Blog – Page 10 – IMT3b Observatory

Viewing Report 20th April 2020 – IMT3

Viewing time period – 20:15 – 23:46

TONIGHTS TARGETS

H56-1 / NGC2903-OS-Ha-300s x 12 – Done

NGC3395-OS-Ha-300s x 24 – no Ha so aborted

M94-OS-Ha-300s x 8 – Done

M85-OS-Ha-300s x 24 – no Ha so ignoring

Flats () Darks () FlatDarks ()

Camera Temp -26℃

WORKFLOW

Cool down scope and dome – done
Turn off Dehumidifier – done
Turn off fans on scope – done
Find home – done
Slew to nearby star to target – done
Select filter and focus – done 74,517 Ha – done
Slew to target and take a test image using Frame and Focus – done
Solve and Sync and then right mouse click on object and Slew Here – done
Setup SGPro Sequence with details – done
Make sure guider connected and calibrate – done
When guiding run sequence – done

Tonight we will take a bunch of Ha images for 4 targets we have been imaging recently with Ha data being provided through the 12″. I have selected the 4 objects in order of passing across the Meridian first. We should aim to get 2hrs of Ha in each, in which case we may need to take the rest tomorrow.

Auto focus run before dark on Ha using 20s subs @ 21:00 focus position is now 74,517 at focuser temp 15.84℃

Autoguiding on 10s with one of the 2 stars in the FoV of the guider for OS12.

@21:17 started taking the first image. Noticed quickly the guiding in Dec went up, so stopped and recalibrated guider. Then started guiding on 8 second subs.

So the sequence is now running and taking frames of the first target in Ha NGC2903 aka H56-1.

After 12 x 300 seconds on NGC2903 I slewed to NGC3395 and took the first Ha image, but unfortunately it was very dim so not worth pursuing. Instead I have now switched to M94 which is currently on the East side of the Meridian. I will take 24 x 300 seconds Ha with no guiding. It will require a meridian flip in about 90 minutes. I will then leave Bob to complete the Ha on M94 for the rest of the night as M85 does not have any Ha within it.

Bob continued and had a little success, cloud rolled in at 23:46 so frame 9 onwards are no good so we got 8 frames in total for M94, we will continue another night. The shutter was closed as Bob did the meridian flip due to cloud.

I tried to take calibration frames the following day at 7pm when the outside temp was 15.5℃, the inside was 18.5℃ but the ASI camera on the OS12 would not get lower than -25℃. I now concur for with Bob and GingerGeek that we should lower the cooling temp to -20℃ for the remainder of the Spring and Summer returning to closer to -30℃ in the Autumn / Winter. For now I had to wait for the temperature to drop outside and thus inside to cool down the final 1℃ to take the calibration frames. By 20:22 the temp outside had dropped to 12℃ and the internal temp to 15.8℃ which was enough to cool the camera to -26℃.

Viewing Report 19th April 2020 – IMT3

Viewing time period – 21:16 – 23:24

So first I could not see any USB devices that were plugged in to the USB hub on the mount. A reboot of the mount fixed that problem. Next I could not auto focus, I did not get to the bottom of that so tried to focus manually best I could. Then PHD2 settings were wrong for the OS12 and the associated lodestar guider, the calibration steps were 100 rather than 400, the min move was 0.66 rather than 0.18. I had taken screen shots before on the blog so changed them back, I am not sure why they have changed. I then managed to calibrate the guider on the OS12, given I have taken off the camera to clean the filters the other day.

@22:15 I started imaging RGB on M94 on the OS12.

The guiding was not bad after calibration. I set to expose once every 8 seconds on the only guide star in the FoV.

What I do need to do is set the FoV indicator in TSX for the Lodestar guider to the correct position to help find a guide star. Else I really should try to guide with one of the other scopes. I am now off to bed, I will leave the scope collecting the rest of the green, 2 left and the final 12 blue. Then Bob will take over imaging for the rest of the night.

Bob took over Green which lost the guide star, so he performed a meridian flip, continued on the Green and then took some Blue. Bob then took some HA, OIII, SII at 5 and 10 minutes for a test. The Ha would be useful for the galaxy as an LRGBHa image. Bob turned in at 2:50am.

I also noticed this morning that the Offset was wrong in the ASI camera profile which was called ZWO camera in the dropdown and in fact was set to 50 rather than 21 for this Gain which was correctly set at 139. I have also changed the OSA12 No Guider profile to use the ASI2 camera rather than the ZWO one, not sure the difference. I have adjusted the setting back to 21 so all the OS12 profiles now use Gain 139 Offset 21 as their standard. If we want the other 2 setting that need changing for each time we run, along with subsequent darks and flats etc would be Gain 0 Offset 10 and Gain 75 Offset 12. For the moment the Darks and Flats etc from last night are Offset 50 so we can only use for last nights images.

