It's all gone wrong - Please help!

[hayju01]

After 4 weeks waiting to try some of my new gear and some replacements it was a night of failure

I'll keep it brief as I'm a little annoyed right now but if any can help and needs more info please ask.

1 - Replacement 17ah seems to be faulty

Come in and put it on charge and no battery indicators lights are on. Yet when i take it off charge the 'Reday To Use' light comes on and when I turn one of the lights on the 'Need Recharge' also comes on.

Plus my NEQ6 was flashing after only 2 hours. I just can't believe I that unlucky to have two powertanks break on me (The other was the 7ah)

On the positive side I should be able to get this sorted with the supplier assuming they can believe one person can be that unlucky. hopefully they dont blame me!!

2 - The mount - Due to the above I am wondering if its the NEQ6 that's causing the problem.

3 - BrigthStar Off-Axis Guide - Doesn't fit!! Even though I explained to the supplier that it was going on a C9.25

** Resolved *** After some guidance and some trial and error, I found that a connector & spacer kit I had already purchased to fit the QHY8 to the scope had the necessary bits to enable me to fit the OAG

4 - QHY8 Pro - Got better images with my SPC that cost less than a 20th of this camera and it appears to MONO and not colour (this is the second time I have bought a CCD thinking it was colour and it turns out to be mono. As I dont believe they even make a mono 8 pro I am wonder if it is even the correct model!!!

5 - Both my laptop and Netbook ran out of power they were fully charged when I started

6 - This is the second time of writting this as my pc went funny and I lost the first attempt.

This hobby has given me alot over the past few months but it has also absored almost £5k it has certainly been worth it but its nights like these that doubt creeps in.......

Hope you all had a good nights seeing where ever you are.

Justin

[david o]

Ouch... I feel for you Justin.

I'm afraid the only advice I can give is to give yourself a break from this and get some sleep, if you can.

Then, later tomorrow, come back to it with fresh eyes.

Not much consolation I know. Sorry

[SlipperySquid]

Yup I'm feeling your pain mate.

I haven't had the scope out for what seems like an age and with clear skies forecast for this evening I decided to give it ago! Set all the gear up and found it really hard to find decent alignment stars with the light skies etc.

So did my best and finally got the GOTO all working and aligned. Struggled to get focus but got there in the end. Set the laptop running a 3 hour sequence on the Veil Nebula in 15 minute subs. Went inside for an hour and when I checked the subs the OIII channel was out of focus. So stopped everything and refocused, Set the thing running again and went inside.Fell asleep was woken at 3am by my son returning from a night on the tiles! Went to check on how the subs where doing....I'd left the Bahtinov mask on the scope. All images useless! I was ready to kick the scope over and set it on fire!

Some times I wish I was into knitting or something!

Matt.

[yeti monster]

Er.... tarot reading anyone???

[Essex Stargazer]

O dear

After all that time and money sounds like you could do with some luck on your side

I do hope you get it sorted out soon then hopefully you will be able to look back and have a laugh about this

Cant you do a dry practice run during the day just to see if its all working ? without viewing

Allen

[hayju01]

Thanks David good advice had I seen it sooner but kind of glad I didn't...read on

Matt, what can I say?

Er? No thanks! Yeti Monster

So having worked out the OAG problem, I took a look at the powertank and fixed that too Anyone that has similar problem with charging lights not coming on, it could be because the plug on the charging cable has one of those 'clip in pin' plugs so contact wasn't being made! fiddled with the contacts and all's good This also makes be feel more comfortable with my mount now

So all of this messing about got me round to about 3am which I knew was close to Jupiter being higher enough to clear neighboors roof, took a peak outside and sure enough there it was just below the moon and skies were clear. Of course my C9.25 and mount were all packed away but I grabbed my Konus and my netbook (which had recharged by then) and got all set up. Simple polar alignment but no Star alignment as there weren't that many out. Managed to get about an hour before the cloud rolled in and have been sifting through the footage and processing ever since.

Jupiter with Europa, Io and Ganymede.tif

As this is my first every image (and first visual too) of Jupiter I am well pleased :hello2:

Right wife is calling for a cup of tea and I need to get some sleep before grand prix.

Thanks ALL for your support.

Justin

[david o]

That's grand

I'm glad that the perseverance has paid off.

I like your Jupiter. Nice work!

[hayju01]

Thank you David much appreciated.

If any could take a look at this jpg file (saved from FITs in fact it looks 'worse' on the fits almost like 4 panes) and tell me where I might be going wrong it would be much appreciated, I appreciate that this CCD is not really for planetary imaging but I was expecting more. If I'm wrong than that would be good to know.

Kit used was - C9.25, Celestron 6.3 FR (I think), QHY8 Pro with spacer and Nebulosity.

I'm away this week (without scope ) so no rush.

Thanks,

Justin

[hayju01]

Hi All,

So after a week away at Centre Parcs and then a weekend in and out of hospital with my daughter (viral gastroentoritis), today was my 'free' time to experiment.

As had been suggested a day time 'practise' was definately in order.

So with most of the original issue resolved I was left with one major question mark

Is my QHY8 Pro really a QHY8 Pro?

