powerlord

I second that. All 3 of my setups use SW finders with my own 3d printed designed adapters - I use them no matter what I'm shooting with - from an 8mm samyang, through to 250mm redcat, through the newts all the way up to the 300pds and the C9.25. They work a treat. I also designed and printed basic ring mounts for them to clamp them tightly so I don't need to use adjustable finder style brackets. So they are pretty robust - just stuff em on, wrap a 5v usb dew heater round them, and job done. It also means that all my asiairs share the same guiiding setup.

Starting a thread for folk to post ai images they've generated just for general interest. This is mine from mid journey* just now "photo of spiral galaxy showing dust lanes and areas of ha nebolosity" I'd be quite pleased with that result. 🙂 *for those not in the know mid journey is one of the leading hires ai image generators at the moment.. It really is quite extraordinary. On an unrelated topic here's what it created for "a sentient badger from a badger society who have reached the technological level of the industrial revolution. in formal attire, driving a steam power motor vehicle"

Hmm.. so after a few false starts I confirmed it WAS the camera... and THOUGHT I'd got it a bit better: But after looking at the subs and intergation this morning, it looks like a corner has went off somehow..so need to try again. sigh.

thanks. wish me luck...

ah hold on, it's in the manual I've found. https://manuals.plus/zwo/asi2600mc-pro-usb-3-0-cooled-color-astronomy-camera-manual which is utterly useless. 'like a newtonian' - they have a lock and an adjust really, not push pull. so - which are the locks ? if it's like the newt - the grub screws ? man stuff like this gets right on my <insert here>. how long would it take to add ONE paragraph explaining which are which here. arg.

so the asi2600 has 3 bolts in the end, and 3 grub screws. I can find no docs anywhere explaining how to adjust anything... are the grub screws push/pull or are the bolts in play too - and one set push and one set pull ? and if so- which ? stu

For All Mankind (spoiler alert) - the Apple tv series covered this. I think there's a free trial for Apple tv sometimes if you wanna binge watch for free. If you've not watched it - I'd recommend it. It starts in the 1960s, and the basic premise is, imagine the russians got to the moon first. Imagine they actually kept up in the space race. It then follows it through the next couple of decades. Best space thing I've seen since the classic all time great - The Right Stuff. stu

So.. with my new 90ED I've been pixel peeping more than I usually do - and, well things were looking a bit off with my image train (90ed, FF or 0.8RFF, spacers, L-ultimate/D2/nowt, asi2600) Thanks to Siril I had a look at the tilt.. and yes, I appear to have an issue (note: I have also checked individual subs - and those are about the same) this was after eliminating my EFW and assorted spacer - that was even worse (albeit with D2 rather than the L-ultimate above): So.. the fact it's the same in both suggests that it's either the scope (same orientation in both so can't rule it out), or the camera. correct ? My next step tonight was going to be to swap the camera for my other asi2600. My thinking there being IF it's the camera it should change a lot.. and since my other camera, currently on my 200 newt is giving this result (below) which is good enough that I would call it 'level enough for me'.. I'd expect the tilt to disappear to the levels below if its the camera? I could then pursue trying to level the offending camera to remove tilt knowing I had the correct suspect. does this sound like a plan ? what with clear nights being like hen's teeth at the moment I want to try and get it done. my plan was - take a 30 second sub, load into siril, view tilt... try to work out which side I need to adjust (50./50 chance)... make an adjustment on the asi2600 tilt adjuster...screw it all back up again.. probably find I have to refocus again... take sub.. load into siril, view tilt.. repeat until losing the will to live and/or get success.

So.. some of you are probably just being to polite to point this out... but on shooting the heart nebula sunday night I was surprised to find it now as bright as I suspected. Yesterday I realised my booboo... and on one of my asiairs I've named the filters wrong on the EFW.. and what I though was my L-ultimate is actually the IDAS D2 SII/OIII filter. cough. hence my lobster looks a bit different than it should ! It also explains why my attempts at the xmas tree nebula in 'ha' over the last week or so have all been so bad I stopped trying.. not so much Sii in there...sigh. anyway - normal progress has resumed.

any chance of a quick walkthrough of your process ? I'd love to do this.

The first hot today today. Not air wise - it's 13 degrees, but very sunny. On day like this the old plastic obsy even with the white roof used to get very warm - about 15-20 above ambient. Similar to my conservatory where its in the 30s today. However in Oiii it's a cool 17 degrees. The south facing wall and roof are hot to the touch on the outside, but inside the insulation is just a bit warm. Mostly it seems to be reflecting the heat away. So seems to be doing a good job.

oh yeh. forgot the date. yeh - serious. its esp32, with a wee I2c MAX98357A audio amp. you just stream i2c data (raw sample of the star trek door) to it. I'm using this library: https://github.com/pschatzmann/arduino-audio-tools I would have loved to adjust the delay a bit more, and reduced the stepper steps, but I did the same thing I did with the first board - connected power to the esp32 at same time as plugging in to usb, and the crappy chinese ones I have promptly stop allowing code uploads after that - so by that stage I'd had enough, and didn't feel like trying to desolder 40 pins from a crappy chip to replace it with another one again - hence it is what it is. 🙂

The usb 3 plug sticking out to the side of the asi120 is a pain. I've ordered a right angled one, but it's still a pity it's not on the back

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/163332659704?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=KITMgBrAR0e&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=k_pahIebQ6a&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY Got a 50mm and a 150mm. The 50 makes a good size just over 120mc, but no more. The 150 would be easier to make an enclosure with - say a bit of drain pipe. Will try and knock something up tomorrow now thst I've got myself a pi4.

