IDM

I have been using Sharpcap with ASTAP platesolver for about a year with general success. the issue I have is that sometimes it will solve in seconds and sometimes it takes minutes. More recently I have been experimenting with different refractors with different focal lengths and am having very poor results with long times spent with the platesolver thinking followed by messages like "failed to solve", "no stars" or "too many stars". What are the best settings? do people input their focal length into the plate solver tab? What about the 8 bit format? Any thoughts on the best solutions? Thanks Ian

I have recently bout an Altair 70 EDQ-R: Altair 70 EDQ-R F5 Quad APO Astrograph (altairastro.com) Still early days but it seems truly excellent and I find myself selecting over my Esprit100 due to its relative lightness making setup very easy. I was tossing up between William Optics 70 + flattener versus the Altair scope. One of the main reasons I chose the Altair was the inbuilt flattener that doesn't require completely accurate back focus distance (just focus and start imaging). So in my setup I have a filter draw where I only sometimes need a filter. This means that whatever the situation, filter or no filter, I can get precise focus (as you probably know the filter thickness affects back focus distance). It is so much easier than my Esprit 100 with flattener, where I am constantly wondering if I should try different shims to try and more precisely nail focus. Certainly on my limited use so far the Altair is producing tighter stars with routinely lower star FWHM values (as determined by Sharpcap). At F5 the scope is also fast. I know that I am encouraging you to spend more money but if you were thinking of getting a flattener as well as the scope then the price difference becomes less pronounced. The only issue I am aware of with the EDQ-R is tat it doesn't lend itself well to visual astronomy. Though I understand it may be possible, I certainly haven't tried. Good luck with your decision making. Ian

Finally its done! Many thanks Fozzybear for keeping me motivated. Ian

Hi, I just reinstalled 1.8.16 and now the library is being seen. So progress!! However I am getting an error during the compiling, which I will have a look at tomorrow. I am making very heavy weather of a normally simple process 🙄

Yep, that's where they are. I have tried everything I can think of. I even deleted the compiler and re-downloaded. Whatever I do it fails. I never had this problem with the focuser. I really don't know what to try now 🙁

Thanks for the help I am trying to use version 342. I can find and see all the library files and use preferences to point at the library but still it won compile with the same message. Rather frustrating. Thanks Ian

Hi, I thught I would have a go at this having had success with the my focus pro. However, when I try to compile I get this error message: myQueue.h: No such file or directory Looking in the myqueue folder there is a notepad file. I am pretty sure (several repeat downloads and unzipping as well as redefining the library path) that I have set this up ok, but to no avail. Can some one point me in the right direction? Thanks. Ian

In my (admittedly limited) experience AP of DSO’s versus planetary have almost opposite requirements. Planetary needs large aperture long focal length (often slow) telescopes. Whereas DSO you can use smaller refractors with short focal length (fast) scopes. I have just bought an Altair 70 EDQ-R F5 and on its limited testing it appears excellent. With planetary I have had pretty good success with a 100mm refractor. So maybe something with a focal length of 550 or 650mm . I guess they might work ok with a Barlow or focal extender. I did get some ok images with my esprit 100 and my TAL 100 with a barlow. cheers Ian

I have been using Sharpcap for a couple of years and find it very intuitive and easy to setup. I have the pro version which involves an annual license fee (not much) as it does provide some benefits. I am interested in NINA because as I understand it it can do polar alignment without seeing the Polaris. This would be useful to me because for me to look south from some parts of the garden I cannot see polarise due to trees. I therefore downloaded NINA and tried to set it up but found it less intuitive in terms of just getting the camera, mount etc to talk to each other. I must watch a video to sort it out. Anyway in my experience I managed to setup Sharpcap with no instructions or videos whereas NINA was more difficult. cheers Ian

Thanks Adam. I probably should have been clearer in that my intention was to drive through Europe with our caravan and therefore flight size was less important to me. Indeed on Monday I received the Altair scope. Which I managed to get out briefly last night (clouds were not good) but based on the limited time to play with the scope it seems optically excellent. I agree with your comments on size, in that the 70mm scope is probably a little large to take on a plane (not impossible). But I was keen to get fast optics, so the Altair at 70mm F5 is pretty good. Last night I managed to frame the California nebula and could clearly see a lot of the detail in a single 2 min sub. Size wise it’s so much smaller and lighter than my esprit 100 it will be easier to setup and take down making it more likely that I will use when conditions are less perfect (most of the time in UK). The other thing I really like about the design is that when you put a filter in it’s easy to sharpen the focus without having to do all the back focus compensation with spacers that are required for normal flattener. will report on more as I get more used to it

After much indecision I finally ordered a 350mm focal length quad refractor from Altair which arrived today. As ever very quick dispatch from Altair and the scope was well packed. My only disappointment was that they packed the obligatory cloud cover which looks like it could las a week! The scope seems very well made and should give me excellent wide views when partnered with my Altair 26C camera and I hope it will provide a good travel scope as well as complement my Esprit 100. Here it is on my Ioptron IEQ30 pro mount. Cheers Ian

That does really help. I have seen a positive review on The Sky at Night website but not much more for the Altair. I do like its simplicity.

