IDM

Not in the same league as others have posted but this is my first attempt to capture Mars. Equipment was Stella Lyra 8 inch CC with Zwo ASI224MC camera. I use Sharpcap software and have only just realised that their is a high speed USB option allowing me to go from 60-70FPS to over 200 (I know I should have realised!). I regard myself as a total beginner with planets but feel that things are starting to slot into place with regard to ROI and frame rates. Though I think I am still struggling with getting good focus. I find that focusing the CC is so soft compared to my refractors making planetary so difficult. Thanks for looking Ian

Hi, Clear nights have been so rare that despite the full moon I had a go at capturing M31 with my new Altair 26C camera attached to an Esprit 100 with field flattener. Clouds still kept rolling through so out of a whole evening I managed to get keep 82 1 minute subs. The result is below. the subs were stacked and processed in Siril. Annoyingly there is a weird artefact which can be seen. This appears as a dark spot in the flats, but hasn't calibrated out. I checked the camera and all the telescope lenses and there was no obvious dust. I am interested in feedback on the image and any ideas on the artifact. Thanks, Ian

Excellent, thanks Malcolm. I was just ploughing through a YouTube tutorial and you have saved me some time 😀

I just checked my PHD2 guiding settings and it appears to have multi star guiding enabled, so hopefully all good with that

I tried to work out how to make the changes you suggested so opened the Ascom settings. I could see the section on pulse guiding but could not see a slider labelled to change the a-s/s. I will have to work out how to change this. Likewise with the multi-star guiding, I had a look through the PHD2 settings but couldn't see an obvious way to change the setting. I will have to look into this. Any guidance on how to make the changes is gratefully received. Thanks, Ian

Hi, Yes, the telescope mount would respond to Stellarium and accurately found each target I asked it to go to. I think changing the cables is a great idea and I did have some spares so they have now been replaced. Weather wasn't great last night but I quickly put the scope out just to see if the guiding would work. Looking at the graphs it certainly appeared to be working so I hope it might have been primarily caused by the cables. Thanks, Ian

Hi I have been using PHD2 happily for about a year but recently have had it causing issues and stop working reporting possible cable snag or unable to move mount. The setup is a Zwo ASI120M connected to telescope PC via USB cable and SW EQ6R mount also connected to telescope PC. The mount uses Ascom to connect and works fine with Stellarium and can move and plate solve with Sharpcap pro but I get the issue with PHD2. Initially I found the problem when photographing the Heart Nebula which was nearly vertically above the scope. However, after the failure I thought maybe it was my calibration so I slew the mount to a star nearer the horizon, deleted my calibration and tried to recalibrate. The process started and then failed with PHD2 reporting it was unable to move the mount. I have attached the guide log. It was so annoying as last night was possibly one of the clearest nights I have had this autumn and in the end I could do nothing but take down the telescope and give up on the night. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks, Ian PHD2_GuideLog_2022-11-20_205724.txt

Hi Gary, Many thanks for your observations they are very helpful. my mini pc has 4x USB3 ports so that’s not a problem to me. I am 99% sure on getting the Altair. I think I will probably go colour purely because clear nights are so rare that it would take me forever to finish an image using a mono camera. I don’t know much/anything about tilt adjusters but it appears you can buy them for about £50 which seems a lot cheaper than the Zwo camera. Am I wrong about retro fit tilt adjuster. Ian

Yes, this kind of finicky-ness does put me off. I have a Zwo ASI294 which seems bomb-proof and I also have a QHY183c which seems to occasionally glitch and recently I thought it was broken (I have a thread below) but turned out to be that the camera does not work well with the zoom function in in Sharpcap. As things stand, I feel most tempted by the Altair camera. I hope some people will comment about the Altair camera and the Rising Cam. Ian

Thinking of getting a new camera with a larger sensor than my Zwo ASI 294 MC pro. To me, the most obvious choice is a camera with the IMX571 sensor. The logical choices being: 1. Rising CAM at £1054.46 including shipping and estimated VAT. 2. Altair 26C at £1399.00 3. QHY268C at £1888.00 4. Zwo AsI2600C at £2265.00 I know there has been considerable discussion regarding these different cameras and there potential issues: • Zwo occasionally suffering from heat transfer paste leaking onto the sensor. • QHY having driver issues when trying to integrate into some software packages. • Rising Cam unknown pedigree and possible lower grade sensor • Altair, not sure of the issues with this, though I did find one report of the heat transfer paste leakage issue. For me I want a reliable camera with good customer support at the best price possible. So looking at the prices and spec it seems to me that the Zwo has priced itself out of the market its £377 more expensive than the next most expensive (QHY). The Rising Cam looks like a bargain at just over a £1000 but I am not confident of the import duties. Plus if there are any issues with the camera shipping the item back to China is going to be expensive and there must surely be a very irritating delay waiting for the return of the fixed camera. The QHY seems like a more reasonable price but I am worried by the extensive number of threads detailing driver/integration issues. That leaves the Altair which from what I can see is UK based which I would like to think would be advantageous with any warranty claims and technical support. All these cameras have had favourable reports with regard to how they behave on the telescope with people very happy with the results they achieve. The problem I have is that the more I have read the more I feel paralysed as to which one to buy. I would very much like to hear other peoples thoughts on these cameras, their idiosyncrasies etc. I am looking to integrate the camera to a Skywatcher Esprit 100 and use SharpCap for camera control. Thanks, Ian

I sorted the problem last night. I have been doing some planetary imaging and using the zoom function in Sharpcap to help with focusing and whilst I had reset the zoom to 100%, this does not seem to work properly with the QHY183C and the result is that the image is still hugely zoomed in and therefore the likelihood of seeing a star in the field of view was unlikely. Even at 20% the image was zoomed. I eventually put Zoom back to auto and all seems fine. Stupid mistake but hopefully someone else can learn from my error. Ian

