What is your setup routine?

[CaptainShiznit]

Hey,

So as I'm becoming more comfortable with my setup, I was wondering what others' setup routine looks like? Obviously I'm still new to imaging and I'm still having problems with guiding and other things so I'm looking for pointers on my own routine as well as being able to compare it to yours. I'm particularly interested in your software setup and what you use and how.

Mine looks like this:

- Roughly point mount North

- Mount scope and camera

- Balance scope

- Connect everything up to laptop

- Switch everything on

- Get Polaris within circle of polar scope

- Start SharpCap and polar align

- Open BYEOS, Stellarium and EQMOD software

- Do a 1 star align in EQMOD/Stellarium near my target

- Centre the alignment star and adjust focus in BYEOS with a Bahtinov mask

- Slew to target in Stellarium

- Check framing in BYEOS (30s/ISO400)

- Adjust exposure and ISO with BYEOS till I'm happy

- Start PHD2 and *attempt* auto guiding (I'm still having issues with this step with PHD saying star did not move enough and have tried adjusting step amount and creating bad pixel map/darks)

- Set plan in BYEOS and start session

[Tomatobro]

your comments re PHD are something I have seen.  For about 2 years I used an Altair 60 mm with an ASI220 mono guide camera and never had any calibration or guiding issues. Recently I saw by how much off axis guiding improved the tracking so invested in a OAG setup. I pent a couple of hours trying to get PHD to calibrate with no success. The star would move initially during calibration and then after about 8 steps would stop moving and the return steps  would not follow the usual 90 degree pattern. It would end up with the "star did not move enough" error message.

I never got to the bottom of this but returned to my usual guide scope setup and since have had no problems with calibration and guiding.

All the settings for PHD reflected the changes the OAG setup demanded but I could not get it to work.  like you a dark library has been created via PHD so it cannot be that its trying to calibrate or track on a hot pixel. My imaging scope is a MN180 and I wondered if it was some kind of internal star reflection that was causing the problem. If i slewed the scope I could see the guide star move.  Strange!

[CaptainShiznit]

8 minutes ago, Tomatobro said:

your comments re PHD are something I have seen.  For about 2 years I used an Altair 60 mm with an ASI220 mono guide camera and never had any calibration or guiding issues. Recently I saw by how much off axis guiding improved the tracking so invested in a OAG setup. I pent a couple of hours trying to get PHD to calibrate with no success. The star would move initially during calibration and then after about 8 steps would stop moving and the return steps  would not follow the usual 90 degree pattern. It would end up with the "star did not move enough" error message.

I never got to the bottom of this but returned to my usual guide scope setup and since have had no problems with calibration and guiding.

All the settings for PHD reflected the changes the OAG setup demanded but I could not get it to work.  like you a dark library has been created via PHD so it cannot be that its trying to calibrate or track on a hot pixel. My imaging scope is a MN180 and I wondered if it was some kind of internal star reflection that was causing the problem. If i slewed the scope I could see the guide star move.  Strange!

Indeed, it's confused me. I know there are some hot pixels on my QHY5 because I can see them, but the other night when it was windy, a gust of wind would knock the scope and I'd see the guide star wobble while it tried to calibrate but it still failed. Must have lost about an hour of imaging time trying to fiddle. I've a spare Travelscope 70 I might try using instead of my 9x50 for guiding and see if I can at least eliminate the scope as the problem and maybe look at a new guide cam.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Mine is very similar at least to start with and looks like this:

- Roughly point mount North - When I first polar aligned the mount which I have on the patio I measured the distance of each leg to the patio wall so each time I bring it out of the garage I can pretty quickly re-align it again with a tape rule.

- Mount scope and camera

- Balance scope - I have a stop on the dovetail that rests on top of the mounts saddle, This was adjusted when scope was in balance, hence every time I put the scope on now and let it drop in the saddle till the stop rests on the saddle the scope is already balanced. Also acts as a safety device so the whole rig cannot drop through the saddle before I tighten it fully.

- Connect everything up to laptop

- Switch everything on

- Polar align using the polemaster and associated software.

- Open APT, PHD & Stellarium.

- Slew to a bright star which can be done directly in APT or in Stellarium.

- Focus normally pretty good from last session but if not then refocus using auto focuser and Bahtinov mask.

- Take a short image and platesolve using APT.

- Sync position of mount with the result of the platesolve.

- Slew to target and take a short image, platesolve again and sync mount to platesolve result.

- Take a shortish image and frame target as I want it.

