Jay6879

4 hours ago, wimvb said:

Testing on a laptop is a good idea. If the problem persists, it must be something mechanical. I would babysit the gear during such a test, and check everything when RA starts to misbehave.

Unfortunately, I don't have any further ideas at the moment.

So those two pics I posted above were 5 and 10 (!) minute exposures using a Zenithstar 61ii, the ten minute one has bloated stars but they are still quite round. The 5 minute exposure looks mint. IF it happens to be mechanical, what should I be looking out for?

I just got PHD2 all setup and ready to go. I'll be outside soon to give it a go. I figured I may as well format the Asiair Pro SD card that holds the OS, and then flash the card with the backup I made when I first got the Asiair Pro. I tried to format it and it wouldnt do it. Kept throwing a "windows was unable to format the card" error. Strangely enough it only showed the card as having 30mb of space, despite being a 32gb card.

I tried repairing it, just regular ol windows formatting, using disk manager, even going into the cmd prompt and using diskpart to select the volume and manually format that way. It all didn't work. Didn't matter if I formatted in exfat or ntsf it was throwing up errors. I looked at the SD card and it was bent!

New card on the left, old on the right. So I'm now flashing the OS backup inmade when I first got the Asiair Pro. I wonder if this is why it wasn't saving any guiding logs as well.

Could this damaged SD card be the cause of my guiding woes? ...ehh..probably not. But as long as I have any new theories to test out I can keep up hope that there will be a solution!

On 10/07/2021 at 15:35, wimvb said:

That explains a lot. Your guidescope should never move relative to the imaging scope.

Also, I’m a bit confused regarding how you have the clutch. When released, the mount should move freely. Correctly balanced, it should stay in any position. If either end falls down, you have an imbalance.

During imaging, you tighten the clutch, but not overtighten it.

Well, after weeks and weeks of rain and clouds and forest fire smoke, last night I finally got a chance to see if the changes would solve these issues.

Swapped in new cables and managed them better to reduce any chance of snags

Modified the counterbalance rod to have a bit more weight for better balance 

Tightened up the loose autoguiding rail

Double (and even triple) polar aligned 

And....the issue still persists. It runs well for awhile then goes wild. I don't get it, I'm feeling utterly dejected at this point. Get a load of this, when the autoguiding WAS working I took a 5 minute and 10 minute test exposure to see how it would do...

I zoomed it in to get a better look at the star shape, but that looks pretty damn good to me for 5 minutes at 360mm focal length! During that exposure the RA bounced between 2" and 3" and yet still managed to pull that off?

Next I tried 10 minutes...

At 10 minutes you can see the stars jussst starting to go egg shaped.

But I see this and think to myself, mechanically there isn't an issue? If there was surely it would've shown up. So does it come down to software? I have no friggin idea anymore. I was going to upload the log but for some reason it didn't save it? I'll check again tonight.

My next step is to try PHD2 on a laptop and see how that goes. I tried hooking it up but it didn't recognize my guide camera for some reason? Do I need to download those ASCOM drivers? I'm using a Stwr Adventurer, which is st-4 so I was under the impression ASCOM didn't apply.

Do you have any other ideas here?

2 hours ago, wimvb said:

That explains a lot. Your guidescope should never move relative to the imaging scope.

Also, I’m a bit confused regarding how you have the clutch. When released, the mount should move freely. Correctly balanced, it should stay in any position. If either end falls down, you have an imbalance.

During imaging, you tighten the clutch, but not overtighten it.

My bad I should've been more clear, when I said 

Quote

 I left the clutch open and had the counterweights on and it dropped smoothly into the 6o'clock position

I meant when I was tightening up the worm adjustment screw. I had read that was a good way to tell if it had been tightened up too much, causing binding. That was done with just just counterweights by themselves. As for the actual balancing with the scope on it I did a little modification allowing me to add a bit more weight and I'm more balanced than I was before.

Let's hope tightening that part up solves these issues!

On 08/07/2021 at 12:54, Davey-T said:

Have you checked PA  with the Star Adventurer polar scope ? it's all I use with mine, if you use an app to set it you can them monitor it during imaging to see if Polaris stays tracking round the circle and if not do a little tweak to put it back.

Dave

Good idea, wish I saw this post past night before gong out. I'll be sure to give it a shot tonight, this looks to be my last clear night for at least a week.

Update, so I did a double polar align last night. Managed my cords better. I attempted to reduce backlash by adjusting the screw on the bottom of the unit. There is no "clicking" backlash sound anymore when I move the unit with the clutch tight and it appears to rotate freely. I left the clutch open and had the counterweights on and it dropped smoothly into the 6o'clock position so I believe it is not too tight?

