Need help with my step by step instructions please

[ianpwilliams]

I don't know about that! There's just so much to remember! That's why I had to put this list together, otherwise I'm sure I would miss something important and probably render a session completely useless.

As for the shed, we'll have to wait and see, but it's not far from my little concrete platform (if it's the one I'm thinking of), so it would be very convenient.

[ianpwilliams]

I've checked my camera, and my memory card only has room for 47 RAWs. So assuming that Darks and Flats have to be RAW too, then I would have to limit the amount of Lights I could take so that there was room for some Darks (I'm not sure I'd have the patience to take too many Darks though), and then when back inside I would have to copy the files to my PC, format the memory card, and then do the Flats all without moving the camera (with Flats being short subs I'm assuming I would want as many as possible). That is until I get around to buying a bigger memory card!

Of course, hopefully I might be able to get away with 60-second Lights without star trails (hopefully), in which case I would require less shots, which would leave more room for Darks and Bias. If I could do, say, 20 x 60-second Lights, then maybe I could do 7 Darks, and 20 Flats, without having to change the card?

It would be great if I could do the Flats while outside as well really. But I don't have an iPad. I do have a Flashlight app on my Android phone though, which has an option for a "Light Table", which shines a white light through the screen. But I suppose it may be too small being a phone.

[ianpwilliams]

Hold on, I have a laptop! Presumably at the end of my session I could hold that in front of the telescope with a piece of paper in front of the screen, and let the timer remote take the Flats for me? I'd have to go inside to bring the laptop out, but rather that than carefully trying to carry the scope and camera upstairs without moving anything.

[Davey-T]

Can you download straight to the laptop if you leave the memory card out ? my Canon has the option to shoot without memory card.

Dave

[ianpwilliams]

Possibly, although I was hoping to avoid getting the laptop involved at this stage (apart from maybe using it to provide light for flats) because it would be another thing to worry about. And if I had the laptop with me then I would be feeling like I should be using it with the various astronomy programs, which is a whole new world of pain!

[carastro]

Hold on, I have a laptop! Presumably at the end of my session I could hold that in front of the telescope with a piece of paper in front of the screen, and let the timer remote take the Flats for me? I'd have to go inside to bring the laptop out, but rather that than carefully trying to carry the scope and camera upstairs without moving anything.

An idea:

If you are going to bring the laptop into play just to do the flats, then why don't you download the subs on the SD card onto the laptop before you start the flats, then you will have an empty card to take your flats and darks.

Using a laptop would make you life so much easier, as would mains power.  Is there definitely no way to hang an outdoor cable down 2 floors and across the garden?  A camping hook up cable is suitable for outdoors and you can get them very long.

Carole 

[Tinker1947]

You may need to swap the bolts over i think there different lengths, when you get the scope pointing in the northerly position at roughly the right latitude, do a 2 star align with the handset then a Polar Align with the hand set, rinse and repeat, this should save any kneeling down squinting through the Polar scope, if you mount is not in a permanent site mark where the feet sit and make small indents so it get back to the same place each time.....I founs a Telrad very handy when using the handset to do the PA as you can see where the mount slews the aligning star to and use the correct bolts to mover it back......Good Luck, its easy after a couple of try's.....

Seems i skipped a couple of pages, hope its all been sorted...

[ianpwilliams]

An idea:

If you are going to bring the laptop into play just to do the flats, then why don't you download the subs on the SD card onto the laptop before you start the flats, then you will have an empty card to take your flats and darks.

Using a laptop would make you life so much easier, as would mains power. Is there definitely no way to hang an outdoor cable down 2 floors and across the garden? A camping hook up cable is suitable for outdoors and you can get them very long.

Carole

Yeah that could be worth doing, thanks. As for the power, I'll wait to hear about the shed first, because power in there would be better.

[glowingturnip]

use your laptop, use APT and capture straight onto the hard drive.  Then use the laptop screen for your flats.  Solves several problems.

By the way, your darks don't strictly speaking need to be done in the same session as your lights - so long as they are the same ISO, same exposure time and same temperature as the lights then you can use them, so maybe on a night you're not imaging, just hide the camera somewhere dark in the garden shooting darks.

Bias you can do any time, just shortest exposure possible, same ISO as the lights, and somewhere dark.  I do mine in a cupboard.

So flats are the only ones you need to do at the same time, and before moving the camera.

[D4N]

I thought you could do flats any time provided you don't change anything in the imaging train? For example I bring my scope in with the camera still attached.

TSED70Q, iOptron Smart EQ pro, ASI-120MM, Finepix S5 pro.

[carastro]

I thought you could do flats any time provided you don't change anything in the imaging train? For example I bring my scope in with the camera still attached. 

