powerlord

thanks, yeh i've just watched a tutorial that talks about making sure you go down to about 30ish. I wish I'd had more time for more lights, but its a good master to play with and learn on  - so I'll start again tomorrow.

I have a massive band across the image caused by some very weird high level cloud - and I'm basically struggling to get at the stars, black and nebulosity - attaching the raw stacked 32 bit  tiff so you can see the issue. Above I've definately piled on the saturation too much, but even starting again and working on now - I'm struggling to get the detail out without adding tons of noise to the non-nebula areas. 🤔

I will add, I'm really happy with the AZ GTI in EQ mode now - that's 60 secs exposures Im getting now, with one round of align and polar align. In AZ/ALT mode I couldn't reliably get 10 seconds.

more affinity and photoshop tutorials required me thinks..

any suggestions/help greatly appreciated.

IC434_HorseHead_and_Flame-RGB-session_1-St.calibrated.background.tiff

Hi chaps - making progress! considering only been doing this astro business for 2 months I'm pretty pleased with last night's results - one I've been building up to as I knew it would need some long exposures.

In the end I only got 37 lights before it went behind my neighbours house, but it still came our better than I could have hoped really. 😀

37 lights @ 1600 iso, 60 seconds. darks, flats, darkflats and bias. Processed in APP, edited in Affinity Photo. Of which this is just my first attempt tbh. I've been watching @AstroRuz videos on affinity editing and will have a few more goes as I'm losing some of the detail in the flame at the moment when I'm bringing the rest out.

There's no doubt there's far less options on the mac - I'm not autoguiding, etc like you are, but even for regular AP stuff, limited options.

What I would say, is you can look at it as the best of both worlds - you can run windows software if you like - vmware fusion is free now so that, and a windows key from amazon for a tenner and you have a powerful fully compatible windows laptop running in your mac. Everything will work fine from usb to 3d stuff.

stu

I've read the forums, I've search the net. I've read the 'brief descriptions' that last several pages. I've came across sentences like "Technically you don't need bias if you use darks.You need bias to calibrate your flats." which is about as clear as mud.

For utter numpties like me, I thought a table of 'just tell me what to do - I don't care why' would be useful.

This is just for us DSLR users.. and I think it's correct and not too contentious ? Obviously idea here - is keep it simple for beginners like me. So there may be conditions where bias is required or dark flats, or something else is different, but for a beginner - this should get them going is the general idea ? Certainly it would have helped me a heck of a lot a month ago.

key:  variable X, Y,Z,T,T2 just means whatever you used, or whatever it was set at.

Take all these at the same session. lights, followed by darks and flats.

Darks - take a while (if T long), but take at least 20.

Flats - quick - so take lots - 20-50.

*Even bright light: old school: white tshirt over lens and torch, etc. new school - just get a 'light  box' from ebay/amazon for about 15 quid and put that over lens.

If you like, you could even print this table, and fill it in when you do a session. For example:

1. yup - worked that out later last night in daylight. amazing how much simpler things are when you can see the actual mount! im gonna stick a few bits of luminous tape on the sides of it so I can actually SEE what orientation it's in - which will help a lot.

3. It's weird as I think I was finding the opposite. I am using my own built regulated 12v i kncked up from circuits, old lipos, buck converters. I double checked it last night and it's really stable 12v, But swapping for AAs saw it work more reliably at that point. I'll hook up the oscilliscope tonight and check it out. Maybe it needs a few smoothing capacitors. But it's not had any issues until last night weirdly. And since it has it's own regulators on board taking it down to 3.3v for the ESP32 I can't see why it would be - but worth checking.

2 looks like remaining a mystery

Got a few questions I'm hoping others using it this way can help in, as they are doing my head in a bit.

1. what's up with the direction arrows ? for one target they seem to work as expected - up is up, left is left, etc. Then on the next target its completely different.. left is up diagonal or whatever - do the direction arrows turn into RA and DEC or has something gone weird - I feel like I'm missing something - trying to align it at the start is a lesson in frustration.

2. the align with 2 stars, 2 bright stars, etc - my god how is it chosing that second star ? some sort of 'how to annoy me' algorithm - I use sirius as the first - and I have a sky full of bright potential second stars - but then ones in the list are things like atik which I can barely see.. then trying to align it when the arrows have to be worked out as well - it's a trial too far. And as I only have view of south and south west, all the north and east stuff is out... but there's mars not far from atik - but no.. can't chose mars - align with this one you have to sqint at to see.

