Budgie1

I have my own Space Weather page on my website (shameless plug ) and for Aurora I use the NOAA PEOS maps, which I've found to be more accurate than any apps I've used.

11kg is at the top of the recommended payload for the HEQ5 and (assuming you want to buy new) the EQ6-R Pro is only another £250, its already belt driven and has a 20kg payload capacity.

I love encouraging the spending of more money! 🤣

5 hours ago, LandyJon said:

Not sure how DSLRs connect to laptops, hopefully someone with experience can help there, but if they can be made to work with the astro capture softwares like Sharpcap etc. they have so many features that will help you, like focus tools and polar alignment aids. If you can run the DSLR captures from the laptop, then I'd have the guidecam to the laptop too and run guiding with PHD2

When I first started I used software called Astro Photography Tool (APT) because it worked with my Canon EOS 2000D, via a USB cable, and also linked to PHD2 for guiding. I still use this software today and have it connected to my ZWO ASI294MC Pro, ASI1600MM Pro, filter wheel, focuser & mount.

There is also NINA, which is also very good and has lots of features to make your imaging sessions easier.

Both are free to download and use, so worth checking out, and they're built for astrophotography.

5 hours ago, Maho said:

Afternoon all

I'm going to be getting a new laptop  for controlling my mount and take longer subs.

I have a CEM25P goto mount. However I'm a bit confused what laptop would be suitable, what cables I will need etc.

First off, what exactly do you want to control with the laptop? You mention wanting to take longer subs, so is it just the mount or do you also want to control your camera or a guide camera?

Have you looked at the ASIAir, which sits on the mount and controls everything for you via an Android or Apple App? Great for beginners because it just works and comes with guiding, Polar Alignment etc, although the downside is that it's limited to ZWO cameras, focusers & filterwheels, but it will work with Canon & Nikon DSLR cameras and most mounts. Plus it's half the price of the laptop you're looking at.

If it has to be a laptop then a second hand or refurbished laptop running Windows 10 Pro or Window 11 Pro will be fine for image capture. If you intend to do all your image processing on it as well, then a better spec may be needed. A simple way to connect your CEM25P to the laptop is using the Lynx Astro FTDI USB to Serial cable, which plug into the RJ11 Serial port on the base of the hand controller, with the other end going to the laptop.

Because laptops don't have that many USB connections, the use of a powered USB3 hub on the mount is a good call. Then you connect your mount, camera & guide camera into the USB3 hub and have one USB3 cable from the mount to you laptop. This keeps the cables short, which have less chance of tangling.  

7 hours ago, labtech1122 said:

OK great, I'll give it a go on pixinsight, I started using siril because pixinsight can be a bit intense on the mind sometimes haha. I used to use DSS 2 years ago when I started but could never get it to work correctly but back then I was using a Canon on a very long focal length scope so now with the asi183mc pro and a 72ed I'm sure it will be easier

When stacking in PixInsight's WBPP, your dark-flat files just go into the "Dark" tab, then WBPP matches them with the Flats with the same exposure length or filter name (if using mono ). There isn't a separate folder for Dark-Flats.  

What stacking software are you using?

With DeepSkyStacker you can use the Group tags at the bottom and put each exposure set of lights, darks & flats in their own group.

In PixInsight it will distinguish between them and assign the correct darks to lights.

These are the only stacking software I've used, so the likes of Siril may do the same thing.

Yep, I had the Obsy roof open and was imaging the Cave Nebula. I went inside for a cupper and when I came out to check on the progress I saw a faint green glow on the Northern horizon.

So I grabbed the EOS 2000D and tripod and got these:

Green to the naked eye with vertical shards moving East-West, which you can see clearer in the second image.

While you're waiting for those who know more about this camera/sensor than I, I've noticed a couple of things which may help.

In the Sensor Type on the screen, you have it set to RGGB but your 26M is a mono camera, so it there an option for a mono sensor?

You say you've set the offset to zero. Any reason for using zero because normally you would want to avoid using zero offset as this may clip the black or (as I read this morning) allow pixels with 0 ADU value. You really need to use some sort of offset value to move the histogram to the right slightly and avoid clipping the black point, even something like 20 or 30 will be fine. There is a way to find your correct offset value, but I can't locate the instructions at the moment.

This is what happens when you "upgrade" from CCD to CMOS, you now have to worry about things like gain & offset, which were factory set on the CCD camera!

