First full night out and progress and Stellarium Problem Solved

[Prolifics]

I am at the very start of my Astro Imaging exciting journey and made a fair bit of progress last night.

It was my first full night out with my new Imaging setup.

Firstly I connected all the leads and balanced my scope.
Played for about 45 minutes with Sharpcap to get my focus and setting right for my guide camera Altair Aor130
Succesfully Polar aligned another 1 hour (First time)  Sharpcap showed it as Excellent within 00:00:10. (I nearly gave up)

Run and setup PHD2 and Sequence Generator Pro with some help with setting off of youtube. Got my EFW 8 slot wheel working and mount control and Asi1600mm Pro.
Spent 1.5 hours playing with it all to finally get it to work. Had a lot of problems with getting SGP to automatically starting PHD2 and guiding. Just said connecting constantly but fixed itself
Added my Bahtinov mask and got HFR on my 10 second Lum frames between 0 and 3.0 (not sure this is good. Was around HFR 6.0 and 8.0 before Bahtinov focucing?)

PHD2 Giuiding was smooth and was averaging 0.43 total less than 1 arc second. I have had my EQ6 Pro Modified.

 

Tonight I will be out again as the skies look fantastic. But I need to align my scope to the stars.
After Polar Aligning I tried to do a 1,2 and 3 star align on my Synscan controller but it always skewed the wrong way and I had to stop it twice as it got close to the tripod legs.
I have the correct day, time, long and lat coords dialled in and daylight saving on.
I was using ascom on my PC last night to control my scope from indoors.

So the question is can I star align my scope another way after Polar alignment? If I used Astro Photography Tool and plate solved and then ran stellarium to fix the point as in this video would I be able to star align that way?   

Regards David

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Prolifics]

Here is one of Vega a 10 second lum.

 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

I am very new to all this but I platesolve just like in the video using APT and has revolutionised my sessions so much quicker and so accurate. Usually after polar aligning I will slew to my target take a short image (20 secs or so) platesolve it and it will be out a little but but then click on Sync you then see Stellarium update its position. You can then slew to the exact position you want to image and away you go.

And the great thing is if you setup Stellarium with the camera and scope details it gives you an outline of the image on the screen so you can see exactly how your camera is rotated.

Steve

[Prolifics]

1 minute ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

I am very new to all this but I platesolve just like in the video using APT and has revolutionised my sessions so much quicker and so accurate. Usually after polar aligning I will slew to my target take a short image (20 secs or so) platesolve it and it will be out a little but but then click on Sync you then see Stellarium update its position. You can then slew to the exact position you want to image and away you go.

Steve

Thank you Steve! I only see one problem when SGP and PHD2 are running you can not lock on to the com port with Stellarium as its being used and by pressing connected in Stellarium it does nothing. If i shut down SGP then it will connect. So I guess i align it in Stellarium first with APT?

[teoria_del_big_bang]

As I said I am pretty new to imaging and learning but to be honest I had a few issues with Stellarium at times and struggled to get good allignment till I started using APT (a brilliant piece of software - I paid the small fee as well worth it).

Now I have stellarium open but I do not use to move the scope as such, I really just use it to see what is in view and to pick a target that I then know will get at least a couple of hours imaging before it is out of sight.

I do double click on it in Stellarium but then back to APT click on the object button, whilst holding down the shift key, and the position of the object will be transfered to APT so you can slew directly to that object in APT using the GoTo key. Take a test shot, can be short just enough to get the stars not necessarily the DSO, in platesolve click on "<<Scope Pos" to transfer mount position so it can solve quicker, then click "Solve", when succesful click "Sync" and you will see the position in stellarium move a little. Then if you want the exact position just double click on object in stellarium again, in APT click on the object button again, whilst holding down the shift key, then click GoTo.

Like I say that is my current method, Others may correct me with a better or quicker method. So no need to have scope connected in Stellarium at all in fact I do not open Stellarium Scope just Stellarium (ANGLE mode). Whether this is correct or not I am not sure so do not take this as a done thing ?

Steve

[teoria_del_big_bang]

By the way isn't it a great feeling when things do go right on a session. Even if you do not get the data you really wanted just the fact you learnt how to do something and it worked is a great boost ? 

