Budgie1

What you have to ask yourself is; Am I happy with my exposure times without guiding? If you're currently getting good results with 30 second exposures and no start trails then maybe that's all you need. If you want to try longer exposures, anything up to 5 minutes, then guiding allow you to keep the target in view and the stars round during longer exposures. You may be able to just use a 30mm guide scope & a ZWO ASI120MM Mini camera, linked into an ASIAir or a laptop running PHD2 software. This would fit onto the finder scope mount and shouldn't add that much weight to your rig.

Wonderful detail in there and I like the foraxx palette. What gain & offset settings did you use for this and did you have any issues with gradients using the L-eXtreme?

This was taken over two nights (1st & 2nd Dec) and is a total of 10h 40m of integration time, consisting of: Ha 3.5nm - 60x 300s = 5 hours Oiii 4.0nm - 38x 300s = 3h10m Sii 8.0nm - 30x 300s = 2h30m Captured with ZWO ASI1600MM Pro, WO Z73 III with adjustable flattener, on HEQ5, controlled through APT. Stacked & processed in PI using only the stars from the Ha stack. I'm really pleased with this one and it's the best I've got with the ASI1600MM to date. It definitely shows that integration time is what counts as the Ha stack was really clean with hardly any noise on it. I hope you like the colours, I prefer a little touch of red in with the yellow Ha channel.

Did you have a return policy statement on the original advert? If so, what did it say? If you're not sure then check the advert again in case one has been added automatically. Has the buyer contacted you directly or have they opened a Return Request via eBay? It's hard to say whether the filter photographed by the buyer isn't the one you sent, mainly because these filters can show different colours when lit from different angles. So, assuming it is the same filter, I would be asking: Why it's taken two weeks to report the alleged scratches? Why is the filter so dirty and covered in dust? For photos once the filter has been cleaned using recommended cleaning materials. How have the two indentations occurred in the casing foam (not there in your image), has the filter not been stored correctly in the box using the central cut-out or have other filters been stored in the box at the same time (which could have scratched the coating on the L-eXtreme)?

I started on SH2-157 on the 24th Nov as I'd never got around to imaging this one, and thought it was about time. On the 24th I managed 30x 300s subs with the 3.5nm Ha filter and 20x 300s with 4nm Oiii filter before the clouds came. The following night it was looking good and I managed another 10x 300s Oiii Subs and 30x 300s with the 8nm Sii filter, giving me a total of 7h15m integration. When I stacked and processed the images, it was obvious that the Sii subs were trash due to high cloud, there was just too much to make them usable. I didn't get another chance to re-take the Sii subs until last night (30th Nov) and managed 25 good subs, before the clouds came over, and that was enough to create a good stack to add to the Ha & Oiii images to produce this. A total of 7h 5m of 300s subs, taken with the ZWO ASI1600MM Pro set to -10°C, Gain 139, Offset 50 and attached to a WO Z73 III with adjustable FF. C's & C's welcomed, as always.

For some reason I thought I'd run last nights video from the Allsky Cam and discovered Aurora on it! I was out imaging last night I didn't see anything, or maybe I just wasn't out there at the right time. This time the Aurora is red and occurred around 18:33. In the video you'll see three bursts of red, before the Moon wipes it out, if there was more. And here's a couple of stills showing the best from it. 25112023-allskycam_video.mp4

Oh, don't worry, it's still been wet. 86mm in one day back in October! And I've had my fair share of 30 minute sessions then clouded over for the rest of the night. Fortunately the Jetstream has been a bit further South than normal, so you're getting all the weather we normally do at time of year, and we really do appreciate you doing that for us. 🤣😂

What's the plan for the obsy, are you going to be walking on the concrete or will there be a raised floor? You could try putting a washing up bowl of water on the concrete and walk around it to see if there are any ripples created. A bit crude but it may give you an idea if there's likely to be any movement or vibration. The other alternative is to bolt down the pier, stick the mount on it and give it a go, before building the obsy. If it doesn't work then you'll be digging out the holes you made for the bolts anyway. 😉

Just a whole night, with or without the Moon, is a rare thing this season! 🤣 And for it to fall on a weekend when I didn't have to get up in the morning, how lucky was that! 😁

Yes, I only use #2. it saves time and gets the job done in one pass. If you use the auto-crop then it lines up all the channels together and crops them, so you don't have to do that in post-processing either. When you load all the lights into WBPP it will recognise the different filters from the FITS header or the file names and group them accordingly. Likewise with the Flats, it will group these by exposure time or filter name.

