powerlord

If you don't fancy parting with 60 quid for one of these: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-accessories/zwo-adjustable-eos-lens-to-t2-adapter-for-all-asi-cameras.html get one of these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/164039478468 It's wrong M42 thread pitch, but without forcing it still screws on most of the way onto an M42 extender tube. For my ASI1600 for example, I need one 5mm extender and the 11mm it comes with. That plus the adapter screwed on gets me infinity focus no bother with my DLSR lenses. Saves you 50 quid, and maybe lets to play with your DSLR lenses without having to justify it's worth it ? stu

Sorry, maybe should have explained.. I've got the fecking dew shield wrapped around the wrong end... heating the mirror up instead of the glass at the front of the scope. Hence... initially focused nicely, then dew shield switched on.. and mirror starts getting heated.. warping all over the place - enter the seagulls. I had to remove the vixen plate to slip the dew shield under it, and during that seem to have not realised I'd then tighened and adjusted it on the wrong end. I'd say - make sure you don't make the same mistake....but frankly it's too stupid a mistake to be common I think. stu

Has anyone got pier plans they can share ? something I could modify/share with a local fabricator ? also, a sort of 'how to' ? I'm looking to stick one in the garden at centre of circular slabbed patio. It has one circular slab in the middle. I'm thinking - get a replacement of that, dig/bash that one out, dig down, and that's the foundation hole. Then - what ? is it just 4 rebars into concrete ? drill 4 holes in new slab for rebar, assemble. Then once dry, fit new pier over. Need to have some sort of gasket between bottom pier plate and slab to allow it to evenly tighten and not break slab.. It's for an EQ6. Not sure I really understand the multibolt patterns folk seem to put on top of their piers ? don't I just need summit that looks like my EQ6 tripod at the top ? Or, in fact the actual top of the EQ6 tripod welded in there ? And how important is the north pin position ? I mean, PA moves around through the days/year - do you just set pin as best you can to actual north or is it more important than that ? I can imagine it not being correct enough, and then running out of ALT adjustment one day to get PA, etc. Or is that why people have a seperation between the pier and the 'adapter plate' and the mount ? And how tall ? I mean ideally I'd have it 20 meters tall right ? see everything. Though slightly impractical. So is their a common max compromise? Standing on a step to reach stuff isn't ideal, but the higher the better too.. 1.5m feels quite low, but easy to use. 2m feels better for visibility, but will need steps to put stuff on, etc... Sorry if some of these are numpty questions. There are of course lots of search results for people doing piers but each is different, and trying to pull out what is common to all is tricky. Oh and, I'm in Suffolk.. if by any bit of luck someone has built one and got it fabricated locally, please tell all. stu

Er... I may have found the issue. Did think it was funny that when I eventually got focus it seemed fine on Arcturus, yet later on Vega it was seagulls... er.. after getting focus on arcturus, I only then turned on the asiair to start PA, etc. the asiair that has my dew heater plugged into it. well.. you say.. so what... can you spot what's wrong with this picture: I will get my coat.... what the hell i was thinking when i put that on, I have no idea. muppet.

yes, good idea. I've now marked a line at far end stop on ota and a mark on knob. So for a given configuration I can record the focus position. For example, the celestron t-ring + asi224 was 10 turns in/clockwise and then 8oclock. stu

thanks, the targets were really just to test it ready for saturn in the morning. When I used it with the 6d before it was with the FR. Last night it was direct. no FR. Something I've not tried with the 6d. But as you say, I'd have thought I needed that 42mm. I think I'll need to find a daylight target far away and do some tests. I though coma was more blurring/comet trail kinda thing on edges ? Here, with nothing between the asi224 and the C8 mirrors, surely if its focused it must be at the right back focus ?

Yeh, for that reason I have setup my 50mm 240FL finder to be as accurate as I can. So centred in the asi120 should be centred in the C8. Though must be a fraction off as wasn't helping last night. weird. I mean it can't be the C8 - it took this pic fine a few weeks ago with a 6d and .67 reducer. Unless the .67 reducer/corrector is doing one heck of a lot of correcting...

