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My tutorial for installing, setting up and using AstroTortilla


Gib007

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Hi again

Actually, your fov calculation is wrong - for a explorer 200 and a 1000d, it should be 1.27 x 0.85, so 20% larger should be 1.27 x 1.2 -> 1.83 deg, say 1.9 deg. 20% smaller should be 0.85 x .8 -> 0.68 deg so you need to use those values to determine which index files you need. Then you just need to put 1.9 into scale maximum.

I suddenly realised your calcs were wrong when I was looking at my own for a 150pds and 1100d... Sorry, wasn't thinking before, d'uh.

Louise

Oops! Sorry just realised you have a coma corrector - if that's a reducer also, you'll have to multiply the values to allow for that.

Edited by Thalestris24
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Thank you very much Louise I will give those setting a try tonight and let you know if I have any success  :smiley:

Hi again

Can you confirm if you have reducing coma corrector? If it's a SW 0.9 one then your fov will then be 1.41 x 0.94. So 20% bigger will be  1.41 x 1.2 -> 1.69, say 1.7 and 20% smaller will be 0.94 x .8 -> 0.75. So those numbers will determine the index files you need and you can put 1.7 into scale maximum. Hope that works now!

Phew! :)

Louise

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im outside now with the first setting not working so I guess I need to start over again the coma corrector is the 0.9 one yes. Clouding over now, rats never mind I will try those setting with correct index files and see how we go, thank you for helping me on this one, will let you know if I have success later on. Cheers.

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Ok I thought I had it sussed but after I got myself a canon 1000D and a coma corrector astrotortilla just will not play ball so could do with some help to iron out what is going wrong.

So some details.

I have sky watcher 200p and I am using a  Modded Canon 1000D fitted with a sky watcher coma corrector for my imaging. I use Backyard eos prof edition for the camera and eqmod to control my HEQ5 mount.

I followed the instruction in your tutorial again as best as I could and ended up with the following.

my F ratio is f4.5 focal length is 900mm and field of view is 1.41x 0.94 resolution is 1.19/pixel according to the sky at night converter chart.

So armed with that info I worked out my narrowest field of view was 0.94 x 20% = 0.188 x 60 =11.28 arcmin and for the widest 1.41 x 20% = 0.282 x 60 =16.92 arcmin

I then downloaded index files 4205 which covered 11-16 arcmin and index file 4218 which covered 16.7-23.3 hoping that was correct because I am dyslexic and maths is not my strong point at all. :sad:

With all that done my setting for astrotortilla where like this

attachicon.gifastrotortilla.JPG

After doing all that still now joy it finds about 106 files then tries to solve and fails. Very puzzled by this as it worked great with my canon 350d wondering if its the setting on my canon 1000d to blame but any suggestions would be very gratefully received as I loved using astrotortilla before.

Cheers...

your scale min and max don't look at all right to me.

for my 10" f4.8 (1200mm) these are my settings and i get 100% solves

bd1f4c31-f3ef-4308-87bb-5dd15df29f29_zps

when installing i selected indexes 4204 and 4210 btw 

Edited by Dave_D
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Yes they were incorrect Dave but after changing them to 0 for the min and 1.7 for the max it seems to be working ok again, its a great bit of kit but could do with being a bit more user freindly on the interface front dont you think? Any way so long as it solves now thats ok with me too scared to touch it again now lol :grin:

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  • 3 months later...

Just been trying out Astrotortilla for solving deep sky images from a Pentax K5 DSLR and a Pentax DA300 telephoto prime.

I'm going to use this for tracked deep sky astro imaging work, on a motorised EQ5 driven from CdC and AstroEQ.

This camera and lens combo has quite a wide field of view (4.5 x 3.0 degrees) and having read the tutorial, read this thread, and tried almost every setting under the sun with the 4200 series astrometry files, nothing was working.

