powerlord

Whats wrong with the moon ? Have a good look at that. Easy too see, even if it's a bit cloudy. Good luck

Using up the last of the subs I've managed to eek out of the last 2 months - here's 4 hours of Andromeda, shot with the redcat. stu

This is the only other image I've been working on the last 2 months (see ic342 for the other one). In the end, 10 hours of data over 4 sessions - all shot in broadband with the asi2600 and redcat. I've not shot it in broadband before. It has to be the easiest edit I've ever done - once it was integrated there was really no noise worth 'xterminating' so I didn't bother. it's just had a wee crop, and a tweak to the levels, curves and saturation. It's worth doing the clicky dance to the full res one - there's a hell of a lot of fine detail in there I've not noticed before in my NB attempts.

Happy new year all! With the minging weather, I've not been posting much - this has been one I've been trying for the last few months on the odd occasion I can see a star and it doesn't star raining half way though a night that had a "0% chance of rain" according to the forecasts! It's one I've tried before, and got dejected and given up after not seeing a thing in a single sub. But - I know it's a tricky one - peering through the dust of half our galaxy to see it..so I thought I'd just get stuck in and start just gathering data. In the end I gathered 16 hours of RGB data, and another 15 hours of Ha/O3 data (L-ultimate) with my 200pds and asi2600. Edited in Siril and Affinity Photo. I've posted a crop in below as well. Lots of dust and some faint outer red spiral arms just about visible (top left) I think which I've not seen before ? stu

one thing is, do make sure its focused BEFORE you try to goto anywhere - it needs to be focuses to plate solve. You can always focus again later. Note sure about other issues.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who find's @vlaivs theoretical explanations of things difficult to really visualise and understand (no offence Vlaiv!) - And recently he was trying to explain aperture to me when I was talking about night vision - I tend to be a very visual guy - I have no problems rotating and working with 3d models in my head, etc - but if presently with equations, they don't naturally lend themselve to the same visualisation (even though 50% of my degree for maths). So for folk like me, I find Huygens Optics channel very interesting, and it just so happens his latest video makes what Vlaiv was trying to tell me clear to me: Again, thanks Vlaiv for making me think - it's just I need different medium sometimes to understand I think. stu

wow. yeh that's what I'm talking about. that truly is amazing. I wonder how long till we get the seestar s500 that does that for all of us.

But the SNR is clearly better, or else they'd be useless for thier purpose surely ? have a look at video - the milkyway is clearly visible in real time. With images bright to the human eye. it still seems similar to the planetary issues to me ?

I just watched this excellent Veritasium video: And it got me thinking when they were looking at the night sky and the milkyway, etc. Seems to me if you stuck one of those onto a telescope, you could then attached a camera to that and take very short <10ms images aka planetary imaging with it. And with enough of them remove the emissive noise. Then apply the same lucky imaging techniques as we do to planetary to nebulas and galaxies. Couldn't this enable unprecedented terrestrial resolution to astrophotography ?

The main difference is going to be selectivity. Stacking live, it's gonna stack a frame if it thinks it's decent. then it's on to the next one. When you stack afterwards you have the benefit that ALL the frames can be analysed and the software can make decisions about which is the best 'master', and depending on software, weighting, ones to not bother stacking, etc. screening is pretty straight forward - at least on a mac - I'd imagine something similar is possible on windoze. On a mac space bar 'quick views'. i.e. pops up an instant picture of the file. For fits, once you install a quickview viewer for fits (I use the free Quickfits), I can just go to the directory, press the space bar to quickview the first file, and then use cursor keys to move down the list. takes no time. cmd+delete to delete any rubbish ones as I go. then into Astro Pixel Processor, where it will also make decisions about which to stack if I want based on quality. However, if beginner, I'd start with the seestar stacked fit, and learn to make that better first. Here's a free process I'd suggest based on Siril, and installing starnet2++ and setting it up with Siril. - open it in Siril. set siril to autostretch (you will now see it) - go to plate solve, and enter target, set FL to 250, and pixel size to 2.9nm and plate solve. - go to colour correction and do photometric colour correction - save that if you like as file-platesolved-colourcorrected.fit - histrogram stretch - use auto. - change view to linear. - use siril to do a star removal, and create star mask [you are now looking at a starless version]. - save this as a tiff. - open the stars only one it created in siril and save that as a tiff. Now, go into you favourite photo editor that supports layers and load both the tiffs. you will use a blend layer on the stars - depending on the software it might be called 'lighten' or 'screen' - experiment with them you can now turn that layer off, and concentrate on the nebulosity - play with curves, contrast, saturation - try to bring out the nebulosity while keeping the background darker, but not pitch black. add some denoising. pop the stars layer back on, maybe add some saturation to that too, and probably curves to pull the brightness of the stars down a bit. - save it as a jpg. The above may sound like a mammoth task, but with a bit of practice it really only takes 10-15 mins. btw - nothing about specific to S50 - that is a general colour workflow which will work for ANY astrophotography. stu

Sure, I saw that stuff - but that's just using the asiair HW really - it's not added 3rd party devices to the asiair really. I mean, it's interesting and I may give it a try sometime, but originally I thought the plan was to try and 'hack' the asiair app/software to support 3rd party apps - that would have been more interesting to me at least. stu

I didn't think there had been any success though as of yet, or am I mistaken ?

