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Post by howie1 on Feb 24, 2017 20:02:48 GMT
No Moon.
Weather forecast is 10% cloud, 5km/hr wind, 24 degrees C by 9pm with dew point 19 degrees C.
Coords are 27.9882° S, 153.0019° E.
FOV with my camera and scope combo 1.29 degrees (although I can easily crop and zoom in).
Should be there from 6pm right through to midnight to 2am.
Dont expect much from targets low in the sky from North horizon right down to the South East horizon due skyglow.
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Post by ChrisV on Feb 25, 2017 1:48:47 GMT
Great ! As our local astro viewing night is cancelled.
I know its a standard, but I'd really like to see how your single 30/60sec captures go with the running chook. Or is that trouble as SE. I've always had trouble getting a clean shot of this. And stacking it.
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Post by howie1 on Feb 25, 2017 20:12:05 GMT
Its going to sound like a davy story! I got the chook and will post up desktop capture later today. There were about 30 scopes and 60 or so people at the party. When setting up the Western horizon was ominous. By 7:15pm when it was dark enough here in Summer to do alignment, I was on my second alignment star (Achernar) and suddenly it disappeared behind cloud! Started again and got it done, so slewed to couple of fav's to check GoTo's all ok. Just when ready to go, a bloke nearby wanted some help so went off to assist him for half an hour. When I came back and slewed off the GoTo was miles off! Parked the scope and started alignment again. I always do the Alt Az bolt adjustment on the first star in the alignment process (rather than use the hand control arrow buttons). But, when I did that it was also miles off! That cannot be unless the mount has shifted. Checked the top of the OTA with the digital level and sure enough it was no longer 27.9 degrees but was instead 24.6 degrees! Perils of having people everywhere at those parties. Someone had bumped it big time. Its happened before. Gotta take it in stride. So by the time I had setup everything again, it was 8:30 ish. Went to the running chook and got did indeed get vignetting on my usual 30 sec Toaster settings. It looked above the SE skyglow, but what was happening was high level cloud was all over that area of sky. I still grabbed a HD vid of the desktop capture which I'll post up today. Anyway, had some fun from 8:30 to 10:00 and by that stage the whole sky was pretty much high level haze. Most people started leaving. So the forecast is now bleak.
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Post by howie1 on Feb 26, 2017 7:41:32 GMT
Certainly was a night for calamity! When trying to correct one of the many laptop problems last night, I must have shutdown while Sharex was still recording so it didn't finish properly ... it is corrupted. Tried loading it into various video and media tools to no avail. Sorry Chris. Will have to get out again. I can say it certainly isn't bright. I found a website today which said the surface brightness of the chook is 21.7! There's also a bright star in its centre. I certainly didnt get very much nebulosity at all around that star, but the object about half a degree away named IC2948 came up well in 30 secs iso800. It reminded me of a smaller Rosetta. Have a look at the following photo in the link below and hover over the names of the objects cos then it shows you them in the photo. You'll see IC2948 which came up no problem. But you'll see the running chicken has that bright star in it. dso-browser.com/picture/view/14242/running-chicken-nebula/IC/2944/bright-nebula/by-djtrotterBTW, the guy who shot the photo in the link above reminds me it would be nice to try the ED80 + reducer again, and to guide and to do long exposures! Man, his shot is beautiful. Unfortunately he didnt put details of exp times and such.
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Post by ChrisV on Feb 27, 2017 3:29:48 GMT
Sorry about the calamity. And thanks, good to know running chicken is not that bright even in your hands. And I'll have a look at IC2948 when I get the weather for it. That's a nice wide shot on dos-browser
I'd like to really have a go at guiding and do single longer shots (2-5min). I got PHD2 going with a guidescope/ASI290MM, but haven't had a chance to take some shots using guiding.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2017 11:21:31 GMT
"I always do the Alt Az bolt adjustment on the first star in the alignment process (rather than use the hand control arrow buttons)"
Interesting idea Howie. I'll give it a try.
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Post by howie1 on Feb 27, 2017 12:26:55 GMT
Hey Robert ... re using Alt and Az bolts on centering the first star ... if you used your polar scope then don't adjust the Alt and Az bolts on the first star. Just follow the normal hand control buttons centering etc.
I cannot look through polar scopes due back and neck disc problems. I once fashioned a camera to look up through a polar scope, but carrying all the extra gear to do that was a PITA. In the end I figured out that I don't need to bother with the polar scope process at all.