So I unboxed my OTA (boxed while away as plumbers were in fitting a new bathroom) mounted it on my NEQ6 in the dinning room and installed and aligned the finder scope. easy peasy

Next on to fitting the QHY and remember which box/bag/case the cables were in but all found installed and working. Hooked it all up to my netbook and kicked off Neb 2.4.

Focused (the reath on neughbours door) while in Frame and Focus mode

Image appears to be in Black and white but may be this is just because I'm in preview mode so i continue on.

Take 5 frames and sure enough end up with 5 fit files

Now of course the challenge is to find something that will read fit files :-) PS won't as my trial of Astra Image has expired so next stop Regstax 6 open up one of the fit files and it's in black and white

OK so maybe Neb2 has a setting that saved the fit as b&w?

Nope all seems right in Neb2

Ok let see what DSS sees these pics like.........

SUCCESS!!!!!!!

So I have confirmed my QHY8 Pro is indeed a QHY8 Pro

Goes to show how much 'patience, perseverance and PRACTICE' we need to do in this fascinating hobby of ours.

Thank you all once again for your support and advice:icon_salut:

Next 'challenge' is to see how my netbook copes with guiding and imaging at the same time

Clear Skies to all,

Justin

Justin

[shaunster]

was going to say all QHY8's are colour only

Hope you can get out there and use it now. Your netbook will be fine im sure, mine was good with imaging and guiding but it didnt like me opening stellarium!

[Ant]

You have fallen into a classic trap of this hobby - you have gone from nothing to everything in such a short period of time, you haven't got the experience yet of what can go wrong and put things in place to stop that happening.

For example your not running your laptop on mains...! Thats the first lesson - everything that runs from the USB pretty much pulls power from the laptop. I have 5 USB devices on my setup - all but one is powered through the USB port.

So at least some of your problems aren't actually problems. Just things that you should have done a different way.

I'm not being condescending - or at least not intentionally, just trying to make the point that most people by the time of trying to do what your doing will have a year or more of trial and error under their belt and some of the silly things that go wrong will have been sorted one at a time and not all ganging up on you in one go

The HEQ5's and EQ6's are quite fussy with power and power leads. I run mine from a mains - 12Vdc bench supply from maplins. Never an issue with a run down battery.

A laptop will need to be run from mains, because when it gets cold the battery will be less than efficient and running the camera, gamepad, EQmod, guide camera etc will all run the battery down quickly.

Never waste clear skies putting stuff together for the first time. I'm glad your sorted with the OAG - but I always put new kit together for the first time in daylight so I can have a fiddle and work out whats going on without wasting multiple hours of clear skies!

Also another tip is to get one thing working and then move onto the next, do not try and get it all working in one go. Especially IMO important when dealing with PC's and USB ports...

Can't help with the QHY camera, never got on well with them (probably more me than the camera though), or number 6

Cheers

Ant

[hayju01]

was going to say all QHY8's are colour only

Hope you can get out there and use it now. Your netbook will be fine im sure, mine was good with imaging and guiding but it didnt like me opening stellarium!

Yup thats what had me puzzled and as I'd bought it 2nd hand from someone that had only used it one i wasn't it was a 8 but it is so that's sorted.

Cool. Yeah mine'd not pleased with Stellarium either :-)

[hayju01]

You have fallen into a classic trap of this hobby - you have gone from nothing to everything in such a short period of time, you haven't got the experience yet of what can go wrong and put things in place to stop that happening.

Cheers

Ant

You are TOTALLY right Ant, I do not have the experience yet and really I am trying run before I can walk! That's me and my impatiance :-( one of my many failings !!

Thanks for the pointers on power, as the QHY needs mains I am running an extension cable with dual sockets so will be able to power the laptop from that too.

After today i have learnt the very valuable lesson of setting up in daylight especially with new kit. Partly in my defence, not always an option with work and 4 kids about but definately something i will be doing from now on.

Thank you,

Justin

[SteveL]

Thank you David much appreciated.

If any could take a look at this jpg file (saved from FITs in fact it looks 'worse' on the fits almost like 4 panes) and tell me where I might be going wrong it would be much appreciated, I appreciate that this CCD is not really for planetary imaging but I was expecting more. If I'm wrong than that would be good to know.

Kit used was - C9.25, Celestron 6.3 FR (I think), QHY8 Pro with spacer and Nebulosity.

[ATTACH]61906[/ATTACH]

I'm away this week (without scope ) so no rush.

Thanks,

Justin

The top to bottom gradient on that image looks very much like when my QHY8 (old original version) didnt have 12V supply attached, so the TEC and fan were not working. Unsure what connections the Pro has, so unable to comment on what to look for.

[hayju01]

The top to bottom gradient on that image looks very much like when my QHY8 (old original version) didnt have 12V supply attached, so the TEC and fan were not working. Unsure what connections the Pro has, so unable to comment on what to look for.

Thanks Steve, you could be right. It was so long ago that that first image was taken i'm not sure what I had plugged in or not as the case maybe.

Today image though seems ok though so should be good to go. Although some of the lenses may need a clean :-)