Guiding with PhD problem

[barrie greenwood]

Now thers a load to take in before bed:)

Thanks mark ill do a bit of reading and try to grt my head round it ......so much to learn

Thanks again guys any help is welcomed

Kind regards Baz

[barrie greenwood]

OK I've dropped that APT and it does seem as it a good easy bit of kit it also accepts my dslr and gives control over the camera as well and provides a range of tools suchaas collimation tools etc so I'm looking forward to trying the whole lot together 

Upto now I've had my dslr on the scope with a cheap attachment that gives you longer exposure times but not been using guiding so the whole setup should give some better results than I've had 👍however forecast is not great up here living on the pennines it gets a whole lot of rain most of the time.

I will put up my results as and when I can get some data collected in the meantime many thanks guys it is really appreciated

kindest regards Barrie

[spillage]

Just too add more to the table. You can also set up dithering. This may allow you to be able to process your image without using and dark frames.

[barrie greenwood]

Will have to read up on it I've seen the settings with dithering on phd2 but don't know what it is

[spillage]

It moves the scope around in random movements during a set amount of frames. This helps the processing software remove bad pixels, pattern noise and man made streaks in the image. So it kind of makes the stuff that should not be there dance around and easier to be spotted and removed.

As you would need to take dark frames at the same time you image with the dslr it might mean that the time spent capturing darks could be spent capturing more light frames.

[barrie greenwood]

sorry for delay ive been putting a new cylinder head on my crappy landrover had an issue with it filling up the sump with diesel

back to the subject in hand i have so much to learn about  imaging and then theres the processing side of it aswell

the best results ive had was using pixinsight but its a pretty expensive program given i hardly have the conditions to use it

[spillage]

Have you heard of startools? Its very easy to use and initially appears a bit basic but has lots of hidden aspects and it actually very good.  Within a few clicks you can have a good result.

I have pixinsight but find unless I am using it allot I forget the workflows so have to go back to the books and vids for help.

Knackered valve seals?

Edited October 17, 2019 by spillage

[barrie greenwood]

No the td5 engine is prone to the aluminium head cracking on the injector pockets and this allows the diesel to leak inside the rocker cover and into the oil because the injectors are inside the engine these days so unfortunately it's a new/secondhand head which has brought its own problems one of which was a rip off merchant on the well known auction site but heyho.

no not heard of that one but I'll take a look at it

Your right about pixinsight it's a very long work flow but I did like the stretch stf button it seemed to pull out a good bit of detail in one click

[alacant]

26 minutes ago, barrie greenwood said:

I did like the stretch stf button

Then you'll love StarTools. Moving from pixinsight to StarTools is easy using this table.

HTH

[Dustspeakers]

I’m fairly new to narrowband and trying different processing software for what is best for me. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks with Pixinsight (free trial) and various Youtube tutorials trying to process test data sets. The results from PI are still not as good as a 4 hour first attempt with StarTools. Still evaluating but it’s a 👍 for StarTools from me.

[spillage]

I do find with startools that the manual dev is much better than the auto function.

[barrie greenwood]

So correct me if I'm wrong with APT and PhD I don't need to bother polar alinging or star alignment all I need to do is level the mount pointing roughly northwards

Regards Baz

[teoria_del_big_bang]

10 minutes ago, barrie greenwood said:

So correct me if I'm wrong with APT and PhD I don't need to bother polar alinging or star alignment all I need to do is level the mount pointing roughly northwards

Regards Baz

I would still polar align, otherwise you are asking a lot of PHD2, but no need to star align. Just go to your target, plate solve it and correct for any misalignment.

Steve

[barrie greenwood]

So I need to integrate plate solve into APT  its a little confusing

Regards Baz

[teoria_del_big_bang]

12 minutes ago, barrie greenwood said:

So I need to integrate plate solve into APT  its a little confusing

Regards Baz

I would not say it is a must but if you do it makes life so much simpler, or at least it did for me. Using plate solving with APT revolutionised my imaging made it so much quicker and easier.

Download Platesolve2 and All Sky Plate Solver (I am told PlateSolve2 works better if it is not installed in the usual Program Files location, don't ask me why I just followed others instructions). Then after polar aligning go to your desired target, take a shortish sub (30 secs usually enough to show up enough stars when stretched) then using Point Craft in APT click on "Scope Position" so the platesolving has an idea where roughly in the sky you are and a few seconds later it tells you exactly where ypou are pointing. You can then click on "Sync" and if you now slew to the target you should be perfectly on your selected target.

Steve

Edited October 19, 2019 by teoria_del_big_bang

[spillage]

you still need to do your PA. This makes your tracking more accurate when using phd2.

[PaulR1]

This might help ?

 

[barrie greenwood]

Hi guys OK I've kinda got somewhere

I can solve and get it centered on an object so now I come to the camera

I can set the plan and it works OK with 10 second exposure but above that it won't work and it I get exposure started followed immediately by exposure finished if I set the exposes as 10seconds it works fine where am I going wrong

Regards Baz

[spillage]

I would jump onto the apt forum here as ivo will be able to look into it for you. Just post up you camera mode and version of apt. He is normally very quick to resolve issues.

Do you need to set the camera to bulb mode. I'm sure I had to do this with my old canon.

Edited October 22, 2019 by spillage

[Skipper Billy]

9 minutes ago, barrie greenwood said:

I can set the plan and it works OK with 10 second exposure but above that it won't work and it I get exposure started followed immediately by exposure finished if I set the exposes as 10seconds it works fine where am I going wrong

Have you got your camera set to B (Bulb) - not M (Manual) - that can cause the effect you describe.

[barrie greenwood]

To enter into bulb mode you switch the dial into m and then reduce the exposure until bulb is displayed

Unless there is, a different way

[barrie greenwood]

It would appear as I need two leads to connect it one for exposure control the other to the pc slot

I already have a long expose control set so after solving and setting up I may just use the remote set to control exposures

Thanks guys