Framing on a different night with asiair pro

[DaveS]

One of the beauties of square sensors is not having to worry about landscape or portrait. Just set it orthogonal and forget about it. It's just a pity that there's nothing between the small but affordable 533 and the professional Gesense 4040 cameras at budget busting prices. The old Kodak 4022 is in that range but realistically a non starter.

[Elp]

A true 1" x 1" or larger square sensor would be very useful.

[DaveS]

It wouldn't be quite 1" square, but how about a 533 evolution with twice the pixels on each axis? It would be 22.6 mm square with a 32 mm diagonal, potentially allowing the use of 36 mm unmounted filters.

[Elp]

Definitely be useful, I sold on my 533 as the 11 x 11 didn't suit combining the data with my 183 13 x 9 without a massive crop, it got even worse with larger sensors.

[DaveS]

I suppose one *could* look for a S/H 16803 camera, but the same gotchas apply, Costly, even S/H, noisy, insensitive, and needing pricey 50mm square filters.

[saac]

53 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

You can leave the plans in there can you?  I’ve always deleted them after use because I left one in once and when it finished the plan for that evening it went on to execute the previous plan. But you’re saying it shouldn’t and doesn’t do that are you?  

Yes you can leave the plans in the Air. Let's say you are doing an image run over multiple nights then leaving the previous night plan (images) in makes things easier. You simply call up one of your previous images, plate solve and goto. You can then just do another auto run (assuming you've focused etc) and it will generate another run using the same plan name ie M31 adding to the lights, flat, dark and bias folder accordingly.  You will need to remove some data eventually as storage fills up of course.  It would be nice if there was an emulator mode to allow familiarization during the day in comfort of the house.  The best I can do is take the Air inside and fire it up but then it will only go so far when it starts searching for the mount, camera etc which are not connected  

Jim 

[Ouroboros]

1 hour ago, saac said:

I wonder if it gives that information if you change to the SkyAtlas view page. 

Jim

Erm … I’m trying to recall exactly what it does do. I think you’re right. After hitting GoTo it shows the frame you’re aiming to achieve ie in the old image and another frame showing what it’s actually imaging. Then you hit frame repeat and can rotate the camera as necessary.  I know it works anyway.

It’s funny with computers and such like. I know what I’m doing when I am actually doing it, but have difficulty recalling exactly what I was doing when I’m not doing it. If you see what I mean. It’s sort of intuitive somehow. 

[Ouroboros]

54 minutes ago, saac said:

Yes you can leave the plans in the Air. Let's say you are doing an image run over multiple nights then leaving the previous night plan (images) in makes things easier. You simply call up one of your previous images, plate solve and goto. You can then just do another auto run (assuming you've focused etc) and it will generate another run using the same plan name ie M31 adding to the lights, flat, dark and bias folder accordingly.  You will need to remove some data eventually as storage fills up of course.  It would be nice if there was an emulator mode to allow familiarization during the day in comfort of the house.  The best I can do is take the Air inside and fire it up but then it will only go so far when it starts searching for the mount, camera etc which are not connected  

Jim 

OK. I think my use of auto plans is very basic.  I tend set up the lights to run all night and, with a bit of luck, I’ll get some shut eye. Then in the morning I’ll delete the light plan and do the flats using the sky and t-shirt method and the  flat darks.  It takes me ages to get the flats with the right exposure even using the flat’s auto exposure setting. I have no means of doing flats and darks automatically after the lights.  I assume you have to have some means of doing that in order to use a plan incorporating Lights then Flats then Flat Darks. Also for each filter too presumably. I do OSC so only one set of flats and darks. 

[Elp]

I normally do the calibration at the end for flats (other than darks and dark flats), setup needs to be brought in anyway.

Using an LED tracing panel, and around 10-12mm of perspex to diffuse with panel on lowest setting it usually does 10s flats every single time with the auto setting when doing narrowband, OSC the time can vary with auto settings.

[DaveS]

I do flats maybe every 6 months or so unless I've taken the imaging train apart.

[saac]

15 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

OK. I think my use of auto plans is very basic.  I tend set up the lights to run all night and, with a bit of luck, I’ll get some shut eye. Then in the morning I’ll delete the light plan and do the flats using the sky and t-shirt method and the  flat darks.  It takes me ages to get the flats with the right exposure even using the flat’s auto exposure setting. I have no means of doing flats and darks automatically after the lights.  I assume you have to have some means of doing that in order to use a plan incorporating Lights then Flats then Flat Darks. Also for each filter too presumably. I do OSC so only one set of flats and darks. 