Me neither, Alan. Maybe it depends on the orientation?

I love this time of year when you get a clear sky early on. This was taken on Saturday 11th November and it was dark enough to start the subs at 18:30. I finished the run at just before 05:00 on Sunday morning, with a meridian flip & a laptop reboot in the middle of it. If it wasn't for the laptop reboot then I'd have got another hour out of it, but decided to call it a night at that point as I was also running a second rig with Samyang 135mm f2 & ASI294MC Pro which had to be put away. I managed to capture a total of 10h10m of 300s subs: Ha 3.5nm - 3h45m Oiii 4nm - 3h30m Sii 8nm - 2h55m The kit was: WO Z73 III with adjustable flattener ZWO ASI1600MM Pro set to -10° C, gain 139, offset 50 Baader filters as above Heq5 mount with belt conversion Captured with APT & processed in PI Processed as SHO but I only used the Ha stars for the final image. Thanks for looking.

Just so I can get it clear in my head did you: Run a separate instance of WBPP for each channel - Run WBPP for Lum, let it finish then reset the lights with the Red subs & calibration frames and run WBPP again, continuing on for Green & Blue? Or did you load all the channel subs into the Lights folder in WBPP, with their corresponding Flats & Flat-Darks and just run WBPP once to create all four stacks at the same time? If you did #1, have you tried #2 to see if that makes a difference?

It's my processing of the images that's caused the bright centres in those two. I was rushing a bit to get them done as I had 5 stacks from the weekend to process. I do like to keep the images on the light side as I feel you loose faint detail from nebula if the background is too dark. I've had a wee tinker with them and I think they look much better now. The Spagetti had the data rung out of it, as it's a very faint object and 3h40m isn't anywhere near enough, but darkening the centre of the California has brought out a lot more cloud detail.

And here's two from the evening of the 11th November. Same setup as above with ASI294MC Pro and L-eNhance filter using 200 gain & 30 offset at -10°C. The first one I did was NGC7822, the Cosmic Question Mark, and this is 5h28m at 240s exposures, stacked & processed in PI. As this one went out of view, I was going for NGC7000 but then spotted that Sh2-240 Spagetti Nebula had appeared from behind the trees and managed 3h40m of that. Much more time needs to be added to this, as can be seen from the results, but it'll get better as the year progresses.

So, I had another cracking night last night to test out the new settings, Bit Rate 20000k & Frame rate of 30fps. It's the first time my Star Trails image has worked, I experimented with the Brightness_Threshold and set it at 0.2 for last night and this is the result: I may have to do some more experimentation as that seems a little too bright. As for the video, well I'm impressed with it for a £36 camera. The stars are nice & sharp, there's little pixelation now the setting has been altered (thanks @powerlord for the pointer) and you can even see high level cloud towards the end of the night, which I couldn't see when I was out there! The only thing that stops it being perfect is the water droplet on the dome, I wonder if something like RainX would help? Enjoy, I'm keeping this one. 11112023-allskycam_video.mp4

Having been graced with a couple of good clear nights this week I've been running two rigs, my main rig and dusted off the Samyang 135mm connected to a ZWO ASI294MC Pro with L-eNhance filter, all on my old EQ5 and run using ASIAir Mini. The second night is running as I type, but on the first night I got a couple of images, stacked & processed in PixInsight: IC1396 with gain of 200, offset 30 & 3h57m 180s exposures. NGC1499 with the same camera settings but only 1h45m

The camera back focus is 13mm +/- 0.5mm, according to the technical specs. But this only the distance from the front face of the camera to the sensor, you still need to know what the reducer's required back focus is, normally this will be 55mm but some aren't.

