finally shooting

[Fieldsy]

Well I'm finally shooting m101 ( sorry adam) m13 is behind cherry tree and me as behind tree tops in park and as m101 is direct above me ?? .I'm doing 10sec x 30 mono only  just to see what I get if any clouds are slowly coming in .but guiding seems to be working although qhy cam has a few hot pixels ?.

[Fieldsy]

Currently 10 sec subs and camera at 10°C  asi178mm is that good/ok ? No warnings have come up ,so that would indicate I could prob run a bit longer .

[Adam J]

1 hour ago, Fieldsy said:

Well I'm finally shooting m101 ( sorry adam) m13 is behind cherry tree and me as behind tree tops in park and as m101 is direct above me ?? .I'm doing 10sec x 30 mono only  just to see what I get if any clouds are slowly coming in .but guiding seems to be working although qhy cam has a few hot pixels ?.

Just make sure your not guiding on one of those pixels. ? You will know because your guiding will look too good to be true. 

10 seconds while ok for m13 is too low for m101. You need to be up at 30 second subs at about gain 125 for that. I you want to go with 10 seconds you need gain 200 and 1000 subs would be a good start lol

 

[Adam J]

11 minutes ago, Fieldsy said:

Currently 10 sec subs and camera at 10°C  asi178mm is that good/ok ? No warnings have come up ,so that would indicate I could prob run a bit longer .

The camera temperature won't really change too much once your doing multi second subs. Like I say. 30seconds @ gain 125. Get about 200, don't get me wrong but really you want to get as many as possible I would never bother getting less than 2hours integration on any target with 6hours or more being the norm for me. 

The sensor can easily run up to 40c without damage just expect way too much noise. 

M101 is faint and shockingly difficult to image well m82 would have been a better choice or m81. 

[Fieldsy]

Yeah tried m82 same times and expo waste of time cant even make out a blob lol better luck next time in a bout 2 weeks ?☁️☁️I ended up moving scope and managed to get M3 visible but nowt on them settings .

Not happy leaving scope out all night 1000 subs at  10 sec plus dithering

[Adam J]

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6 hours ago, Fieldsy said:

Yeah tried m82 same times and expo waste of time cant even make out a blob lol better luck next time in a bout 2 weeks ?☁️☁️I ended up moving scope and managed to get M3 visible but nowt on them settings .

Not happy leaving scope out all night 1000 subs at  10 sec plus dithering

If you not seeing something of m82 in a 10 second exposure then your pointing in the wrong place. I can see it in my guide scope in a 2 second exposure with the qhy5L-ii. Can see m13 in a 1second exposure. Are you looking sung the autostretch function in APT correctly? 

[Fieldsy]

Another clr night and back to normal laptop and phd2/qhy not playing  ball so 3 hrs of fiddling about and no progress so shut it all down pack it up and have a cuppa.

[Adam J]

On 12/04/2019 at 00:05, Fieldsy said:

Another clr night and back to normal laptop and phd2/qhy not playing  ball so 3 hrs of fiddling about and no progress so shut it all down pack it up and have a cuppa.

Even I would be selling that thing now. It's causing you too many issues. In regards to m82 not being visible I may be able to help more if you post a image of what you did manage to capture.

[Fieldsy]

Gonna try other laptop/notebook will have to put sd card in for storage ??.still not sold on this 10 month old qhy got a few hot pixels aswell?

[Fieldsy]

Thinking I may just bite the bullet and buy another guide cam looking at the asi120mm mini.going no where near qhy

So only other option is altair .any  advice welcome, bear in mind I'm using asi178mm as main cam.

[Adam J]

5 hours ago, Fieldsy said:

Gonna try other laptop/notebook will have to put sd card in for storage ??.still not sold on this 10 month old qhy got a few hot pixels aswell?

Gain is set very high when guiding so you always have hot pixels without cooling. Hence why PhD lets you take and apply dark frames. 

[Adam J]

5 hours ago, Fieldsy said:

Thinking I may just bite the bullet and buy another guide cam looking at the asi120mm mini.going no where near qhy

So only other option is altair .any  advice welcome, bear in mind I'm using asi178mm as main cam.

The asi120mm mini should work fine. You will just have to select the correct camera in PhD but I think it remembers your last selection every time it loads so it's not normally an issue. Also you may want to consider an ASI air at some point down the line.  

[Fieldsy]

Hi Adam I was just looking at more cameras .a penny for your thoughts on the Atik Titan ?

[Adam J]

14 minutes ago, Fieldsy said:

Hi Adam I was just looking at more cameras .a penny for your thoughts on the Atik Titan ?

For guiding? That's a really bad idea the pixels are huge, you need small pixels to guide with the ZWO guidescope you have. 

If for imaging then that's an even smaller sensor than the 178mm

[Fieldsy]

No titans as main and put 178mm as guide.i think I just worked this out that the atik size ÷650×206= over 2 so that means it's not ideal is that right?

[Adam J]

3 minutes ago, Fieldsy said:

No titans as main and put 178mm as guide.i think I just worked this out that the atik size ÷650×206= over 2 so that means it's not ideal is that right?

The titan is a tiny tiny sensor and you would only get low resolution images at the same time due to huge pixels. I would chose the 178 as main over it every time and in this day and age the titan is a terrible guide camera too.