You can, but Ian seemed to think bringing the scope inside intact with camera would be problematic.

use your laptop, use APT and capture straight onto the hard drive.

That would be the most ideal, but Ian doesn't have power outside, and it all depends on how long his laptop would last on battery.  

Carole 

[ianpwilliams]

My laptop battery is actually pretty good ad it happens. So maybe I could move the files from the SD card to the laptop, and then use the laptop as a light source for flats. Or if it doesn't have an SD card reader (I need to check), then I could take the SD card up to my flat, empty it onto the PC, then come back down with the empty SD card and laptop for flats.

Regarding dew, at the moment I just have a bit of a camping mat for a shield, which is also fairly short. And I fancy having another crack at M31 tonight,'but it'll be overhead like the other night. Will this cause a problem do you think?

[ianpwilliams]

Also someone said that Darks aren't really necessary if the subs are under 2 minutes. Is that right? It would be great if there was no point in me doing them if I'm doing 60-second subs.

Speaking of which, I had 9 star-trail rejects from my 30 30-second subs. Does that not bode well for trying 60-second subs do you think?

[glowingturnip]

Also someone said that Darks aren't really necessary if the subs are under 2 minutes. Is that right? It would be great if there was no point in me doing them if I'm doing 60-second subs.

Speaking of which, I had 9 star-trail rejects from my 30 30-second subs. Does that not bode well for trying 60-second subs do you think?

try some darks, see if they help.  You won't have much noise build-up in 30 or 60s subs, but there will still be some.  Also, if you find that the darks have the same banding along the bottom as your M31 lights then that'll be a good thing because the banding will get removed when you stack.  (I'm not sure what causes that banding btw)

Try some 60s subs, see how much trailing you do get.

[carastro]

If your laptop battery is good, then I'd use that for the entire session and forget about using the SD card.  It makes life so much easier all round, you can do focus on live view.  If you're worried about damp, put your laptop inside a cardboard box.

Carole 

[ianpwilliams]

You may need to swap the bolts over i think there different lengths, when you get the scope pointing in the northerly position at roughly the right latitude, do a 2 star align with the handset then a Polar Align with the hand set, rinse and repeat, this should save any kneeling down squinting through the Polar scope, if you mount is not in a permanent site mark where the feet sit and make small indents so it get back to the same place each time.....I founs a Telrad very handy when using the handset to do the PA as you can see where the mount slews the aligning star to and use the correct bolts to mover it back......Good Luck, its easy after a couple of try's.....

Seems i skipped a couple of pages, hope its all been sorted...

Another stupid question from me - when running the 2-star and 3-star alignment processes, am I supposed to be using the SynScan handset to centre each star in the finderscope crosshairs, or am I supposed to be adjusting the Alt Az bolts like when I centre Polaris?

[carastro]

You use the bolts to adjust for polar alignment and the synscan for doing a pre-session star alignment so the mount knows exactly where you are pointing.  

Carole 

[ianpwilliams]

So I adjust the bolts when getting Polaris in the crosshairs, circle etc, and then when running the SynScan alignment utilities I centre each alignment star using the handset? I don't touch the bolts at all once I have the small circle in the right place and Polaris inside it?

[ianpwilliams]

If your laptop battery is good, then I'd use that for the entire session and forget about using the SD card. It makes life so much easier all round, you can do focus on live view. If you're worried about damp, put your laptop inside a cardboard box.

Carole

How much work is involved in getting the laptop and camera working together in regards to storing shots and using live view on the laptop?

[carastro]

So I adjust the bolts when getting Polaris in the crosshairs, circle etc, and then when running the SynScan alignment utilities I centre each alignment star using the handset? I don't touch the bolts at all once I have the small circle in the right place and Polaris inside it? 

Correct

How much work is involved in getting the laptop and camera working together in regards to storing shots and using live view on the laptop? 

Not very difficult at all.  Do you have the Canon Utilities disc that should have come with the camera.  This has the drivers for the camera, and you should also have a camera to laptop USB cable as well, although in practice this requries a USB extension cable as it is too short for imaging purposes.  

Get that installed and you can use the Canon utility software for capture initially (described on my "How to image with a DSLR" page of my website).  Make sure you install Digital Photo professional as well (on same disc) as this allows you to view RAW files after they have been downloaded.  You just need to select a folder in Canon Utility that you want to download the files into.  

There are better capture softwares than this such as APT and BYEOS but these need a bit more "getting your head around" whereas Canon Utility is really simple and will get you started.

Carole 

[ianpwilliams]

Ok thanks. I did install the Canon Photo program (whatever it's called) and all the other software onto my PC in order to view RAWs, so I'll install it all onto the laptop as well.