I used to use led panels, but frankly I just don't think they add anything other than extra hassle. what I did do is make an easy to use 'flat flap'® -

no need to overthink it - all I do it stick a white sheet over the end in the morning and take em. job done. just set exposure to get in the middle of the histogram. use same iso, focus position, aperture as during the night - just chance the exposure.

Yeh, I would say, not in their defence but just as a sort of 'bigger picture' view - this is pretty much the default way open source is used in companies in my experience. i.e. most large companies use it everywhere, but never publish changes they make to it. It doesn't make it right. But zwo are in the majority here tbh. The few companies who do "come clean" and publish are very much in the minority.

Hi rob. good effort. It doesn't mention flat ? Those would have helped eliminate the background gradient I think. As is, if you havn't had a go with siril back ground extraction I\d try that - there might be a bit more detail of the dust around the sisters visible. Also, for rgb it's worth getting Siril to plate solve, and then doing a photometric colour calibration. Siril can also do start removal now if you install starnet++. And here it would really help you put out background detail without peaking out the stars. cheers stu

unless you can trick it into under exposing, I don't see how it will help. Unlike the dwarf, at least for now, you have no control over exposure. So for nebulas, etc its gonna go to its max. But for stuff like moons, planets, its going to pick what it thinks is the correct exposure - so fitting an ND will just make it take longer exposures - at least until manual seutter speed is added. However, for M42 I think you might be right - since it will be defaulting to 10 seconds, fitting an ND might help bring more detail out the core I suppose. But to be honest, I don't think it's got the FL to make much of a difference. If you look at my core - that was with an asi678 and 1000mm FL. at 250 with the s50 sensor, there's only a handfull of pixels in that core anyway - I don't see there being much point imho. More interesting for manual exposure settings would be planets. Or jupiter and saturn anywae. tiny as they'll be - you would at least be able to make out a bit of colour on them if you could control the exposure, so it'd be great if zwo added that imho - it could be a hidden 'show advanced' setting so no need to complicate things for users, and tbh it would be easy to add. They are a small company, and I think it'll be tricky for them to identify their market demographics tbh - e.g. how many are 'never had a telescope before, what is a nebula?' vs the one eyed men with a bit of a clue vs the seasoned astro chap buying it as a nice wee portable toy. Knowing where to focus your limited budget is key I'd have thought. tbh, though there's not a rats chance in hell of it happening, I'd love zwo to see the bigger picture and open source the S50 - they'd get the sales they want multipled, and the community would see what they could do with it. Creative did the seme thing under pressure with the Ender 3 3d printer, and it changed the whole market. This is different as I'd imagine any other company would struggle to develop the hardware, plus the limited market just won't support it. But that all benefits ZWO - by open sourcing it they'd gain a massive developer community and that limited dev budget disappears. Are ZWO the sort of company to take that sort of leap of faith. I fear not. But then again, they did distrupt the market with the asiair. I'd love to be proved worng and see them do it - I think it'd be amazing to see what the dev community (and you can be sure I'd be in there) could do with it!

Shot over 4 nights in the last 2 or 3 weeks. Wanted to spend a long time on the target for the first time and bring out some of the dust. 5 min subs, redcat and asi2600. Probably took about 30 hours, but only kept the best - lots wasted with cloud. Probably worth doing the clicky dance to zoom in a bit. Happy with this one - came out well I reckon ? stu

2nd clear night in a row. Ap - one of the few things that make winter more bearable 😁 M45 and ic342 are the current targets..

That looks OK. Look at pleiades top left - stars look good ?

yeh, from the pro on it has them. but until recently the fps was always a bit rubbish. I don't know what they have changed, but it now seems to buffer in memory for a bit and write them out in bigger chunks resulting in far better raw fps. I mean, its only to an SD card so it's never going to equal what you can get to a laptop ssd, but I was getting >100fps at 480p. That's the other limitation - 1080p max, and you can only choose specific sizes. And its fixed at 8 bit raw. So, it a poor second to a laptop and fire capture or whatever, but on the other hand, automatic counts for a lot - because of the hassle I reckon I only try planets, moon maybe 2 or 4 times a year. But by sticking a small pixel but larger MP camera on like the asi678 I can still have plate solving, have the asiair still guiding and get decent results. fyi - guiding is a bit weird with it - in that once its all in the rough area, don't enable guiding until in video mode and moved it to be right in the centre. then go back out to preview, guiding, and turn it on. then it will stay locked. If instead you start guiding after the goto, and then in video mode find its not centred and needs minor adjustments, the guiding will continue to fight them and move it back to where it was.

