powerlord

Yeh, minus the focusing filter, that's what I do. Just pop a 48mm ext on adapter. Can't hurt. I do it more to avoid stray light from neighbours gardens.

Doesn't do anything in scenery mode I don't think. There you just tap to focus.

Keep yer eye out on ebay. I got my set off there for just over 200 quid. Even my parents were impressed..and that is a rare thing indeed with technology.

So, yesterday the first time sky clear enough to actually see stars for any length of time - so here's the video (200mb as it's 4k) and the keogram: allsky-20231030.mp4

Ah, sorry misunderstood. Yeh, so there are 2 directories for each target: target target-subs target has one fit file in it - that is the stacked fit - which you see on the app, stretched and whatever else it does when it opens it. target-subs has the individual subs if you wish to restack yourself. As you've found out asistudio or Quickfits will let you view. I don't use asistudio so don't know if it lets you save ? But quickfits does - it allows you to export it as a stretched tiff, which you can then open in yer editor of choice. quickfits is free: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quickfits/id1551075981?mt=12

you don' really want to be opening these in photoshop - you won't see much as they are linear data and will appear almost black. To just view them - get quickfits from app store. To do anything more with them - i.e. stack, etc - download Siril - it's free. DO watch a few tutorials first though as it's not easy to use. Alternatively I would recommend Affinity Photo - it DOES handle fits natively, AND will stack them all up properly - so no need for siril ,etc. And it is really easy to use. Unlike photoshop, its a buy once product - no subscriptions - its 68 quid - which compared to PS is a bargain imho. It does everything ps does and much more (imho) - in particular having lots of astrophotography features that PS does not have. One of the main chaps there, James Ritson is an astrophotographer. https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/#buy 30 day trial available, so download it and give it a go? tutorial of stacking: And it's native to mac and has a mac silicon version which is super fast if your mac is mac silicon. stu

I think ur right. Too old android. Alternative is to open in app and then share, and email them to yourself ? The actual location will be something like this, but u might need a file explorer like fx file explorer to see them: /android/data and then down there somewhere..

android now works similarly to ios, in that apps must be default write to their own sandbox area. so the pics, etc are stored in a directory specific to the seestar app. Hence, as has been said, check the app has permissions to your photos, etc so that it an copy them there. the local storage on the s50 is only used if i remember right, for videos and astro stuff (fits, etc). stu

just a heads up though, there's a seller selling HQ cameras for 24 quid new on ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/314843921410 That does have the benefit that if you get a 170/180 degress lens you could get a full sky - albeit, no remote focusing, and won't fit into the enclosure I've posted about, etc. and wee cctv 170 degree lens are only about a fiver: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/155815657826

I assume you mean so you can adjust remotely ? Just checking you know it won't actually autofocus on stars - as per my initial posts above. But yeh - at least if it goes off for some reason, you can adjust remotely by playing with setting above. 120 wise - I was previously just using the allsky lens that comes with zwos which is 120 anyway - and tbh my view of sky has woods on one side, houses on others - you can see neighbours tree in south too for example. Also, the camera 3 is quite 'long' with 16:9 aspect vs most astro cameras 4:3 formats - that can either be good or bad depending on the slot of the sky you want. I oriented mine long ways N-S. I imagine the 120 degrees is a diagonal, so your getting less on the short side, more on the long side. calculating I put it at 113 degrees long side, 80 on the short side. Or to put it in AZs - above 60 degrees E/W above 45 degrees or so N/S ?

its pretty straight forward - download the latest pi img, stick it on sd card, boot it up. To connect to it first time to do this, you can connect monitor, keyboard and all that jaz, but if you want to avoid that and just VNC to it, you should be able to VNC to it's default hostname - which over local network will be raspberrypi.local you want to give it a personal hostname (edit /etc/hostname) and you can then access it remotely via VNC. i.e. mine is allsky, so I can then access within my network via allsky.local as the name. then everything is remote - update the pi, and follow thomas/eric's excellent docs to install and configure allsky

It should be the opposite - too little green. Since I just did a basic scnr on it near the end to strip the green out the background, and just let it strip it out the nebula too. I didn't spend a whole lot of time on this tbh - didn't seem worth it.

I'm using the new overlay module. There's an editor then that u use to stick what you want where.

So here's last night's with a decent bitrate in 4k.. pretty pleased with that. I'm gonna change config to make it save day pics as well. allsky-20231027.mp4

I think the autofocus was pretty hit or miss a few version ago, but to be honest other than testing my Bahtonov masks work, I've never felt the need to use it - autofocus seems to work spot on every time now. I suppose it's a nice to have verification if you are going to try a long integration to make sure it's as perfect as possible, but it is by no means a necessary thing to use at all.

A target that takes some fiendish skills in capture and processing to get great results. As can be seen from my attempt below, skills I am lacking. Attempt made with 200pds, asi2600 and L-ultimate. I can at least, make out the 2 internal stars. And there's an outer halo, albeit the wrong colour...hmm. Oh well. I didn't expect miracles as I only shot 1 hour of 30 second subs. Any longer subs were blowing out the core, and I didn't want to waste the whole night on something with a low chance of success. I dunno - will maybe try again sometime. Even with the results below, it look a fair bit of tweaking in Siril with GHSTs to get the outer faint stuff and the massively bright core to come out together.

Ah yeh that is another limitation I hope they sort .. No joining home network. Range is atrocious . 10 feet ? If its 3 feet outside my kitchen window, I have to be in kitchen for it to work. Awful.

I should go over with the dog sometime.

