Rallemikken

Very nice picture. I'm considering one of those for next season, most likely the StellaLyra 8" f/8. What camera did you use on this?

2 hours ago, Xilman said:

are there some configuration settings I have not yet discovered?

They are all accesible in the Indi Control Panel, but I guess you are familiar with that if you have used this software before. When it comes to odd equipment, I sometimes spend a little time searching for clues regarding chipsets and such. (sudo) lsusb and dmesg are two terminal commands that can help. Then it's google.

PS: It don't hurt to present the camera with another driver. These things are not written in stone. One thing is the outside, the inside can hide parts and electronics used by other manufacturers. If it works at all with another driver, try to tweak it. Things to do on a cloudy night.

4 hours ago, lalou said:

For the levels, when you're choosing a specific channel do you clip the data if its more than the other colors?

No clipping. See image. If I touched the left handle here, I would start clipping the black immediatly. The righthand one could tolerate some adjustment, but for this purpose I  always use the handle in the middle. Zoom in heavily on a neutral spot in the background. 200-400%. Choose one channel, and move the slider in the middle a little bit while prewiev is enabled. I rarely move more than 0.05%. There is no right or wrong way in dealing with this issue; this is how I do it.

I've imaged with modified Canon's for several years. Firstly I'd suggest you try out Siril, and it's "Photometric color calibration" tool. If that fails, use the standard color calibration tool. This will most likely give you a neutral background. For fine-tuning I use the "levels"-tool in my image manipulation software (Gimp). Choose the channel you want to reduce or increase, and move the middle slider a little bit sideways. Easy does it.

Mine is 0.22.2 on a Linux desktop. The galaxies are faint, and Stellarium handles that with the sliders shown. And you must tick those catalouges you want visible.

First you must tick the "Deep Sky Objects" icon on the bottom toolbar. Then you can adjust what to see, and how much (sensivity) under the square icon (speech bubble-like) on the vertical left side toolbar. At least, this is how it looks like on my desktop install.

59 minutes ago, Dazzyt66 said:

think I know the answer to this after some further Google work…. Unmount the camera usb drive…

...anfd some of these Canon DSLR's don't play well unless you remove the SD (or CF) card. And they don't play well if the power supply don't provide enough current. Regardless if you have a 220v/12V/USB supply, the battery indicator on the camera should show full.

4 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

NINA will never be ported to Linux, so don’t hold your breath….👍🏻

I won't, but it would be nice. Looks good. KStars and Ekos does have some faults. Their sky-atlas is a disaster, and the whole user interface may be regarded as a little childish. That said, I can't see any feature in NINA that lacks in KStars/Ekos. 

People may use whatever OS they want, but I will encourage all to try Linux to get a taste of if. I left Microsoft 20 years ago myself, but still do support for friends and family with Windows. Computerwise, I consider the Windows/Linux divide as parallel universes. Grab an old laptop, install the latest Linux Mint, and go for an adventure!!

6 hours ago, Backyardscope said:

Have you checked the clips on the primary mirror to make sure the mirror is not pinching.

Exactly! And check the angle of the focus tube, it must be spot-on in both axis. These are the two things you should start with on a newt.

5 hours ago, Anne S said:

Windows

You said it yourself.

Allow me to elaborate: Do you regard the control of your AP-rig as missioncritical? I do.  Windows was never considered. Soon ending my third full season, and never missed a minute of capture time. How? Linux.

It never stops to amaze me. Highly technically skilled folks, able to master a complicated AP-setup, and they lay their software foundations on Windows?

First you must check that your image viewer renders the native .cr2-images from Canon without any messing around. Then you must check the EXIF-data of each sub, to get a grip of what's happening. Did you capture with the camera in "M"-mode? Only mode usable on this camera for astro images.

55 minutes ago, Flakmunky said:

Anyway, what is the cam circled below used for?

That's the RA axis. Maybe at one time a motor was fastened to the cam and meshed to the gear? Would make long-time exposures possible if PA was on spot.

7 hours ago, assouptro said:

I am just struggling to eek it out with my current skill set 

We'll all have to start somewhere. I'm no familiar with any other than DSLR's, but one thing springs to mind: The galaxy as a whole seems transparent. You have those beautiful red regions that I'll never find in such a small target, but the spiral arms lack some depth and content. My guess is that you have lost some of that in focusing on the background, that is, you have clipped the black or lacked in bringing it forward. When you image a target like this there will always be a compromise between a dark, colorless background and the faintest details in the motif. The sky is never pitch black, nor is it colorless.

