Desmond

ahh - thanks guys

I have not had the filter in for a while as I was shooting Andromeda.

I used to shoot at 800 but dropped to 200 as i read that was a better ISO for the 1000D

Makes total sense to shoot at higher ISO with that filter in as it does block a lot of light.

It's obvious to me now you both say it out loud

Back to the drawing board as they say... be kind clouds... be kind...

Cheers!

Hi all,

I have been having a go at the Flaming Star Nebula with the recent clear nights and have around 9 hours of data on it using the following.

Skywatcher ED72

Modified Canon 1000D @ 200 ISO

lEnhance filter

Approx 180 exposures at 5 mins each

I was hoping this would be my best image yet however, the nebula is so dim I struggle to  get anything out at all once stacked!

I have to stretch so far I get really bad artefacts before the nebula appears.

Any thoughts on what I'm doing wrong would be much appreciated.

Not had this trouble before...

cheers!

I got 

aha - great info in what teh screws are there for - I suspected that they were serving a purpose I was not fully aware of - I'll leave them well alone!

Thank you all for the help - much appreciate - I'll look for an alternative - underneath might be possible for me...

Hi,

Does anyone know if I can move the position of the guidescope shoe to the other side of the telescope?

Currently it is on the same side as the ZWO eaf and it throws the system off-balance.

I see a screw there that can be removed but I don;t want to move it if it is holding something in positiojn internally.

Ha sanyone swapped the shoe over?

Thanks!

I do see the temp reading from the sensor, but I am unable to enable Temp compensation due to some driver config option I cannot access 😕 

Hi, 

I have a problem enabling the temp sensor in NINA as the documentations says I need to setup temperature in the EAF driver, but the EAF ASCOM driver does not have any settings for a temp sensor.

Am I missing something obvious?

Documentations says:

Driver read temp but offers no settings:

Any help much appreciated!

Thanks!

I have always worked to get 'Excellent'/'Good' in SharpCap - where it flip flops between the two usually due to seeing conditions I'm told.

Now I'm wondering about all that effort  

Some experimentation I think...

I had much better success last night so I'll record here for others what I did just in case it's helpful...

I set up just to try and troubleshoot guiding and with that in mind I sent NINA to M31 and got it to centre the image but not start any imaging.

I then went to PHD2 and set it looping and calibrating manually (I usually had NINA get this going from the Sequence tool)

This time, calibration worked (without me fiddling in any settings).

Once Calibration was good, back to NINA to initiate an imaging session just to check it's all OK.

NINA was set to slew to target, centre target and start guiding.

This all worked perfectly!

So it could be the interface between NINA and PHD2 that went wrong for me - not sure, but I'm going to adapt my workflow for this now.

I did have one runaway though which I caught. Stopped PHD2 manually and set it off again - no further issues.

Funnily I managed to get over 4 hours of guided imaging at 300s per sub after this.

The interesting part?

I had not polar aligned at all!

I was running a test to I plonked the setup down and just let it go.

Maybe I got lucky?!

So for me the findings are:

NINA > PHD2 might have had issues when NINA is waiting on calibration (it just kept stopping and restarting for about 40 mins).

So I'll get PHD2 happy first, on target, then start NINA imaging sequence.

No calibration wait seemed to keep everything happy - fingers crossed...

Hope that might help someone else  

hmmm - never delved into calibration settings. Probably worth a look, thanks  

Has anyone had any issues with 3.36?

I tried for the first time last night and PHD2 just would not play ball. It kept stopping after a few steps West and restarting calibration again. 

Anyone else seen that?

I use a cable connection to the mount to avoid WiFi connection issues.

I updated due to runaway with 3.26 (no longer on the website) after a meridian flip (went perfectly) and subsequent dither (ran away with itself).

Using NINA to put everything together.

Any thoughts, much appreciated

Considering going back to 3.20...

I have an old 1000D at the moment and I do not change focus or remove the camera.

I just bring the whole setup inside and re-polar align each session.

I used to take darks but read they were not needed so I have removed them from my process.

Thanks for the help - much appreciated as always.

Save me some time and disk space!  

I have been taking Flats and Dark Flats and Bias regularly but don't always find the time.

Can I re-use most recent files for these and save time?

Are older files better than no files at all when stacking is DSS?

Thanks in advance  

Got it working now - brilliant - thank you!!!

aha! - thank you

Much appreciated!

Now I need to work out how to connect the two together...

A little more learning to do!

Probably something dumb I'm doing wrong...

I want to be able to find a nice bright star to check my focus. I decided on Arcturus and thought I'd be able to go into the Sky Atlas, type in Arcturus and NINA would find it.

I get no results.

I have even tried entering other formats from Stellarium but still nothing...

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

Hi, did you get a resolution to this?

I got the cable yesterday and tried it out last night.

NINA targeted OK but the guiding failed in Dec so it was a washout.

WiFi works ok most of the time (targeting and guiding) for 5 min subs but the cable would not play. WiFi is unreliable though so I hoped the cable was the cure.

Did you have any luck?

cheers!

No to be honest - I'll have to test that.

I just managed to get the mount and NINA connected and to slew to a target so some progress at least

I'll have to try it out once the clouds clear and see how I get on.

👍

The mount is a Skywatcher AzGTi which I setup using the app on my phone. I realise it's not a great mount for photography, but it was never intended for that. I originally wanted it for visual, but fell into photography after seeing what can be achieved.
So, I'm pushing the limits of the mount (I don't yet run it in EQ mode as I'm still too slow with PA at the moment).
So the idea was (and it may well be a misguided one...) that I would do star alignment, target using mobile Stellarium, then plate solve to check accuracy.

I think, having read this thread so far, that I should rethink that flow and use NINA for everything...

Need time to setup and test that though

Thoughts always very welcome!

Thanks all.

Brilliant.

I'll use the eternal cloud cover to get the mount setup with NINA and try again

I was not using NINA to drive the mount, just to try to verify my targeting.

Seems like I should look into using NINA for driving the mount too.

Some more learning to do, but thanks for all the advice here - much appreciated!

Hi,

I failed again...
Missed the Rosetta Nebula despite being hooked up to NINA and trying to place solve and frame.

The issue is, I'm not quite sure what to expect.

I did upload an image to astrometry.net and use the legacy survey to get this:

That's the kind of thing I would like to see in NINA after a plate solve, but I'm not sure how to make that happen.

Any help would be much appreciated

Thanks!

Beginner error. I had the ASCOM for DSLR driver selected as that's what I'm used to seeing in SharpCap

Turns out that will connect OK but then return a blank image - not helpful.

I switched to the Canon drive and all is well - image returned as expected.

So, all set for the next long run of cloudy nights after the last 4 clear ones.

Like comedy, it's all about timing

Not be making that mistake again in a hurry...

I'll give that a go - thanks!

Currently like this:

This is what I found for auto stretch