Then I spotted the note on the Astrotortilla install about using the Tycho2 (4100 series) Astrometry files for FOV > 3 degrees, so thought I would give these a try.

Works perfectly now, and I have tried it with 9 sample files which I had previously solved using Astrobin, the field centre RA and DEC coordinates agree perfectly with what AT is now saying.

Most images solve in less than 1 minute.

Just thought I'd post this in case it is of use to any others.

Paul

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  • 1 month later...

Hi all

Have tried to move in the AT world of solving and have had a few issues.

My main one is how do you have AT and Stellarium connected to control the mount at the same time?  I tried last night in teh not so warm outdoors and could only connect either AT or Stellarium.  I had to bring up Stell, slew to a target, close that, open AT, connect, then try and plate solve.  Is htis right or have I missed something?

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Louise

Yeah, have teh ASCOM platform installed, but think I may ahve to update that too.

Have pretty much all you have going on there with the exception of Stellarium Scope and APT.  Don't use APT as my imaging is done with BYN (which has now gone to full release too).

Think my issues may be with not using Stellarium Scope.

Am guessing you have this running and then set the Telescope Control module in Stellarium to 'Other program' instead of Serial and then that should resolve my problem

Cheers

Paul

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Hiya

Honestly, I can't remember! I think it was straightforward to get going. Selected Ascom.Celestron.Telescope. Use JNOW. You have to let it update Stellarium configuration. Obviously, in Stellarium itself, you have to tell it that telescope control is external.

Hth

Louise

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Hiya

One of the tricks of using AT is to optimise the index files. You clearly don't need all of them. You can use the Log viewer (Tools menu) to see which ones you are using. I believe this can vary somewhat with different parts of the sky. Once you've deduced which ones you need you can put the rest in a separate folder. It will then solve quicker :) Sometimes you have to adjust exposure and the --sigma value according to sky conditions. For me, exposure can vary from 2 to 6s with a dslr. I start sigma at 30 e.g. --sigma 30 --no-plots -N none -r --objs 75 -c 0.02 , but if it seems to find more stars than expected and doesn't solve ie, picks up noise, I increase sigma to 70 or even 100 and increase exposure. But I live in a light-polluted city so your mileage will be different.

Happy plate solving!

Louise

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Result......

Downloaded Stellarium Scope and also updated ASCOM platform.

Ran SS and left everything as default and followed on screen prompts to delete existing .ini files and then re-ran Stellarium.

When back into SS, set it up for Celestron and connected fine.  Updated the Stellarium settings and then launched Stellarium.  Did a slew and away goes the mount.

Now the big test......started AT and said 'Connect to my mount'.  Low and behold it did.  Back to Stellarium and issue another goto this time way over the other side of the sky and when it starts moving, back to AT to see that it has updated the target and shows 'Slewing' and current mount positions.

Am a very happy bunny and also even happier that I did my de-bugging the warmth of  my 'Geek Room' as Mrs S calls the 3rd bedroom that has been given over to me in new house.

Think I may have also solved my guiding issue, but not yet been able to test it out in anger.

Whne i was de-bugging i connected my D7100 via the USB extension cable that I had the QHY connected to yesterday.  Is a 10m jobbie, but has active repeater in.  When I told AT to solve it took an age for the command to get to the camera, so reckon the cable may be causing a few delays which the QHY does not like.

Will be getting a plain USB extension as can put laptop closer to mount and see if that makes a difference.

Now just need to get out and all should be good.

Cheers

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Hi again

Well done for making progress! I think AT converts raw to jpg before solving which takes time. With APT and Canon 1100d I have the camera set to download raw + jpg. Not sure if you can do that with Nikon/BYN? As mentioned before, you can monitor what AT is doing by selecting log viewer.

Louise

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Louise,

Yeah, you can set BYN to take RAW+JPG.  May do that for initial aligns and then change back (if I remember) to RAW only for imaging.

