barbulo

Bear in mind that you can easily get rid of that colorization during processing; just aligning the three channels.

Fully agree with all said here. Savvy words from savvy people. My 2-cents: as a beginner myself I would say practice is paramount; trial and error made me understand many things I previously had read about but didn’t really understand. Unfortunately, we need clear skies, very rare in some places (my investment-per-night ratio is still above 100€ 😭), which makes the learning curve even steeper.

Welcome to the Lounge! Beautiful place to live is Annecy. Enjoy those dark skies! Nice M42 shot BTW.

Hi and welcome to SGL.

Hi and welcome to SGL. There are a lot of tutorials on YouTube, like this one. How do you connect the mount to the PC?

Hi and welcome to SGL!

I had the same slowness using astroberry locally in the Pi. INDI common issue? Don't think so. Anyway, I've given up that route and gone for a mini PC (89€).

150P on a EQ3-2. Then the AP bug bit me.

Hi and welcome to SGL. In my opinion, the SW 130 is a good entry telescope for visual astronomy. However the eq2 mount is going to be too flimsy for that tube. I would go for a more sturdy mount like EQ3 or even EQ35, if your budget allows. The latter would even let you step into astrophotography. The despair you will suffer in the beginnings will be inversely proportional to the quality of the mount. Investing in a good mount is one of those things you will never regret of.

After giving up trying the INDI / Rpi route, I have just ordered a refurbished Mini-Computer Fujitsu ESPRIMO Q9000 (Core i3 2,53GHz 4GB 120GB SSD HDMI WIN10) in eBay. I hope it can handle my setup running APT + CdC + PHD2 + RDC I've chosen this one because of its price and dimensions: Width168mm, Height165 mm, Depth57 mm, Weight1.4 kg. Although it doesn't have wireless connectivity, I plan to use an old PLC Powerline Passthrough to connect it to the router.

+1 for the dummy battery. I purchased mine (with a 220v adapter) in AE.

Yesterday I had the first clear night in around 3 weeks so decided to test the EKOS autofocus routine with the 600D. I disconnected the Pi one hour later and put the laptop back with APT, not long before the Moon showed up 😬. I have the impression that autofocus feature in astro-software is meant for dedicated cams. The live view in EKOS was completely useless, so to roughly focus the camera I had to take a "few" pictures (each one took around 30 seconds to be displayed). Once there, the autofocus process didn't worked for me: most of the times failed to take or process the image. And on top of that, the Kstars/Ekos app crashed 3 times 🤯. My idea is not to use the laptop to control the rig. That is why I though about the INDI / Astroberry way. I am not a big fan of Windows but it seems that the only way to achieve my goal is using a mini-PC, though I didn't want to spend more (the Pi solution looked attractiv€ but...) Any thoughts / alternatives?

Hi and welcome to SGL

Welcome to the Lounge!

Welcome to SGL!

Hi and welcome to the Lounge! Star Adventurer + DSLR and a good lens is a good way to enter in AP. Next step should be a good mount that allows you to “grow up” without weight restrictions. Enjoy!

+ for the firs one. The second one seems a bit greenish to me. Nice job BTW.

Welcome back to the Lounge!

Muchas gracias Sean. I’ve read somewhere that selecting jpg format during the focusing process helps reducing that time. Important to remember switching back to raw before starting imaging. I’ll test it when there is a clear night.

Following this thread with interest since I am starting my AP journey and have a lot to improve.. I've heard before about this stretching algorithm and would like to give it a try some day. I believe I know the difference between linear and non-linear data but when you talk about linear stage, (here the newbie question) what actions can be done to maintain the linearity? I can imagine some like binning, cropping, flipping... But I am sure there are hundreds more and some of them very useful. Any clue?

Yes, I've tried. And also its predecessor indigo_ccd_gphoto2. And they worked in INDI environments (EKOS) but not in APT. INDIGO - ALPACA developers says it explicitly in their web, along with other limitations: No DSLR support ASCOM binning is always 1x1, INDIGO binning is masked by readout mode INDIGO RGB is mapped to Colour, other modes to Mono sensor type (no bayer offsets etc) INDIGO camera mode is mapped to ASCOM readout mode None and gzip image compression supported (no deflate)

Yes indeed: you can use DSLRs in KStars/EKOS through INDI. I've done it with my 600D. The problem is that ALPACA (interface INDI-ASCOM) doesn't support DSLRs. You can use your CANON with ASCOM (Windows) or INDI (all OS) drivers but not in a Windows system from a INDI server. I would like to use the RPi placed in the rig running an INDI server and APT on a desktop to control the AP session. However, the two alternatives (APT supporting DSLR INDI drivers or through ALPACA) are not working yet. I feel very comfortable using APT, though I'll probably give KStars/EKOS a try. The day the clouds go away al least a couple of hours. Someday. Next summer? ☁️☁️☁️ BTW, sorry for hijacking your thread, @vlaiv

I understand there are some caveats according to this web page. DSLR support being one of them 😭

Welcome to SGL. This could be a good place if you own a ZWO EAF.

No doubt the 2600MC is performing well. Image looks superb to me. Congratulations!