So, I took delivery of the Dwarf II yesterday. Rubbish conditions, but just about clear enough to get 30 mins on the North American Nebula with it - this was with no filter other than the built in IR cut. And binning at the default 2x2. First is the dwarf stacking, second is my processing of fits on PC: So far... the mobile app is a hell of a lot more rubbish. Calibrating is a hit or miss affair - I was looking on internet for reasons why mine was failing for ages till I just kept trying again and again till it worked - but it could be because it was cloudy - but S50 WAY ahead here. And it's looking like in camera stacking is much better on S50 too - though to be fair remember this is with basic UVIR filter - no narrowband like the S50. I'll try a UHC and then an L-extreme next clear night. Oh also, this was in AZ mode - EQ mode would of course eliminate the rotation and the rotation walking noise on my edit. I also thing in EQ mode, with longer integration turning binning off will be worth a try. What I will say, is that during the day its really good - easy to flick about using the wide view to find birds, squirrels etc. And the normal landscape rather than weird portrait vertical format of the S50 works far better fort that sort of stuff. Anyway, just first light shared. stu

Now, that's what I mean. If anyone truly thinks that's as easy as it is on the asiair - I cannot believe they have actually done it on both systems. I have done (since stellarmate's is just same as Kstars). And seriously, it just is not as easy and quick. length of triangles, plate solving vs move star and calc - enough already. 🤨

Joey's kernel is required for the usb and power board to work on the asiair - is that correct ? I'd quite like to try it and give it a work out you see, but don't really want to faff around with rebuilding kernels to get it working. And running it on a pi is no use to me, as I'd lose the 12v power connectors I need and would need to faff around with new pi case, bla bla. I posted a message to joey on youtube saying it'd be great if he could make imgs available for openastro for the asiair pro. Similarly it'd be great if stellamate could do the same. I'm assuming you also have an asiair and after evaluating them side by side have decided stellamate's mobile app is better ? I've not seen any in depth reviews comparing them both ? All I find are ones reviewing stellarmates web interface. e.g: https://webofoptics.com/stellarmate-vs-asiair/ I do think stellarmate shoots itself in the foot as a software offering not offering and evaluation option - and it's what has always put me off trying it frankly. It's money down the pan if I don't like it. And for me anyway, I'd only be interested if if works on my asiair pro - since that's what I have already HW wise, and all the cabling, mounting, etc that goes with it. i.e. Im not paying $50 to run it on a pi4 as I know that's not a viable real option for me without also then getting 12v distribution boards, etc, etc - so not work paying. However saying it doesn't rely on any other software is not accurate I think ? It is in it's own way just a package of other things - ekos/kstars, astronomy.net, etc. https://www.stellarmate.com/ And this website states: StellarMate is a verstile OS that supports multiple methods to control it. The first and primary supported method to control StellarMate remotely is via the Ekos 64bit desktop application on Mac/Linux/Windows. The secondary supported method is to treat StellarMate as a mini-PC and access it over VNC or directly via HDMI/Keyboard/Mouse. You can use Ekos directly on StellarMate and it supports all the features just like the 64bit version. The final and third method is via the StellarMate Mobile App. The app is still in development and does not cover many features in the desktop application Everytime these asiair vs others comparisons come along, some folk get hostile on the anti-asiair side. I just don't understand that as a tech guy, and an experienced IT guy - they are different. To say one is better than the other is total nonsense - you might as well argue windows is better than linux, a ferrari is better than a tesla, a horse is better than a dog. I don't think statements like @Backyardscope "asair is just a rebranded..." help new users at all either - they are again, false. I would never say asiair is better than stellarmate. Any more than I'd say stellarmate is better than astroberry. It needs honest evaluation of the features that are important to you as a user - and that requires information out there to be accurate and without bias. If Joey can persuade me I can get stellarmate working on my asiair, I may buy it and try my best to do an evaluation which is accurate and unbiased , as well as a review of how it compares for my use. I have alread done those evaluations privately for other software - astroberry, PC - kstar/ekos/phd2, NINA. I found each of these powerful, but complex, buggy, unreliable, unscalable, and messy to use (x86, remote required, not mobile, etc) FOR ME. Since I valuable plug and play and mobile control, and total reliability more than anything else - and asiair does that for me 100%. However, I'm a geek - I like trying new things - I have no chips on my shoulder or skin in the game --I've just bought a dwarfii to try along with the S50 I have, etc -- So I am genuinely interested if Stellarmate are one the way to achieving the same level of black box bit of HW don't worry about what runs under the lid 'just works' asiair. Having an asiair I can 'flip' to being stellarmate and therefore open the door to non ZWO camera would be useful Im sure for certain stuff. atb stu

Need to increase the video bit rate, and cloudy last night - ignore start bit as was faffing about with different settings. Actual images are very crisp. No noise, sharp stars and vastly better than asi120. I've changed video bit rate to 10x this was tonight, and will post that as well as an old one from asi120. But very happy with camera 3 performance. allsky-20231026.mp4

just completed the dark frames, and getting some stars before the clouds come in.

Have you some references/citations for that stuart ? I mean, I know there i some fuss about zwo not honouring GPL, but that was stuff like ffdshow, etc. Since asiair is all based on indi stuff and the UI is entirely theirs, I'm curious as to what stellarmate open source stuff you are referring to is ? Of course, depending on the licence associated with. it, using open source in your product can be entirely inkeeping with the licence also. I've not used stellarmate's mobile app - is it really usable and a complete alternative to vnc ? or it it just a fancy vnc interface ?

Little and large! Though tbh side by side there's not as big a difference in size as I thought.