powerlord

yup powered from aap sometimes, direct other times. depends how many other things I've got plugged in. I try to use AAP power outputs for lower current stuff with exception of my 12v dew heater on the C8 if I'm using it (not with the azgti!) as aap lets me control voltage output on that which is cool. So stuff like my EQ5, EQ6, asi1600 I power direct, but other stuff like my wifi AP, az gti i put through the AAP if I've ran out of 12v outputs (my DIY power unit has 4 12v outputs, so with AAP using one, that gives me 3 spare there, plus 4 on the AAP). My DIY power unit also has 2 x 8.4v outputs for DSLRs, and 2 x 5v USB outputs - so DSLRs and their 5v dew heaters get powered from that. stu

ASIAIR PRO number 2... Usually buy everything from FLO.. still will. but.. well.. got ZWO sale email, didn't know FLO was gonna do it too.. and took a gamble on buying a second asiair pro direct.. looked like it might work out at about 185 quid inc postage if I didn't get stung on duty...if I did, well still might be a bit cheaper than normal price. arrived today! and looks like no duty! oh.. and with exchange rate it didn't work out at 185 quid... it worked out at 158 quid !! all in inc postage. 🙂

I've got a bunch of manual vintage prime DSLR lenses, plus a new Samyang 135mm f2 ordered. I find them quite tricky to get the focus spot on, especially with the wider ones. I use bahtinovs that I've printed specifically for each lens, but you only get tiny wee crosses with the wider ones. And with 10x live view on the camera, trying to see if it's spot on which also moving around as you are adjusting focus is really tricky. Anyway, as I upgraded to ZWO EAF I have a few of the basic 60 quid skywatcher focusers lying around. Here's a video showing how to rig up a basic way to let you use that to focus any DSLR lens. all you need is a few of these sort of things: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/392914563455?hash=item5b7b88717f:g:GNAAAOSwEYpc5khK a strip of rubber and an elastic band. One of these and there: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/223461492884 - a 300mm works well https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/223280281197 - 6mm and a few camera UNC bolts. works a treat.

amazing. can I ask a newbie question ? I see people posting planets in several orientations like you have - what is the reason ? stu

This is what I do: After PA, make sure the mount knows where home position is. Go into mount screen and 'goto home'. If it is now in home position (i.e. pointing at polaris) all good. If not, release clutches and set it so it is. Now use the arrow to move the mount a bit - ideally in direction of your target and same meridian - since it won't plate solve within 5 degrees of polaris. Once plate solved you get a thing coming up, and press SYNC. now it's all syned. You can now select your target and goto and it will do its thing.

actually mine is the PRO and I got it from ebay (from astro-gadget but I figured if I buy through ebay and it doesn't arrive I've got recourse)

Are these usb2? If so you are already limiting what your Asi224 can do speed wise. I'll b trying a similar setup for jupiter, but I Wouldnt try it for dso. For me c8, Asi224, 240mm guidescope. For dso I think trying to keep that setup stable might not be possible with any mount under 10k? If it's your only ota, I'd suggest getting a bigger sensor camera as @Shimrod says. Basically you've got a setup that has an FOV about the same size as a knat's chuff. 😁

Haha. That was like me 2 weeks ago.. Motorhome away for 2 nights to do some AP. everything Inc kitchen sink packed, tripods. Filters, psus, asiair, dslr. Got there and realised I'd forgot the telescope.

Yeh it's a pita. For stuff like adjusting exposure or focus it's impossibly. What I reckon is happening is the memory buffer is a certain size. At 1080p that's only a few frames, but as you roi it down it can fit more and more frames into that buffer. Go down to 240p and it's crazy long. Imho this is dumb and they should only use the buffer when recording. Anyway my botch workaround is, make a change then force clear the buffer. How? Just change the roi. It then has to dump the buffer as its all now bad data. So I was trying to get the exposure right for jupiter a few nights back and shooting at 240p. So I adjust to say 5ms. I then change roi to 480p, and then back to 240p. Now I see 5ms exposure. As I say, just bad coding to not realise that the last thing you want in preview/live is a fecking buffer. I did mean to bring to up on the zwo forum but not done as it wouldn't let me post!

I have before. I had my asiair set up on my main eq5, controlling that, but I had a second mount set up with the azgti unguided, and powered that from the asiair. Had no problems. Obviously make sure the psu powering the asiair is beefy enough though.

26th April! stu

as someone with 6 months experience, I feel a bit under qualified to say this, but you've got the same '40 years of photography' knowledge i have holding you back. Don't worry about high ISO - thats what stacking is for. if you can't see it (well.. accurately..didn't record it) no amount of stacking will help. kick that ISO up. https://dslr-astrophotography.com/iso-values-canon-cameras/ suggests best iso is 1600 for your 70d. that, and get a bahtinov mask for a tenner for focus and you'll be cooking on gas

So, an update - it wasn't the dew heater... though I imagine that was not helping matters. It was badly out of collimation. I finally got some bobs knobs today, and roughly calibrated it in daytime against a few BBs stuck on some flock. It was waaaaaay out. I'm sure its not perfect, and I might tweak on a star, but you can clearly see the difference just focusing on a ball bearing now 20m away. Before I was focusing on trees a mile away and just figured the poor picture was seeing conditions - now I see it was collimation. amazed I got M51 as good as I got from it, but now should at least be good enough to try Jupiter - just in time for the crap weather to come in!

