Lodestar X2C usb cable extension/LLive questions

[arkosg]

Hello everyone,

I've been following these forums for a little while, and let me say that I have been very impressed with 

the images I've seen captured using the Lodestars and Lodestar Live software!  In fact, I've jumped 

into the fray myself, and have a recently arrived Lodestar X2C ready to try out with my alt/az Celestron 

CPC 800 HD (with f3.3 focal reducer).

I'm running a MacBook Pro with Mavericks 10.9.4, and have been looking at the software (Lodestar Live)

and the Lodestar hardware, and have a few initial questions that I'm hoping someone can answer for me....

1) has anyone used a USB extender cable with the Lodestars?  The 3m (?) cable it comes with seems av bit 

short, and I'm wondering if I can use an unpowered extender or need a hub or ... ?

2) Is there more extensive documentation for the Lodestar Live software?  I've read the Readme, but I have 

more questions about some aspects of the software (eg. Dark frames - are they automatically applied once 

you've taken them?  Can you turn dark frames on/off to see the difference?)  I love that it runs on OS X and 

seems pretty simple to get up and running with, BTW!

3) Anyone used the "official" SX IO v 1.0.5 Mac software?  Any advantages? Seems very bare bones....

Thanks in advance, and hope to post some pictures of my own soon!

Greg A

[DoctorD]

Hi Greg

I have used 2 USB 2.0 5m active cables in series to run my mount and lodestar-c from inside the house. People seem to have mixed results with USB extender cables so it's a it hit as to what actually works.

There should be a file called LodestarLive_Stacking_Notes.pdf in the distribution ZIP file which gives a more in depth explanation of how to use the software.

Dark frames are automatically applied, however I do not think there is a way to toggle them on/off.

I have used SX IO, however it does not support realtime stacking or dark frame subtraction - it's primarily a capture program.

Hope this helps.

Paul

[HiloDon]

Hi Greg,

Welcome to the Lodestar club! You have a perfect setup for near real time viewing with the Lodestar X2c. Any thing longer creates a very narrow FOV. The F6.3 reducer would be a nice addition and gives you nice range with the C8. Does the 3.3 work with the Edge? I think I have seen that asked in other forums, but never saw an answer.

I second everything DoctorD wrote. I use an unpowered 5m USB extension and it works well. I might add that there are some YouTube videos that demonstrate LL. Just google Lodestar Live and they will come up. Also, the color balance control is a little tricky with version 0.10. Paul is working on version 0.11 that will incorporate better and more automatic control of color.

Best of luck and I look forward to seeing your captures. Post any other questions you have and I'm sure someone will answer.

Don

[Martin Meredith]

Hi Greg

Welcome to the forum! I'm sure you'll have a great time with Lodestar+LodestarLive.

As Paul says, there isn't a toggle for dark frames. If you need to see the difference, you could either save the FITs of the images (which I believe don't have the dark applied) and open them in another application; or, totally within LodestarLive you could take a single dark at a low exposure (say 1s), save it, then take your proper darks, save them too, and to see the difference all you'd have to do is use the restore dark option, choosing the low exposure dark instead. I haven't tried the latter option but it ought to work...

If it is a case of convincing yourself of the need to take darks, then the simplest approach is not to use them, take some say 15-30s exposures, and see how much the non-stellar pixels bother you; then take some darks at the same exposure and you ought to see the difference immediately. With the sensitive X2C I guess many of your exposures will be 30s or less so the 5 mins it takes to assemble some darks at the start of the session is well worth it.

Any other LodestarLive questions, ask away. There are quite a few active forum members with growing experience of the software so you should get an answer quickly.

cheers

Martin

[kerrylewis]

Hello Greg

I am in a similar position to you and am just starting on the Lodestar Live trail. I am actually hoping to use a 10m active extension cable to enable me to view from inside the house. It seems to work but it's to early for me to confirm that it is not having any adverse effect.

I also found the lack of 'instructions' frustrating but is understandable given the source of the software and forum members have been very helpful in helping me to get going- in particular Martin and Don as above. 

I'm now waiting for another clear night to see if I can get my first proper image.

Kerry 

[arkosg]

Hello again everyone,
 
Thanks for the warm welcome and the good advice.  I got a chance last night to try out the X2C in my 8" CPC 800 Edge alt/az scope, 

and was able to get a short USB extension cable to work (it was at hand).  I will try with a longer one, as suggested.  There is clearly a

learning curve, but I'm encouraged by my first results.