In the end it didn't make much of a difference at all. It still was going wild after some time. I wasted the night, what a bummer. However, when I was putting away the Zenithstar 61 I noticed the guide scope rail moved...

I was able to wiggle it back and forth a heavy 1/16 of an inch. Not much but I'm assuming it could be enough to mess with guiding? I friggin hope? Seriously, it would be wonderful to tighten that up and everything just work again...

2 hours ago, michael8554 said:

Depends on the rotation of the guidecam.

"to the right" could be Dec if the long side of the guidecam sensor is at 90 degrees.

The orientation of the camera matters as well! This is quite involved.l, a lot of variables.

For what it's worth this is the orientation of the guide camera from the other night...

Last night I set up the whole thingand played around with balance. What I had originally thought was well balanced I found needed to be tweaked more. I modified the counterbalance rod and added a bit more weight to the end, allowing me to adjust the counterweight that came with the Star Adventurer. It allowed me to get better balance than I did before, quite a bit better actually.

I tried rotating the Star Adventurer and either felt smooth the whole way. From what I'm gathering since it's showing Dec drift I'll tighten up PA and now I've got a much better balance. On top of that I'll manage the cords better to avoid snagging, hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to check if this has made a difference.

If you all don't mind I'll try to get a log at least as long as the one posted above to make a comparison? I do appreciate the help so far!

1 hour ago, wimvb said:

I would probably run the polar alignment procedure twice. That should get it close enough.

Ok I'll give that a go next time I'm out. So could the declination drift be the cause of these issues in your opinion? Like it drifts so much, and without any way to correct the drift, it eventually just fails?

If I remember correctly in the guide cam screen the little circle around the star would drift to the right.

9 hours ago, wimvb said:

It’s a star adventurer, so no dec motor. This is ok in the settings.

According to the log, there are sections where guiding is fine during at least 1.5 worm cycles. If the mount gets stuck, it must be in the main RA wheel.

When this issue is resolved, there is still room for improvement, because the guiding shows a period of about 17 s, which is in the gear near the stepper motor.

If the ASIAIR guider outputs a guidelog, the OP should try this guider and compare with phd.

The only conclusion I can draw so far is to check the mechanics: balance, clutch, cables, free movement. For the latter, with no load, release the clutch and spin the RA. It should move easily and not get stuck anywhere.

When you say it must be in the RA wheel, should I try tightening the clutch up more? I read somewhere that tightening too much would be detrimental so I would lightly tighten it. I will check the free movement tonight and will also experiment with my balancing setup...things that can be done while it is cloudy and rainy! 😞

7 hours ago, michael8554 said:

You are ST4 guiding, which is fine in itself.

But means that unlike an ASCOM connection, your Guide Rates and RA/Dec positions aren't reported in the Logs, which makes diagnosing more difficult.

Your first Cal with a step of 2000ms gave 12 steps in the Cal, which in PHD2 would be correct, so stick with that.

You are only guiding in RA, so PA has to be good.

The logs report that PA Error is at least 5arcmins. Yes ASIAir is reporting only 2 arcmins, but that amount of drift is apparent in the logs.

That would be good enough if you were guiding Dec, not not good enough without.

So what is happening ?

You managed to guide for five sessions of 10 minutes or more, then RA went "wild".

I believe that during that period the guidestar has been horizontally central in the guide box, but the unguided Dec has been drifting vertically in the box, due to that PA Error.

Eventually Dec drifted vertically out of the box, and guiding failed.

There are flaws in this theory. In the log the Star Mass remains good, and often many RA corrections are being sent. Perhaps the Auto Select has move to another star ?

Despite that, it would be worth seeing what happens if you improve your PA, or stop/start guiding every 10 minutes or so, to reset the star position ?

IMO the sudden jump in Dec at 01:25 is an isolated event, not seen anywhere else.

Your image scale is 6.45arcsecs/pixel, it would be worth Binning X2 to reduce that to 3.27 and entering that into ASIAir.

RA guiding is very choppy, but lets see what guiding is like after these changes.

Michael

There is declination drift despite the Asiair reporting 2 arc minutes...so would that mean it isnt to be trusted? Should I just try to get it even tighter? (1 arc minute? Not sure what happens below 1 arcminute ha)

9 hours ago, wimvb said:

That step in DEC is interesting. Something caused a sudden jump, even in RA. But guiding recovered. There is a smaller step earlier in the sequence. Even here, guiding took care of it. But it makes me wonder; how is the guidescope attached?