I have the gain & exposures on auto but I have the max gain set to 16 (the max for the camera I think) and the max exposure to 30 seconds. The auto-stretch is set to 20 with 10% mid-point setting. I also have it set to reduce the size of the images to 900 x 506, which is to make the upload video smaller for my website. Thanks for the tip about the bit rate, I'll also try upping the frame rate to 30 as well. Here's the config.sh #!/bin/bash # X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*XX*X*X*X*X*X*X # For details on these settings, click on the "Allsky Documentation" link in the WebUI, # then click on the "Settings -> Allsky" link, # then, in the "Editor WebUI Page" section, open the "config.sh" sub-section. # X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*XX*X*X*X*X*X*X ########## Images # Set to "true" to upload the current image to your website. IMG_UPLOAD="true" # Upload the image file as "image-YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.jpg" (true) or "image.jpg" (false). IMG_UPLOAD_ORIGINAL_NAME="false" # If IMG_UPLOAD is "true", upload images every IMG_UPLOAD_FREQUENCY frames, e.g., every 5 frames. # 1 uploades every frame. IMG_UPLOAD_FREQUENCY=2 # Resize images before cropping, stretching, and saving. IMG_RESIZE="true" IMG_WIDTH=900 IMG_HEIGHT=506 # Crop images before stretching and saving. CROP_IMAGE="false" CROP_WIDTH=640 CROP_HEIGHT=480 CROP_OFFSET_X=0 CROP_OFFSET_Y=0 # Auto stretch images saved at night. The numbers below are good defaults. AUTO_STRETCH="true" AUTO_STRETCH_AMOUNT=20 AUTO_STRETCH_MID_POINT="10%" # Resize uploaded images. Change the size to fit your sensor. RESIZE_UPLOADS="false" RESIZE_UPLOADS_WIDTH=900 RESIZE_UPLOADS_HEIGHT=506 # Create thumbnails of images. If you never look at them, consider changing this to "false". IMG_CREATE_THUMBNAILS="true" # Remove corrupt or too dim/bright images. REMOVE_BAD_IMAGES="true" REMOVE_BAD_IMAGES_THRESHOLD_LOW=1 REMOVE_BAD_IMAGES_THRESHOLD_HIGH=90 ########## Timelapse # Set to "true" to generate a timelapse video at the end of each night. TIMELAPSE="true" # Set the resolution in pixels of the timelapse video. TIMELAPSEWIDTH=900 TIMELAPSEHEIGHT=506 # Bitrate of the timelapse video. TIMELAPSE_BITRATE="2000k" # Timelapse video Frames Per Second. FPS=20 # Encoder for timelapse video. VCODEC="libx264" # Pixel format. PIX_FMT="yuv420p" # Amount of information displayed while creating a timelapse video. FFLOG="warning" # Set to "true" to keep the list of files used in creating the timelapse video. KEEP_SEQUENCE="false" # Any additional timelapse parameters. Run "ffmpeg -?" to see the options. TIMELAPSE_EXTRA_PARAMETERS="" # Set to "true" to upload the timelapse video to your website at the end of each night. UPLOAD_VIDEO="true" # Set to "true" to upload the timelapse video's thumbnail to your website at the end of each night. TIMELAPSE_UPLOAD_THUMBNAIL="false" ###### Mini-timelapse # The number of images you want in the mini-timelapse. 0 disables mini-timelapse creation. TIMELAPSE_MINI_IMAGES=0 # Should a mini-timelapse be created even if ${TIMELAPSE_MINI_IMAGES} haven't been captured yet? TIMELAPSE_MINI_FORCE_CREATION="false" # After how many images should the mini-timelapse be made? # If you have a slow Pi or short delays between images, # set this to a higher number (i.e., not as often). TIMELAPSE_MINI_FREQUENCY=5 # The remaining TIMELAPSE_MINI_* variables serve the same function as the daily timelapse. TIMELAPSE_MINI_UPLOAD_VIDEO="false" TIMELAPSE_MINI_UPLOAD_THUMBNAIL="flase" TIMELAPSE_MINI_FPS=5 TIMELAPSE_MINI_BITRATE="1000k" TIMELAPSE_MINI_WIDTH=1014 TIMELAPSE_MINI_HEIGHT=760 ########## Keogram # Set to "true" to generate a keogram at the end of each night. KEOGRAM="true" # Additional Keogram parameters. KEOGRAM_EXTRA_PARAMETERS="--font-size 1.0 --font-line 1 --font-color '255 255 255'" # Set to "true" to upload the keogram image to your website at the end of each night. UPLOAD_KEOGRAM="true" ########## Startrails # Set to "true" to generate a startrails image of each night. STARTRAILS="true" # Images with a brightness higher than this threshold will be skipped