The software, it hates me it does...

[frugal]

The nasty little Hobbitty software...

First clear night in a fortnight. I got the kids to bed and set the laptop and camera up outside in the shade of the shed to capture a widefield of Orion. Hiding in the lea of the shed helps to minimise the glow from the moon.

First off, the laptop will not talk to the camera. After some fiddling I realise that the active USB extension cable is the problem. So I just use the short USB cable and hook the laptop up to the camera with a 0.5m cable. I guess that is why I bought a Toughbook, so it can sit in the damp grass and not complain.

So then I focus and frame with Backyard EOS. Tonight I am going to save the photos to the camera only. Because if I save them to the computer Backyard EOS does not have time to process one frame before it starts the next, so I end up with it processing all of the frames after I have finished the session. So I figured that I would just leave them on the camera which meant I could take more photos in the same timeframe.

So I kick off 200 10 second shots and go in for tea (well supper as it is 9pm at this point ) I come out after tea, wipe the dew off of the laptop screen and the camera lens. Reframe the shot as Orion has been gradually moving out of frame, and then kick off another 200 shots. Yes I know that 400 subs is over kill, but I am worried about clouds

All the photos taken I bring everything indoors and I pop out the SD card from the camera to copy the photos onto the processing laptop. "no files on device"... what!!!!. Put the card back in the camera. The camera can see the files. Phew. Plug the camera into the computer via the USB cable... Does not recognise the camera!!! after 5 minutes of frustration I followed Emergency Repair Procedure (IT) No.1 - I rebooted the laptop. All the files now recognised.

Copy the files over, and bring up Canon DPP to have a look at them. Hmmm... Only some have a blueish background from the moon glow, most of them are black...

Turns out that for some unknown reason the first 36 frames in each set were 10 seconds long, the remaining 164 frames in each set were only 1 second long... Needless to say the air turned blue.

I am trying to process the lot as DSS claims there might be stars there after all.

Very frustrating as BEOS was counting up to 10 for each frame, but the camera just seemed to get bored and decided to only have the shutter open for 1 of the 10 seconds...

[Leveye]

Welcome to astrophotography! What OS are you using btw?

[Astrosurf]

Sounds like some nights I've had! I only use an intervalometer. I don't trust sw! And even then I keep an eye on it to make sure the camera's taking the shots as expected. One night my intervalometer stopped taking multiple shots and I had to keep restarting it. At least I noticed it! I wouldn't have if I'd gone off and left it running. Do not trust your equipment and sw. They're out to get you!

Alexxx

[kirkster501]

Yep, the curse of software at the scope.  Been there and got the T-[removed word]. Try to get as much tested during the day as you possibly can.  For instance, you can test that EQmod/ASCOM/CdC/AstroTorilla are working inside on a cloudy day/night by setting up at the kitchen table

[kirkster501]

{removed word] = shirt??  Why was it removed?

[StuartJPP]

{removed word] = shirt??  Why was it removed?

Did you misspell it

T-shirt

T-[removed word]

[frugal]

Yep, the curse of software at the scope.  Been there and got the T-[removed word]. Try to get as much tested during the day as you possibly can.  For instance, you can test that EQmod/ASCOM/CdC/AstroTorilla are working inside on a cloudy day/night by setting up at the kitchen table

The annoying thing was that it was working. for the first 20 minutes it worked perfectly, it just stopped taking 10 second subs and started to take 1 seconds subs a third of the way through the plan. I have no idea why.

I tried stacking the whole lot over night, but the 1 second shots really bring down the light level in the whole image. I am trying to restack just the 65 10 second shots. The only problem is I thought I would try the "Auto Adaptive Weighted Average" as an experiment. It has been slowly counting up stars for an hour now as it happily tells me that it will finish calculating the final image in 3 seconds

[Pete Presland]

welcome astroimaging  another reason why i always like to spend my imaging time under the stars, rather than in the house is you can monitor whtas going on and react fairly quickly. i did once leave everything snapping away happy, not realising the ac power to the laptop was not switched on! i dont need to tell you what happened to the guiding when the battery went flat