Managed to get Stellarmate working....sort of!

[LaurenceT]

After a pretty frustrating first attempt at Stellarmate EAA with Live Stacking some months ago following Cuiv's YT video I decided to have another go. So last night I set up and was surprised that everything worked most of the time. I wasn't able to download a stacked image so this is just one of frames:

Skywatcher Evoguide 50ED, ASI224mc, Az GTi in alt az mode.

I was pretty astonished at how quickly the images showed up on the Ipad and how bright they were. I need to do more work of the focussing obviously but this little scope has a bit of history with me, I'm going to try it next with my Askar FMA180. No post processing has been done.

IC 342, a spiral galaxy in  Camelopardalis

 

Edited September 10, 2023 by LaurenceT

[Elp]

This is just one unedited frame? It's fantastic.

[LaurenceT]

I think it's the third frame in the sequence, I was using 10 second exposures.

Thanks for the comment, I was really surprised at how quickly such bright images showed on the iPad.

[Elp]

It's a fairly bright galaxy, you'll be surprised by the brightness and resolution boost with the next scope.

[PeterC65]

EAA is quite a revelation after doing visual astronomy. Many objects show up quite well with just a single frame, although some certainly need several stacked frames before you can see anything sensible. What I was able to see with EAA blew my socks off when I first started after doing just visual astronomy. I mostly use a 72mm refractor for EAA, so not much aperture, and I've recently bought the FMA135 with only 30mm aperture but a nice wide field of view. I've heard good things about the FMA180.

 

[LaurenceT]

1 hour ago, PeterC65 said:

EAA is quite a revelation after doing visual astronomy. Many objects show up quite well with just a single frame, although some certainly need several stacked frames before you can see anything sensible. What I was able to see with EAA blew my socks off when I first started after doing just visual astronomy. I mostly use a 72mm refractor for EAA, so not much aperture, and I've recently bought the FMA135 with only 30mm aperture but a nice wide field of view. I've heard good things about the FMA180.

 

I'm looking forward to using the FMA180 but I've had to do some lateral thinking in connecting it to my 224mc planetary camera, extension rings to get back focus. What app/system do you use for the stacking? 

[PeterC65]

56 minutes ago, LaurenceT said:

I'm looking forward to using the FMA180 but I've had to do some lateral thinking in connecting it to my 224mc planetary camera, extension rings to get back focus. What app/system do you use for the stacking? 

In part I chose the FMA135 over the FMA180 because it has an M42 rather than an M48 camera connection, and my filter wheel / camera combination has exactly 50mm of back focus but screws into an M42 thread only. The FMA135 is spectacularly flat by the way and has got me wondering whether I should buy a x1.0 field fattener for the 72mm refractor.

I use SharpCap on a laptop for camera control, image capture, stacking, mount control, plate solving, and filter wheel control. I think it is a great piece of software that is really well supported by Robin Glover. He releases new versions periodically that incorporate useful improvements and works closely with his user community to decide what the improvements should be and to get them right. I use Stellarium alongside SharpCap for GOTO and tracking objects.

I connect the mount, camera, and filter wheel to a powered USB hub at the mount, with a single USB cable from the hub to the laptop (which is indoors). I can only use USB2.0 as the cables are too log for USB3.0 (which is actually slower), but this isn't a problem with the longer exposure times needed for DSOs.