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Almost everything went smoothly :)

Ant

By Ant
in Imaging - Discussion

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Ant

Ant

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Managed to get out last night for the first time in months.

I have had a big change in kit and have had a lot of help from Mike, both in software setup and some bits of hardware that he's been kind enough to send to me.

So the changes.

1. The handset has gone, now I'm using Skymap Pro11 connected via a HitecAstro EQDIR adapter to the HEQ5.

2. A game pad to move the mount while looking through the finder.

3. Maxim DL to guide and capture.

Firstly I don't find Skymap Pro to be that straight forward - I've always used Starry Night, so I guess I just need to get used to it. But connecting it to the mount and aligning on a star was OK.

being able to align on ANY star is fantastic. But how on earth do you do a two or three star alignment?

I managed to find M51 and put it on the chip on the first attempt, which was a good test.

I managed to get Maxim to talk to the guide camera, but couldn't find anywhere the exposure settings, so it was just taking a 1/30 second sub and of course there were no stars... In the end I gave up and went back to PHD.

After PHD refusing to work that well and having wasted an hour mucking around with settings I decided to go back to Maxim and have another play.

Finally I found the setting to alter the exposure - so set that to 2 seconds and at last had guide stars to choose from.

I think at that point I had the wrong setting checked, but I only realised that once I'd packed away and started watching the Maxim Tutorials that I may have had the "Autoguider Output - Control Via" set incorrectly. I had it set to ASCOM direct, but I think that it should have been Guider relays {can someone confirm that?}.

So all in all I was fairly happy with the evening. I *may* get another chance tonight - I only need an hour or so to see if I was right or not.

I did manage to get a image, not very good but you know what - it's an image. Which is more than I've got for the last three months.

7 x 2 minutes, M51. CLS filter, no calibration frames.

Ant

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Doc

Doc

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Well done Ant...

It does sound complicated and this is the main reason I've always been reluctant to move to the dark side.

It's a good picture you achieved considering it's only 14 minutes of data.

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Paxo

Paxo

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Ant,

Which version of Maxim Dl are you using. Version 5 has an inbuilt planetarium program which is very capable for finding your way to objects (you can also plate solve which gives you very accurate positioning.

Well done on getting back in the saddle, nice pic.

Steve..

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simon84

simon84

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Its looking very good mate, you'll have to show me how you do it so I dont have many nights headbutting walls......

I get the basic principal of it all but until I get all the gear in front of me ready to go I dont suppose for a moment I've considered any of the problems that I might run into.

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Euan

Euan

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I managed to get Maxim to talk to the guide camera, but couldn't find anywhere the exposure settings, so it was just taking a 1/30 second sub and of course there were no stars... In the end I gave up and went back to PHD.

Sounds like my usual routine for Maxim guiding... ah **** it, back to PHD :(

Glad you got there in the end!

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Ant

Ant

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not so smoothly anymore...

OK, I've tried everything I can think off now.

Maxim is totally beyond my tiny little mind. I thought that I managed to get it guiding at SGL5 - but it did lose the guide star after a while. That was with a DMK21. So SteveL's suggestion on the change in setting did enable Maxim to talk to the mount.

I've borrowed a SXV-EX guide head and tried that for the first time last night. The image from the guide head was poor to say the least, I estimate that aprox 1/3 of the image didn't display (just black) and the remaining 2/3 did show stars but I need darks and a 4 second exposures to get them showing... I've never needed a 4 second sub with the DMK before.

I'm at a loss now. I really do not know where to go.

So I think that maybe I need to start from scratch? Back to basics...

I really do not like Maxim, I do not like the GUI - for me it's like windows - tries to do too much, making everything too complicated. I'll still use it for image capture as I have no other choice.

So can someone please send me a screen shot of the settings (click on the brain button) for PHD. I'm using v1.11 as I heard that some of the new features may help me (they didn't). The guide scope I'm using is a Skymax127 with 1.6 reducer (so around 1000mm FL) - F8 shouldn't be an issue , would it?

So questions...

1. I'll do a rough Polar Alignent - through the polar scope - is that good enough to get the software guiding? I do not care how big the adjusts are, or about field rotation!

2. Is the guide scope suitable? Should I attempt to guide through the ED80 instead? or would it make little difference?

3. Has anyone used the Hitech EDdir module with success? Should I use that or return to the handset/serial lead?

I'm getting more and more annoyed and will lose my temper at some point - I am likely to do something that I'll regret at that point.

Help put a man out of his misery.

Ant

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MikeP

MikeP

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Hi Ant,

Only just found this thread. Here's my 2p worth - others will disagree but it works for me.

Polar alignment with the polar scope is perfectly OK if you are going to guide.

To align for goto's, set the rule "User Interface" to a value "Append on Sync" - its close to the centre of the EQMOD GUI. When you "slew to" using SkyMap (right click the object to find "slew to"), centre the object (eg Castor) in the eyepiece using your gamepad then click on the Telescope menu entry - you should see "Sync on Castor" as the 4th entry on the drop down - click on it and do the OK bit. That synchronise will add the object as a point in EQMOD. Do two more to form a triangle around the area you are interested in and you should be in business.