Last night I attempted to use my C8 with my asi224. I'd previously used it with my 6d + .67 reducer and shot dumbell nebula and got nice clean results. So I figured OTA was collimated good, and I was ready to try it for another target. Then plan was to get it setup at the start of night, try dumbell, and maybe Ring Nebula, but really just pre-cursors so it was all mostly focused and PAed so I could try saturn in the morning. After 3 hours, I gave up and went to bed... here's what went wrong. Equipment: my eq5/eqstarpro, asiair, 120mm/50mm guidescope, asi224 direct on C8. zwo eaf, macbook air. Firstly, not having anything in daylight I can see at a decent distance away I knew I'd have fun focusing, and unless it's in focus, I can't PA, plate solve, etc. So I used my macbook air direct on the 120mm to get decent focus on the guidecam, then tried the asi224. As I'd bought the standard celestron t-ring adapter here (https://www.celestron.com/products/t-adapter-for-schmidt-cassegrain-telescopes) I naively assumed that it was setup for a back focus of ~55mm of a DSLR, and therefore would need another 42mm or so of tube with the ASI224 (12.5mm back focus). Hunting back and forward with the EAF I couldn't see anything, but with such a narrow fov - was it because I was out of focus or nothing to see - even pointed at Arcturus, I couldn't be sure I WAS on it or not... cue about an hour trying to focus.. finally finding a bit of a light gradient and hopeing I was seeing a defocused star, repeating, trying to move towards it again, losing it, etc... argg.... Finally I got close enough and hit end stop.. could it be I'm not at correct back focus.. cue removing 10mm and trying again... then another 12mm.. Finally I tried just the adapter above... and finally, finally I got somewhere, and managed to eventually focus by reducing the size of the edge of the curved gradient I was seeing, then moving towards it till I eventually could see the star itself and focus on it. That confuses me, as it means I can't see how I can possibly get focus with my DSLR - but then again the focus range of the C8 is massive which is part of what makes it a pain to focus. Anyway, on the mac things looked ok now, so I put it back to HOME position and went back to the asiair. Now the fun continued. My stars look like seagulls. All of them - not just the edges. polaris is in the middle and looks like attached. I should have checked this on bright arcturus, but it had taken me the best part of an hour to find the b4gger, so I was where I was - seeing some stars near polaris, or polaris. Undeterred, I tried autofocus anyway, and it actually worked! by which I mean it made the seagulls as crisp as they would get. So thats the first issue.. I could swear I read about stars looking like seagulls somewhere but search isn't finding anything. why ?? secondly, I figured, well lets put that aside, can we plate solve. well..no. asiair says my fov is 0.15 degree and below 0.2 it says plate solving may not complete. And they were right, it didn't. try and try again I couldn't get a plate solve so PA wasn't going to work either. So that's the second issue: assuming its not just my stars being seagulls and plate solving doesn't work with an asi224+C8 is this just a mad combination or are people working with this sort of thing ? I mean it seems like what would be a common enough setup for planetary observation - but without plate solving 'goto' isn't really possible with the asiair - not with such a narrow fov anyway as you'll never find the target. Do people setup with a larger sensor (my asi1600 say), plate solve, PA, goto saturn and then swap over to something like the asi224 ? Anyway, it was now 01.30 in the morning, so I packed it in and brought everything back inside. that was an efficient use of the one clear(ish) night in 2 weeks. 🙄

they do that here in Suffolk - tie themselves to trees on clear nights, in case they fall into space. And the noise of howling during full moons can be heard as far away as Essex.

I had another go yesterday. 4 times it crashed out during autofocus routine. Firstly, it just seemed to stop doing anything, then it said driver was being restarted, but ekos just crashed/disappeared and took down kstars too. At that point trying to restart INDI did nothing. Just ignored me. Reboot was required. How do you save position data ? In the field I'd find the above unusable to be honest, each one of those crashes would have left me having to do a HOME again and start again to get to target, etc. Maybe it is just DSLR control that's crufty, but that's the main reason I could see using it tbh. Pity. I'd have thought stellarmate would use the same INDI drivers, so doubt that's any better. I might have a look on the asiair pro and see what dslr driver it is using. Saying that - no focus at all for DSLRs there - maybe ZWO found it as unstable and crufty as I have and that's the reason they left it out ? stu

wow. Just tried this in Sirl (on a mac so would prefer mac solution). worked a treat with 2 of the 3 I tried- maybe need to crop the other one as it was stacked all over the place. It's a crying shame it's from the same UI/UX school of mess Pi is from - otherwise I think a lot more people would use Sirl. As it is, even with instructions above, I found I needed to 'convert' the files first so that they would be named into a sequence before Sirl would recognise them as a sequence to register. but give it it's due - it did work! thanks for the tip. stu

Sounds like a great validation of the technique to me then.😉

You don't need a powered one for camera and mount. Both will be using minimal amps. USB powered cameras, eaf etc yes. But as you say its just management. Get some velcro straps. Tape it up where u want it to go. Test it in daylight. Simples.

USB hub? And just tether enough slack onto the mount so camera can twirl round and not cause problems.