Hi Michael, Yes, I tried up to probably 60 seconds. However, I balanced gain and exposure time the sky was either black or noise (when I tried long exposure high gain). I did use this telescope combination last year on galaxies and all seemed fine. I wondered if maybe a Sharpcap update might have affected in the camera, though to be honest I haven't kept track of when I did updates. I also wondered about the USB cable, but the same cable works fine with my Zwo ASI294MC pro. Additionally I tried other cables non have helped. I might try Nina incase its Sharpcap that's causing the issue. Is there anything else I should consider before condemning the camera? Thanks Ian

I am having problems with my QHY183C camera. It worked fine last winter but I have been trying to get it working as part of a second telescope system. I am using Sharpcap 4 software and the camera seems to connect . I checked the device manager and it says the camera is working normally. In Sharpcap the camera can be selected and I have set the default gain as 11 with offset 30 USB traffic is 0. This is the same as last year and I understand these to be the optimum settings. When I tried to use the scope (Skywatcher Equinox 80) with the camera to polar align I cannot see any stars, however much I increase the gain and or the exposure time. In desperation I pointed the scope at the moon which does appear in the live view but the colour looks all wrong the moon appears sepia like some ancient photo. I used the moon to check focus then tried to detect stars in other points of the sky and again could find nothing irrespective of gain and or exposure. The guidescope which is a 50mm Skywatcher guidescope with Zwo ASI120MC had no problems seeing stars wherever the telescope was pointed. Other settings are: RAW16 Binning 1x1 FITS Dabayering on Video live OFF Force Still OFF Gamma 1 Brightness 0 Contrast 0 White balance (R) 64 White Balance (G) 64 White Balance (B) 64 Is there something wrong with my settings or is my camera broken? Grateful for any thoughts. Ian

So, the 55mm does not include the adaptor. Effectively the 55 to 48mm adapter are part of the flattener and everything gets measured after that. Is that correct? thanks Ian

I know there have been several threads on back focus but I am completely stumped. I am trying to get an OVL flattener to work with my QHY 183C camera. I think (please correct if I am wrong) the back-focus should be 55mm (though possibly 56mm). The sensor in the camera is 17.5mm recessed so the spacer needs to be 55-17.5= 37.5mm. The flattener has a 55mm female thread to 48mm male thread adaptor on the back. This adaptor is about 8mm thick. So does the 37.5mm include the 8mm, therefore the spacer would be 37.5-8= 29.5mm or should the spacer be the full 37.5mm? I have searched everywhere for a manual for the flattener but I cannot find one. I hope someone can explain which spacer is needed. Thanks, Ian

I had a look but the seller I bought from has sold off all their stock. My mini pc is an: HP Prodesk 400 G2 mini with an i3 6100t processor running at 3.2Ghz. It has 4x usb3 and 2xusb2. there are 2 i5 versions on eBay at the moment but no ram or ssd! Unfortunately like everything else prices seem to be going up as I cannot find anything as cheap as mine was. I will keep an eye out though. Ian

I have also been thinking through mini pc idea. I have to say when I have tried any wireless solutions I get endless problems. I have now bought a 20m cat6 cable which I can feed into the house and in my early experiments seems to work flawlessly. As for pc’s I have a raspberry pi which is pretty good and I have just bought an hp pro desk mini on eBay. It was cheaper than the pi and came with ssd so I am hoping it will work well. If you do go down this route make sure you get windows 10 pro license as you need it to remotely access the pc. others will know far more than me. good luck Ian

Hi Lee, I notice you have a filter draw between the field flattener and the camera. It is my (limited) understanding that different filters affect the back focus distance and different filter thicknesses affect the distance differently. You therefore need to be careful when determining flattener to camera sensor distance. You may of course already know this. kind regards Ian

I am seeing quite a few mini pc’s by Gigabyte are these ok? They appear to have 4x usb3 though the processors are i3 5th generation so not as fast as some but I am presuming this is fast enough for simple acquisition, plate solving and phd2?

Last winter I used my RPI-4 with Astroberry and got some decent images but it did crash at least once. So given the rarity of clear night in the UK I feel loath to rely on it try and take several hours of imaging and so have been considering the NUC windows 10 pro route. I am unsure of how good/fast a processor I need. The remote computer would not need to do any image processing just mount control, PHD2, and image acquisition with Sharpcap pro. I look at the i3 but see there have been so many different versions, the same true for the i5 or maybe I should use an J4125. At the end of the day I just want a reliable and cheap PC that can sit outside. Any thoughts? Cheers Ian

Excellent, thankyou both for your feedback and knowledge.

Hi, I am putting together a new guidescope based on a Skywatcher 9x50 right angle finder which I have converted for use with a guide camera. From what I have read mono is the best being more sensitive due to the lack of the bayer matrix, but is that extra sensitivity required for guiding with a 50mm scope? My particular issue being that I have been offered a Zwo ASI120MC USB3 do is very tempting. What I want to avoid is wishing I had paid more for the mono camera at some point in the future. Thoughts? Ian

Hi, which YouTube videos did you use? I have the trial version and find it very unintuitive. thanks Ian

I have the evaluation version and also tried it on the image and couldn't get anything like the improvement that Alcant achieved with StarTools. Whilst de-noise is not recommended the difference between the algorithms is very interesting. I will have to try and get more time on the targets, but what with the lack of darkness through the summer this is going to become very difficult. I can see me having to put things away until the planets start to turn up later in the year, which is a real shame. Ian

I haven't tried dithering yet and will also explore different ways of stacking. Also what program did you use to denoise the image, I couldn't get any improvement and would like to know what you did? Also from your comments I am thinking you don't think filters will help? Thanks Ian