I have got myself in a knot trying to decide which way to go for a shorter focal length astrophotography scope and cannot decide between the Williams and the Altair. I like the idea that the Altair doesn’t require fiddling around with back space for the reducer, but the Williams reducer is also adjustable which I think/hope might make getting the back-space right easier. I currently have a SW Esprit 100 and would like a scope of similar mage quality but more wide-field and fast. I am also thinking something portable so I can take it on holidays without filling half the boot of the car with astronomy equipment! Does anybody have any thoughts on these two scopes or indeed better alternatives?

I currently have an SW Esprit 100 (focal length 550mm) with flattener and a SW Equinox 80 (focal length 500mm). I use two camera either an Altair 26C or a Zwo 294 MC Pro. After a recent outing where the Esprit with the Altair camera was imaging the Elephants trunk and the Equinox with the Zwo camera was imaging North American nebula I concluded that I need a wider field of view to encompass the whole of the nebula. Indeed the Equinox was my first telescope bought for astro photography and I have been really happy with, it but I think its focal length is too close to the Esprit. I am therefore thinking of selling the Equinox and buying a shorter focal length fast scope. So far I am looking at the William optics GT71 (420mm focal length) or with 0.8x reducer flattener 336mm FL. Alternatively I also looked at the Altair 70 EDQ-R F5 which is a quad APO with built in flattener. The focal length is fixed at 350mm. I quite like the Altair for simplicity of not needing to setup a flattener with all the back spacing optimisation potential issues but the William Optics offers 420mm or 36mm with reducer which might be useful when using it as a travel scope. I guess the WO could also use a barlow. I am not sure if the Altair can use a barlow. Whatever I buy I want it to last a good long time so I am looking for a good quality telescope Am I on the right track with these scopes or are there better other options. Does anybody who owns these or other suitable scope have any feedback?

Hi, Thanks for the positive comment. The scope is an SW Esprit 100 with flattener and Altair 26C camera. The capture software is Sharpcap with a gain of 300 and exposure time 120 seconds. It took about 30 subs and selected two adjacent subs that looked the cleanest and stacked them is Deep sky stacker using the comet stacking option (comet in focus, stars potentially out of focus). The stack output was put through Siril to remove background and then stretched. Hope that helps Ian

There were clouds about and the comet was still quite low in the sky but managed this photo, which consists of 2 2 minute subs stacked and processed through Siril. It's my first ever attempt at finding and photographing a comet, so I am pleased. Thanks for looking Ian

Hmm, I can see the logic of all the arguments for the full tower PC. What started me down the avenue of thinking about mini-Pc's was that I use HP mini-PC's with i3 6th gen processors at the scope and was rather surprised how fast they were during setup and configuration. Indeed when setting them up I was pretty sure they were quicker than my Asus Ultrabook laptop with its I7 3rd generation processor. I will have to give this some more thought. I see that Geekom also do an i7 11th generation version with a turbo of 5Ghz which must surely be a lot quicker than my old Asus ultrabook. Does nobody process there images on laptops or mini-PC's?

I currently use an aging Asus laptop with and i7-3517U processor, 10Gb of Ram and 500Gb SSD for a variety of astrophotography and image manipulation packages, the principles being; Siril (stacking and image manipulation), Deep sky stacker, Gimp, Affinity photo, Pipp, Autostakkert, Registax and my laptop is somewhat slow. I was looking at mini-PC's as a sensible price alternative with low power consumption. One option I found was this https://amzn.eu/d/3BfQ9XC When I looked at the processor although, its i5 the fact that is is so much newer it looks like it might work OK (i5-8279u), I can also increase the RAM from 16Gb to 32Gb. Does it seem like a good option or should I consider something else (I don't really want to spend the earth as my astrophotography telescopes, cameras and mounts have already been rather a lot! Though of course if there is something slightly more expensive that will be a lot more powerful then I would of course consider it. Thanks in advance. Ian

Lovely image. I have recently started using an Altair Hypercam 26C and I wondered what gain you use your dual band filter? I use and L-Extreme and am trying to optimise my settings. Thanks, Ian

As another beginner I am finding this discussion really useful. Your last pictures are better than I am yet to achieve on Jupiter. I am inter To know what your frame rate was on the most recent photos? My understanding is that the shorter the exposure then you are more likely to freeze the seeing and be able to select the best frames to stack. I have been using up to 200fps with my zwo asi224mc but still cannot get really good stacked photos.

You might also want to include Gimp as quite a few people seem to use it as it’s free. I certainly use for final manipulations. Thanks for doing the poll. Ian

Sharpcap seems to rely on measuring star size across the sensor (I may have misunderstood) so I don't think its as good as the APT method. So i have downloaded APT and will give that a go. I will also try the defocus donut method just to see what I can see. Thanks, Ian

Are you getting these results by testing during the day and advancing the time is stellarium? I had the same issue when I advanced stellarium time, I think ascom used the computer clock not stellarium.

I have been trying to image the planets using Stella Lyra classical Cassegrain and can get reasonable focus but never good. I know about frame rates and roi and can get up to 200fps. When I look at the computer screen with Jupiter the moons never look tight or star like and Jupiter has a bright haze from about 3 o’clock to 6 o’clock position. the camera is a Zwo asi224mc. I mostly use refractors so collimation is new to me. any thoughts? thanks Ian

Hi, I took the calibration shots the following day, but the camera nd scope remain connected and untouched until I have the calibration done. I think I will invest in an air spray just to check that the sensor is ok before my next outing (not tonight as its cloudy and snowing despite the clear forecast 😕