25 minutes ago, TiffsAndAstro said:

Siril seems more than enough at the moment but I like dss quality rating thing

Must disagree. The "quality rating thing" in Siril is far better, but it require you to do the stacking in three steps: Preprocessing and registration, quality sorting (throwing out bad frames manually) and finally stacking. Supereasy and not hard to learn once you get the grips of it. As a beginning, take the Siril script "OSC_Preprocessing.ssf" and comment out (or delete) the line beginning with "stack r_pp_light". Save the file as "OSC_Preprocessing_no_stack.ssf" in the same folder. See if you find your way from here!

On 23/03/2022 at 15:19, Grant93 said:

If most people think this is a non issue, let me know, because I could be tempted to get the 8" versions instead.

Soon ending my third full season with a HEQ5 and a 200PDS. Finderscope with guidecamera and DSLr's. Among them a hefty 5D MkII. No problems, as long as you shield it from the wind. And the tripod stands firm. Best is a fixed pillar. I have a StellaLyra 6" f/4 with the 0.9 cc as a supplement for those wide angles. Use the 200PDS most. You need this focal lenght for galaxies and small stuff.

10 hours ago, Astrofriend said:

How many of you have the Raspberry Pi5 and 64-bit OS with KStars/Ekos ?

I do. Nice guide. I have an obsy where I sometimes use my overclocked Pi4 with full Linux/Kstars/indi setup. It's borderline on cpu-cycles, guiding became erratic when I slowed down the computer. I went back to my trusted desktop, I like to use Stellarium and the browser while capturing. A Pi5 should handle this well.

I use both Raspberry Pi's and Orange Pi's for several tasks. One OrangePi Zero2 as a standalone indi-server on my StarTracker. Common for all is that I use some Debian Bookworm-based distro, that be Raspberry OS, pure Debian or Armbian. They all have the complete indi-suite in their repo's, no need to use scripts or compile. 

I have my obsy connected to my home router with an outdoor USB wifi-dongle on a powered hub (the Pi's don't have more than 4 USB-ports, you will need a hub anyway). It picks up time with NTP, Network Time Protocol. No need for GPS dongles. Just give the Pi time to pick up the time before you start KStars. A minute or two. And my obsy is rooted. Coordinates don't change.

I always start with a headless network install. On first boot I install the Xfce4 desktop and Synaptic. It automatically pulls in X11,  i don't think Xfce run on Wayland. Then it's just a matter of installing what you need, remember to activate the "contrib" and "non-free" in /etc/apt/sources.list.

I use x11vnc everywhere. The inbuildt vnc-server in Raspberry Pi OS is a flavour of RealVNC which isn't open source, nor freely available elsewhere. I prefer to stick to one solution and use that everywhere, and learn to use it well. I have added the x11vnc server as a startup application in my Xfce desktop. The server starts up when I fire up the Pi. 

I have learned to migrate my settings, especially the index-files for platesolving. I can move them from one machine to another, that be a Raspberry or Orange, or a desktop or laptop. They are situated in the same places within your home-folder. A Pi is never further away from disaster than a faulty SD-card.

Good work, should wish more people used KStars/Ekos. Never let me down. Never missed an hour capture time. For four seasons! More than 120 pictures so far!

10 minutes ago, Vinnyvent84 said:

HDMI to my laptop acting as a monitor / keyboard.

Don't think the HDMI transfer keyboard/mouse signal. Why not run the whole thing as any other mount/camera combo? Given that someone provide INDI drivers for the mount it should be plain sailing.  This is how I would do it: A headless RaspberryPi 4 set up as a INDI-server, USB-cables from the Pi to the camera and mount, and either wifi or network cable connection to your PC/laptop. On the PC you run the software for mount control and capture of your choice, I'll recommend Linux/Kstars/Ekos. Be aware that any older Pi than the 4 has a rather slow wifi, will be noticeable during capture. 

6 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

The line to change, or add, in the preprocessing script is in the beginning and says "set 32bit", which if changed to 16bit will export all the calibrated subs in 16bit so half the size.

Did a quick peek into my old (but still working) scripts, and that line is missing. Looks like it uses 32-bit as default is nothing else is set.