3. randomly just won't accept connections from synscan. turn it on/off, clear app, repeat multiple times.. freeze fingers off.. give up. check it an hour later in house and find it now works...arggggggg... any procedure that gurantees connection ?

As you can tell - clear sky tonight, but gave up before I smashed the thing up with a hammer.

Just an update that I'm using it in action for first time tonight - it worked perfectly - getting me a perfect pattern with the bahtinov mask at 10x liveview magnification - before hand trying to adjust focus at that was near impossible! so mission successful! - currently trained on M42 (again) - I'm sort of concentrating on the same target all the time to make sure any improvements I make in process are obvious.

stu

ill try that - it was app i used for the stacking.

24 minutes ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Nice images with some great detail coming through. In the M42 image it looks like the background has been clipped to black, especially around the Running Man. Maybe brightening the background a bit will prevent this

thanks yeh - duff editing. I used affinity photo to remove background, then boosted up around running man, but did a crap job of masking it and fethering.

First night last night with the AZ GTI setup properly in EQ mode. What a difference!! Must be something wrong with my alt axis. In az/alt mode i couldn't even get 10 second explosures - big jerks randomly, etc - and I'd taken it apart and rebuilt it with no improvement.

Now getting 30 seconds easy - didn't try and longer but hopefully can. 100 subs with no duds is a first for me.

Yes, these are terrible compared to the amazing pics on here, but it's a steep hill!

Canon 1200d modified, with a 300mm F4 L on the AZ GTI EQ mode.

First time I've manage to get any of the nebulosity in Pleiades at all - and that was just 50 subs.

Anyway, pleased with the progress. Need to try longer exposures, and more time. prob stop the lens down a stop too.

So, all done - here's some photos of the build.

And a video.

I'll probably adjust the speeds as I think giving it 6 different rates was overkill, but works nice.

As you can see from video - lots of 3d CAD and printing, and it fits securely with no screws, etc. And can be fitted with different sized pulleys or belts - though seems to work well with what I have.

Also, added a red led to top of controller to see it dark. I fitted a lithium ion battery and charger so it's self contained, and the controller plugs in to the stepper, so you can have unlimited numbers of steppers on other scopes, cameras and use the same controller.

I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out tbh. 😃

stu

total newbie, but also made a filter.

my tip would be attach your mobile and only view with that. you can always get a new phone. eyes are a one two time deal

Ah, we've taken a bit of a different approach there then - I played about with different libraries and found the AccelStepper one ran really smooth and cool so used that one.

I'll run your code and see how it runs. Mine attached if you want to modify and try mine (my 5 button control is a 1 wire analogue one so you'd need to modify, etc)

stu

stu.stepper.ino.zip

So - finished the rebuild of my old EQ5. Took it all part, cleaned, smoothed surfaces, bearings all good, but cleaned and regreased, etc.

knobs had broken off, bolts bent, etc - so needed a fair bit of tlc.

And fitted it to a 2" EQ6 tripod (needed to fit a custom 'north' post, etc.

A fair bit of CAD and 3d printing, painted the controls white and biggers to have a chance of seeing em at night, etc. Motorized and covered top motor, new mount bolts and 3d printed knobs.

it's all solid now, and moves smoothly. So I reckon, all good now. 😀

Hi chaps, so Ive built the electronics and written the software. It's all working really well.

Next I'll buy 2 gt2 30t pulleys - one 12mm bore for skymax 102 focuser, one 5mm bore for motor, and a 158mm belt. Test it, then cad up the mount for printing.

it all runs off standard USB. I'm gonna put keypad and electronics in a handset, with cable to motor, so motor only thing on scope. Also.. Means I can just plug handset into any other mounts I do - just need to fit motor to then.

I'll share code and cad later. For now, here's rough video.

So.. had another go at 11pm. Though I had had a bottle of red by then.

I couldn't be bothered doing it properly. I put it in the correct home position pointing at polaris, then did a one star alignment on mars. didn't then do any polar align at all.

then went to NGC1499 california nebula as it was one I could see. Got about 70 shots at 30fps iso 800 with my canon 300mm F4 L.

Considering its mag 5.0, I hadn't done any polaralign, i did actuall get summit.

