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Here is my mosaic captured over 2 nights during November last year. Tadpole 5 min subs x57 c/w cal frames totalling 4hrs 45min with L-eNhance Flaming Star 5 min subs x 92 c/w cal frames totalling 7hrs 40min with L-eNhance Bortle 4 Canon 550d modded 2" L-eNhance filter William Optics Zenithstar 73 iii AZ GTI, EQ mode guided with PHD2 NINA DSS, PS, Starnet++, NoiseXTerminator Link for full res https://adobe.ly/3FQD7ZN

Hell hope someone can help, whilst using the 3 star polar alignment routine in NINA, to align my AM5 mount l adjust the alt az screws as per the instruction given then wait to see the result of my imput I am finding that the mount even though it is tracking is usually worse than before the adjust ment. If I just leave it retake more measurements it continues to drift further and further out of wack. As far as I am aware once you do the nessary adjustment it should stay at the adjusted position and if not correct you readjust until you get to polar alignment. It just nor possible to reach PA if the mount is not holding on the previous adjusted position. To say the least this is very frustrating. Help on this issue would be greatly appreciated. Regards Mick.

I use NINA and in that program i have astap as my primary and secondary is astrometry.net. In the past i've always used astrometry because astap just refused to work. Then sudden astap started working really nice, my targets were centered, but now it's always off by quite a bit. I have to manually move the scope to the correct co-ords using stellarium, and even sometimes that's not accurate. It feels like it's to do with the degree in the sky i'm pointing too. For instance astap will go to bodes, roughly, and m101 too, but not properly centered however everything else the object just does not appear on screen. I have recently stripped my mount apart and fixed all of the physical issues i was getting like binding and chainsaw noises, now they sound smooth and i'm happy with it. But i just can't get astap to work for the life of me, Is it out of date now? Did i accidentally change any settings without knowing? I'd like to know how i can fix it, thanks!

It was the first time last night I used imaging software to capture deep sky objects, it was also the first time using a camera connected to a laptop. I was so amazed by the quality i was capturing. Until I went back and found that i couldn't view my pictures, but in N.I.N.A I could see them clear as day. I really hope I haven't lost these or I'd be heartbroken! Below is a 3min sub, I did 20 of these, but loading them into Depp Sky Stacker shocked me as they turned out grayscale and you could only see a dozen stars. The image files are fit's which i can't even view at all now, never used that format and I'm not using it again if it ruins my images, what's the actual point on that!? How do I fix this? I may have to use a different processor, i've been using dss for years

I need some help from the automation gurus here to understand what I need to do to link observatory control with weather conditions. Having got my first observatory up and running, I immediately started to think about improvements (sigh!). I had not been thinking much about automation as I actively enjoy being out under the sky. So while running an astrophotography sequnce, I will often be using my Dob or binoculars to just look around in wonder. However, whilst this is great for the first four or five hours it palls if you go on too long. I had a nearly 8 hour session over the New Year that was satisfying, but exhausting. I know I can't do that too often. But here in North Wales the weather changes suddenly and forecast or not, I can't trust that I won't get a sudden shower hitting my lovely, sensitive kit. Clearly, at a minimum I need cloud/rain sensors and a way to park up the scope and close the observatory. My confusion is that I can't get my head round which bit of software/electronics does what when. Relays can provide the switching signals to open and close the observatory. Rain and cloud sensors can detect changing conditions to trigger action. But how do I link them together? My current arrangement has a mini-PC on the mount running NINA for control and acquisition and PHD2 for guiding. It works well. NINA has a Switch facility that I think can send signals to make things happen and detect conditions (also has a weather hub), but these seem to work through ascom. So although USB relay boards are widely and cheaply available, it doesn't look like they have ascom drivers. Do I need to run a set of relays via an RPi or Arduino to make it ascom compatible? I have read a number of references to client and server architectures so that one computer is monitoring the weather and controlling the obsy mechanics, and another is managing the imaging rig, but I don't understand how they talk to each other. People say INDI is the answer, but I can't visualise the layout and the relationship between the various bits. I read with interest (and with hope) the thread started by @steppenwolf on unattended observatories, but I could not follow it completely. It seems to be exactly what I was looking for, with the option to restart if the weather improves. But I don't understand how it was done. Specialised astro-control computers like the Eagle 3 might be the answer, but the price is steep. Can anyone point me to a resource that shows how these automation systems operate and what kind of kit beyond a mini-pc I might need? I am not wedded to NINA if Voyager or SGP will do a better job. I have no problem setting up and coding (within reason) a RPi or Arduino, and I am reasonable comfortable with scripting. I just have a mental block about how it all works. Once I have a thought model that works for me I am sure I can sort it out, but right now I am confused. Help! Please!