Viewing Report 18th April 2020 – IMT3

Viewing time period – 21:19 – 23:23

Slewed Tak to M53 started to take colour frames. Clouded up around 11pm so shut dome and took darks, flats and flat darks.

Viewing Report 15th April 2020 – IMT3 – Final TPoint…..

Viewing time period – 18:16 – 23:15

Here is my workflow so I can repeat each night until this is finished.

Open dome – done

cool down – done

turn off dehumidifier – done

turn off fans on scope – done

find home – done

focus – done 60,535 clear

remove existing model – done

slew and sync to nearby star – done

make sure scale is correct -done

make sure image link to all sky database is selected – done

start TPoint run – done @ 21:13

Complete TPoint – 93 points done, paused TPointing at 23:15

Turn on Dehumidifer – done

Note that tonight I found the dome was definitely not lining up with the 12″ OTA. We have noticed this gradually becoming as problem over the past weeks and months. I am not sure if this is a problem with software, hardware, a change in settings or the temperature of the dome in some way has effected this. To this end I will set about a calibration run of the dome tomorrow to see if that can rectify the issue.

Viewing Report 16th April 2020 – IMT3 – Final TPoint again…..

Viewing time period – 20:59 – 23:42

Here is my workflow so I can repeat each night until this is finished.

Open dome – done

cool down – done

turn off dehumidifier – done

turn off fans on scope – done

find home – not needed

focus – done 59,659 clear – done

slew and sync to nearby star – done at 21:06 as not dark enough before then

make sure scale is correct -done

make sure image link to all sky database is selected – done

start TPoint run at point 93 – done @ 21:10

Complete TPoint – 231 points done at 23:46 including checking 5min unguided exposure which was fine

Turn on Dehumidifer – done

So what did I learn tonight? It was worth doing the TPoint model. The resulting pointing accuracy is much better with objects being almost centre off the chip. Unguided images on the 12″ look good at 5mins, I will try longer when the clouds and rain disappear. That following a documented approach helps as above. The adjustments to the worm and the loose weight helped. That fixing the dome rotation slippage on the encoder today helped.

I mentioned above the dome slipping on the encoder, this was because of the small weak spring that is used on the dome, which is not good enough and over the past year has stretched beyond its limit. This means as the dome rotates and the dome shudders due to the joins in the dome not being flush (another issue) and thus the spring is stretched. This meant that some of the time the encoder wheel seen below was not touching the dome and therefore lost around 30-40 degrees. To rectify I have temporarily stretched and tightened the spring which we will replace later with a more suitable one.

Encoder spring now stretched to fix problem

Viewing Report 14th April 2020 – IMT3 – Last TPoint…..

Viewing time period – 20:30 – 22:30

Tried again to get the TPoint completed tonight but hit with a load of issues which I will try to sort tomorrow. FoV in TSX was wrong. Not plate solving in TSX. Focus potentially an issue. Use of All Sky Image Link for Scripted Image Link needed to be selected from the Image Link –> All Sky tab. Image scale in various places was incorrect again and should be 0.32. Managed to get to 10 points with 3 failed. Clearly something has changed given this worked a week ago. I will attempt a go tomorrow night to resolve. Meanwhile I have left Bob to image. In hindsight we should also be leaving the observatory running all night as when I got up at 4am it was crystal clear and dome was closed as nothing planned, so a default object and scope setting should be used and left running. However, Bob did manage to grab some frames in the clear of M53 until what looks like 3am so that is better than nothing.

TOSA Web Status

During one of our video sessions whilst watching the T-point run, Chief TOSA Dave mentioned about how it would be nice to see status information of observatory operations in a simple web page.

Since I’d never used Node-Red but had used ASCOM Alpaca via Python I thought this may be the time to learn something new. As I was designing this for Dave I decided to keep the layout, presentation simple along with colour coding in the spirit of Fisher Price toys.

The safety monitor is always visible across all tabs, the colour changes depending on the threshold levels we decide on.

Likewise the main equipment tab displays the equipment status and allows us to select which camera, focuser or filter wheel to monitor.

This project is still very much a work in progress but there is many different ways that the same thing can be accomplished.

Viewing Report 13th April 2020 – IMT3 – Last TPoint ?

Viewing time period – 20:32 – 22:13

Dome has been open a few hours now and the 12″ cooling down with the fans on.

At first the TPoint run was not solving the image, I had to change again the Image scale which was set to 0.01 for the automated TPointing back to 0.32.

Once this was done I started a new TPoint run. The new numbers coming in looked better on the scatter graph, however at about 29 points the mount stalled and the TPoint stopped. So I went out and backed off, turning anti-clockwise the spring screws 1/8 turn on the RA axis. I then restarted the mount, but now it is too late to start again as I have work tomorrow. So I will leave the mount in Bob’s capable hands and head off to bed.