No I think we are doing something really similar. Once I'm on target, happy with framing etc, I'll take a few different exposures to see which I like then I'll setup the plan.  When I say "plan" I'll basically instruct it with how many light subs I want to take and their exposure length.  I'll typically let that run until it's either complete, say 2 hours or so or either I'm tired and want to go to bed or until the weather calls an end to play.  If I think I need more subs then I will run it again the following night or when the opportunity presents. Here it will just add more lights to the file continuing on from where it left off. Only once I have all my lights captured will I collect darks, flats and bias. For my flats I use a LED backlit  tracing pad held up to the dew shield and put the exposure on auto. If I'm lazy (most of the time) sometimes I will just use darks and bias from a library file. I've never left the scope unattended overnight, I've no confidence in the weather playing nice.  So I have never really done a full auto run as such, I just collect the lights then manually, sometime after, get the rest. 

Jim 

 

Edited August 21 by saac

[saac]

23 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

Great! Thanks. That’s working exactly how I hoped it would on reloading an image.

It would be nice if you could plate solve a previously saved image and it would return the coordinates and angle. 

Been playing around a little more with this and here's what I've found. If you call up and plate solve a previously stored image you can then display the coordinates and angle by pressing the little exclamation icon on the top right hand side. The screen shot below shows what you get.  So teh coordinate infor is there but not just displayed by default.  Remember that you do not need to manually input these coordinates you can just select goto. 

Jim 

[Ouroboros]

4 hours ago, saac said:

Been playing around a little more with this and here's what I've found. If you call up and plate solve a previously stored image you can then display the coordinates and angle by pressing the little exclamation icon on the top right hand side. The screen shot below shows what you get.  So teh coordinate infor is there but not just displayed by default.  Remember that you do not need to manually input these coordinates you can just select goto. 

Jim 

Champion fellow! Great. I’ll have a go at that. Thanks.  

[900SL]

15 hours ago, saac said:

Been playing around a little more with this and here's what I've found. If you call up and plate solve a previously stored image you can then display the coordinates and angle by pressing the little exclamation icon on the top right hand side. The screen shot below shows what you get.  So teh coordinate infor is there but not just displayed by default.  Remember that you do not need to manually input these coordinates you can just select goto. 

Jim 

Why I love this place! Thanks, I'll have a go at that later

[900SL]

On 22/08/2024 at 18:58, saac said:

Been playing around a little more with this and here's what I've found. If you call up and plate solve a previously stored image you can then display the coordinates and angle by pressing the little exclamation icon on the top right hand side. The screen shot below shows what you get.  So teh coordinate infor is there but not just displayed by default.  Remember that you do not need to manually input these coordinates you can just select goto. 

Jim 

Yep, I pulled up an old image and it works. Very handy, I can use my manual rotator to match a previous session. It's quite important with a 533 sensor as you don't have a lot of free real estate to crop into

[saac]

2 hours ago, 900SL said:

Yep, I pulled up an old image and it works. Very handy, I can use my manual rotator to match a previous session. It's quite important with a 533 sensor as you don't have a lot of free real estate to crop into

That's great. I wasn't sure if the angle displayed was the frame rotation or not to match the camera.  I wonder what other wee secrets are hiding in the Air's operating system  

Jim 

 

[900SL]

2 hours ago, saac said:

That's great. I wasn't sure if the angle displayed was the frame rotation or not to match the camera.  I wonder what other wee secrets are hiding in the Air's operating system  

Jim 

 

The next part cloudy evening I'll play around with this, and sky atlas.

[Elp]

The sky atlas also now has a mosaic feature making it even easier. I do wish the atlas was more visual though like stellarium or sky safari, even if it's on target its difficult looking at what you're seeing, say if you want to rotate your camera to suit the orientation of the target.

[saac]

4 minutes ago, Elp said:

The sky atlas also now has a mosaic feature making it even easier. I do wish the atlas was more visual though like stellarium or sky safari, even if it's on target its difficult looking at what you're seeing, say if you want to rotate your camera to suit the orientation of the target.

Yeah the mosaic routine assistant is the next feature I want to learn how to use.  I've watched a couple of tutorials and had an initial play with it  and it seems pretty intuitive. I do wish these things this came with an emulator mode so you could familiarise and train with it during the day. 

Jim

[Elp]

It'd certainly help. I do all my planning via Telescopius and import the coordinates into the plan, never failed me, even for mosaics. Obviously orientation of the camera would have to be done manually but you can see that in the sky atlas when you plate solve. It'll be changed soon as zwo are working on an auto rotator.

[900SL]

On 21/08/2024 at 20:30, DaveS said:

It wouldn't be quite 1" square, but how about a 533 evolution with twice the pixels on each axis? It would be 22.6 mm square with a 32 mm diagonal, potentially allowing the use of 36 mm unmounted filters.

I was hoping for a 533MM tech sensor in micro 4/3, but Sony appear to see no market for m4/3