If you want to give it a try, there's 2 simple rules ...
1. Before turning on your mount, after balancing the OTA in RA and DEC, put your OTA as close as possible to the park position - ie cw bar/side of mount head vertical, and OTA pointing parallel to the polar axle towards the pole. After doing that, then power up the mount.
2. Always pick your first alignment star clos'ish to the SCP EG Canopus, Achernar, Acrux, Hadar, Alpha Centauri (any one of those are up at any time of the year). When it slews there use the Alt Az bolts to centre it and dont touch the hand control arrow buttons. Second star, pick whatever it suggests as the second star which you then centre using the hand control arrow buttons.
After that you are good to go for visual work. Your PA will be close enough as should your GoTo's.
If you want to do camera work then do the hand control polar alignment routine, or any PA routine you like to use. Just be sure after doing a PA routine, realise that you have then very precisely found the SCP ... and in the process have moved the mount in Alt and Az. So, having moved the mount in doing that PA routine ... the star alignment in its "brain" is now incorrect (cos you have moved the mount)!. So you must always follow up a PA routine with another two star alignment - and this time you MUST use the hand control arrow buttons for both stars (cos you don't want to move the Alt Az bolts and bugger up the polar alignment routine which you just did!).
Hope that all makes sense. Sounds complicated but it isnt. Plonk the tripod down and level it. Put on the head and the OTA then balance it. Point OTA right at the pole (CW bar vartical and OTA parallel to the mounts axis). Power up mount. Do two star alignment with first star nearish to the pole. Centre that first star with Alt Az bolts. Slew to second alignment star and centre using HC arrows. Done for visual work! If camera work, then continue on with the HC built in PA routine. Then do another two star but this time centre BOTH stars with the HC arrows.
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Post by howie1 on Feb 27, 2017 12:45:14 GMT
Chris, I think loading PHD onto my bootcamped Macbook has stuffed up something. I loaded PHD on the day before all the issues I had the other night. It is the only thing which has changed since it worked fine. I dont do any updates on that PC cos I dont trust software updates. If it works I leave it alone. And here's the example of why I do that ... just thought I'd like to try guiding sometime soon so installed PHD. Bam! The very next time I use the thing it totally plays up. Toaster now takes a minute or more to process my small fine jpegs! It always used to take only 10 seconds as per all those live desktop videos I shot. BTW I am not guiding and the guidecam isnt even attached to the pc. Task Mgr says PHD isnt running. The other night I tripped the shutter for my usual 30 sec shot in EOS Utils and a bit later I thought I must have missed hearing the shutter close ... but EOS Utils said it was still taking it. Finally I force shut down EOS Utils and the shutter clicked lodging a 2min 46 sec frame in the monitor folder! When I was trying to save the running chook video yesterday arvo it was still misbehaving even when home. The sliders in Toaster were very slow. The SAVE button in Toaster was greyed out! Then when I repeated the same adjustments after resetting it all, it was back to allowing me to SAVE. Really weird things happening. Task mgr says everything is fine!? Tomorrow I will uninstall PHD, EOS Utils, DSS and Toaster then reinstall them (except PHD). Perhaps PHD installs some VB or other lib which DSS / Toaster / EOS Utils dont like using. Anyway ... I have to fix it cos my computer is totally c**p like it is.
Here's crossing fingers!
cheers
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Post by davy on Feb 27, 2017 13:22:09 GMT
Nice one on alignment Howie , I hadn't thought of that,, I release the clutch's and centre it that way,, if I'm in the flat,, no chance of seeing Polaris.
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Post by davy on Feb 27, 2017 13:25:02 GMT
I've heard a few complaints on PhD second version stuffs other programmes up ,, mk1 was ok.