Not sure it is the conversion though.  Watching the progress bar at the bottom it went through the caputuring image and had green bar while it went through the time for the image capture but it took and age for the actual camera to activate and grab the image.  Must have been a good 20 - 30 secs after it had said it had finished exposing that the shutter activated.  When I was out previos had camera connected straight to USB port, not using the active cable and shutter went while the exposure bar was progressing, which was what made me think the cable was causing some serious delays.

Have powered USB hub on order from Amazon so will be using that and single cable back from now on.  All my peripherals will be coming off the hub.  Only three items at present (guidecam, USB>Serial Convertor and D7100)

Paul

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Yeah. Did notice a bit of a performance hit on my very old laptop. Also had some issues of it not wanting to solve.

Think this may be down to fov settings. Need to go back over the instructions again and get it nailed down. Will plug my details into fov calculator as the d7100 is not listed on there.

Sent from my SM-N910F using Tapatalk

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Right.....

Have done a bit more work this evening to try and get ny install of AT as good as possible.  From what I can gather the specs for my D7100 are as follows

Full Frame

Image size = 6000 x 4000

Pixel Size = 3.9

FOV = 1.68 degrees x 1.12 degrees

Crop Mode

Image size = 4928 x 3262

Pixel Size = 3.9

FOV = 1.38 degrees x 0.91 degrees

This then gives me the following for the config

Largest FOV = 1.68 degrees

20% of smallest = 10.92 arcmins (0.182 degrees)

My plan is to re-install AT on the laptop and go through and select library files based on these numbers.

Also, from what I can gather my custom line will read something like ' --sigma 60 -- no-plots -N none -H 1.68 -L 0.182 -r --objs 100'

Will also reduce search radius down to 15 degrees too.

Does this all look and seem right?

Louise - noticed you have a ' -c 0.02' in your custom line.  What is this for?  Am I missing something vital not having it in there?

Will also be setting exposure time for between 4 and 6 secs, depending on viewing conditions.  Like Louise, am in a heavy light polluted area down here in Guzz.

This will hopefully be the final step as have my guiding sorted now.  Was all down to PHD2 having a very small calibration step.  Upped it to 3000 and it calibrates just fine now.

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Another quick on that follows on from the last post.....just going through the setup for AT and the INDEX files, which ones would you install from these options based on the numbers I have put up above

Narrowest

INDEX 4204, 1.2 Gb, 8 - 11 arcmin or INDEX 4205, 628 Mb, 11-16 arc min

Widest

INDEX 4211, 7.7 Mb, 1.42 - 2 degrees or INDEX 4212, 4.0 Mb, 2 - 2.83 degrees

My thinking is to go with 4204 and 4212 as this covers all my FOVs there and AT will download what is in between too so that will have me covered...right?

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Hi

By my calcs you need indexes 4209, 4210, 4211, and maybe 4212 based on 1.68 x 1.12 (or 1.34 x 0.89). That's a whopping sensor you have - but tiny pixels! The narrowest fov I calculated was 0.89 deg. Taking 80% of that gives 0.712 deg = 42.72' which falls within index 4209. You don't want to take 20% of it! I have to admit my calcs were based on an f4 scope rather than f3.9 but should still be ok. 

You don't actually need the -H and -L params in the config line. --objs can be 50. AT sorts the brightest stars in order and can solve on much less than the first 50. The -c parameter allows for pixels to be slightly elongated - it's optional.

AT does like images to be fairly well focused.

If I recall, AT allows you to 'reinstall' in order to add extra index files. I imagine you'll be imaging at 4800 x 3200? 24MP images sound unwieldy to me - and would only be 1.1"/pixel !! Edit: actually still the same pixel scale for the smaller image size...

Exposure times and the --sigma value vary according to conditions. The authors of AT recommend keeping the exposure time as short as possible though occasionally I use 6secs - but only if I have to!

Good luck

Louise

Edited by Thalestris24
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