Astro tortilla

[iapa]

1 hour ago, geordie85 said:

Oh yeah it was kirkster. 

Apologies 

NP

PS, there is one thing 100% guaranteed in this hobby: when the skies are clear, there is no wind, not even a hint of moisture in the air, it's a new moon, no light pollution or other lightning issues, your tech will fail.

I have spent two days making sure that everything connects, plate solving works - using images takes with the same camera /ota etc, that cameras are in focus, disk space is plentiful, batteries fully charged and/or mains adapters are working, guiding is working - even if limited to 20-30 min gaps in the cloud.

Covered it all up, next day, cover off and....... something went wrong that took hours to sort.

There are no walls in my house without dents in them - and they are shuttered concrete not he ground floor - including internal walls!!! My thick skull is still harder ;0

 

But......once in a life time, well it certainly feels that way, and ..... you get that image. Then all of a sudden it has been worth every second, and££££ in psychotherapy

[geordie85]

2 hours ago, iapa said:

 

But......once in a life time, well it certainly feels that way, and ..... you get that image. Then all of a sudden it has been worth every second, and££££ in psychotherapy

And kit. 

I've got everything working fine now as long as I shut down stellarium after slewing.

I don't want to jinx it but tonight is going suprisingly well barring a couple of hiccups. I've never been happier that the weather forecast is wrong. Predicted cloudy all night but so far I've managed 3 hours of decent imaging time. 

[SonnyE]

Thank You Gordie and iapa! I'll take that and run with it.

I think it would be nice to jump over my current alignment duties. And especially to have a chosen target centered automatically.

I spent some times centering up, when I should have been imaging.

But, of course, I got back my powered USB hub today, checked it all out, and some outrageous Lightening and Hail storms blew up around 19:00 Hrs. We have a possibility of favorable skies here tomorrow night.

[iapa]

9 hours ago, SonnyE said:

Thank You Gordie and iapa! I'll take that and run with it.

I think it would be nice to jump over my current alignment duties. And especially to have a chosen target centered automatically.

I spent some times centering up, when I should have been imaging.

But, of course, I got back my powered USB hub today, checked it all out, and some outrageous Lightening and Hail storms blew up around 19:00 Hrs. We have a possibility of favorable skies here tomorrow night.

Tonight I have a 2hr predicted clear window.

Bode's Nebulae beckons - fingers x'ed for 2 good hours.

I will try to document all steps and settings for Stellarium and Astrotortilla along with versions used.

Kit, and IT (h/w and s/w)

• Celestron AVX
• PoleMaster
• StarSense
• Canon 600D (modded)
• Touptek Colour as guide cam
• Orion 50mm guidescope
• Equinox ED80
• MacMini Server (mid 2013)
• Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (bootcamp)
• Stellarium 0.15.?
• AstroTortilla
• BackYardEOS
• StellariumScope
• PoleMaster s/w
• 4 x active USB abled (BlueRigger 10m)
• 2 x Maplin 12v PSU
• PHD 2.6.3

Action plan, I'll stick timings in here later

• put the ED80 on the AVX mount (image and guide cameras were left attached) and I've left the mount setup outside. Had 8 or 9 some acceptable 240 ISO 800 lights on Tuesday.
• Recheck balance
• check PA
• power on mount
• wake from hibernate
• slew to a couple of stars to check alignment
• redo alignment if necessary (starsense auto align)
• - stellarium scope, connect Ascom scope - reconfirm location and OTA details
• - start stellarium
• - check target matches the mount
• - Ctrl-1 to slew stellarium targe to mount
• - start backyardESO
• - start Astrotortilla
• - connect camera (backyard EOS) and telescope
• - plate solve to target.
• - if it worked, celebratory drink
• - return to mount controller and confirm low and high power centering completed
• - rerun alignment (thissi the Starsense Calibration step)
• - still with HC pick a target (Dubhe is god as it's nor far from M81/82)
• - into Stellarium, select Dubhe, slew, platesolve.
• Set up done. - if it worked, celebratory drink
• In stellarium slew to M81, there is a target between M81/M82, SAO15014 I think, slew to thate.
• Backyard EOS
• ISO6400, 5sec exposure
• preview
• should see both nebulae
• celebratory drink
• Mirror - 10s, ISO 800, Exposure 240s
• preview
• - if it worked, celebratory drink

Phew, and I've not even got to guiding yet

 

[John78]

Stellarium and astrotortilla - well stellarium and eqmod for that fact just don't play nicely together - you'll have much less hassle and far more imaging if you just dump it and go with CdC - I understand its not as pretty, but functionaily its 1000% better integrated to the rest of the toolset you are using and a much better sky map when looking for objects and framing.