[ianpwilliams]

Right, time for another update!

I had my second attempt at M31 last night, and I have to say it went brilliantly! For the first time I actually felt like I knew what I was doing! And I was amazed that I also found the time to do Flats, Darks, and Bias all in the one session (overall session time about 2.5 hours)!

I was amazed that I managed to get up to 90-second subs unguided too, and with no rejects. I started with a 30-second test shot and checked for star trails, and I was very happy to find none, so I tried a 60-second shot, and then a 90-second shot. For all I know I could have gone even further, but I stopped at 90 because I didn’t want to push my luck, and because I knew I wanted to take a lots of shots, and 90 seconds adds up quickly. In the end I did 20 shots, so that was half and hour. Both the Tracer and camera battery did brilliantly, giving me no worries at all (I also have a spare camera battery now).

Then while the lights were shooting away I went upstairs and got my laptop (and made a nice hot cup of tea to warm up!), and then did 15 flats with the laptop and a piece of paper over the scope after taking a test shot and checking the histogram. Then I thought what the hell, and did 10 Bias shots, and then started packing everything up while taking 10 darks.

I’ve looked at the Lights, and every single one looks great to me, so assuming the Bias/Darks/Flats are good too, I’m really hoping that maybe this could be a big improvement over the first attempt.

However, the were various issues, questions etc that came up, unsurprisingly, if anyone can help.

When checking the histogram (for ISO levels, Flats etc), the peaks were always off the scale (although they were in the right place left to right based on comments from here). Is that how they are supposed to be?

Someone mentioned that Mel Maz error should be “less than 30 seconds” have 2-star alignment. SynScan comes up with two sets of numbers - do I add them together to calculate the total?

Also, the mount kept resetting itself again, but I have secured the power supply at cigar plug stage, so I don’t know what’s happening there. The handset was hanging down into my toolbox, so maybe a button was pressed? I had polar aligned already, so presumably it shouldn’t have caused a problem as long as I started from home before using GOTO? But then I suppose the alignment routines would be pointless if it reset?

When it came to 2-star alignment (which I did a few times), the stars in the West were spot on (almost no correction required in fact), giving a low Mal Mez error, but stars in the East were way out, giving a high Mal Mez error. So I went back to the stars in the West, in the hope that it might help more.

Also, M31 was some way out after slewing to it using GOTO, right in top right corner. Presumably this was related to my previous issues. Like las time I couldn’t see it in finderscope or Live View (too dim, or maybe bad eyes), so I had to manually slew very delicately and take short high-ISO test shots until it was centred.

However, despite the above issues, I’m really happy with my Lights. So it’s a bit confusing, but there we go!

So now I need to try and process this new batch! Unfortunately my software and processing power is limited as you know, so we’ll see what happens. I’ll have a quick go at it myself and see if I can produce anything good, but if not then I may be looking for volunteers to process my TIFF again in my other thread (which I’m sure someone would be happy to have a crack at). I might try processing it in the StarTools demo first (assuming it doesn’t crash).

I’ve also updated my step-by-step guide again for anyone who wants it.

One thing I will say though, is that I am totally hooked now, big time. That was such as amazing session. And all I’ve done is the moon and M31 so far, there’s a whole universe left! It’s a pretty amazing feeling to have any photo of space at all, and it’s so much fun seeing a weather forecast for clear skies, and then using Stellarium to browse the skies for my next target! I’m thinking a star cluster would be nice...Pleiades maybe?
 

HEQ5 Step By Step Imaging Setup Guide.doc

[carastro]

Sounds like you had a good session.   

When checking the histogram (for ISO levels, Flats etc), the peaks were always off the scale (although they were in the right place left to right based on comments from here). Is that how they are supposed to be?

 I do hope your flats will be useable, how did you acquire them?  Did you use the laptop screen and if so how did you dull that down?  If you overexpose them they won't be any use.  

If you got M31 in the top right hand corner you did well, I've had times in the past when I missed the object altogether and had a right old time trying to find it.  So long as you have found and centred the alignment stars during the alignment procedure you should be OK.  Sounds like your polar alignment was pretty good if you managed to do 90secs with no trailing.

Looking forward to the processed M31, where will you post it in a separate thread, if so can you link it here.

Carole 

[ianpwilliams]

I held my laptop up to the scope, with A4 paper in between. It seemed fairly dull to me.

[ianpwilliams]

For anyone who has not been following my other thread, here is the TIFF of my first M31 attempt (reject star trails mistakenly included by me), kindly processed by AG:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xmlcmx8pt5thn9d/Processed%20M31%20Including%20Star%20Trail%20Subs.png?dl=0