I read this thread and found it very useful. As an asiair pro user, and keeping getting told to try astroberry I thought I'd give it a try. I have a pi400, so I had a go yesterday and want to tell you my experience so far. Initially it was straight forward, got it on the wifi,did all the updates, and set up my INDI devices - GTI AZ in EQ mode, zwo EAF, asi224, canon dslr. all connected and controllable. I then started to play with the canon, using the eaf to focus, and then later putting an AF DSLR lens on and using the canon to focus (via ekos). I have to say, feature wise its great. Stability wise though...after about 4 hours yesterday: - after turning DSLR off and on, found it impossible to get it to work again without full reboot (tried reloading drivers, restarting indi, etc) - regular complete crashes of kstars/ekos which need a reboot before it will work again - regular crashes of indi server which need a reboot before work again - focus sometimes moves when you press, sometimes takes ages. and by then you might have pressed again.. and it buffers them all up.. making it all but impossible to use - autofocus I couldn't get to work at all with artifical stars - i'd start with nearly focused, and it would detect stars, then adjust further and further out of focus before complaining it had lost the stars and stop. - regular lockups of the dslr control where nothing will fix it until rebooted. Now, I did do all the upgrades before I started, and I will have another go today with fresh eyes/head. But to be honest I'll take stability over features any day of the week. Have I just got unlucky with my equipment ? I assume so, as no one would use it if it was this bad. I will say, comparing it with asiair pro is like comparing apples and oranges. So I'll not do that. What I was hoping was that it would be useful as a second mount control for guiding - where I'd use one of my AZ GTIs in EQ mode with the DSLR and probably a DSLR lens. Being able to guide with it would help exposure lengths over my current non guiding if using a second mount (where my asiair is in use on my main EQ5). But that looks like just not a goer. It's a pity as I really liked the idea of remote focus control for my 300mm F4 L - especially if I use it with a canon extender. It would make focusing a lot easier. Even if autofocus routine didn't work, and I could fit my bahtinov mask, but avoid touching setup.. but it seems manual control isn't really possible as all you get is out/in at one speed (massive amount). I wish stellarmate was available as a trial to compare it. As it is, I will have another play today, and also compare it with running the same stuff on an old windoze laptop I have to see if that's any better. stu

thanks, but I mean, that will result in a single stacked image. what I want to do is have an output which is still the 2 images say, but corrected for rotation and scale. So that in seperate layers in affinity I can process them. I thought perhaps there might be some astro tool that does that sort of thing. e.g. >rotateAndScale -in image1.tif image2.tif image3.tif -out image1out.tif image2out.tif image3out.tif kind of thing ? stu

Several times now, I've combined images from different sessions. Or Ha data with RGB data - but shot with different orientation, etc. Sometimes one image in binned and the other not, so different sizes. I have failed to get Affinity 'align by stars' to ever work - which seems par for the course as far as I can tell. So I find myself pulling them into affinity as layers, and having to set the layer to 50% opacity, and faffing around with position and scale until I finally manage to get all the stars to line up. There must be a better way ? Is there a tool which will rotate and scale 2 images or more to align ? Do people just try to use their stacker for this ? And then somehow export the images once stacker has rotated/aligned ? stu

have you closed the battery door ? it wont turn on otherwise

cool, I was going to try with my asi224, and C8. I was going to add in a 2" ED barlow, but do you think that's not going to add anything ? does feel like it might be overkill.. but the idea appeals. stu

Totally agree about cloudy nights. The number of times I Google something and get linked there to find its someone being ridiculed for asking a question, etc. Imho a problem with most USA forums tbh whatever the hobby.

It's a 6d, so Full frame. I posted on another thread some results - but with a 42mm t-ring considerable vignetting, and through .67 reducer, terrible. Hence, the 48mm t-ring and attempt to keep it at min 48mm all the way through. But yet, no probs with 1200d aps-c job. still waiting on SCT-48mm to arrive from germany so can't confirm if there is an improvement or not yet.

ebay. it has one 5mm long then scratch on front glass, but mint other than that. yeh, not sure why it was so cheap, but having used it now I can tell you it works a treat - i posted my M27 image in beginning imaging last week from it. Definately got a bargain for sure. I've a 48mm to SCT ordered which should let me use filters and my 48mm t-ring and DSLR, though I expect to use it mainly with my ASI224 for planetary.

Awesome!! Just as I thought, but was too chicken to try myself. I'll make a wee wee handset up and save myself 40 quid.

Has anyone come across a high resolution/large picture of sky which has all the major targets on it with little pictures ? Maybe one for nebula, one for galaxies, etc? Though I've got the 'periodic table' of targets, and I can hunt around sky safari, I'd like a pic I could print out maybe A3 size or larger that I could quickly look at and see where things were, and what they looked like to help choose targets. No screeds of writing etc - just basic night sky with same 50 or so of top nebulas, positions, apparent magnitude, etc. For example since they are all different sizes, its not that easy to surf around sky safari and find them all - by having a 'map' that just has location, magnitude and picture, ignoring scale, it would really help a lot. I could start trying to put one together, but it feels like something someone will definately have done before, though I'm not managing to find it so far in searching the net. Basially this sort of thing, but for us, not Elite.. and with coords and AM): stu

i use asiair pro - there is no park. there is a 'goto home' but afaik this doesn't seem to do the same thing. it's not like in synscan where you have a hibernate/restore from hibernate. For all i know it's an asiair issue, but its all I've got.