A night of total cock ups

[dannybgoode]

It’s quite easy when browsing all the wonderful images people post with integration times into the days that there’ll be nights of shear frustration; sometimes user error and sometimes factors beyond your control. Tuesday night was the former but as always there was plenty of learning and Thursday night went much more smoothly as a result.

As a result I don’t ever see a night as wasted even if I only got one lousy, unusable sub from 3 1/2 hours work.

So what’s the best thing to do on a rare clear night?  How about [removed word] just about everything up that you can. 

Moved tripod for better positioning and then for some reason made a total hash of PA - check. 

Couldn’t plate solve simply the camera wasn’t in focus and what I thought were stars were in fact hot pixels - check. 

Nail focus only to see really egged shaped stars to the left of the frame because some numpty hadn’t pushed the nose mount of the camera in properly - check

Spend far too long trying to refocus after sorting the camera - check

Forget to press ok on the ‘uncover scope’ message on APT after hitting go and just walking off for 30 mins - check

Go back out after an 1 1/2 of subs only to see I hadn’t pressed go on guiding - check. 

Then the clouds came in but I was determined till get a sub regardless of how useable it was!

[PeterCPC]

We have all been there ☹️

Peter

[Ronclarke]

I had one of those last Monday night but having learnt a bit, Tuesday night was a lot more fruitful!!

Ron

[Spaced Out]

Yep, rest assured you are not alone ! I think we’ve all had similar experiences at one point or another. As you say, it’s part of the learning curve, frustrating at the time but it’s often useful in the long run.

My own biggest problem is tiredness late at night, when I’m tired my brain doesn’t work so well and I just make mistakes !

[dannybgoode]

3 minutes ago, Spaced Out said:

Yep, rest assured you are not alone ! I think we’ve all had similar experiences at one point or another. As you say, it’s part of the learning curve, frustrating at the time but it’s often useful in the long run.

My own biggest problem is tiredness late at night, when I’m tired my brain doesn’t work so well and I just make mistakes !

I’ve never worked on a project passed the point of tiredness and deleted 20000 photos by formatting the wrong hard drive in an attempt to get a pc rebuild done. Never...

Can’t blame tiredness this time - just inexperience I think. 

[Ships and Stars]

I'd like to try imaging 'someday', but after reading posts here, I'm going to wait. My time is limited and I want to observe first, so decided not to delve into AP. Used to do a lot of 'terrestrial' photography in general, was my sole source of income for a while. Weddings are my best point of reference, you have one chance to get it as close to perfect as you can, or else you will have the entire clan chasing after you. Test new gear first before you use it, not on the day of the wedding *cough*. Stuff like that.

I had a new external strobe malfunction at a large wedding. 80% of the shots were massively under- or over-exposed and it was too dark in the venue to use the built-in flash, so I had to just keep firing away and hope for accuracy by volume. Not professional, not fun and the newlyweds probably weren't too impressed, but I squeaked by with enough salvageable shots to produce an album. Never again though! Test, test and acquaint first.

Anyway, back to the astro. Maybe print a checklist and laminate it? Kind of like a shorthand operations manual or a pre-flight check list? I often get in a hurry, and find it often takes longer to do a job than if I had approached it in a more reserved manner. Easier said than done sometimes.

Perhaps this was your 'crux' moment, and from now on, the gear hiccups will diminish? All part of the curve and as others say, you're not alone.

PS did you really delete 20k photos? Don't think I've managed to top that. Impressive!

 

 

Edited March 8, 2020 by Ships and Stars

[Craney]

1 hour ago, dannybgoode said:

Nail focus only to see really egged shaped stars to the left of the frame because some numpty hadn’t pushed the nose mount of the camera in properly - check

Yes, I got caught with that one earlier in the week.  Changing cameras between Moon and DSO in a rush.  Must have been about a millimetre freeboard on one side of the focuser.  Should have spotted the Batinov mask pattern was not quite right as well.....

145 x 1 minute exposures later  (  M82 ), I returned to the scene of the crime after a really nice sandwich and coffee break...plus a bit of archive processing.......  Ahh !!!!....

Oh and look, here is a nice front of showery clouds incident on my back garden......    <grump>  <grump>

[dannybgoode]

34 minutes ago, Ships and Stars said:

Perhaps this was your 'crux' moment, and from now on, the gear hiccups will diminish? All part of the curve and as others say, you're not alone.

PS did you really delete 20k photos? Don't think I've managed to top that. Impressive!

Oh I’m pretty convinced I’ll manage more mistakes. I too am a reasonably proficient terrestrial photographer but even shooting things like weddings there is just so much less to go wrong. Weddings are hard for the reason you mention, you get one chance - you can’t really shout out ‘right - bride back outside, groom get ready to look surprised when you see your bride ‘for the first time’ and guests, hankies away - I need to do that bit again’. 
 

Galaxies and nebulae aren’t going anywhere so soon and AP reminds me a bit like a description of a helicopter once being 1000 moving parts flying in close formation. AP has so many variables each of which are critical to the whole thing working. 
 

Its good fun though and when you get an image it’s a feeling of real achievement. After all there’s so many versions of most targets floating around it’s not like to *need* to do it to capture that single moment in time line you do with Morgan photography. 
 

And yes, I did format the wrong drive and delete at my photos and other documents. Luckily I got nearly all of them  back but I now have a better back up routine as well  

[tomato]

As you say we have all been there,  I lost a bunch of luminance subs the other night due to flexture on the dual rig, the snaps show how much the target moved relative to the other over 3.5 hrs, and the sag was discernible on each 120s sub.

Now @Tomatobro fabricated a bracing plate that bolts onto the top of the scopes to stop this, and it works well, unless of course you don't retighten it down after adjustment which is what I did....

[Endolf]

Took me ages to do my PA last night, I could see polaris with my eye, but could I see it in the alignment scope?, not a chance. Kept shuffling the mount to see if I could find it the edge of the alignment scope, nothing, kept checking if the clouds were over. Nothing.

Eventually it dawned on me that the counter weight bar was still retracted.....

[dannybgoode]

31 minutes ago, Endolf said:

Took me ages to do my PA last night, I could see polaris with my eye, but could I see it in the alignment scope?, not a chance. Kept shuffling the mount to see if I could find it the edge of the alignment scope, nothing, kept checking if the clouds were over. Nothing.

Eventually it dawned on me that the counter weight bar was still retracted.....

I’m quite a fan of forgetting to rotate the dec axis with similar effect...

[Spaced Out]

Just now, dannybgoode said:

I’m quite a fan of forgetting to rotate the dec axis with similar effect...

Classic, done that one a few times !

[ebdons]

Yep as has been said all been there, the only cock-up I repeat now and again is in nebulosity program, when I always do a preview of the object for the same exp length as the capture image and then I set it up for 3 hrs of subs at 5 mins  each and press the preview button again accidentally and go indoors for a couple of hours and come out to find all I have is a 1 preview frame and not 3 hrs of subs. it might better when it the weather warms up?

[rickwayne]

It's like the "dumb criminals" features on the late-night shows, I just can't get enough of these kinds of threads. SO comforting to know that I'm not the only one turning hours of time and thousands of quid worth of equipment into...bad language.

[Viktiste]

On 09/03/2020 at 19:18, Endolf said:

Took me ages to do my PA last night, I could see polaris with my eye, but could I see it in the alignment scope?, not a chance. Kept shuffling the mount to see if I could find it the edge of the alignment scope, nothing, kept checking if the clouds were over. Nothing.

Eventually it dawned on me that the counter weight bar was still retracted.....

Been there done that.

 

On 09/03/2020 at 19:53, dannybgoode said:

I’m quite a fan of forgetting to rotate the dec axis with similar effect...

Been there done that too.

Not to mention dew on the polar scope...

I find that AP is an iterative learning process with very slow progression. Slow mostly due to the very few clear nights I get at my location.

[gilesco]

Last Sunday, on a rare clear night, but had been wet during the day so was setting up in the dark, once it had dried up a bit.

Anyhow - Guiding was giving me lots of issues, I thought I had good PA, but everything was going haywire, so I halted taking subs and turned the lights on, to my astonishment I discovered the counter-weight just lying in the conservatory - I had not balanced the scope on the mount at all.

After further inspection of the mount I also noticed that the filter-wheel was jarring against the azimuth knobs on the mount - my target was near the zenith. I did try to continue, but I my scope must have lost its alignment during rectification, and subsequent exposures just went off alignment, still managed to stack with registration, and I did get an image out of the night, not too impressed though.

Can't stress enough to have a runbook for set up and take down, and keep it updated as you learn... I put mine online