First off I want to thank all of you for joining in on solving this conundrum, as I said despite being very new to this I feel I've gotten everything down, and if guiding just worked properly I'd be on my way so thank you for the discussion here. I am going to read through the replies so far and respond as best I can. For now...

This isn't my image but it's essentially the way my guidescope is attached, using the provided rail on the Zenithstar 61.

2 hours ago, wimvb said:

I'm confused here. This image is not from your phd log file, because the equipment is a G11 mount connected with ASCOM, whereas in your original post you wrote that you use a star adventurer. And the guide log that you provided is for a star adventurer (ST4 port and only RA calibration).

Anyhow, when the guiding suddenly starts to wander off, it is usually a mechanical failure or cable snag.

Wtf for real? Someone else who said they took a look at the guide log shared that pic so I assumed that's what it was. Ugh.

So could a cable snag or mechanical failure cause issues that occur at consistent repeatable intervals like what has happened?

43 minutes ago, Clarkey said:

I am far from an expert in PHD guiding, but looking at the log files (with my basic interpretation) it almost looks like the tracking stops and then PHD is desperately trying to get the mount back on track. Is there any way you mount was stopping or sticking that stopped the tracking? Obviously the mount you are using is relatively lightweight so any snagging might stop the tracking or if the balance is out slightly that might cause it.

I know I had some problems with the mount suddenly stopping which made everything go haywire - but that was an issue with EQMOD and a loose connection.

I dont believe anything was stopping the mount, there is only a single 12v cable leaving the whole setup and the rest are fairly tidy. I originally thought it could be that but I had checked everything and it looked good. Not to mention the consistency of the drops being after 6 to 7 exposures each time I kinda ruled that out. Though I will definitely pay attention to cables next time.

Here is a screen grab from someone else who had a look at the log and it appears once the guiding goes wild there aren't even any pulses to correct it?

On 01/07/2021 at 17:14, symmetal said:

It's the locking screw for the camera rotator at the front of the flattener. Rotate the flatter, with fixed camera attached, for your preferred image orientation. Then tighten the screw to lock it. 🙂

Alan

Omg are you serious?! I've been loosening the rings and rotating the whole telescope all this time...

Equipment --

Star Adventurer Pro 2i

Canon t3i Ha modified

Zenithstar 61ii

Asi 120mm mini

Asi 30F4 guide scope 

Ok so for the first month or so that I had the Asiair Pro it worked phenomenally. I could set everything up and go to sleep, let it run the whole night no issues. I do that at least seven or eight times. There have been multiple updates to the AAP since then and I can't figure out if this is a software issue I'm having or it's hardware?

There have been numerous threads and numerous people who have mentioned issues with guiding, especially since the multi star update but it's hard to say for certain if the issue was update related since there are so many hardware combinations out there.

So the other night I was out for around three hours and tried all sorts of different settings and combinations to remedy the issue and I'm hoping I managed to get enough data to be useful. I'm still quite new to all this so I don't fully understand the nuances of what's contained in the guide log so any help is appreciated. 

Here is the issue, I will set up calibration (single star or multi star, it doesn't seem to matter) and everything will go fine. I am easily getting 2 minute subs with round stars and could go longer. Unguided it appeared 60 seconds was max with the Zenthstar 61ii before stars went oblong so it is obvious the guiding works. I will get six to seven subs in and the RA guiding goes wild. I've seen it shoot up 50"! The star is completely lost.

Here is a screenshot of my polar alignment...

Throughout the night when checked through plate solving my DEC moved less than 2', I slightly adjusted it once if I remember correctly. Everytime the guiding went wild it was only the RA I needed to adjust so my polar alignment is good I believe.

As the night went on I tried fiddling with different settings in the app, and it showed some improvement with RA numbers. When it was working it tightened up the RA, at times to sub 1". That's good! Unfortunately, like clockwork, six or seven two minute exposures later and boom it would go wild again.

I am so close to just being ready to rock here, my setup and takedown routine is *chef kiss*. I can use plate solve to find my object in minutes despite no goto. Everything is mint, except I have zero confidence in the guiding now because of these issues. I have to sit and babysit the thing, and it slaughters any exposure time I have. I managed to gather about an hour and a half worth of data in almost three hours because of this nonsense.

I hope I've providing enough information here to help with trying to figure this out, this forum hasn't let me down yet when it has come to my incessant questions since I started last year and I'm hoping I can get some answers on what exactly is happening here! I appreciate any help, thanks in advance.