With start trek noise

@James Ritson this has taken a while to get round to - apologies. I think this image illustrates the main issue I've had with affinity 2 and why I am still using affinity 1. Until playing today I didn't KNOW this was the issue, but I think it's why I've been finding it just not working as I expect - sorry if this massive difference has been explained somewhere, but if it has - it passed me by -and it feels like the sort of change in behaviour that should be in bold everywhere in the release notes or docs surely ? Here you see a pic I made in affinity 1 on the left. I masked by dogs head, and then did a guassian blur on it. On the right that file (the same file!) has been loaded into affinity 2 - notice that it has flipped the order under the top layer - now the blur layer is before the mask.. BUT the overall affect is the same. If I change af2 so that the order is the same as AF1 - AF2 displays the results af1 does if you flip them there. i.e. the layers seem to be being applied in completely the OPPOSITE direction from af1 to af2. Which is confusing the heck out of me. I suppose now that I know I could adjust... but this seems a massive change and I couldn't find anything in the docs about it ? But it explains why I just was not getting on with AF2 - putting masks, effects, etc under a pixel layer and I was just getting mad results that made no sense. <insert hair pulling out emoji here>

Taken Sunday night - first light with my new StellaMira 90ED. Shot with a Flattener, asi2600. There's a wee bit of tilt I think on the left - I want to replaced the slip in and tighten fitting of the flattener with the same screw in fittings that the 0.8 R/FF has - and see if that gets rid of it. Other than that though, happy with 90ED - nice tight stars. It's only 4 hours of L-ultimate data, with 5 mins of colour stars.. so its very very noisy.. but really just a test of the new scope. I tried using af2 (not really a fan for 2 tbh so far - prefer af1) as it has luminosity masks, so used one to try and just guassian blur the background noise... I think it's fair to say that has been of limited success.. I had an opportunity last night to image, by forecast was for rain at 8am.. and I didn't fancy taking the chance it got that wrong - need to get a rain sensor made up ! (got the parts). In the end, it stayed dry and clear all night according to the allsky, so opportunity missed - hey ho. Next time, I want to try a target with the 0.8R/FF. Anyhoo, here's what I got.

Yup with a full time obsy, it's really worth the effort laying an ethernet cable. With an edging spade, you can part grass and bury 4" or so, and easily do the run in 20 mins. Once done, no more WiFi problems ever.

that's a good point - I've found on low voltage the asiair will stay up, but the network won't (ethernet or wifi connected). You are fine with a battery if fully charged (13.5v), but if the voltage drops below 12v it starts to get dodgy. At about 11.5v it starts dropping out and doing weird stuff. If going down a battery route ,something around 15-16v is better, as it will continue running it till more or less flat. e.g, 4s lipo.

yes, I use a 12v wifi ap with my asiair pro when out and about in the motorhome. just plug it into the ethernet of asiair, and it broadcastsa nice strong signal. Just look for any APs that take 12v and it's easy then to power them with the asiair. I use a vonets VAP11g-300. If at home of course you can just run it in extender mode and have it extend your existing home AP - with the better reception it might connect ok to it. I suppose the question is - do you get a strong signal from your tablet in the observatory of your home wifi ? If not, then unless thats miles away from where you window ledge is then it's to be expected that asiair won't do any better - and in reality will be far worse. I know they made a big thing of it being the 'plus' and having an antenna, but it's still not going to have the range of a decent home router. You do want to be using 2.4ghz for long distances. forget 5ghz. Another way of doing it though is to put a plug in extender nearer the observatory (say, near your window ledge). then set the asiair to connect to it. That way it has the best chance of getting a solid connection to your home network, which gives it internet access as well as making it easier to use via a tablet without having to swap about wifi APs.

Been about 3 weeks since I finished the observatory, but I've only had about 20 mins of clear sky to PA new piers and that's about it. So.. last night looked rubbish and 100% cloud cover, but forecast said it'd clear up by midnight. In the end I got 4 1/2 hours of imaging done on M101 with my 200PDS and asi2600, and another 4 1/2 hours with my new Stellamira 90ed on Casseopia (See later for results there). I think it could have done with more time to bring out the faint stuff tbh - it's pretty noisy back there. However, here's the results.

Perhaps like me you've been using a t-shirt or something and draping over OTA for flat ? I started using an LCD panel, but went back to basics - tshirt seemed to do a better job. But - you need to sort of stretch it over end,make sure no crinkles and keep it there manually while shooting them. Instead make yer own for a few quid! You will need: 1. embroidery hoop(s) of the right size. A bit 14" one like here is about 8 quid and I need that for the big 300pds, but for about a tenner you can get a whole set from small to 12". https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/404025052738 2. a polyster microfibre type bedsheet. something with very fine thread. I used this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07JJKDSDM?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details 3. a pair of scissors. First cut a square of material out a bit bigger than the hoop. You will notice the hoop is in two parts. take off the outside part, and then place the inner hoop over your bit of material now, turn it over, and push the outer hoop over, clamping the material in the middle: Now all you need to do is pull it tight gently all the way around to get it taught, with no creases. Finally, trim the excess material off. you can now just plonk this over your OTA to take flats. and when eventually the cloth gets dirty, it takes 5 mins to cut a new bit out and fit it. You can do a whole set of OTAs for 20 quid. stu

1st one for me, sorry to be a contrarian. Stu

tested new PSUs - working a treat now. My cables all tested at nice low resistance (0.1-0.2 ohms). I set the PSU to 14v, and the 5v to 5.5v. Even under full load its now looking nice and healthy 🙂

oh no - there IS a doormat. I bought it the day after that photo! as you say, otherwise it gets messy quicky!