To add to the above; also change the USB cables if you're using the flat ones supplied with the cameras from ZWO. These aren't the best cables and there have been plenty of people reporting connection issues with them, including myself.

Try to get good quality USB cables from the likes of Lindy, which are available through Amazon.

27 minutes ago, wimvb said:

I wonder if I got the same data as anyone else?

No Wim, it's the same data.

When I took another look at the individual files, the Ha isn't too bad but there are still quite a few hot pixels. The Sii & Oiii files have about the same number of hot pixels, but not always in the same locations.

Here's a close-up of the same area on the three files:

Here you go Ian, I had a play with your files in PI.

I'm not sure how much data is in there but it's quite clean with little noise. This is using my basic workflow in PI with Histrogramtransformation stretch, normally I would use GHS for the stretch, and using the 3 XT scripts.

I've done nothing with the colours, other than a little enhancement to the blue, everything else is just using saturation after removing the green cast with SCNR.

38 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

The USB3 cable directly to the USB2 port on the laptop worked OK, but not when connected to the Lindy USB2 5m cable. So I've ordered an active cable, and if it doesn't work it'll be returned.

Do you have USB3 ports on your laptop or only USB2?

If your laptop only has USB2 ports, there's no advantage in spending the extra to buy USB3 cables because you won't see any increase in data speed, it will still only run at USB2 speeds.

You can still get active USB2 cables to do the same job, only they're a lot cheaper than the USB3 versions.

37 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

Both versions are great!

Agreed you seem to have lost the OIII shell on the second, but the original image looks a bit green on my monitor in the background. Have you run SCNR and lost it on the second version maybe? 

Thanks Chris,

I didn't use SCNR on this one, I think I lost the shell because I used a different mask for the blue. I've done it again and further brought out the Oiii using GHS. This time I cloned the Oiii image, extracted the stars to leave only the Oiii data, then used Curves to darken the background, finally I applied a blur-mask and this created the mask I used for enhancing the blue Oiii data.  

Overall it just needs more data but I think I'll leave it alone for now.

I had another play around with GHS this afternoon and I think the background dust is more pronounced in this version, along with more of the Oiii shell, although I may have another go at that aspect of it because I'm not too fussed on the colour and the outer shell has faded quite a lot.

47 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

Thanks Martin. I have a powered usb3 hub recommended by FLO that I picked up from Amazon (it was that or the Pegasus box which you linked!), and my power bank has a uk plug socket so the usb3 hub could be connected to it outside. So like you say, a long usb3 cable like this https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-cables-leads-accessories/lindy-cromo-usb30-a-to-b-cable.html could work from there. 

Although that's a very good quality cable, it's still only a standard USB3 cable and 5m is about the limit with USB3 before you start seeing connection or power issues. The general advice for USB3 is; anything over 5m then you're better off using an Active USB3 cable. These are powered and have a repeater built-in, which means no loss of power or data.

Before I built the observatory, I ran the 15m version of THIS cable. I had a powered USB3 hub at the mount end & it connected directly into the laptop in the house. Between the laptop & the hub they supplied enough power for the active side of the cable and it would transfer images from my ASI294MC Pro to the laptop at near normal USB3 speeds.

Your cheaper option, with some future-proofing thrown in, is a powered USB3 hub at the mount, and an active USB3 cable from the hub to the laptop. This takes away any power issues over the distance and any USB2 items will run fine on a USB3 connection. 

The ASIAir is a great tool and you have everything in the one package, I have the ASIAir Mini for my Samyang 135mm setup, but I use a laptop for my main rig. With this I have a Pegasus Pocket Power Box Advance at the mount and this powers everything, including two dew heaters. The mount, camera, focuser & filterwheel are all connected to it's USB ports and then one UBS3 cable goes to the laptop. They're not the cheapest to buy but there's one in the For Sale section at the moment.  

Well, it's been a while since I last had a good clear night up here, in fact the last imaging session I had was on the 24th May! This is mainly due to twilight all night from May to mid-August, but this year we've been under the conveyor belt of Atlantic Low pressure systems, so there's not been a real clear night until this week.

I managed to get four hours of imaging in total last night (1st September) after a break for passing cloud, it turned into two sessions. I got an hour of 6 minute Ha subs, then clouds for about 45 minutes, then it cleared for the rest of the night and I got another 1 hour Ha & 2 hours of Oiii, which took me to 3:30 am.

