QHY camera gain

[muletopia]

QHY8l gain question

Hello Folks,
For the couple of years I have been using the QHY8l camera I have become quite happy with it,
For a much longer time I have used PHD 2 for guiding and hold Craig Stark in great respect.
Some time ago an ASCOM driver for the camera was released. When starting Nebulosity the ASCOM drive is sellected and then the QHY camera is selected in the next step..'With the new camera the gain is set with a slider in the camera properties window.
To take pictures of the Helix is slide is set so that it shows gain 6, then OK out to the camera and OK out to return to Nebulosity.
However when images are acquired and an image opened Nebulosity image information reports gain 0, the other properties are as expected.


So which report do I believe, I think Nebulosity is correct.
Have I missed something obvious in setting up the camera?
Any help would be much appreciated
Chris

[scotty38]

What does the fits header say? Can you use another application to see what it thinks?

[muletopia]

Thanks scotty38, I looked at the fits inf with AstroPixelProcessor, t showed a gain of 0.0. Not surprising as Nebulosiry wrote the header.

So somewhere QHY must elaborate on the gain setting, bur where?

Chris

[scotty38]

Is it fair to say then that you are choosing gain 6 in Nebulosity but it seems to be using 0? Do you have any other acquisition software you could try to narrow down where the breakdown is happening?

[muletopia]

Scotty38, sorry for the delay in replying, Astro Pixel Processor also reports gain 0

[scotty38]

It sounds like the Nebulosity/new Ascom driver combo is not setting things correctly then on the face of it.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

What about downloading some other more popular software to test, such as NINA or APT ?
Or maybe first go back to using the native QHY driver  and try that with Nebulosity ?

Steve

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Another thought is that to the best of my knowledge Nebulosity is no longer supported (correct me if I am wrong) and so it may well be that as @scotty38 suggests any new drivers released may not work with it.

Steve

[Stu Wilson]

i used to get similar things in APT however i fast worked out whichever is correct there isnt any visible difference between 0 and 6 gain on the QHY8l

 

Stu

[muletopia]

OK,

I took  teoria-del-bang's suggestion and installed NINA. Sure enough in the set up it finds my QHY8l camera and reports about it, If I set gain 3 for the camera NINA sees this. One query, it reports monochrome for the OSC camera.  I guess that will not matter.

My first hurdle is specifying my Sidereal Technology controlled Mesu mount (200 mk1) which is ASCOM compatible, How do I connect to this in NINA?

Chris

[muletopia]

Progress ,

With a pointer from the Sitech forum and the NINA thread here I have all my gear connected, I look forward to using  some of NINA's many options.

When, if ever, a clear night eventuates CDC might be replaced by NINA's planetarium.

Chris

 

[scotty38]

You can point to CdC in NINA by the way if you wish

[muletopia]

Yes Scotty38  that is so, my next question about NINA,  The  NINA PDF manual  says to set the plate solver to use go to plate solve settings  and specify the path. I want to set Platesolve 3  but cant find the plate solve settings.

much learning to do

Chris

 

[scotty38]

5 hours ago, muletopia said:

Yes Scotty38  that is so, my next question about NINA,  The  NINA PDF manual  says to set the plate solver to use go to plate solve settings  and specify the path. I want to set Platesolve 3  but cant find the plate solve settings.

much learning to do

Chris

 

I'm not in front of it right now but I think it's in Options/Imaging then select the plate solver of choice. There you will have the appropriate options to configure.

[muletopia]

Yes again Scotty38, options->platesolving  does indeed let yo set platesolve3. It then asks for the location of plaesolve3. I know the location of the platesolve3 data sets but not of the executable module. I have posed a question of Sitech groups asking where it is. Hopefully some one will tell me because I can not find it.

Chris

[muletopia]

---

Hello Scottyt38

So I went poking around and tried this thread on Cloudy Nights

N.I.N.A Platesolve 3 Download? - Cloudy Nights

https://www.cloudynights.com › topic › 842082-nina-p...

I found:-
I am trying to setup N.I.N.A with Platesolve 3 using the download link for PlateSolve 3, but it fails at the end of the download.

 

Not a promising start but I went there to find
https://nighttime-im...ng/#platesolve3
clicking on the link gives
PlateSolve3#

Author: PlaneWave Instruments (Dave Rowe) URL: PlateSolve 3.80 5GB
Nina has kindly been selected to add the new PlateSolve3 program to its arsenal of platesolvers, courtesy of Dave Rowe. PlateSolve3 is a standalone executable which has been improved to work with longer focal lengths and smaller FOVs with fewer stars. This download has the necessary catalogues already added. Just unpack it into a directory of your choosing and point to it in Nina platesolving options.
You need to start the executable once standalone and select File - Configure directory.
Set the GaiaDr2 location to the 'UD Catalog' directory in the unpacked PlateSolve3.80 directory.
Then set the UCAC4 location to the 'Kepler' directory in the same unpacked directory. You will also need to set your location in View - Parameters.

 

That all downloaded (52 gig). I followed the installation instructions  and all seems to have gone well.

Chris
.