Steve

[Prolifics]

Hi Steve

Your right! Although to some people I didn't get far last night for me It was leaps and bounds When I saw that picture of Vega, although I just found out how to alter the histogram to get the proper darkness I was shocked an amazed on the quality of my first 10 second image. The important part is I got everything working as it should but still need to learn the softwares back to front and continue learning in a never ending process  I enjoy learning new things and love the challenge on working most things out myself. I have shed loads of questions but try and focus only on my next step to try and not complex things too much. By being able to goto which part of the sky and focus a target I want, will let me start capturing and introduce the next step. I am not looking forward to post processing so much but thats another learning curve. I will have to deal with it when I have some decent data to work with  

 

[simondodd]

Great work! It's always fun when you first get something working no matter how small it is!

You current process is pretty similar to mine by the sounds of it although I don't use stellarium on my imaging machine as it would use up too much processing power & RAM (I have a weak imaging PC). I don't generally do much of a polar alignment, just a rough one since using plate solving. Turn everything on, focus the imaging camera (guide cam stays in the scope at all times so its always focused), connect everything in APT, auto plate solve, slew to target, start guiding, start imaging, drink beer haha
 

[Prolifics]

I have tried to sync up APT and Stellarium I have used these settings in stellarium. I am getting the following errors.

 

 

I get this error in APT 

 

Finally my APT setting for Stellarium

 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Hi,

I have attached a short Word document showing what I had to set my settings in Stellarium to to get it to work with APT. I hope this can help you. I think I had a bit of an issue getting it to work in the beginning and to be honest maybe all these settings are not required but it is how mine is set up and it seems to work well now with APT.

 

APT Connect to and communicate with Stellarium.docx

[knobby]

+1 for APT - platesolve - sync works a treat.

[Prolifics]

52 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Hi,

I have attached a short Word document showing what I had to set my settings in Stellarium to to get it to work with APT. I hope this can help you. I think I had a bit of an issue getting it to work in the beginning and to be honest maybe all these settings are not required but it is how mine is set up and it seems to work well now with APT.

 

APT Connect to and communicate with Stellarium.docx 1.62 MB · 1 download

Hi thanks for taking the time and trouble to post this. I am curently going through it now. 

 

Just one thing I do not get a remote control plugin in Stellarium. I do however have a telescope control where i can change the otions as in these pictures.

 

 

But under telescope control you can use this option. Is this correct? Default port on Stellarium is now 10002 but i have tried lots of different ones.

[Prolifics]

I have tried all that still not working this is the error i get in APM bottom left text. It works perfect with CIEL but i don't like using that

BTW I do not have a server plugin either maybe thats the problem.

I have learnt how to setup occular now though

 

 

[Prolifics]

err just cheked my Stellarium version is 0.13.2 I have auto updates on but I also have the message in about window of stellarium that updates can not be processed. I am going to download the latest version and start from scratch. Thank you for pointing me in the rigth direction without that I would have never found it. I will keep you posted!

 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

I am not sure about why you do not have these plug ins and I think you are right that is why APT is complaining.

Are you using "Stellarium Scope" or just the original "Stellarium"?

I think you may need to be using the "Stellarium Scope" to get all thisa working.

Stellarium Scope

 

Steve

 

[Prolifics]

Problem is I installed Stellarium 7 years ago and thought it was on auto update but after not running it for at least 4 years the auto update server had changed and no longer kept it up to date. Just installing new version now

[Prolifics]

Yay! all working now. Thank you so much for the help. Just need to get my asps plate solving issue sorted now.

By the way how do you change screen resolution in Stellarium. I havent found it yet.

 

Regards David

 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

14 hours ago, Prolifics said:

Yay! all working now. Thank you so much for the help. Just need to get my asps plate solving issue sorted now.

By the way how do you change screen resolution in Stellarium. I havent found it yet.

 

Regards David

 

Glad its working 

Not sure about the resolution, never changed mine from default.

There is something about font size in Configuration / Tools.

One is for the Screen and the other the Graphics so not sure what affect changing this will have?

 

Steve