Viewing Report 11th April 2020 – IMT3 – TPoint again part 2

Viewing time period – 21:02 – 04:21

Started TPointing at Point 153, at 22:00 got to Point 231 which gave us 192 confirmed points.

Then went back and did the following points

Point 28 (DONE)

Point 50-55 (DONE)

Point 60 (DONE)

71-92 (DONE)

100-153

101-106 (DONE)

Failed – 107, 108, 112, 113, 130-132,134

Not tried – 100,109-110, 114-118

Completed – 111, 119-129,133,135-152

We had some cloud around 22:45 until 23:29

Throughout this time I processed some Lunar images on the Windows laptop with AutoStakkert from the previous few nights of imaging through the Mak 180. I have noticed you cannot open anything larger than 4GB file size !!

@1:52am TPoint finished

@2:09 GingerGeek took over to look at focuser positions and backlash and autofocus on the Takahashi FSQ102.

Then we started to image M53 on the Tak for RGB data to add to the Luminance data we already have from GingerGeek’s data on the Esprit 120ED.

Tomorrow I will need to look at the TPoint model to refine it!

Addendum ……

So I took a look at the TPoint model and could not get it below 109 inner circle and 200 outer circle without removing a lot of points. So I posted question on the Bisque Sky X forum.

They came back and stated there is something loose in my imaging train or the mount. There is nothing wrong with my imaging train so instead I performed adjustments on the worm gear as they suggested. I will now need to re-TPoint to see if this makes a difference.

Spring screws left and right and Cam Stop screw in the middle

Viewing Report 10th April 2020 – IMT3 – TPoint again part 1

Viewing time period – 20:36 – 00:33

Another night of trying to complete a TPoint run. After opening the dome around 4pm to cool down and turning the fans on the 12″ and pulling back the light shield material we (Bob, GingerGeek and I) @20:49 completed Slew and Sync to test plate solving ability which worked well.

We then started the TPoint run.

Our first failure was Point 28 @21:21. The following are other failures.

Failed Point 50,51,52,53 @21:42

Failed Point 55 @21:45

Failed Point 60 @21:53

Failed Point 71,76,77,78,79,80,81,84,85,86,89,

We then performed the first of a few meridian flips back and forth at Point 92

At pointing sample 96 we changed from 20s exp to 25s (20 failed at this point) to see if this helped the failure rate, it helped a little. The sky clarity was not great nor was the 12″ pointing correctly through the dome at the Meridian so need to look at this at a future point.

More Tpoints failed as follows. TPoint 100,102,105,106,107 (at this point scope 1/3 obscured by slit!)

Failed TPoint 109,110,112,113,114,116

By 11pm after 2 hour we had completed 122 points

Failed TPoint 123,127,128,129,130,131,132,133,134,135

@23:39 stopped due to cloud

@00:33 stopped again due to cloud and shut dome but left TPoint session unfinished to see if we can pick up tomorrow night if clear.

Viewing Report 7th April 2020 – IMT3 – TPoint Failed

Viewing time period – 20:54 – 22:30

Tonight I set out to perform a TPoint run to improve the values we got last October. However it transpired to be more difficult than I thought. We updated TSX after October to there latest release, this seemed to have changed some of the parameters for plate solving. This meant that every time we took an image in the TSX it would not plate solve and so we could not perform the TPoint run. After the best part of 1 hour I gave up and let Bob take over the scope to play.

Meanwhile I then setup the Mac 180 to image Venus, however, by the time I got round to it and found it in the telescope and thus on the chip it was low down the side of the house opposite by the roof and was bumping around badly due to thermals. I found it difficult to centre the scope on Venus with such a small chip so I may need a more repeatable way of doing this moving forwards. I took a couple of videos just for posterity even though I felt the quality would be poor.

Subsequently the following day I opened up the images take with TSX and also download the All Sky Database that was missing to both the NUC in the dome and my local Mac. I then started to change the settings in Image Link within TSX until I could solve the image.

Solved image using Image Link All Sky Search in TSX

The key parameter transpired to be the Image Scale Tolerance on the All Sky tab setting it to 5% from 1%. Also I changed the Image Scale back to 0.32. On the Setup tab I selected Setup under Source Extraction and changed the detection to 10.0 and the minimum number of pixels to 20.0.

New Source Extraction Settings and solved image

I then tried a second image and that solved in 1 sec too so very happy. I will try to give the TPoint another go tonight as well as Venus on the Mac 180. If TPoint works I will take RGB on the Tak. First solution from the image I solved can be seen below.

The resulting astrometric solution from TSX is below based on another 60s exposure image is below as text.