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Post by howie1 on Feb 27, 2017 20:01:25 GMT
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Post by howie1 on Feb 27, 2017 20:39:01 GMT
Nice one on alignment Howie , I hadn't thought of that,, I release the clutch's and centre it that way,, if I'm in the flat,, no chance of seeing Polaris. Thanks davy. The "AltAz adjustment on first star thing" will work on any star, any distance from the pole, just the closer you are to the pole with the first star in the alignment - the better it works ... because you are effectively doing a PA by using the Alt Az bolts on that first star. I just use anything bright near'ish the pole. The ones I quoted which I try to use are all about 30 degrees from the SCP and all work great cos I live in the Southern hemisphere. But ... !!! ... even though I live down under, I have had half the sky clouded and been forced to use the Northern skies ... even though I'm in the Southern Hemi! Still works a treat! Just made sure the first star in the two star alignment was near'ish the NCP - yup the North CP. For me that's typically Capella, Pollux, or Vega. Again, cos they are near'ish to the pole you are forcing the mount to show where it "thinks" the other "end" of the polar axis of the Earth is (in this case the NCP rather than the SCP), and so adjusting the bolts to centre the (northern) star, you are once again - in effect - doing a rough PA on them. When you release and centre using the clutches as you are doing, you are - in effect - doing a star alignment rather than a PA, as when you are done adjusting the clutches the mounts polar axis is still pointing to its orig position which is away from the pole. Your goto's would be miles off unless you stayed to the region of space where you had first adjusted your clutches on. But if you happen to use a polar scope to get real close to Polaris (in the North hemi), then the mount is real close to being polar aligned ... so the clutch idea works to do a star alignment quite well. It negates the need for the HC do have to all sorts of calcs on its star maps which can lead to errors. I've been asked on my youtube channel to do a vid on alignment. Will have to do that. Trust me, with a stuffed back I have tried iterative (very neat method BTW); CCD drift; fast method (50 sec) CCD drift; various HC routines; camera looking up the polar scope; right angle finderscope attached to the mount (rather than the OTA); and a rather neat method using the HC User objects to perfectly level the scope AND find the exact polar altitude which leaves simply moving left or right in AZ to be bang on the pole. Come to think of it, like my rather loooooong posts, I think that vid might get a tad loooooong too! LOL.
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Post by howie1 on Feb 27, 2017 20:40:31 GMT
I've heard a few complaints on PhD second version stuffs other programmes up ,, mk1 was ok. Interesting davy! It's all I can put it down to in my case cos I've done nothing else to the pc. Will let you know how it goes after blowing it away and reloading EOS, DSS and AT leaving PHD off. cheers
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Post by davy on Feb 28, 2017 0:38:25 GMT
Cheers how,, the windows on the flat are about 3'x 2' and then a central spar and another 3'x2' window,, so I'm not tracking for any more than 15 min and I do need to do a slight tweak I try for a rough pa using Google sky map as a reference,, some observing better than none
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Post by ChrisV on Feb 28, 2017 3:50:56 GMT
Chris, I think loading PHD onto my bootcamped Macbook has stuffed up something. I loaded PHD on the day before all the issues I had the other night. It is the only thing which has changed since it worked fine. I dont do any updates on that PC cos I dont trust software updates. If it works I leave it alone. And here's the example of why I do that ... just thought I'd like to try guiding sometime soon so installed PHD. Bam! The very next time I use the thing it totally plays up. Toaster now takes a minute or more to process my small fine jpegs! It always used to take only 10 seconds as per all those live desktop videos I shot. BTW I am not guiding and the guidecam isnt even attached to the pc. Task Mgr says PHD isnt running. The other night I tripped the shutter for my usual 30 sec shot in EOS Utils and a bit later I thought I must have missed hearing the shutter close ... but EOS Utils said it was still taking it. Finally I force shut down EOS Utils and the shutter clicked lodging a 2min 46 sec frame in the monitor folder! When I was trying to save the running chook video yesterday arvo it was still misbehaving even when home. The sliders in Toaster were very slow. The SAVE button in Toaster was greyed out! Then when I repeated the same adjustments after resetting it all, it was back to allowing me to SAVE. Really weird things happening. Task mgr says everything is fine!? Tomorrow I will uninstall PHD, EOS Utils, DSS and Toaster then reinstall them (except PHD). Perhaps PHD installs some VB or other lib which DSS / Toaster / EOS Utils dont like using. Anyway ... I have to fix it cos my computer is totally c**p like it is. Here's crossing fingers! cheers I haven't had your problems, but I found that the current (pre-February) PHD2 version doesn't run ZWO cameras properly. I had to go to another page which had some development snapshot build. openphdguiding.org/development-snapshots/. That worked OK for me. However, I now notice they have a new version up 2.6.3 - which I haven't tried.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2017 11:00:06 GMT