Here is the log...

PHD2_GuideLog_2021-07-03_232628.txt

2 hours ago, Davey-T said:

I don't think it's a balance issue but I reverse the dovetail foot on my Z61 to help balance it.

How is it unguided ?

Dave

Would the guide cameras exposure have anything to do with it, should I drop it lower? I was using 3s.

16 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

I don't think it's a balance issue but I reverse the dovetail foot on my Z61 to help balance it.

How is it unguided ?

Dave

I saw a guy on YouTube who reversed the foot as well, it's just such a pain in the ass cause it won't fit in the soft carry case it came in if I do that so everytime I gotta flip it back at the end.

Tbh I never tried to see what happened without guiding, though that probably should've been my first process of elimination. I'll give that that try tonight and see how it goes.

4 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Batteries? Is it well balanced? 

Brand new Energizer Max batteries in the Star Adventurer, balanced fairly well. Would the position of the camera/scope setup on the dovetail make a difference? Sliding it back or forwards?

I finally received my modded t3i and field flattener for the Zenithstar 61 so I'm ready to go. I'm using a Star Adventurer 2i, asi120mm and asiair pro.

Get everything good set up, acquire target and do the guiding calibration. It bounced between .9 and 1.2, 180s subs produced nice pinpoint stars. 10 or so images I to the routine it starts going wild, rms shoots way up and stars streaking.

Redo calibration and same issue.

Any ideas what the issue could be? How do I go back to single star guiding if I want to try that out instead of multistar?

On 04/06/2021 at 01:02, R26 oldtimer said:

I wouldn't say that is useless,  but it is really not worth trying with this filter. You should really modify your camera because right now the internal filter blocks almost 75-80% of the Ha emmision.  Remember that this filter will give you a narrowband HOO image, so if you lose all this Ha signal from the ir filter,  in practice all you get is OIII.

If you're after a light pollution filter with an unmodified  camera, then a light pollution filter like the l-pro will suit you best.

Welp, that's exactly what I ended up doing. I purchased a modified dslr (selling my old one), and I'm ready to rock. I appreciate all the help here for giving me that little boost to finally just modify and get it over with.

25 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Yes it will, especially if you live in high light pollution.

It's best to use super pixel mode to debayer your data when you use such filter.

I'm jn a bortle 5 location so there is light pollution but not extreme, but I guess if the filter helps cut out even that little but it's only going to improve the image eh? So I should still see a boost in Ha despite my camera being unmodified right?

I've been told a few times already my camera will be useless for nebula so I'm trying to make this work without modifying it!

4 hours ago, vlaiv said:

No, but you can if you wish.

L-enhence filter is UHC type filter and is suitable for imaging emission type targets - which means Ha regions, Planetary and emission type nebulae and super nova remnants.

These targets emit most of their light in few narrow emission bands - Ha, Hb, OIII, SII, NII and so on.

UHC type filter will pass most if not all of these and cut most of the rest of wavelengths. This means that color of these targets will be good regardless of filter used. What won't be good is star color. You can't get good star color using such filters because stars emit light over whole spectrum and this is very restrictive filter.

You have a choice - you can put up with very strange star colors in your images or you can shoot RGB data for use with stars only. This requires special processing, but good news is that you don't need as much data to capture star colors as you need for nebulosity. This means that you can dedicate just a small amount of time to capture unfiltered star color data and dedicate most of your time to capture target with filter.

If you want to attempt to blend in proper star color, here is workflow that I would recommend:

- shoot target with filter and then create starless version of the image - process it separately

- use starless version of the image to get stars only version of the image

- use unfiltered RGB data to color the stars only version of the image (color transfer)

- blend in two versions in the end - starless processed separately and stars only with true star color transferred.

Btw, don't use this filter on star clusters, galaxies or reflection nebulae - these are all broad band type targets.

3 hours ago, R26 oldtimer said:

I assume that you have an osc camera. If that's the case then the image you get is effectively an HOO* narrowband image.  That means that through that filter your camera records Ha emmision on the red channel/pixels and OIII on the blue and green. 

If you split the channels,  you get an Ha image from the red channel and an OIII from the green and blue. You can also stack the green and blue, to increase the OIII Snr.

*actually the l-enhance also allows Hb wavelength along with OIII so the out of the camera image is more of an Ha,OIII+Hb,OIII+Hb

This is good! I'm new so I'm not exactly looking to add any more complexity at this point, but I like that the option is there to add it as separate data. One thing I forgot to mention is I have an unmodified Canon T3i, would this filter still make a difference over no filter? 