And isn't it possible to work on 16-bit only? If so, you would half the space needed with just one config setting.

50 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

Also useful to know where in the sky do you prefer to calibrate the guiding.

With my setup, Ekos clear calibration on every slew. So each time I start a session, Ekos does the whole calibration before guiding starts. Takes 1-2 minutes. And I let it settle for a few seconds more before I start the capture. Balance, weight, wind and other factors will vary. If I decide to do big changes during the cature, switch binning or go for single-star mode, I also do a new calibration. As for config, I can do a shot next time I fire it up. I don't correct for erros less than 0.4 arcsecond, and agressiveness lies between 0.4 and 0.8. I dither 3 pixels for every 5 subs, and always gives it at least 2 seconds delay before resuming guiding. The same goes when platesolving. Despite concrete floor and sturdy pier, my newt's need that time to settle. With good PA you shouldn't really need guiding, but it is handy on windy nights, it keeps the target within the frame, despite you have to toss some frames with elongated stars. And guiding opens the door to dithering. A bless for us with old DSLR's.

PS: I keep my box at 16 pixels, as seen in the screenshot, and almost NEVER bin. And I have my guidescope pointing slightly away from the target. Not much, just a little, in my opinion it gives steadier guiding. Far from optomal to guide straight into the Rosette or Orion nebula. Or any star cluster. Should be obvious.

5 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

I also realised that you have  what appears to be the primary showing up for guiding purposes. Am I missing something?

No. On that occation the focal lenght was actually 1000mm. In the dark I started the wrong profile...   It platesolved OK, so I didn't do anything with it. This perticular part of the UI is the one I never look at. I think the guide RMS is calculated on the basis of the guide scope and camera, and that is the same, no matter what scope I attache on my mount. They all have the same findershoe, that fits the 50x180mm SkyWatcher finderspoe I use.

9 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

Is there a reason its only on RA? Anything to do with polar alignment or other factors?

Not sure why. But my guiding is at it's worse when I shoot targets low on the horizon, with any wind attacking the scope from the side. If the wind had it's way, it would turn around the RA-axis. The DEC-axis is 90 degrees opposed, so much more stable.

If you do it manually, you can preprocess and register in batches. Not sure, but I think once you have the _r_pp-files the _pp-files can be deleted??  Once all are  registred you must do some magic in order to gather all r_pp-files in one sequence-file before stacking the whole lot.

I preprocess, register and stack files from different nights as a whole, with just one set of darks, flats and biases. And that is OLD calibration files. I have a feeling many overcomplicate the whole process. My darks have not changed in two years, my DSLR is pretty consistent. And I have one set flats for each camera/scope/reducer combo. No need to take new, I shoot with reflectors and naked sensors. As long as I keep the reducer clean on startup, I never experience those big donuts some struggle with.

No secret I'm a big Linux/KStars/Ekos fan. Tonight my rig started guiding with a total RMS of 0.11. The figures slowly increased, but never got higher than 0.42. The screenshot is taken halfway in a 3-hour run at Cassiopeia. The scope (Skywatcher 200PDS) is aimed into bortle 3 (I live on the border of 3 and 4) and is pointing almost straight up. And it's minus 12 degrees celsius, the grease in my HEQ5 is stiff and stable!

The internal guider in Ekos have never let me down, but it's a savvy beast to master. I have a flimsy rig, a big newt on a medium mount, and only the finderscope in the findershoe to do the guiding, through a mini 120.  I'm good when I'm below 0.6, but sometimes it's a struggle. I've learned a few lessons during my rather limited time in this game:

1: Have plenty of processor time and bandwidth for the signal from the guide camera. If the cursor, at any time, starts to drag, you are underpowered. Don't expect good guiding if you are low on cpu-cycles.

2: Curb the aggressiveness of the guide signal. In my case especially in RA.  Usually i set it between 40 and 70%. This can be done "on the fly", just hit "Apply"!

3: Play with the time for each correction. Sometimes 2.5 second is best, other times I set it at 1 second. Can also be done on the fly.

4: Give the rig plenty of time to settle after dithering. I use 3 seconds.

5: Under really bad conditions I've found that manually picking a guide star and guiding in single-star mode gives the steadiest rig. Very rare, but try it once, just to learn the routine. When I do this, I pause the capture and restart the guiding.

It looks like these are for connecting non-standard lenses/scopes to the camera itself. You want the opposite.