't really know what it depends on... I know these informations might throw you off from even wanting to try Raspberry+KStars/EKOS, but once you solve the issues, it's really worth it. I found it very nice to have "everything under one roof". Using the same suite I can control the mount movements with the planetarium (KStars), focus, platesolve, plan the capturing sequences and - soon - guide. The developing team is very active and they are constantly adding new features / solving issues. The Pi is also really small and fits perfectly on the dovetail. Really a nice package! I don't know if I am allowed to provide links to other forums in here, so I'll probably send them to you in a private message? Off topic: your user name is in Italian, are you Italian too, by any chance? Clear skies, Matteo Edit: typos...

Thank you for your reply. Could you please specify which model your 120mm is? Is it the Mini or the -S variant? Clear skies, Matteo

Hello, I have been successfully using KStars/EKOS on a Raspberry Pi 4 - 4GB RAM to control my current equipment for quite some time. I currently use Astroberry installed on a SD card and everything is connected to the Pi (I use a very old laptop running Lubuntu to remotely access the Pi with VNC Viewer, since the laptop itself is uncapable of running anything...). Before jumping to Linux, I managed to make some astrophotography software work under Windows XP with the laptop, but I could never get it to control the camera. Rather than buying a whole new laptop, I decided to give the Rapsberry Pi a try and I have to say I am very satisfied with the performance. The only thing I miss is the fact that with EQMod under Windows I could use PEC, and KStars/EKOS only support it for Permanent PEC capable mounts... Currently my setup is as follows: Mount: Sky-Watcher NEQ6 Pro Imaging camera: Nikon D5300 Astromodified Joystick for fine tuning the framing Astrometry for plate solving So far I only used some Nikon lenses that I already owned from my every day photography (70-300mm, 50mm) for my astro-imaging, but I am in the process of acquiring some new gear: Telescope: Tecnosky Triplet Apo SLD FPL-53 80mm f/6 V2 with 0.8x flattener/reducer Guide scope: Tecnosky SharpGuide 60mm f/4 Guide camera: ? I am pretty sure about the choices of telescope and guide scope (unless anyone has any advice to give on that same price range: the telescope plus reducer is under 1000 Euro, which seems to me as an awesome deal), but I would like some advice on the guide camera. As I wrote on the title, the purpose of this thread is not deciding which camera is best between QHY and ZWO (as far as I understood, they are basically the same, if we consider the entry level guide cameras). The purpose of this thread is deciding which one to buy with the following considerations in mind: 1) I would like for the camera to work with my current setup, under KStars/EKOS, with pulse-guiding (as far as I know it's better than ST4), connecting it to the Raspberry Pi 4 (if I need to purchase a powered USB Hub, it's ok - so far all the equipment that is attached to the Pi has its own power supply) 2) I would also like for the camera to work both with EKOS internal guiding and PHD2 as an external guider for EKOS, just to have the option of testing which method gives me the best results 3) It has to be relatively cheap 4) I would like for the camera to be "future proof": I also own a very old Celestron C8 (it's been with me since 1997), so once I manage to get the "easier" setup working (80mm imaging scope + 60mm guide scope), I would love if the camera could work also in an OAG setup with the C8 (so I would just need to buy an off-axis guider and possibly a reducer, instead of buying yet another guide camera) 5) Last, but not least, I would like if the camera could work also if one day I decided to upgrade from the DSLR to a dedicated astro-camera (I read on the INDI Forum of a lot of people having troubles running two same brands cameras at the same time, one for guiding and one for imaging) So far my choices of guide cameras are: -QHYCCD QHY5L-II-M -ZWO ASI 120MM Mini (Mono) Any other suggestions, in the same price range of the above mentioned, are welcome! Also, for the refractor/guide scope setup I mentioned, would the color versions of those cameras be sufficient for guiding, so they could also serve as planetary imaging cameras? With an f/4 guide scope I shouldn't have any problem finding guide stars, correct? But probably they would not be good enough for the OAG and the C8... I have read a lot of posts in this forum concerning the two cameras of choice and I have read of many people having troubles with both (expecially with drivers, even under Windows...). I have also read of a lot of people having troubles with some versions of the 120MM (the Mini or the -S, I am not really sure) and Linux/Raspberry. I don't know if the problems have since been solved, with the latest versions of KStars/EKOS, so any help is appreciated, expecially from people that have a working Raspberry setup with those cameras. Since, as we all know, astrophotography is an expensive hobby/passion, I would like to make the right choice and be sure that the camera I will buy will be fully compatible with the hardware/software I am using. I am sorry if these questions have been asked before, but as I said, I would like to buy something and not have any bad surprises along the way! Thank you all for your help and clear skies! Matteo (Edit: typos...)