Do I essentially have to capture the data twice and then combine it in post? Or is imaging just straight L-enhance good enough?

6 hours ago, RoloFanatic said:

Thanks! I was torn between the Z73 and Z61 but then I saw the Z73 on sale second hand and just went for it. I was worried about the weight as well but having tried it out now it seems to work really well! The only issue I've had is that I can't balance the load with the Z73 and guidescope so I've been using it with no guide scope and just platesolving to find my targets. I have a red dot sight coming in the post though which I think will be ideal!

I can't wait to get back out there and have another go at Bode's galaxy (this time i ll bring the spare camera battery as well!).

 

Oh boy, I haven't even had a chance to try it out and I'm already getting aperture fever for the 73. What kind of hobby is this?

11 hours ago, Grant93 said:

Hello again everyone!

Was doing 60 second exposures unguided on M51 yesterday, come to stacking and editting it today. I can bring out the real colors (I think) but it seems very, translucent (not too sure on the right term when it comes to astrophotography). I got about 45 minutes of lights, did some darks and bias etc.

Without going into too much detail about the current picture, just wondering without a goto system, how do I go about gathering more data tonight, and making sure I can still stack them with my data from last night? I've never tried it, I just assume I might be struggling to stack if the frames are a little off?

Also would it negatively effect the image anyway if I attempted 90 second exposures and stack them with the 60 second exposures?

Ill share an image of the current edit just for those who may be interested! The scope is a ZS61 so its quite cropped, using a Canon EOS 800d.

I understand Ill have to start the editting process all over again, but I'm ok with that, the more practice, the better!

Thanks everyone!

Grant

Have you thought about getting an Asiair Pro? It has elevated the whole game for me. I've got a Star Adventurer so same schtick, no goto and a pain in the ass to find objects. With the asiair pro I would find the whirlpool galaxy in an app like stellarium, get the dec and RA coordinates. I'd point the camera in the general direction and take a short 2 second exposure and then plate solve. It then gives me the coordinates of where the camera is pointed, I compare it to the objects coordinates and adjust.

I can get the object in frame in five minutes or so most of the time. And when you are close enough you can then use the annotate feature, it'll put a nice green circle around any objects in frame, even if you can actually see it in the preview. It has made imaging so much smoother, less time messing around with thirty second exposures looking for a faint blob iand more time imaging. Honestly I was getting very frustrated by the whole ordeal before I picked one of those up.

This allowed me, for the first time, to properly image across multiple nights. And yeah you can stack multiple exposure lengths, and for many objects it is recommended. Especially for HDR imaging. Just make sure that each night has its own set of calibration frames.

As for reframing on different nights without an asiair pro? It's brutal, I honestly have no tips, I couldn't figure out a way to do it efficiently and consistently. Maybe others will chime in with help on that?

Wow you got 4 minutes out of a Zenithstar 73?! I have a Star Adventurer 2i (more or less the same as the Skyguider) and I opted for the Zenithstar 61 because I thought weight and focal length would an issue. Haven't tried it out yet as I'm still waiting for the field flattener to show up, backordered.

Your Bode's galaxy pic doesn't look too overexposed to me though. Imagine what you'd achieve with four or five hours worth of data!  I'm only a month or so into imaging as well and have much to learn still, everytime I go out I learn something new.

On 28/05/2021 at 15:17, LuckieEddie said:

I put in the true focal length and the sensor size of the camera and it seems to just work - what the simulator shows matches very well with the actual framing. I use a micro 4/3rds camera, not full frame.

On 29/05/2021 at 04:13, michael8554 said:

Hi Jay

Crop Factor was a marketing tool invented way back by the camera makers.

To help buyers understand that when they mount their old Film SLR lenses on their first Digital SLR, that the Field Of View will be smaller by the "Crop Factor".

Those lenses haven't magically altered their focal length, they're just projecting onto a smaller sensor.

Crop Factor has no real use any more.

AS LuckieEddie said, put in the real FL of the scope, with the correct size of the sensor of course.

Michael

Geez, so you mean I've been caught up in marketing fluff from decades ago eh? Scoundrels. Alright, I'll put only accurate info in from now on. Thanks for the help.

Hello, I have just purchased a Zenithstar 61 ii and I'm trying to see how well objects frame up on Telescopius. The focal length is 360mm, but with the 1.6 crop factor it equals out to 576mm. In the settings would I put 360mm or 576mm?

I appreciate the help!