for # startrails image generation. BRIGHTNESS_THRESHOLD=0.1 # Any additional startrails parameters. STARTRAILS_EXTRA_PARAMETERS="" # Set to "true" to upload the startrails image to your website at the end of each night. UPLOAD_STARTRAILS="true" ########## Other # Size of thumbnails. THUMBNAIL_SIZE_X=100 THUMBNAIL_SIZE_Y=75 # Set this value to the number of days images plus videos you want to keep. # Set to 0 to keep ALL days. DAYS_TO_KEEP=7 # Same as DAYS_TO_KEEP, but for the Allsky Website, if installed. WEB_DAYS_TO_KEEP=0 # See the documentation for a description of this setting. WEBUI_DATA_FILES="" # See the documentation for a description of these settings. UHUBCTL_PATH="" UHUBCTL_PORT=2 # ================ DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE ================ ME2="$(basename "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" # CAMERA_TYPE is updated during installation CAMERA_TYPE="RPi" if [ "${CAMERA_TYPE}" = "" ]; then echo -e "${RED}${ME2}: ERROR: Please set 'Camera Type' in the WebUI.${NC}" sudo systemctl stop allsky > /dev/null 2>&1 exit ${EXIT_ERROR_STOP} fi IMG_DIR="current/tmp" CAPTURE_SAVE_DIR="${ALLSKY_TMP}" # Don't try to upload a mini-timelapse if they aren't using them. if [[ ${TIMELAPSE_MINI_IMAGES} -eq 0 ]]; then TIMELAPSE_MINI_UPLOAD_VIDEO="false" TIMELAPSE_MINI_UPLOAD_THUMBNAIL="false" fi if [[ -z ${SETTINGS_FILE} ]]; then # SETTINGS_FILE is defined in variables.sh echo -e "${RED}${ME2}: ERROR: SETTINGS_FILE variable not defined!${NC}" echo -e "${RED}Make sure 'variables.sh' is source'd in!${NC}" return 1 fi if [[ ! -f ${SETTINGS_FILE} ]]; then echo -e "${RED}${ME2}: ERROR: Settings file '${SETTINGS_FILE}' not found!${NC}" sudo systemctl stop allsky > /dev/null 2>&1 exit ${EXIT_ERROR_STOP} fi # Get the name of the file the websites will look for, and split into name and extension. FULL_FILENAME="$(settings ".filename")" EXTENSION="${FULL_FILENAME##*.}" FILENAME="${FULL_FILENAME%.*}" CAMERA_MODEL="$(settings '.cameraModel')" # So scripts can conditionally output messages. ALLSKY_DEBUG_LEVEL="$(settings '.debuglevel')" # ALLSKY_VERSION is updated during installation ALLSKY_VERSION="v2023.05.01_03" CONFIG_SH_VERSION=1 And here are the settings.json { "takeDaytimeImages": "1", "saveDaytimeImages": "1", "dayautoexposure": "1", "daymaxautoexposure": "30000", "dayexposure": "500", "daymean": "0.5", "daymeanthreshold": "0.1", "daybrightness": "0", "daydelay": "30000", "dayautogain": "1", "daymaxautogain": "16", "daygain": "1.123", "daybin": "1", "dayawb": "1", "daywbr": "2.5", "daywbb": "2", "dayskipframes": "5", "dayTuningFile": "", "nightautoexposure": "1", "nightmaxautoexposure": "30000", "nightexposure": "10000", "nightmean": "0.16", "nightmeanthreshold": "0.1", "nightbrightness": "0", "nightdelay": "30000", "nightautogain": "1", "nightmaxautogain": "16", "nightgain": "8", "nightbin": "1", "nightawb": "1", "nightwbr": "2.5", "nightwbb": "2", "nightskipframes": "1", "nightTuningFile": "", "config": "[none]", "extraArgs": "", "saturation": "1", "contrast": "1", "sharpness": "3", "width": "0", "height": "0", "type": "99", "quality": "95", "filename": "allsky_latest.png", "flip": "0", "notificationimages": "1", "consistentDelays": "1", "timeformat": "%d%m%Y %H:%M:%S", "latitude": "56.7N", "longitude": "5.2W", "angle": "-6", "takeDarkFrames": "0", "useDarkFrames": "0", "locale": "en_GB.UTF-8", "debuglevel": "1", "useLogin": "1", "alwaysshowadvanced": "1", "overlayMethod": "1", "showTime": "1", "temptype": "C", "showExposure": "1", "showGain": "0", "showBrightness": "0", "showMean": "0", "showFocus": "0", "text": "Allsky Camera", "extratext": "", "extratextage": "0", "textlineheight": "30", "textx": "15", "texty": "35", "fontname": "0", "fontcolor": "255 0 0", "smallfontcolor": "0 0 255", "fonttype": "0", "fontsize": "7", "fontline": "1", "outlinefont": "0", "displaySettings": "1", "showonmap": "1", "websiteurl": "", "imageurl": "", "location": "", "owner": "", "camera": "RPi Module_3", "lens": "N/A", "computer": "Raspberry Pi 4, 4GB", "cameraType": "RPi", "cameraModel": "Module_3", "lastChanged": "2023-11-06 21:22:36" }