But it was very faint. Only way I could pull it out was to use Sirl to stretch the historgram, then process in affiniti photo. When I tried just stretching in affinity I couldn't do it (user lack of skills rather than afifnity help).

But if anyone fancies trying, I've attached the tif from DSS.dss_california.16.tiff

But even with that, its a heck of a lot better than i was getting in az/alt mode - I couldn't get 30 seconds there ever. So glad I did it, just need to get better at setting it all up.

So.. As I say.. Sometimes it's the things taken for granted... I'd polar aligned the alt axis... When I managed to eventually Google 'eq home' I see I'm supposed to polar align az axis.
Yes.. Stop laughing.

I'm now getting 30 sec subs as far as I can see.. Which is a damn site better than I ever got in az mode. Now trying to get california nebula.. Which is prob too dim, but its all I can see from current position.

Ok, thought I knew what i was doing tonight, turned out I havn't a clue.

I tried to follow this, but it skips the most important bit.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/658474-skywatcher-synscanaz-gti-alignment-instructions/

namely all it says is 'you have to do a 3 star alignment first'

ok.. how do I do that then ?? I mean what is the start position of the mount supposed to be ?? I've tried polaris and that ended up with my first star (rigel) pointing at the ground.. I tried changing it then to point at rigel, but the 2nd one was all over the place.

maybe these things are so obvious they are not mentioned but there aint obvious to me... arggg.

can someone just explain in numpty terms the process please.

assume I've leveled tripod, and toughly pointed the base at polaris.

from there - what position should mount be in ? what position should scope be in, etc ?

i will owe you forever - though already lost my chance at M42 tonight.

stu

2 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

I made one as did several others here.

Dave

If I can do the 102 mak, I'll do my 200p too. and I'd like to do one for my canon 300mm F4 L*

Once I've done one, other than different mounting, it'll be a shoe in - and they are cheap as chips - though as I say, I've got 4 or 5 in the parts bin, plenty arduinos, etc so kinda free (with my warped logic anyhoo).

*ideally that should be possible via regular remote of course - but I don't want to use PC/mac outside, and the only android app I can find that works is qDSLRDashboard - but it's a bit buggy - but it does actually allow remote focus operation all be it, needing to [removed word] around with mobile app.

on that - maybe should post this, but er.. I use FLO whenever I can (got an adventurer on back order), but last few things Ive got from microglobe.co.uk who, for whatever reason, seem to have everything in stock.

e.g. no one had enhanced motor controller kit for EQ5 in stock - microglobe had, and cheapest. delivered next day.

I checked today for adventurer and they have them in stock too. I'm leaving my back order with FLO, but if yer desperate worth a look ?

dislaimer : I have nowt to do with them or any other company, just a punter.

@Davey-T awesome - just what I'm looking for. thats my weekend project sorted 🙂

thanks. the good thing about using it for a focuser (and I mean one controlled by me via buttons, not via PC) is that precision isn't that important. compared the the precision of Stu mk1  hands, it's gonna be massively better surely - if only due to the lack of vibration meaning I can actually see when things are in focus.

stu

thanks - Ill have a look.

I must admit, short of long ago wiring one up and playing with it, I just assumed it was bipolar.

some tutorials seem to also suggest this ? e.g:

https://www.makerguides.com/28byj-48-stepper-motor-arduino-tutorial/

This other post though also suggests it can be made to run CW and CCW ?

https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=549927.0

Have I embibed some duff info ?

I'll have a look at your project, though obviously the needs for a focuser are a lot simpler. When the skywatcher one is only 57 squid, there's a pretty low bar of complexity before I just buy that one tbh.

Hi chaps, I see a few old threads about this, but not many details.

I've plenty in my parts bin, so figured I'd knock one up for my skymax 102.

As far as I can see though the bjy48 has a 5 degree full step, the gear box is 64 reduction, so basically I've got 4096 micro steps to play with with 360 which is loads of precision I think ?

I was planning to just wire it up to an arduino nano, and stick a little 4 way joystick on it (fine, fast) and write some code using the existing stepper libraries.

I reckon easiest fit is to directly connect to focus wheel rather than via belts for the skymax ?  Then I'll just CADS design a mount for it and print it out.

However, I'm a lazy [removed word], so don't like redesigning wheels - so thought I'd ask incase any of this has been done before and there's stuff I can steal/reuse 🙂