I recently upgraded to a purpose made astro-camera (Atik Horizon Color). The learning curve has definitely been noticeable, but I cant figure a couple things out. For some reason the pictures are grey scale when using N.I.N.A. I have tried different binning and formats, but the image is always black and white. If I use the ATIK software (Infinity,Dusk) there is an option for 'Color Binning', and that seems to have fixed it for those programs, but N.I.N.A doesn't seem to have that option (you can not select anything for binning, or select 1x1, 2x2 ect.). But what makes it weirder is that the preview is always color using N.I.N.A. I used a pinhole lens cover to take pictures of my computer screen and it always shows up as color images. However, if I take that exact image file that previews in color and move it to pixinsight, it is grey-scale. Is this a binning thing, file format problem? At this point I am just confused, if the preview of the image is color shouldn't the image data be color as well? So far all the problems I have had with this camera have just been simple things that were new to me, but this one is really throwing me for a loop. Thanks for any help. I've attached a couple images. The first you can see the NINA preview is color, as well with the couple other I took in the bottom right. And the other in a photo of trying to color saturate the stretched image in Pixinsight, and it says that it cannot saturate a grey-scale image. I have tried this with Tif, Fits, and various binning types.

Hey all. I am a complete nooby. And I’m trying to get going (on a budget) with what I have available. I am trying to use my dslr canon 2000d with Nina and sharpcap. Unfortunately after downloading the drivers etc it’s still not connecting to either. Please help! many thanks, Mike.

Hi guys I have a few questions I've recently upgraded to an ASI533mc pro from a DSLR. As I am living in the southern hemisphere and in bortle 6 light pollution, I don't have site of Sigma octanis to get a rough initial polar alignment and previously found that using the reticle feature on my DSLR live view with the synscan polar alignment routine, I could get quite accurate polar alignment in 5-10 minutes (180second unguided subs with around 80% keepers, I don't trust the estimates but under 2 arcminutes generally) My initial setup is usually 3 or 4 degrees out in azimuth. I had a go with phd2 PA last night without much luck, I'm assuming because my initial setup was more than a couple of degrees out. I'm happy to just use the synscan routine as I can complete it quickly enough and achieve a good enough alignment, especially now that I'm guiding, and it would seem I would have to run a few iterations of it anyway to get my initial setup close to simulate you lucky northerners with your bright polaris in the polar scope. So my question is, what is a decent piece of software with reticle live view to use with my Asi533mc pro? I currently have NINA, ASI studio and PHD2 installed and I couldn't figure out how to superimpose a reticle last night. Also, Sharpcap pro seems to be the most commonly recommended software for polar alignment. However I am using an SCT telescope and a smaller sensor camera so my field of view doesn't meet the requirements stated by sharpcap. Has anybody tried using Sharpcap pro PA at 1500mm and 945mm (f6.3 reducer) with any success? Besides drift alignment, which would take longer than the synscan routine for me, are there any other pieces of software that I should try that won't cost an arm and a leg? I'm running an HEQ 5 with a Celestron 6se using an Asi533mc pro imaging cam with an ASI290mm mini on a ZWO OAG for guiding. I'm open to suggestions for other software to use for imaging, I only installed NINA because the functionality and price point is amazing, and it gets rave reviews. Thanks in advance wonderful people!

Hi everyone, I would like to ask an advice as a beginner in astrophotography. I will try to be as clear as possible. I managed to connect my Canon 6D Mark II through NINA to my laptop. No matter how hard I tried so far, I couldn't manage to get a nice relatively shapr image of moon. On the other hand, with same telescope (Skywatcher MIRA 200p), same DSLR, when I unplug the camera from USB and just press the shutter button manually, I get much sharper image. Could there be any difference in your opinion? Or I am just clumsy with computers?

Hello everyone, hopefully this is the right place to ask I'm getting an headache trying to get my telescope to work with NINA, since I can't even get past the EQASCOM setup process! First of all, this is a list of the equipment I'm using: SkyWatcher EQ-6 PRO EQMOD cable I got from amazon (Amazon link here). This connects directly into my mount, no need for the remote USB over ethernet extender to connect the cable to my pc (not factoring this inot the equation, since I'm having the same problems even when connecting the eqmod cable directly to my pc) I've been scouring the internet for solutions, so here's what I'm currintly dealing with: I connected the EQMOD cable from my mount to my pc (the pc does the "device inserted" sound, so it definitely works) I checked to see that my cable gets recognized in device manager (it does, but not under "PORTS." It's shown under "Other devices," as you can see here—"FT232R USB UART") I run EQASCOM as administrator and check "register" on both eqmod and eqmod sim (success!) I go to "SETUP," choose eqmod and then driver setup Set my options as following (I tried changing polling rate a couple of times for the next step) I close the window after setting my location and try to "ASCOM Connect" but I keep getting the "Connect error: Port not available" error I tried the step above with ALL COM ports, but to no avail I tried checking comm stats, but I keep getting this on all of them Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I should proceed? I've watched tens of videos and read many posts, but I'm still at a loss as to what I should do... Is my cable faulty by any chance?

Hello everyone, I've been shooting some images the past few nights, but I couldn't really get any good results. Turns out I was using NINA's histogram all wrong! I was trying to get the peaks around 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through, not knowing that the histogram doesn't work the same way as my camera's. What are the things that I should pay attention to when trying to get well-exposed images through NINA? Thanks in advance!