Stellarium keeps 'wandering off'

[swag72]

I hope someone can help as I am at my wits end here.

My mount is all set up and guiding nicely. Good graph on PHD - no problems there. I am trying to find a galaxy to image, yet when I put it into Stellarium and the mount slews there I have 2 problems

1) It's nowhere to be seen even on a 300s exposure

2) My telescope finder on Stellarium is wandering off the target.

Just to test that all is OK, I go to a nice bright target, Arcturus for example, and it's bang in the middle of my image. So I try again, PHD still guiding nicely, tried recalibrating on the off chance, still no luck. Slew back off to Arcturus incase something has moved - Nope all still nice and central.

I had this Galaxy the other night, no problem - I am clean out of ideas - Anyone? Please??!!!

Life started going wrong after EOS utility died and would not work or reload under any circumstances and I have had to try to get to grips with APT. Grrrrr.

[Glider]

You have stopped PHD guiding before you slew haven't you? Otherrwise the guiding is fighting the slew!

[swag72]

Yep, PHD stopped prior to slewing.

I have had a TOTAL mare tonight - More to follow in the morning, I am so down hearted at the minute.

[swag72]

So, incase anyone reads this or has a similar issue - Here is the only thing I can put my issue down to - I recently downloaded APT and from there it all went wrong.

1) EOS Utility stopped working straight away and despite several reinstalls still will not work at all - Little box saying 'programme has stopped working' - Nothing more.

2) PHD - could calibrate the scope, but the minute I went onto guiding the RA didn't work at all, guiding was lost within a few seconds.

3) Stellarium was innaccurate and each time I slewed to something easily recognisable it had 'slipped' in the view and did not remain in the middle of view

All computer control was removed at this point (except PHD) - Stellarium unplugged and reverted to using the handset. APT stopped and camera unplugged from PC. Realign carried out - Still the PHD graph was showing the RA (Blue line on the graph) climbing up as soon as calibration had been carried out. I thought that perhaps my mount had developed a fault and that the RA wasn't working - Yet it would slew happily via the handset, just not to where it should.

Final go, last night (this morning at 0200) was uninstalling PHD and reinstalling it. Uninstalling APT and NOT reinstalling it. Tried the guiding again and for 10 mins it was fine, both lines merrily bobbing about the middle line on the graph as always.

The only thing I can think of is that APT has caused some kind of configuration problem with my PC. It only started once I had downloaded and tried it for the first time. I also remember the computer crashing that night and I also used to get a big arrow cursor appear for use instead of the smaller one - As though the screen resolution had been changed.

So, it's back to the drawing board again today - I shall do a system restore and see whether I can get EOS Utility to work.

The trials and tribulations of this hobby - I don't think I'd put up with it for anything else!

[Yoddha]

Hi Sara,

I can't think up how APT installation can have such influence over Setallrium, EOS Utilities and PHD. APT uses its own copy of the Canon library which is in its folder and because of that can't interfere with EOS utilities. There is nothing common with Stallarium and PHD. The link between APT and PHD is through HTTP socket -like between your browser and any site... I suppose that you are not using connection to your mount through APT?

[Yoddha]

Thinking more about this, leads me to the thought that the root of the problem is "What caused EOS utilities to stop working before you installed APT?"

Other ideas that can help are:

Did you tried to connect the camera on different USB port?

What power source do you use? Sometimes unstable power results in very strange behaviors especially with mount control.

How long USB cables are you using? Cables should not be longer that 5m, but highly advisable is to be under 4m

Do you use USB hubs? Sometimes there is need to power the hub in order to get things working properly. For example my DSI don't work with unpowered hub.

[swag72]

Hi Ivo,

Thanks for the thoughts on this. I have decided to KISS (Keep it simple stupid) and after a few hours of installing, uninstalling, updating and goodness knows what else I have finally got EOS Utility to work - I will be using that from now on as it worked for me prior to trying out APT (EOS only stopped working after installing and trying APT). I never did try to run the scope through it either.

None of my cables are that long and I don't use a hub. I hope that by keeping it as simple as possible (Stellarium via handset and USB / serial adaptor, and EOS utility for exposures) I can get imaging again. This has been over a 12 hour learning curve about technology! I think I will definately be giving EQMOD etc a miss as well. All this automation is great when it works well.

Here's to a simple life!!!! Once again Ivo, thanks for thinking about my problem. One thinkg I did learn with APT is that my focussing is pretty OK as the FHWM never got any better than when I focussed with the B mask.

[Yoddha]

You are welcome!