Soul Destroying - A night in the life

[Filroden]

Well, having packed my scope and camera up for the summer, I finally dusted it down. I've had two clear nights since the start of September, one an almost new moon and one an almost full. Both nights reminded me that this hobby demands lots of practice, trials and errors!

Both nights I lost over 2 hours or more setting up and making mistake after mistake, or not quite remembering what I should be doing in what order. Night 1 started well - got the new mount ASPA polar aligned and then fired up PHD2 to drift align. I could not get it to work for love nor money. No matter how I adjust the alt-az all that happened was the trace went off the screen in an almost perpendicular manner. In the end I gave up and made do with a second ASPA alignment. Then I could not get guiding to work from within SGPro. I thought I was getting all sorts of mount conflicts between PHD2 and SGPro until I realised I had to leave PHD2 alone and just let SGPro control it.

I only achieved 6 x 240s images of the NA and Pelican in Ha and even over those 24 mins I noticed a small amount of field rotation! This is very much a work in progress but for all the frustrations of the night I was pleased I even got an image.

Second night: surely I can learn from the first night and make improvements? I thought I'd be smart and try our SharpCap's PA tool. It's BRILLIANT!!! So much quicker than drift aligning using PHD2. I think PHD2 is getting a similar tool in its latest Dev build but SharpCap's has more features and is well tested. I'd highly recommend it.

Then everything else went wrong. First the autofocuser stopped working - it would push out the focus in jerky steps but would not draw it back in - so I reverted to manually focusing. Then the mount would not track. It seems SGPro leaves it in park until you start a sequence so by the time you're set up you have to re-centre the image again! I still can't figure out what I've done wrong in the settings as it never behaved like this before. And then the mount would slew in the most frightening ways with the counterweight way too high. I had to reset the mount a few times to stop that little quirk.

The the first subs I took were completely bugged. It was like looking at a split screen with the image made up of two halves with a perfectly clean divide between them, both just noise but one half much more exposed than the other (and both halves showed the same satellite trail) - very odd. A few reboots of camera/SGPro later and it seemed to resolve - maybe a loose USB cable or a conflict in drivers.

So, again, after hours of frustration, I managed 15 x 240s of the Soul Nebula. This time my processing failed me, and anything I did made the image worse and worse. So I've got a minimally processed image which is way too noisy compared to similarly exposed images I've taken. The image is offset: by the time I got a good first exposure I couldn't bring myself to throw it away and re-centre the nebula! And I also either have some amp glow in the upper left that didn't calibrate out, or the remnant of gradient from the moon which would have been in that direction.

I probably should have just cropped it but I figure it's actually about right to create a 2x2 mosaic covering the Heart. Of the two, I prefer the inverted image as it hides the noise a little better  

So today I fixed the autofocuser. I'd feared I'd somehow broken it but it seems just to have worked a few screws loose (like its owner) and now it's fully operational (unlike its owner).

So, rather than soul destroyed I've probably done a little soul searching  Hopefully night 3 will be the one where it all comes together (so sometime in December at this rate).

[Nigel G]

Despite your troubles Ken they are great images, very fine detail.

I particularly like the Soul nebula, a very crisp image.

Well done.

So looking forward to getting a new camera but fund raising has taken a step backwards atm.

Nige.

[Allinthehead]

Oops. Tough few nights. Had similar issues recently when windows updated and changed drivers which meant i couldn't connect to my mount or camera. Then it tried to do another update and restart the computer right in the middle of a sequence. 

Always difficult to get back in the swing of things after a break but at least you managed something. 

[Filroden]

5 minutes ago, Allinthehead said:

Tough few nights. Had similar issues recently when windows updated and changed drivers which meant i couldn't connect to my mount or camera. Then it tried to do another update and restart the computer right in the middle of a sequence. 

It's like this hobby is designed to throw us one issue or another every session just to keep us on our toes (or in my case, on my knees scrambling about with connectors).

[Filroden]

9 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

So looking forward to getting a new camera but fund raising has taken a step backwards atm.

Sorry to hear that. It's worth waiting for and you never know...there may be more new models out by the time you're ready to buy

[Tommohawk]

Nice looking images despite the glitches. You wouldnt want it too easy, would you?

One problem I had recently which caused some buggy behaviour, not sure if it relates to your problem:  I connected the ASI1600MM for imaging , and when i subsequently hooked up PHD2 - which has the default profile set to use the ASI290MM for guiding - PHD2 decided to use the ASI1600 for guiding instead. This gave me some really wierd results til I worked out the problem. Maybe yours was something else, but worth watching out for.

[tomato]

Total respect to persevere and achieve results like these after the gremlins set in.

After that much hassle I usually switch it all off and get the bins out.

[Filroden]

3 hours ago, tomato said:

After that much hassle I usually switch it all off and get the bins out.

I was close to doing just that but I wanted data to play with so badly! However, I did end both nights early because of the issues. Had everything been running smoothly I’d have probably got a couple more hours of data

[Rodd]

Nice images all.  I have come to the conclusion that one must embrace the gremlins, lest one ends up in the looney bin.  I have yet to accomplish this Zen approach.

Rodd

[StargeezerTim]

On 05/10/2017 at 16:44, Rodd said:

Nice images all.  I have come to the conclusion that one must embrace the gremlins, lest one ends up in the looney bin.  I have yet to accomplish this Zen approach.

Rodd

I got 3 hours last night, then clouds. The clouds cleared so I started again and went to bed at 4.30 with what should have been at least two and a half extra hours of data. The reality was that I got nothing! Not one extra sub... the gremlins infiltrated my camera control cable and took 1/10th second subs instead of 10 minutes. The annoying thing is that all I needed to do was check a sub on resumption... but I didn't!

Still slept OK though, and the three hours I got was good, not that I am a spiritual giant 

[Rodd]

11 minutes ago, StargeezerTim said:

I got 3 hours last night, then clouds. The clouds cleared so I started again and went to bed at 4.30 with what should have been at least two and a half extra hours of data. The reality was that I got nothing! Not one extra sub... the gremlins infiltrated my camera control cable and took 1/10th second subs instead of 10 minutes. The annoying thing is that all I needed to do was check a sub on resumption... but I didn't!

Still slept OK though, and the three hours I got was good, not that I am a spiritual giant 

Keep at it--it IS a sound approach.  I had the opposite result over 2 nights recently.  I went to bed just after the meridian flip and a refocus and slept until 5:30.  I got 10 additional 30 min subs.  By then the temp had stabilized so focus was pretty decent in all of them.  The thing that got me on one night is my dew strip came unclipped from the battery.  lost 3 subs that time.  I am leary of doing this though unless the weathere is perfect.  A sudden burst of rain would really put a damper on things!

Rodd

[PatrickGilliland]

Think you had it easy with so few issues, don't know what you are complaining about :). Nice first outing for the winter.

[Filroden]

1 hour ago, PatrickGilliland said:

Think you had it easy with so few issues, don't know what you are complaining about :). Nice first outing for the winter.

Now I’m worried about what other great issues I missed that I can now look forward to next session  But it is nice to be imaging again, no matter that there appears to be a permanent cloud here now.

[MarsG76]

patience, trial and error and a test of self controlled rage are all a part of this hobby. I too can have nights where nothing goes to plan and end up finishing the night disheartened and disjointed with nothing to show except perhaps some mental theories to what to try next time.

After all of the issues you had, you still manages some great looking pics tho... that's a plus and obviously not a total loss.