I was going to add some pics, but I can't figure out how to upload them - am I restricted as a new member?  Or is there a trick to it...?  

 
Conditions here last night: 3rd quarter moon, urban skyglow from Nanaimo & Vancouver to the east (I'm actually stunned how much

the X2C picks up when shooting near the horizon!  Sensitive camera).  Clear, calm skies.  My view is primarily WNW through N to E;

the S sky, especially low down, is blocked by houses.  I used an f/3.3 reducer (I'm still working on the spacing of the various elements 
in my imaging train).  I screwed up taking darks, and didn't feel like removing the dewcap once I got going, so there are no darks/
flats applied.  I used short exposures (typically 15s) and played with the various stacking options, mostly sum & mean.  Focus could

be better - I don't have a focus mask, and tried LL's focus assist/eyeballing it.
 
Impressions: once I got the X2C properly situated in my imaging train, I had some nice images pretty quickly.  Colour is fun!  It was

hard to "balance" the colour, though; my feeling was that colours were undersaturated and (depending on altitude) had a red-cast

to them that I couldn't really remove well on the fly.  I tried further colour correction in iPhoto with mixed results.  I'd love advice on this!
 
The Lodestar Live software is fun to use!  Stacking works really nicely, though I had a hard time seeing the impact of mean/median 
on some subjects with my short exposures.  Colour adjustment I found difficult - couldn't "clean up" the image as much as I'd hoped 
to remove colour casts & adjust saturation.  I know Paul said he is working on this, which should be great.  

As I was slewing around looking at things last night, I found myself turning stacking on/off, resetting stuff, starting/stopping exposures,

playing withthe histogram & image adjustments, and generally doing lots of back and forth between various panes in the process.  

Perhaps it would be possible to streamline it a bit more?  It would be nice to have the exposure control buttons available all the time, 

for example, rather than have to click between panes. 
 
Thanks again, and I'm sure I'll have more questions in the near future!
 
Greg A

[arkosg]

Hi Don,

I forgot to mention - yes, the Meade 3.3 reducer works with the Edge 8", at least in my limited testing of the Lodestar X2C and a Mallincam Jr Pro/PC.  

I imagine that as long as you limit yourself to the smaller chips used in these types of cams (and avoid full frame sized chips), you can probably get 

away with using it and not getting terrible distortion; at least, in my case, the results seem acceptable for near real time viewing.

Cheers,

- Greg A

[HiloDon]

Hi Don,

I forgot to mention - yes, the Meade 3.3 reducer works with the Edge 8", at least in my limited testing of the Lodestar X2C and a Mallincam Jr Pro/PC.  

I imagine that as long as you limit yourself to the smaller chips used in these types of cams (and avoid full frame sized chips), you can probably get 

away with using it and not getting terrible distortion; at least, in my case, the results seem acceptable for near real time viewing.

Cheers,

- Greg A

Greg,

I think all these F3.3 reducers only work for small chips and then collimation needs to be spot on.

To upload images you need to go into the more reply options. There should be an attach files function. I'm not sue if you need to have a minimum number of posts.

Looking forward to seeing your results.

Don

[arkosg]

Hi everyone,

Thanks Don - the one place I *didn't* look was the reply options!

Here are my first light shots with the X2C, 8" Celestron CPC 800 HD w/ 3.3 reducer.

No darks, flats, filters, etc.  I didn't note exposure times/stacks, but most exposures 

were 15 seconds, and in some cases stacks of 3-5 either sum or mean.  Tweaked 

video settings/histogram in LL; minor colour tweaking (or attempts at it!   ) in iPhoto.

Any advice and suggestions gratefully accepted!

Cheers,

Greg A

[HiloDon]

Great images, Greg! The magenta tinge is something I get as well. I think Paul is working on a correction. I did some flats for him with a gray sheet and they were very pink. That 3.3 reducer works very well. With some of the Hicksons you could go native, but they're a little harder to find. Do you have a 6.3? It would give you a nice range of FOV.

I think the 8" SCT is the best for near real time viewing and gives the best flexibility.

Don

[arkosg]

Hi Don,

Thanks!  I'm pretty happy for a first time out with the results - I've been super impressed with the results you & others here in the group have been 

regularly posting.  It's been good inspiration to get out there and to continue to improve my process!     

I have access to a 6.3 reducer, which I will try out as well when I have a chance.  Do you plan your viewing targets at the start of the night, based

on FOV, or do you swap out reducers as necessary?  I've tended to just "set it and forget it".... 