wow that's awesome. Did you set gain to 16 and 30 secs or is it automatic? I want to try same settings as you are getting much more details. And what is your stretch set to if using ? for pixilation, just up the bitrate - the standard bit rate or rubbish. I think I put mine up to 20000. here's my settings - be good if you could post yours ? settings.json: { "takeDaytimeImages": "1", "saveDaytimeImages": "1", "dayautoexposure": "1", "daymaxautoexposure": "29000", "dayexposure": "500", "daymean": "0.5", "daymeanthreshold": "0.1", "daybrightness": "0", "daydelay": "1000", "dayautogain": "0", "daymaxautogain": "16", "daygain": "1.123", "daybin": "1", "dayawb": "0", "daywbr": "2.5", "daywbb": "2", "dayskipframes": "5", "dayTuningFile": "/home/powerlord/imx708_wide.json", "nightautoexposure": "1", "nightmaxautoexposure": "29000", "nightexposure": "29000", "nightmean": "0.2", "nightmeanthreshold": "0.1", "nightbrightness": "0", "nightdelay": "1000", "nightautogain": "1", "nightmaxautogain": "16", "nightgain": "3", "nightbin": "1", "nightawb": "0", "nightwbr": "2.5", "nightwbb": "2", "nightskipframes": "1", "nightTuningFile": "/home/powerlord/imx708_wide.json", "config": "[none]", "extraArgs": "--autofocus-mode manual --lens-position 10.19 --denoise off", "saturation": "1.0", "contrast": "1.2", "sharpness": "0.0", "width": "0", "height": "0", "type": "99", "quality": "100", "filename": "image.jpg", "flip": "2", "notificationimages": "1", "consistentDelays": "1", "timeformat": "%Y%m%d %H:%M:%S", "latitude": "52.04N", "longitude": "1E", "angle": "-6", "takeDarkFrames": "0", "useDarkFrames": "1", "locale": "en_GB.UTF-8", "debuglevel": "1", "useLogin": "1", "alwaysshowadvanced": "0", "overlayMethod": "1", "showTime": "1", "temptype": "C", "showExposure": "0", "showGain": "0", "showBrightness": "0", "showMean": "0", "showFocus": "0", "text": "", "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": "0", "showonmap": "0", "websiteurl": "", "imageurl": "", "location": "", "owner": "", "camera": "RPi Module_3", "lens": "", "computer": "", "cameraType": "RPi", "cameraModel": "Module_3", "lastChanged": "2023-11-06 19:33:00" } 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="false" # 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=1 # Resize images before cropping, stretching, and saving. IMG_RESIZE="false" IMG_WIDTH=2028 IMG_HEIGHT=1520 # 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=10 AUTO_STRETCH_MID_POINT="10%" # Resize uploaded images. Change the size to fit your sensor. RESIZE_UPLOADS="false" RESIZE_UPLOADS_WIDTH=962 RESIZE_UPLOADS_HEIGHT=720 # 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=3840 TIMELAPSEHEIGHT=2160 # Bitrate of the timelapse video. TIMELAPSE_BITRATE="20000k" # Timelapse video Frames Per Second. FPS=30 # 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="true" ###### 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 ${TIMELAPSE_MINI_IMAGES} haven't been captured yet? TIMELAPSE_MINI_FORCE_CREATION="false" # After how many images should the mini-timelapse be made? # If you have a slow Pi or short delays between images, # set this to a higher number (i.e., not as often). TIMELAPSE_MINI_FREQUENCY=5 # The remaining TIMELAPSE_MINI_* variables serve the same function as the daily timelapse. TIMELAPSE_MINI_UPLOAD_VIDEO="true" TIMELAPSE_MINI_UPLOAD_THUMBNAIL="true" TIMELAPSE_MINI_FPS=5 TIMELAPSE_MINI_BITRATE="1000k" TIMELAPSE_MINI_WIDTH=1014 TIMELAPSE_MINI_HEIGHT=760 ########## Keogram # Set to "true" to generate a keogram at the end of each night. KEOGRAM="true" # Additional Keogram parameters. KEOGRAM_EXTRA_PARAMETERS="--font-size 1.0 --font-line 1 --font-color '255 255 255'" # Set to "true" to upload the keogram image to your website at the end of each night. UPLOAD_KEOGRAM="true" ########## Startrails # Set to "true" to generate a startrails image of each night. STARTRAILS="true" # Images with a brightness higher than this threshold will be skipped for # startrails image generation. BRIGHTNESS_THRESHOLD=0.5 # Any additional startrails parameters. STARTRAILS_EXTRA_PARAMETERS="" # Set to "true" to upload the startrails image to your website at the end of each night. UPLOAD_STARTRAILS="true" ########## Other # Size of thumbnails. THUMBNAIL_SIZE_X=100 THUMBNAIL_SIZE_Y=75 # Set this value to the number of days images plus videos you want to keep. # Set to 0 to keep ALL days. DAYS_TO_KEEP=14 # Same as DAYS_TO_KEEP, but for the Allsky Website, if installed. WEB_DAYS_TO_KEEP=0 # See the documentation for a description of this setting. WEBUI_DATA_FILES="" # See the documentation for a description of these settings. UHUBCTL_PATH="" UHUBCTL_PORT=2 # ================ DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE ================ ME2="$(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

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@Stuart1971150mm lens ? That can't be right surely ? I just got my cheap hq camera and a few cheap old lens from ebay so gonna have a play with those. Not for allsky, just fun.