blameTECHIE

well at least I had focus on something then

I'd like to award @LukeSkywatchera medal for the reference, but now I've got Nena stuck in my head .... (including the German version) 🤣

well I'm learning loads here for my ASI224MC, currently mounted on a SW ED80DS. Looks like I need to be investing on a 1.5x 2" barlow for my Celestron 9.25 XLT then - that should give me F/15 which should, if I've read @vlaiv message correctly, puts me in the sweet spot for the sensor.

@Tablelands Astro - reading through the thread above, I feel your pain. Last night was a terrible experience trying to PA using SharpCap and I'm waiting on an adapter to connect my PoleMaster to my EQ6-R. Whilst it doesn't help your situation, I'm so glad to read that it isn't just me and the replies have helped me enormously, so thank you for posting and thanks to those that have replied. Hope that it all falls into place for you soon and I look forward to your next post saying how easy it has become and getting goto accuracy is (hopefully) less troublesome. Kev

Setting up my rig for first nighttime capture, so was getting used to fine focus and mount control using the moon in the early evening. Not sure this was an authorised launch though Yep - three red party balloons 🎈🎈🎈 Kev 20210424-200330BST-Moon_CorrectOrientation.avi

@alacant 🎖️ Thanks for taking the time to read it - I wasn't using both, just Win10, but during the setup in the day I was just testing to see which I would get on with better as a beginner. But being a Microsoft person in my day job I stuck with Win10 for now, the RPi went back in the box with my other purchases. So it's just a Win10 laptop (with remote session via RDP, VNC or TeamViewer [all are configured]), with SharpCap & PHD2. I do have BackYard EOS for when the Canon gets used on the rig but need to get a longer rail first to push the scope forward, far too back-heavy with the stock SW rail on the ED80. I hadn't tried EKOS though - so my next run will be RPi with that, thank you for the suggestion. My intention is to have only ever one system, the W10 or Astroberry (and the reason I bought Pi4, so ideally that as I'd be happier a small black box out there than a Win10 laptop) so I can sit in the house with a glass of red image if I'm working at night while the tech does the heavy-lifting. Kev

Booster landed fine, dead centre of the drone ship again @michael8554 was used for Crew-1 (which I think is still attached to the ISS). The dragon capsule was also a reuse item, having been used on Demo-2. Think Crew-2 was the first human flight with reused flight elements. The three Tesla vehicles had new licence plates, 'REDUCE', 'RECYCLE' and 'REUSE' I'd missed the coverage though about the debris issue, thanks for that @maw lod qan. Kev

I don't expect any replies - think I'm just braindumping for the mental wellbeing aspect of a frustrating night. --- Having been ill through the week, Saturday found me feeling well enough to get outside and see if I could hook some things together and try to get FirstLight through some of my recent purchases. I've been using my Star Adventurer mini-rig [SA non-wifi, Canon 200D (unmodified), >30yr old Tamron 200mm f3.5] but knew things were going to be very different, and was keen to get going. So the kit was all lined up: > Laptop (Win10), Raspberry Pi4 with Astroberry > EQ6-R Pro > SW 80ED-DS Pro (Kit), SVBony SV106 190mm/50mm Guide Scope > ZWO ASI 224MC, Canon 200D, SVBony SV205, 7TC ASI 120MC clone > USB GPS Dongle (G72 G-Mouse Glonass Beidou GNSS) for location and mains power for all via various PSUs with enough USB cables to circle the planet --- Didn't take too long to get both Win10 (ASCOM) or Astroberry (INDI) talking to the mount and progress was being made - RA/DEC all seemed fine so onto the cameras. Found a distant object and SharpCap gave me images for all three USB devices once I had the SVBony as a Windows WebCam (RESULT!) and the same through INDI on the Astroberry, all three displayed images when enabling Streaming. Settled on EQ6-R, SW 80ED, ASI224MC for imaging, SV106/SV205 for guiding That's it (I thought!) and I broke down the rig and moved it to the lawn - I say lawn, more like a mossy bank but serves the purpose - and wait until dusk where a simple Polar Align and I'll be grabbing images of M51 Whirlpool in no time ............... (I must cut the lawn, even if just to get rid of the blue from spray-painting a new table a couple of weekends ago) (please ignore the middle dew heater, was there to remind me to put it on the guide scope later) --- PA on the Star Adventurer, 30mins (5mins for the alignment, 5mins for remembering which phone app has a PA Clock and the obligatory 20mins to find the flamin' polar illuminator!) - this has been giving me consistent 5min exposures with no trailing. PA on the EQ6-R is 'interesting' - I have a QHY PoleMaster but am waiting on the adapter from FLO (stock issues) so it was SharpCap alignment. Wait for it to get dark enough, then get focus, then wait for platesolving in a "change exposure, gain, star threshold, black threshold, platesolve again" loop for over an hour. Woohoo, plate solved ..... oh, rotate around RA ..... and perform the same operation again ..... ARGHHH! Over two hours later (probably more like 3hrs+) I've got polar alignment to within 12 seconds (wishing I'd screengrabbed that now). I really don't like the adjustment mechanism, the thread pitch is far too high for minute adjustments of alignment! --- And onto guiding ........................ or maybe not. PHD2, Nothing through it at all .... then remembered I'd not refocused the guide scope, then it was taking the Darks library. Still nothing. Opened the SV205 via SharpCap and got focus, switched back to PHD2, still nothing ...... hmm, is this just an unsupported camera (windows 'webcam'). So switched out for the 120MC copy - Amazon 7TC special. Repeated the SharpCap for focus, then PHD2 Darks library and BOOM I have stars showing up in PHD2 - RESULT ...... I'll leave it at that for a moment and try looking at something, see what I get from the 224MC main camera and what PHD2 gives me in the guide scope. So onto the next 'learning opportunity' - target selection --- Erm, how do I select a target for goto with just two camera apps .... aha, Stellarium No Telescope selected, easy - it went something like this: "Open Stellarium, select telescope, select ASCOM ... there we go ... nope, it won't connect ... restart everything (twice) ... redo settings (twice) ... check ASCOM diagnostics (all passed) ... quick google search, aha I'm not the only one, you have to select the scope within the options pane ... what options pane .... oh, scroll down ..." And I now have Stellarium control of the scope - again a RESULT - it's taking time but I think I'm making progress here .... hmm, it's getting bloody cold, wow, it's midnight! --- So I now have an in focus 224MC, an in focus guide scope and control over the mount, here we go ... I'll be stacking images in the morning and making millions from selling prints online NOPE! Easy targets for testing were below the horizon (basically M42) so I'll just pick Vega and make sure slewing works, imaging works and can see how guiding works. Nothing, no bright star at all - okay, bigger target - the moon. Again nothing, no bright screen - so switched out the camera for a 26mm LER EP and a diagonal and manually aligned the moon - then, and here comes stupid, refocused (!) for the moon. --- Stellarium wasn't syncing with the mount - I was 'off' on any selected target and by a lot Quick google search and I'm no the only one - no sync points on my clean build so wasn't that, but use of the GPS dongle for location and TIME might be the problem. --- And at this point it as 2:30am - prime viewing time last night with the moon disappearing in the West behind me - the garden slopes due-West to due-East so I only get Partial-North>East>Partial-South viewing. Time to give up, have a small glass of Red and look for more things to buy on SGL/Astro B&S. --- Today - well I had to break everything down to get it into the garage (too heavy to carry as one with current health) - I'll try to get the ASCOM/GPS element sorted out and maybe this evening try some targeting/lunar rate tracking so see if that major element is resolved. And, if you've made it this far, please accept this for your perseverance🎖️, you've earned it.