Last night was first light with my WO Z73 mkIII & adjustable field flattener which I got from @Rustang over the summer , and to this I attached my Atik 428EX and filterwheel, using Baader 8nm Ha filter & 8.5nm Oiii filter. Captured using ATP and PHD2, I was really happy with the guiding as I stripped & re-greased the HEQ5 over the summer and it was running at an average of 0.82 arc-sec over the session, which is better then I've ever had to date.

There's a total of 1h54m Ha & 2h0m Oiii of 360s subs, stacked & processed in PI using the three XT scripts and GHS, I'd have liked more of the Oiii shell to be showing, but I can add to that as & when.

C's & C's welcomed, as always, & thanks for looking.

That's really enhanced the detail in the cores.

2 hours ago, Phillyo said:

Has anyone else noticed that they moved the Yes / No buttons around, or am I just imaging it? I keep clicking "No" automatically thinking it's yes from muscle memory so I'm assuming they have changed it lol 

It's not just you. It's a bit annoying and I can't see the reasoning behind it TBH. 😕 

I've also installed CUDA 11 and it's working fine. 

One thing to note: If you update PI then it will likely overwrite the tensorflow.dll file, so you have to add the original back into the PI bin folder after an update.  

2 hours ago, skybadger said:

The standard Pegasus PSU, from experience with the mount, is for a 12v 5A. I bought a generic 12v 10A one from Amazon and made up adapter cables to suit. 

Pegasus list them as "Power Supply Unit 12V / 10A – 120W" on their website and it says 10 amp on the Pegasus PSU I have. The Pegasus mount on its own may be fine with a 5 amp supply, but running the mount, camera cooler, fiterwheel and a couple of dew heaters may need a few more amps on tap.

The Pegasus PSU is 12v 10amp, where as most of the other PSU's are 12v 5amp. Depending on what you're going to be powering with it, then one of the cheaper 5 amp versions may be enough.

You can get cheaper 12v 10amp PSU's on the likes of Amazon, which is what I had to start off with my Pegusus Powerbox Advance. It had a bad connection between the mains cable & the PSU, and you could hear it spark when you pushed it together. I was lucky enough to get a genuine Pegasus unit second hand and never had an issue with it.

The other option is a Navada power supply and use a 12v cable with a car power connection on the end to supply the Powerbox.

With the scope weighing in at just over 8kg, you need something with an imaging payload of well above that figure because the main issue with the scope of that size, for imaging, is the scope acting like a sail if it's windy. 

The SW EQ35 comes in at 7kg payload, and EQ5 is just 6.5kg for imaging. The HEQ5 which @bosun21 suggested has an imaging payload of around 11kg and a nice stable tripod, which should support the Explorer 200P.

It's also worth exploring the second hand market as you can sometimes pick up the likes of a SkyWatcher EQ6 or EQ6R-Pro for the price of a new HEQ5. You don't say where you're located but, if you're in the UK then FLO have a couple of ex-demo iOptron GEM28's on their OFFERS page at the moment with good discounts.

With no clear skies at the moment, well, I did get about an hour to focus my new guide scope & camera the other night but that was it, I have resorted to re-processing some of the images I took earlier this year, to see what I could do with them. That & to check PI has no quirks following the latest update and to keep my "hand in" with processing.

This is IC410, which I took a total of 9 Hours & 15 minutes worth of data in SHO. The original thread from February with full details is here: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/407034-ic410-tadpoles-in-sho/

So, this is the original process I did back in February, which isn't that bad:

The following one is the re-processed version I did today using the same SHO stacked images. The main difference between the two processing workflows is the use of the GeneralisedHyperbolicStretch (GHS) script on the latest version, where as I only used the normal PI HistogramTransfomation tool on the first one.

This has allowed me to fine tune the fainter parts on each of the stacked images, which has enhanced the fainter dust in outer edges of the image. I also think the processing is more subtle in this one, not has hard as it looks in the first rendition.

I'm open to comments and suggestions, so what do you think?

I found the same with my ROR shed so I got a solar powered LED shed light. It has three brightness settings (no red LED's) but I have to disconnect the power cable from the solar cell during the day because the light won't work while it's charging.  

The details and a UK link is here: