How long to get first decent image ?

[Quetzalcoatl72]

been 10 years now still not satisfied and i've spend nearly £7,000 sooooo...

[Astro Noodles]

I have decided to conduct an experiment to determine whether a) The Sky-guider pro is a lemon, or b) I am a pillock.

The time is 16:00. I have turned the sky-guider on to 1x. I have set the reticule so 12 is at the top.

In 6 hours time, at 22:00, the red mount head should have rotated through 90 degrees. Am I correct?

[JamesF]

Close enough that you'd have to do more work to tell the difference, I think.  I don't believe it will be exactly 90° because the mount presumably runs at sidereal rate.

James

[Astro Noodles]

19 minutes ago, JamesF said:

Close enough that you'd have to do more work to tell the difference, I think.  I don't believe it will be exactly 90° because the mount presumably runs at sidereal rate.

James

You're probably right. Hardly scientific. But to trail at 200mm after 20seconds, it must be out by several percent I would have thought. It may be detectable visually. A longer experiment over several days might be more obvious visually.

[JamesF]

23 minutes ago, Astro Noodles said:

You're probably right. Hardly scientific. But to trail at 200mm after 20seconds, it must be out by several percent I would have thought. It may be detectable visually. A longer experiment over several days might be more obvious visually.

I did something similar with my Star Adventurer.  If I recall correctly I used a mark on the wall and fixed a pointer to the mount to align with the mark, then allowed the mount to run for 23 hours 56 minutes.  It should then be pointing back at the mark.  Using a laser pointer would probably be ideal as the mount can then be further from the wall, making errors more obvious.

It's a bit more tricky to do shorter intervals that way though.

James

[Clarkey]

I think from the drift on your subs it will be a long way off - and should be quite obvious. The only other issue is how smoothly it runs. It might do 360 degrees in 24 hours but if it does it in one minute intervals it is not too useful. (If my analogy makes sense).

[Astro Noodles]

It looks to me as though it has over-rotated. That would make sense and is corroborated. When I ran through the 100 subs I took last night, the image slowly slid to the left. When I checked the RDF finder after the session, it was to the right of where I had placed it.

So, do I have a lemon? Is there a fix, or should I return it to FLO?

I've just lifted list off CN. I will try this first to see if I can re-calibrate the unit.

Turn the unit off and press/hold the center button. Switch the unit on while holding down the center button, then release the button. It'll do an 8-minute slew in one direction and stop. Press the center button again, and it'll slew for 8 minutes in the other direction. Power cycle, and it should function normally.

Edited June 2, 2021 by Astro Noodles

[JamesF]

I think quite possibly you should contact FLO.  It might be worth running the test for 24 hours too, so you can quantify quite how much it is out.

James

[Davey-T]

I had a similar problem with my first Star Adventurer.

This is two shots of Cappella 30 seconds apart showing how far the tracking was out made into a GIF.

Dave

[iapa]

18 hours ago, JamesF said:

I did something similar with my Star Adventurer.  If I recall correctly I used a mark on the wall and fixed a pointer to the mount to align with the mark, then allowed the mount to run for 23 hours 56 minutes.  It should then be pointing back at the mark.  Using a laser pointer would probably be ideal as the mount can then be further from the wall, making errors more obvious.

It's a bit more tricky to do shorter intervals that way though.

James

I bought a dec circle from http://www.astrokraken.fr/accessories-for-skywatcher-star-adventurer-mount-a184487612

 

[AstroMuni]

On 02/06/2021 at 13:08, Astro Noodles said:

Last night's effort.  80x 20 sec subs at iso 3200. 

Its not a bad at all considering its only 1600 secs worth of data. I am finding that focus can be a key element in getting those crisp images. As others have mentioned you shouldnt have too many issues with tracking as its only 20s worth. I find that using a computer to control my mount has given me a great advantage in that I can get it to automatically recentre the image after a few shots (to compensate for any drift).

Here is my effort using...

Celestron 130 on HEQ5 pro, ASI224mc, Ekos,
25 x 30s lights, gain 240
5 x 60s lights, gain 240
Processing: Siril

[Astro Noodles]

The Skyguider is on its way back to FLO tomorrow. 😥

[Clarkey]

2 hours ago, Astro Noodles said:

The Skyguider is on its way back to FLO tomorrow

I think this is the right thing to do - from what you have said there does seem to be something wrong with it (or you are polar aligning on Mars😂). Are you getting a replacement or something different?

[Astro Noodles]

6 minutes ago, Clarkey said:

I think this is the right thing to do - from what you have said there does seem to be something wrong with it (or you are polar aligning on Mars😂). Are you getting a replacement or something different?

A replacement. But there is no stock at the moment, so maybe some time.

I went through absolutely everything that I could be doing wrong - 10 times just to be sure.😂

[Astro Noodles]

In the meantime, I will go back to using the Star Adventurer mount. I have got an IR/UV cut filter on the way, so let's see if I can do something about the star bloating.

[Astro Noodles]

FLO have just contacted me.

What a joy they are to deal with.

They have tested the Skyguider Pro and agree that it is not functioning correctly so have sent out a replacement.

I am very happy. 😀

 

[Clarkey]

3 hours ago, Astro Noodles said:

They have tested the Skyguider Pro and agree that it is not functioning correctly so have sent out a replacement

Great news. Hopefully you can get the images your efforts deserve.

I would not expect anything else from FLO. In all my dealings with them they have been first rate.

[Astro Noodles]

Ok so I think I have made some progress.

Here is last night's attempt at the western veil.

47 x 60sec taken at iso1600.

I am very happy with the tracking now (trust me to get a lemon). I have had to stretch it like mad to get the nebulosity.

What can I do next to bring out the nebulosity?

Longer exposure, higher iso, filters, more integration time? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 🙂

[Clarkey]

Great to see the tracking issue is sorted.

I think 47 minutes is a pretty low amount of data - I think more subs will make a large difference. Also, At the moment there is no real astro darkness which will not help. A few hours in real darkness will start to pull out the details. Also, is your camera modified - this will improve the Ha signal

[Astro Noodles]

Thanks Clarkey

Astro-modified camera is on by Birthday list for October. 🙂

I will try to get more integration time on it. Cygnus is in a really good part of the sky for me and I should be able to get good time on it over the next few months.

[AstroMuni]

1 hour ago, Astro Noodles said:

What can I do next to bring out the nebulosity?

What software do you use? I am in same boat as you and having read up about this,it seems that one way to do that is isolate the stars into a layer so you get only the background to play with. Then play with this to remove background noise and bring out the nebula.

Tools like PixInsight have tools to help do this quickly. I am not into PI yet, so continuing my struggle with Siril, Gimp and other such free tools 🙂

Edited July 9, 2021 by AstroMuni

[Clarkey]

12 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

What software do you use? I am in same boat as you and having read up about this,it seems that one way to do that is isolate the stars into a layer so you get only the background to play with. Then play with this to remove background noise and bring out the nebula.

You can do this and it might give you a better result. However, by stretching your signal you will also be increasing the noise. With limited data, light sky and an unmodified camera I think you might struggle.

You could use a star removal tool such as Starnet++ which is a free download. Always worth trying.

[Astro Noodles]

14 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

What software do you use? I am in same boat as you and having read up about this,it seems that one way to do that is isolate the stars into a layer so you get only the background to play with. Then play with this to remove background noise and bring out the nebula.

Tools like PixInsight have tools to help do this quickly. I am not into PI yet, so continuing my struggle with Siril, Gimp and other such free tools 🙂

I'm currently using Gimp. Nico Carver and Astrofarsography have created youtube Gimp tutorials for star masks, gradient removal etc. I'm waiting until I have something worth the effort before following them closely though. 🙂

I'm actually quite interested in Startools, I have been playing around with the demo.

[AstroMuni]

10 minutes ago, Clarkey said:

You could use a star removal tool such as Starnet++ which is a free download. Always worth trying.

I am struggling with installing the same. It needs some components for computing from Google (tensorflow) that I am finding hard to install on my Linux machine

Edited July 9, 2021 by AstroMuni

[powerlord]

36 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

What software do you use? I am in same boat as you and having read up about this,it seems that one way to do that is isolate the stars into a layer so you get only the background to play with. Then play with this to remove background noise and bring out the nebula.

Tools like PixInsight have tools to help do this quickly. I am not into PI yet, so continuing my struggle with Siril, Gimp and other such free tools 🙂

Consider trying Affinity. it's cheap (vastly so compared to PS), works natively in 32 bit colour, and has some specific astro tools - stacking (not great), and background neutralisation (very good). It's also a very powerful and easy to use image editor. Coming from PS it took me a few weeks to cross over, but now I'd never go back. And I tried Gimp - and imho it really is abysmal. personal opinion - many folk love it - but I found it to be a clunky dog.

PI is a mess imho. One look at the website, their blog nonsense, attitude to hotmail email addresses, etc - it all reads like a David Ike website. Yes, lots of folk love it - but frankly it costs a fortune and has a UI and UX which is utterly abysmal - if it was 20 quid I'd put up with it all and use it a bit. It's not, and I won't.

You don't need to spend much for a full pro kit you can grow into. My suite is now:

DSS (free)

Startools (35 quid)

Affinity Photo (50 quid)

Sirl for bits and bobs.

Firecapture for planetary.

stu