Finally, a clear night and it's now dark at 18:00! So, I went for IC1805, the Heart Nebula using SHO filters. I took 25x 300s images with each filter and then had to call it a night as I was working this morning. The data looked clean and needed very little noise reduction. The kit consisted of: ZWO ASI1600MM Pro set to -10°C, Gain 139, Offset 50, WO Z73 III with adjustable flattener, on a HEQ5 with belt mod. Filters: Baader 3.5nm Ha, Baader 4nm Oiii and Baader 8nm Sii Captured with APT, with PHD2 guiding and stacked & processed in PI. I think this is the best image to date using the newly acquired ZWO ASI1600MM Pro. C's & C's welcomed, as always.

First proper clear night last night to be able to test the camera. A bit pixelated but you can see the Milkyway clearly, plus all the satellite trails. allskycam_video.mp4

That's not my experience using EQMOD with APT. I can park the mount after a session, turn off the power to the mount, have the laptop do a restart for a Windows update. When I next connect the mount to APT, EQMOD works fine from the park position and slews to the required location when I ask CdC to move it. Once pointing roughly at the target using CdC, I get APT to do a plate solve and GoTo, it never moves that far until the plate solving software is happy it's aligned.

If you're using NINA, then are you also using EQMOD? If so, then expand the EQMOD GUI (Fig 1 in the image below) and in the central column, at the bottom, are the Park controls. In the drop-down you get the choice of Park to Home Position or Park to a custom position (I can't remember the exact wording on the drop down menu ). You'll find details on page 88 of the EQMOD Manual. I have this set for my HEQ5 in my ROR Obsy, so the scope is laying horizontal when parked, to allow the roof to roll over it.

The default guide rate in the ASIAir is 0.5X, but with my EQ5 & HEQ5 I tend to use 0.75X or 0.9x, just because the faster rates are recommended when using EQMOD & PHD2 and I transferred them across to my ASIAir Mini.

The remote website isn't that hard to setup. If you do get issues then it's normally down to the settings, in my case I had to remove the FTP server port number from the ftp-settings.sh file on RPi for it to work. There is an error file created by the RPi, which I accessed via Remote Desktop, which points you in the right direction. I've converted the Webcam page on my weather website for the AllSky, it's currently only got the latest image on it, but is setup to take the timelapse, keogram & star trail files when they get created tomorrow morning.