I was awake and waiting for the Dragon Crew-2/ISS docking - which is usually dangerous for the bank balance, so hit up Stellarium for a few minutes Taking: your profile, picking Colchester as a rough location; winding back to dusk (2030 UTC) on Thursday; looking NorthWest: COSMOS 1455 does seem to travel the path you've described (transit time around 2mins) if it was later than that (2115 UTC) then RESURS-DK 1 has a similar path, transiting under Polaris (transit time around 5mins though) Hope these help, always nice to know what we've seen go overhead

I've looked at that a couple of times and nearly bought it, that was until I watched Scott Manley on youtube and all the 'fettling' he's had to do to assemble it (no lego quality control) and then try to get it to support its own mass. But still thinking about getting one every now and again for my Saturn V (set 21309) as some careful use of a craft knife and lots of super glue would probably sort it out - for now I've managed to distract myself with the Apollo 11 Lander (set 10266) waiting in the wings for the next run of cloudy nights. With the Shuttle/HSO kit now available (and looks great @smoggy) then there's my 50th pressie from the better half sorted

I'm with @Stuart1971 on that - I've had issues with my RPI4 using wifi and pulling power through the USB ports (GPS dongle & another device was fine, then connecting a USB3.0 Camera had some random dropout of wifi issues) - adding a cheap powered USB3.0 7port hub from Amazon seemed to solve the problem and enough spare ports to power my dew heaters. Though that was my second issue - the first was my home wifi channel was fine, but outside a neighbour was on the same channel and knocking out the signal, a quick walk around with an android app identified open channels and I just set up an AccessPoint to broadcast on that for outdoor use.

That's the bit that I'd not got before and now the penny has dropped I'm looking forward to trying again.

Michael - thank you! Over the last year I've gone through several different combinations of auto-guider and the "power it on, it'll do the rest for you" (provided you have GPS and know what stars you're aligning to) and I've made a step to some better kit. This included trying to get a setup for guiding and I hadn't thought about just needing an object to track with instead of the guide scope being perfectly aligned with the main scope - especially the bit about the plate solving being form the main camera, this comment has helped piece it all together for me. Kev

And now I'm feeling rather awkward I've been trusting a bubble level app on my pixel phone and using the levels on the EQ5 & EQ6 mounts to validate the technology is correct (oops 🤔) I wouldn't mind too much, but the EQ5 level is a purchased upgrade with a 3d printed bracket and 30mm bubble level (off fleabay) so I can see it when I forget my glasses.

My first chance to get out in 2021 (work or weather always get in the way) and I had nothing ready. Purchases during lockdown have given me a celestron 925 SCT, a skywatcher EQ6R-Pro (both second-user), ASI224MC and a brand new SW 80ED DS-Pro (amongst many other items) - all of which are still in the box/case and yet to see any light. So it was left to a quick charge of a battery for the 200D, a set of Aldi batteries in the Star Adventurer and thankfully the SW Illuminator didn't need a new CR2032. But I've a feeling my polar alignment might have been better than my focusing, I'll find out in the morning I guess. But here's the quickly assembled rig - oh, and "Hi from Shropshire", my first post in an SGL forum 👋 (edit) oh, the images were taken with a Pixel 5, probably my best images of the night 🤣