With CdC/EQmod/AT I can point my telescope in any direction in the sky and it 3x 10 second solves it will be perfectly centred on target, and the next target slewed to either 1 or 2 solves.  I never successfully made Stellarium point at my target without getting it in a finder scope first.

 

Failing that if you haven't paid for BYEOS then try APT, because you are using a Canon camera the APT has a platesolving tool built in and works fine and already knows all the relevant info about your camera so the setup is a breeze - then you just need CdC, EQmod and APT.

[John78]

Oh my other top tip is - if you cant get AT solving upload your data to astrometry and have it solve it - if it can solve it, your computer can to - you just have the settings wrong.  If it can't you're probably out of focus.

 

http://nova.astrometry.net/upload

 

[Thalestris24]

6 hours ago, John78 said:

Stellarium and astrotortilla - well stellarium and eqmod for that fact just don't play nicely together - you'll have much less hassle and far more imaging if you just dump it and go with CdC - I understand its not as pretty, but functionaily its 1000% better integrated to the rest of the toolset you are using and a much better sky map when looking for objects and framing.

With CdC/EQmod/AT I can point my telescope in any direction in the sky and it 3x 10 second solves it will be perfectly centred on target, and the next target slewed to either 1 or 2 solves.  I never successfully made Stellarium point at my target without getting it in a finder scope first.

 

Failing that if you haven't paid for BYEOS then try APT, because you are using a Canon camera the APT has a platesolving tool built in and works fine and already knows all the relevant info about your camera so the setup is a breeze - then you just need CdC, EQmod and APT.

Hmm... I've never had any problems with Stellarium (+Stellariumscope) with (heq5) or without (avx) eqmod. Astrotortilla works ok with both mounts too

Louise

[John78]

12 hours ago, Thalestris24 said:

Hmm... I've never had any problems with Stellarium (+Stellariumscope) with (heq5) or without (avx) eqmod. Astrotortilla works ok with both mounts too

Louise

Weird software is.  I tried for about a month and could never get it working properly, or at all really - I switched to CdC and it worked straight out of the box.

[Thalestris24]

4 hours ago, John78 said:

Weird software is.  I tried for about a month and could never get it working properly, or at all really - I switched to CdC and it worked straight out of the box.

Did you have StellariumScope as well? When I first started I couldn't get Stellarium to work with a mount either but found that StellariumScope was the key

Louise

[John78]

On 3/24/2017 at 13:34, Thalestris24 said:

Did you have StellariumScope as well? When I first started I couldn't get Stellarium to work with a mount either but found that StellariumScope was the key

Louise

Yeah, I was using SS also - I think there is some black magic in the way you have to launch the applications to get it all working together, but with CdC I just launch, click connect and its ready for the clouds to roll in!

[geoflewis]

On 15/03/2017 at 21:55, geordie85 said:

Hi

I'm having trouble and getting really frustrated. First night in months it's clear and Astrotortilla keeps freezing on me. I've recently updated stellarium and I'm wondering if that could be the problem. 

I'm busy reinstalling Astrotortilla now. Any other ideas?

Have you tried using AT to solve images on your laptop without connecting to anything, i.e. no mount, no planetarium, etc.? I use AT all the time for the past 4 years, but I use CdC not Stellarium to control my mount. That said, sometimes I have USB comms issues with CdC (at least that is what seems to be the culprit), where my connections drop out with AT freezing, at which point I have to reboot, which can be very frustrating.

I have several different imaging configurations so I set up different config files during the day using uncropped (this is important to ensure the correct image scale) images from each scope/camera configuration. First I'd solve them on line using astronomy.net, then use the image scale results to set the scalemin and scalemax parameters in AT, with scale refinement set to 0.1, so when the image is solved by AT the scalemin & scalemax values get updated with the correct, accurate parameters for the image (and hence scope/camera configuration). I save each of the 'solved' AT settings as a unique config file for each imaging configuration, e.g. C14+QSI583, TSAPO100+CanonT3i, etc.

By working through the AT settings during the daytime I'm not losing valuable dark sky time trying to fix things at the scope. Once you are satisfied that AT will solve your local images, then try hooking up Stellariumscope, then your mount, etc., to see when/if and what causes AT to freeze. Good luck

Regards, Geof