Give me a call if you still have problems.

Mike

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Ant

Ant

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Hi Mike,

Thanks for that, GOTO's aren't generally an issue - it's very unusual for me to not get the object on the chip, that's a lesson i Learnt from Roger. Align on a nearby star to the object you want to image and then bob's your uncle.

But I did wonder how to do a 2 or 3 star align, so you've answered that query... I'd like to continue to use EQMOD as going back to the Handset was strange (even though I've only used EQmod for a few weeks).

It's the guiding that's the issue. with PHD the guide star slowly drifts away from the cross hairs - I've tried all sorts of different settings, increasing / decreasing them in accordance to the instructions. Increasing the exposure times so I'm not chasing the seeing etc.

Don't get me started on Maxim :D

Jon, you sure you don't mind - don't want to impose! Assuming you're sure and that Thursday is OK, let me grab something to eat at the office and I'll make my way down to you for around 8?

I'll give you a call later to sort. It'll be interesting to plug your laptop into my kit and see what happens...

Ant

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Ant

Ant

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Had a great evening round at Jon's last night. I knew that my situation was bad when I pulled into the drive and saw Steve's car sitting there :)

The first instruction from Steve was to set up as I normally do. It's strange doing something that you've done a hundred times before but being watched for mistakes...! ;)

I cannot remember exactly which order things went wrong in but...

It appeared that the USB lead that I used for the Guide camera wasn't in the best of Health. So a replacement was used.

The powered hub didn't work correctly. The PC didn't even see it. Now this is a new fault as it did work at SGL5 - but it's either a new fault or an intermittant one. Either way it's going to meet Mr Hammer over the weekend.

So in the end we just plugged the EQDir and Guide cam straight into the laptop (to remove another uncertainty) - Ok everything connected and talked to each other.

Load up PDH and got the DMK talking to it OK. Then it crashed - this was the point that we discovered that the USB lead was not happy. New USB employed and we left the scope while we ate!

Burgers, sausages, onion rings and wedges later... Phd was still working correctly and so was the DMK.

We found a guide star, ran the calibratin routines - making a few adjustments to pulse length. Watched the calibration and then PHD was guiding.

Well it said that it was guiding but the star slowly drifted off... it soon bacame clear that the scope wasn't guiding in the SOuth Direction. After re-watching the calibration a few times the star clearly didn't move during the final (South) part. Steve found the setting that was wrong - happy days! Everything worked.

We changed the setting back - it went wrong, we corrected the setting it worked...

The final job was to plug things back into the [replacement] hub and make sure that they still worked. They did...

So in the end I had -

1. A faulty USB lead

2. A faulty USB Hub

3. A setting stopping the mount guiding in one direction.

So only one of them being directly my fault. I don't remember changing that setting - but maybe I did! (not too embarrasing Mike :( )

If it had been one of the problems on it's own I think that I would have found it eventually and sorted it, but all three - there was no chance!

So a big thank you to Jon and Steve, for the help, the food and the company. I enjoyed it!!!

Cheers

Ant

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SteveL

SteveL

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It was the PHD DEC Guide mode, which was set at "North" and not "Auto", so any south DEC command was being ignored completely. Calibration went W/E/N/Nothing... star headed north because of the lack of any south guiding. Set that to auto, it calibrated W/E/N/S and held the star in position for a good 10 minute sbefore we were sure that was the issue. Turne d to North only again and off the star went... whoosh!

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Ant

Ant

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The conditions are dire outside, lots of high cloud and a gibbous moon... probably see no more than 30 stars!

But I've just taken my first ever 900 second sub. Got a 1200 second one running now.

Attached is a screen grab (via a "log me in" link - so the quality of the screen grab isn't good - but you get the idea). Showing the 900 second sub, it's maxim so looks all stretched etc... But the stars certainly look round to me.

The 20 minute sub has just come in and there is a small amount of trailing. It might mean that I need to adjust the settings a little more on the tracking front, or it could be field rotation (I didn't waste a great deal of time polar aligning).

Cheers

Ant

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Ant

Ant

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And here is the result of tonight's tests...

12 x 5 minutes, 1 x 10 minute, 1 x 15 minutes and 1 x 20 minutes. The 20 minute sub was slightly trailed but I included it anyway!

I can see that I do still have some much more minor issues, could be flexure, could just be guiding errors, could be poor polar alignment.

All in all though it's probably the best it's ever worked.

Just to give you an idea of the sort of rubbish that I was imaging through, attached below is a satellite image of the cloud - I'm in the middle of the little circle that I've added in (South East).

Then the image itself - I'm going to take some flats tomorrow and see if I can improve that at all. I'll also be getting out the kitchen roll and windowlene ;)

Cheers

Ant

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