Finally - some clear skies!

[daz]

Thursday 14th July - finally managed to get some clear skies while I was at home and not too knackered to open the observatory!

I checked (and tweaked) the PA and collimation of my RC, and then got to work on setting some sync points with TheSky and EQASCOM - that all went remarkably well! As an aside, I'm going to set up a little project to do some auto-mapping and syncing....

Then fired up PHD2 to create a new profile (0.67 reducer added to the image train) and run the calibration. That complete, I then did some playing with the aggressiveness and hysteris settings until I got fairly steady trendlines. It was at this point that I discovered my guide camera was not focused - and I don't mean just a little bit. What I thought was smearing due to the OAG being not quite positioned correctly, turned out to be a focus issue! 

PHD sorted, so into SGPro. Brought up the sequence for my Eastern Veil mosaic, and double-checked all the settings for auto-focus, flip, number of exposures, etc. Focused with my Bhatinov, ran the focus routine in SGP - bang on!

In TheSky, slewed the scope to the Veil, took an image, solved and synced, then slewed to the first pane in the mosaic - solved and synced that too.

Just before midnight and everything has gone smoothly, no major glitches and I'm ready to go!

 

Got up this morning to find the luminance event had completed and half of the red. Looking at the logs, it seems the meridian flip failed, but I don't know why just yet - investigative task for the weekend!

The frames are showing a slight triangular shape to the stars - probably easily fixed with a good PSF in PI, but I'll investigate this in more detail. Hoping this is just a collimation tweak needed, but Sunday looks like the next opportunity to test.

 

All in all, happy with the evenings work - all the software and hardware worked together (well, apart from the flip) - just some minor tweak to do now, hopefully!

 

[DRT]

16 minutes ago, daz said:

Thursday 14th July - finally managed to get some clear skies while I was at home and not too knackered to open the observatory!

I checked (and tweaked) the PA and collimation of my RC, and then got to work on setting some sync points with TheSky and EQASCOM - that all went remarkably well! As an aside, I'm going to set up a little project to do some auto-mapping and syncing....

Then fired up PHD2 to create a new profile (0.67 reducer added to the image train) and run the calibration. That complete, I then did some playing with the aggressiveness and hysteris settings until I got fairly steady trendlines. It was at this point that I discovered my guide camera was not focused - and I don't mean just a little bit. What I thought was smearing due to the OAG being not quite positioned correctly, turned out to be a focus issue! 

PHD sorted, so into SGPro. Brought up the sequence for my Eastern Veil mosaic, and double-checked all the settings for auto-focus, flip, number of exposures, etc. Focused with my Bhatinov, ran the focus routine in SGP - bang on!

In TheSky, slewed the scope to the Veil, took an image, solved and synced, then slewed to the first pane in the mosaic - solved and synced that too.

Just before midnight and everything has gone smoothly, no major glitches and I'm ready to go!

 

Got up this morning to find the luminance event had completed and half of the red. Looking at the logs, it seems the meridian flip failed, but I don't know why just yet - investigative task for the weekend!

The frames are showing a slight triangular shape to the stars - probably easily fixed with a good PSF in PI, but I'll investigate this in more detail. Hoping this is just a collimation tweak needed, but Sunday looks like the next opportunity to test.

 

All in all, happy with the evenings work - all the software and hardware worked together (well, apart from the flip) - just some minor tweak to do now, hopefully!

 

All sounds a bit like hard work, Daz - I had a similarly tough night - I got my Dob out and looked through the eyepiece

 

[Davey-T]

Well you got further than me Daz, I couldn't even get plate solving to work 

Dave

[Scott]

21 minutes ago, DRT said:

All sounds a bit like hard work, Daz - I had a similarly tough night - I got my Dob out and looked through the eyepiece

 

sounds good... when can we expect to see the images?

[barkis]

Great to hear you are involved with the second love of your life again Daz, after all that
work related stuff in Greece. .
 That was some speil,  all that setting up and checks had me  bamboozled. Sounds complicated for sure.
We look forward to seeing the final result on the Veil  Neb though, might even be a POTM candidate
One day that is HehHeh!!
 

[daz]

@DRT - lol! Each to our own mate, I had an enjoyable time and that's the main thing. Not sure that 'visual' thing will really catch ion though!!

@Scott - given the recent weather, about 2020 I would think!

@barkis - it reads worse than it is Ron, once you get the routine sorted, it's not too bad. 

@Davey-T - sorry to hear this Dave, sorry I can't help with your set up

[Stu]

Nice to hear you are getting some imaging time in at last Daz. Remarkable that it all went so well, given the complexity; completely beyond me