Well first light last night for my new EQ6-R PRO. Wow this thing is big. and heavy. and did I mention, big. I swapped all the kit over from my EQ5 with eqstarpro, and after a bit of farting around before finding the right baud rate to connect the asiair, it was all working. The EQ5 is quite old, but I rebuilt it with new greace, etc and was getting somtimes 2" rms, sometimes 1. but occasionally the DEC will go for a wander. Probably not balanced very well. After only 10 mins or so of tuning I'd gotten the EQ6 to <.5 rms. ocassionaly over 1, but no wanders. There's def more to do there, as it's the RA that is wandering most which is weird. saying that, I've just realised that when I put it away this morning I hadn't tightened the RA clutch nearly enough.. so that probably explains it... will find out whenever we get some decent weather again. For first time though that meant I could do 600 sec subs - which I'm hoping will pull a bit more Oiii/Sii out of IC1396 that I'm currently working on. So, summary - really pleased I took the plunge. And now I need to sell the EQ5/EQStar pro before I decide I need it as a spare or something!

Woohoo - After a 3 month wait - my EQ6R-PRO has arrived !!

very nice. i can only hope to get something similar as I'm doing the same just now. Can I ask - were you using 139 gain ? And is that with the 200p ? stu

Forgot to post - lovely campsite - busy, but I still had a massive pitch and a clear view to the east where I was imaging. Dog friendly, all families - no rowdy parties. cafe and shop. I usually hate campsites - I'm a wild camper - usually preferring to jsut park up somewhere and be self sufficient when I got up to scotland where I usually go - but down here its near impossible to do. I will most definately be going back. And I need to sign up for a weekend during that November astro week too - looks like a great idea. In the end I didn't get much pics - the first night was very cloudy. The second night was crystal clear.. however it had been roasting during the day, and I may have consumed slightly more alcohol than was wise... so faced with teh prospect of getting up at 11pm.. I stayed in my bed 😛 stu

@Tommohawk you were asking about where the elephant is - here's the wikipedia pic of the middle bit, and my doodle of the elephant head on top of it, with the original underneath.

yeh you're no doubt right - its all worse case init. without measuring the load difficult to know. No doubt lifepo4 is better - but also heck of a lot more expensive. all the gear has built in regulators so voltage varying shouldn't be a problem I'd have thought. That said, my own self build uses lipos wired up at 26v, so I have a DC to DC regulator on that to give a clean 12v out anyway regardless of input voltage. You can't really do that with 12v battery though as there's not enough headroom.

give startools trial a try. watch a few youtube tutorials on how to use it - otherwise you won't have a clue. but 10 mins of tutorials later you'll be surprised what it can pull out your basic unstretched stack.

amazing!!!

when using mine with a DSLR i tend to use liveview too - nice and easy. just remember and turn it off afterwards. stu

One suggestion.. Rotate the camera half way through the subs. Even better rotate a few times. Depending on how you've mounted it on your azgti I grant you this could be tricky, but with a ball and socket on there not so hard.

If you dont mind the size, a leisure battery will work (caravan/motorhome battery). those are built for deep cycle. However, carting even a small one of them in and out to charge is gonna get old quickly ? I use custom built lipo packs based on large capacity lipo batteries from hobbyking.com. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they were familiar with lipos, had a lipo charger, new how to make a buck regulator to step it down to 12v, etc. So easy way - get something like this for 60 quid: https://www.tayna.co.uk/leisure-batteries/exide/er350/ stick it in a big tupperware box, and charge when required. I'm not sure I'd trust that wee 22ah one for 2 mounts for a night. In winter, thats gonna be say 10 hours, and maybe 5-6 amps load average across your mounts, not including cameras, dew heaters and the like. I'd be working off 10amps and hour.. maybe 15. so for 10 hours, maybe 150ah to be super safe, though prob that 80ah one above enough. stu

Yes, it is almost impossible to see elephant head in most pics I've seen. When/if I Get it good enough to show it I'll point it out. Framing wise it's my own fault. Asiair is great for it as you just give it a pic from the last session. But last night I tripped over the power cord twice.. Meaning I had to start again from beginning.. Home mount, goto, setup filters.. I must have did a goto ic1396 the last time rather than my framing of it. I'll bin last night's basically, but I integrated it tonight just to see if I could. This is the first time I've tried to stack over multiple sessions, also different gains, and of course different flats, etc so a bit of a learning curve!