Good to hear about the "tinge" being potentially addressed, too.

As far as workflow goes, any advice from folks about using the various video adjustment sliders?  I've got the idea of "bracketing" in the histogram,

but was struggling to figure out when and how to adjust gamma, brightness, or contrast - they all appeared to shift the histogram, as far as I could

tell in my viewing session.  Is there a particular order of adjustment, or should some of these be set and left alone and only others adjusted, or ... ?

Cheers,

- Greg A

[HiloDon]

Hi Don,

Thanks!  I'm pretty happy for a first time out with the results - I've been super impressed with the results you & others here in the group have been 

regularly posting.  It's been good inspiration to get out there and to continue to improve my process!     

I have access to a 6.3 reducer, which I will try out as well when I have a chance.  Do you plan your viewing targets at the start of the night, based

on FOV, or do you swap out reducers as necessary?  I've tended to just "set it and forget it".... 

Good to hear about the "tinge" being potentially addressed, too.

As far as workflow goes, any advice from folks about using the various video adjustment sliders?  I've got the idea of "bracketing" in the histogram,

but was struggling to figure out when and how to adjust gamma, brightness, or contrast - they all appeared to shift the histogram, as far as I could

tell in my viewing session.  Is there a particular order of adjustment, or should some of these be set and left alone and only others adjusted, or ... ?

Cheers,

- Greg A

Greg,

I don't really do much planning before I view so it just varies from night to night. Sometimes I want to search for Hicksons so I use a longer FL. Other times I just do a Tonight's Best search with Sky Safari. I usually like to try different set ups, but I don't like to change once I'm set up. I have two Lodestars now, one mono and one color, so I set up two scopes, one wide field and one narrow.

As for FOV planning, I found a great app for my iPad and iPhone called AstroAid. It's only $2.99 through Apple and it has a huge database of telescopes, imagers and objects. It actually show you what your image will look like for a given setup.

I'm still learning about LL. When doing mono, I don't use the gamma, brightness or contrast controls. I do everything with the black and white levels. I find the sum stacking the images at 10 or 15 seconds to give the best result. It's important though to use darks at the same exposure when stacking.

Color is a different story. After I get my exposure correct, I play around with the contrast to stretch the histogram, and the gamma to control the individual colors. I just recently got the color Lodestar, so I'm still experimenting. The last time viewing Orion was a big improvement, but I think Paul's next version will really help in getting the color more balanced.

Hope this helps.

Don

[Paul81]

Hi Greg!

Nice set of images, I am glad you are finding the program fun to use and getting enjoyment out of it   . It was always the aim to allow people the smallest learning curve possible to get into this branch of astronomy and hopefully enhance the observing experience. I often mix video and visual observing sessions and use video as a way of studying things in more detail, or finding things too faint to see visually. I have found video assisted observing has opened up a whole new catalogue of objects that previously were impossible using my 10" newt and my sky conditions.

I've posted some videos to help explain some of the display processing controls in another post on the forum. They are only some quick introductions but hopefully might have some assistance. Also note in my other post about loading a saved FITS image so you can have a play during daylight hours for practice. I am hoping the new algorithms in V0.11 will be more intuitive.

On the subject of darks, you should use darks as the Lodestar is uncooled so does have a reasonable noise signal, especially when trying to observe something very faint. Also very hot pixels can get mistaken for stars during the stacking alignment processing thus the accuracy of the image alignment in your stacks will suffer so you might start seeing mis-alignment artefacts when stacking. I take darks during set-up just before I start observing so it does not impact much on the session. I then 'top-up' the dark about every hour or so with 3-4 extra dark images.

Look forward to seeing your future posts!

Paul

[arkosg]

Thanks Paul!  I found LL very easy to jump into and get going with, but the new videos you posted really help me to see "why" 

you apply certain corrections, and what you are aiming for when applying them (I felt I was just kinda eyeballing things in my 

first time out, to mixed results).   Now I feel like I have a better sense of how to approach the image corrections!

I had intended to do darks, just messed up the spacing in my optical train when I first took them, and then after I'd put the dew 

shield and other things all on and got it going I just didn't go back and "correct" them.  But yes, I remember reading your note 

about how it improves the image alignment process, etc.  And honestly, it didn't take long; I just have to do it "right" next time!

Here's hoping the weather clears out again soon so I can have another go .... 

Cheers,

- Greg A