- Check Focus again.

- Take a few test exposures if necessary (I may know from a previous session exactly what I want).

- Start PHD2 and start auto guiding - I cannot say in past I have not had various issued with guiding, believe me I have, and it still is work in progress as it could be better, but often I just want to image it works well enough for up to 15 min exposures. At some stage I will try to improve my guiding.

- Set plan in APT and start session

I myself am still learning so don't put too much weight on any of this. I am still sure I have a lot to improve.

Regarding session software I have wanted to try some other software such as Sequence Generator Pro, NINA but clear nights where I am are at a premium so normally I just want to get imaging and get some data so stick with what I know and tbh APT will take some beating for ease of use, how it is presented and for what it can do.

Steve

Edited February 18, 2020 by teoria_del_big_bang

[CaptainShiznit]

5 hours ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

- Take a short image and platesolve using APT.

- Sync position of mount with the result of the platesolve.

My trial is just coming to an end on BYEOS and I've been considering trying APT as will probably upgrade from DSLR to an astro camera at some point and should probably future proof my experience. Could you by any chance give some more info on this part of your setup for me? While I understand what platesolving is, I've never put it into practice yet. Feel free to explain like I'm 5.

Cheers.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

That is no problem but believe me it will be a conversation between two 5 year olds anyway (and that may be doing some 5 year olds an injustice) I am not that technical.

But platesolving revolutionised my imaging for sure and probably was the biggest step I took in the early days to being able to get up an imaging in minutes rather than hours.

So the basics are really as simple as I made out in previous email. You take an image of a few stars (any stars really) and the image does not have to be that good so long as you can see enough stars,. I tend to pick some well known bright stars that I know are visible at the time so I can also check focus as well. Then click on platesolve and normally within 10 seconds or so (can take longer) it tells you exactly where in the sky you are. You can then update the mounts position with another click of a button and if you have Stellarium open and running with EQMOD then APT is also talking to Stellarium and you see Stellarium update its position and you see your scope pointing to that exact bit of sky in Stellarium. Honestly it seemed like pure Magic when I first got it all working.

Now there is a bit of setting up in APT to get all this working and without it all working in front of me that is the technical bit I may struggle to tell you how to do it. But APT uses third party software for the actual plate solving that you have to download (Platesolve2 and All sky plate solver) but these are free and there is some data about the scope and camera (such as focal length and pixel size etc, and also your own latitude and longitude) that must be correct for it to work but there is a good guide with APT that tell you all this.

Then you pick your target and slew to it.

If this is a known star or DSO then you can do it direct from APT using a drop down list of objects but I find it easier to use stellarium, this makes it easier to search around the sky for a good target if you do not already have something in mind. So in Stellarium (or another planetarium software) you can select the exact piece of sky you intend to image. Then in APT (which if all setup correctly is talking to Stellarium via EQMOD - I think) you can slew to that spot by telling it to use Stellarium.

When it slews there the scope should be pretty close to the target, but if it is a fair distance from where you did the first plate solved it may be off to one side a bit. I guess then you could just manually frame your object. But I tend to take another short image and platesolve again and sync the mount again which updates its position, and you actually see the target in Stellarium move as well to where your scope is pointing. You can then put the sight or frame back on the correct target in Stellarium and slew your scope to it again in APT and your scope is bang on target. Often to get the best framing I may actually select a star or even a blank patch of sky just to get the DSO in frame as I want it and then slew there.

When platesolving there is an option to tell the plate-solving software where you think your scope is pointing, and it passes the scopes coordinates to it, this speeds up the process no end as it then starts solving from that piece of sky rather than searching the whole of the visible sky.

Then start imaging.

Now there maybe things I am doing that are not 100% correct , this I am not sure about. Because it is so easy I may not be polar aligning as well as I used to, because at the moment it doesn't seem to affect me too much, it seems to work and guide pretty well (even though it is not as good as others and I do have it on my list to find out why at some stage - problem is often when I get to this stage and sky is really clear I just want to get some data and make some images) and maybe this can ultimately affect the guiding. I need to ask about this and do some work on it.

I hope this explains okay, but if not it is one of those things that is much easier than I can make it sound and works a treat.

Steve

Edited February 19, 2020 by teoria_del_big_bang

[CaptainShiznit]

Steve

Awesome response, thank you. You sound just like me when I get a clear night just wanting to get some data and not sacrifice precious time tweaking.

I'm going to get APT today and use your post as a guide to get me going so thanks again.

John