Thanks for the info on alignment Howie. I use alt /az mounts but have a HEQ5 which I keep avoiding because it seems like too much work. Your instructions confirm that I need to do another 2 star alignment after using the alt and/or az bolts and then maybe do it once again. I have the RT 1600 which needs more than the 30 secs integration that I use on the alt/az. I am struggling with it. If I dont get polar alignment right then the 1600 is being wasted. Might take a trip over to Snake Valley with the HEQ5 , ED80 and ST120 for a bit of instruction from Ken Paul
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Post by Dragon Man on Feb 28, 2017 11:24:02 GMT
Yep, come on down again Paul. We'll stumble along together
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Post by howie1 on Feb 28, 2017 14:25:17 GMT
There was a guy with a drone at the Saturday Star Party ... great bit of video has come off it so here's the link below. ON the webpage it takes you too, scroll down until you see the post with the words ... "Nice wave to the camera Mikey...BWAHAHAHAHA!!!" Open the video up by clicking on it and then when the window opens click on the Settings "Cog" to set HD ... very sweet video! www.facebook.com/Astro-Anarchy-295399253967757/timeline/
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Post by howie1 on Feb 28, 2017 14:51:43 GMT
Thanks for the info on alignment Howie. I use alt /az mounts but have a HEQ5 which I keep avoiding because it seems like too much work. Your instructions confirm that I need to do another 2 star alignment after using the alt and/or az bolts and then maybe do it once again. I have the RT 1600 which needs more than the 30 secs integration that I use on the alt/az. I am struggling with it. If I dont get polar alignment right then the 1600 is being wasted. Might take a trip over to Snake Valley with the HEQ5 , ED80 and ST120 for a bit of instruction from Ken Paul Hi Paul, yup there is most certainly a "learning curve"! When I started out I could not make sense of the manual telling me to calculate the last transit time for Venus in Paris (or something like that), but did it anyway. Then the next step with the RA setting circle, just would not work out for me ... until I realised it was written for the Northern Hemisphere so the hours had to be reversed for the Southern Hemisphere. And on, and on it went! Like you I gave up and didn't use the GEM for ages, preferring instead a GoTo Alt Az. Finally, due to the desire to go a bit longer exposures with the cameras I gave in and started with the GEM ... but I looked up every method I could on PA, and started going to local astro club meetings and asking how to set them up. In the end it has turned out kinda easy. Still more hassle than Alt Az but it is pretty simple. I see Ken has welcomed you over there so he'll sort it out for you. One of the reasons I plugged Pete from AstroPete's cafe was he tells his customers to not worry about the polar scope and to simply use the hand control routines. I have started to put together a video with my "tips" on easy setup, and should be able to post it up tomorrow (maybe the day after). Total cloud here this week so wont have a actual star alignment video'd ... but I can sim it pretty well, I think. Cheers Howie
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Post by howie1 on Mar 1, 2017 7:52:07 GMT
Fixed the Macbook / PC!!!! (as its running Windoze perhaps I should just call it a PC. LOL) I thought long and hard about taking PHD off, cos I really want to get into longer true AP (AstroPhotography for those who were wondering In the end, I didn't even take DSS, Toaster and EOS Utils off. I simply re-ran the installers in that order - DSS then Toaster then EOS Utilities - hoping they would do a "repair" option ... and they did! (Except EOS Utils which just carried on with a 'normal' over writing install. I think?) EOS Utilities did not give any option or indication it was 'repairing', whereas both DSS and Toaster did give a Repair option. Toaster is back to taking 10 secs or so to process an image, and the sliders are behaving themselves and adjusting the colours nice n quickly. So there's a tip to people ... if your Toaster installation is taking a longer time than usual to process then try clicking on the DSS installer again, select Repair, and then re-setup all the settings in it including (dont forget this) to click the "SAVE" > "Save As DSSLIVE Settings" option. Then click the Toaster installer again and select its repair option, and then (dont forget this) to click the "Settings" > "Refresh Settings From DSS" button. Dont forget those two actions ... the DSS settings have to be saved as DSSLIVE settings for Toaster to then 'read' from when you first set it up. Otherwise it simply uses all the std settings. Which, BTW, aren't too bad ... it all works. Just I know Howie Levine who wrote Toaster says to set the DSLR red colour balance to 1.25. There have also been debates on forums re should you use Median or Average as the stacking algorithm in DSS. The consensus is to use Average if taking less than 10 frames in a stack when stacking, and Median if taking more. Could I tell a difference when I tried both ... nope. But then I was shooting iso6400 and 4 to 15 sec frames in those days. Try it out if you wish ... but again ... if you change that in DSS from average to median (for instance), then you should Save as DSSLIVE settings, then in Toaster click that Refresh Settings Fron DSS button to bring those new settings into play.
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