******* ASTROMETRIC SOLUTION RESULTS ********

Center RA (2000.0): 07h 14m 12.34s

Center Dec (2000.0): +32° 34' 16.1"

Scale: 0.3250 arcseconds/pixel

Size (pixels): 4656 x 3520

Angular Size: 0° 25' 13" x 0° 19' 04"
Position Angle: 195° 28' from north through east

Mirror Image: No

RMS: 0.88 (X: 0.45 Y: 0.75)

Number of Stars Used in Solution: 40 (100%)

FWHM: 8.98 pixels, 2.92 arcseconds

***********************************************

Things still to resolve

Check out why WSX is loosing connection and shutting the dome
Clean filters for the 12″ to get rid of doughnuts
Clean sensor for QHY168C

Bob’s viewing report: 6th April 2020 – More Comet chasing

Chineham Scouts say ‘Thank you’ on Zoom session whilst viewing the Moon

After helping with a BAS Outreach event using Zoom to share images from IMT3 of Venus and the Moon with 1st Chineham Cub Scouts (to help them acheive their Astronomy Badge) I joined Dave and GingerGeek for a joint observing session chasing Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) with Dave’s 12″ OS.

I continued to observe after both Dave and GingerGeek called it a night, my aim was to get some data from the Esprit 120 of C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) as the previous nights run had been terminated when the clouds rolled in.

Quick 10min Exposure through Esprit 120 Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS

I set up another Profile in SGPro for GingerGeeks Esprit 120, adding his Lodestar Guider. C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) was too far from the equator for the Calibration of the guider in PHD2, so I slewed to Bogardus in Auriga, cleared the calibration data for the Lodestar and re-calibrated it. I was then able to get two 10 minute guided exposures with the mount tracking at Sidereal rate before the comet disappeared from view below the roof line of a neighbouring house.

Comet C/2017 T2 PANSTARRS 10min Exposure Esprit 120

Having lost Comet Atlas for the night, I checked Heavens-Above for other candidates and found C/2019 Y1 (ATLAS) was about to drop below the horizon, but C/2017 T2 PANSTARRS was reasonably well placed, albeit a bit low, and only a short slew from where the telescope was already pointing. After slewing to PANSTARRS and a 5arcminute JOG Up, Left, Down, Right and Down I had it reasonably centred in the FoV. The first 10 minute exposure had star trails, thought I was guiding but found the Mount was still tracking at ‘Custom rates’. The next 10 minute exposure also had stars trailing even though the PHD2 Graph looked fine. I then discovered that with the SGPro profile changes I’d made I hadn’t connected to the ASCOM Telescope Driver for TheSky. The next 10 minute exposure was not much better as by now I’m imaging down in the weeds 🙁 . Time to find a new target … as it is up and really bright drowning out most objects I slewed to the Moon for a few final shots of the evening.

Bob’s viewing Report: 5th April 2020 – C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS)

I started the evenings session grabbing some frames of Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) with my Takahashi FS-102 and QHY168C OSC Camera.

After successfully acquiring some data of various exposure times I decided to try and grab some data from GingerGeek’s Esprit 120, the weather station was reporting Haze and I could see wisps of clouds on the All Sky Camera so it wasn’t worth spending lots of time gathering data but worth using the opportunity to work out a procedure for chasing comets. As I hadn’t switched Dome profiles I found that the view through the Esprit was partially obscured so I switched to Dave’s 12″ OS only to find that the last thing he’d been doing was collecting Dark frames and the cover was still on the 12″.

I was in the process of switching back to GingerGeeks’s Esprit when Dave ping’d me on WhatsApp to say he’d woken up and remember that he cover was on and did I want it removed … perfect timing !
I managed to grab some frames for comparison with those I’d taken with the Tak earlier in the evening but aborted the sequence as clouds were messing up the results. So decided to try GingerGeek’s Esprit one more time as the clouds appeared to have passed by.

I found I had to create a new Profile for GingerGeek’s Esprit as the only profile available had the ASCOM Telescope Driver for TheSky selected and as Dave had mentioned to me previously, this was not needed when Tracking a Comet as that would be done by the Mount under direct control of TheSky X.

This does create a problem in that with these profiles you cannot Plate Solve and Centre the object as they is no Telescope for SGPro to work with, so we’ll need to figure out how to do that in TheSky X or start the session with the Telescope selected, centre and frame the comet, set the Tracking Rates to the comet then switch to a profile without a Telescope to run the SGPro sequence.

The weather deteriorated and the Wx Stn Auto closed the slit at 01:27 part way through a 15minute exposure.

Another night of good lessons learnt.

Viewing Report 4th April 2020 – IMT3 & Travel Setup Mak 180

Viewing time period – 18:42 – 04:21

Hoping to perform a TPoint run tonight, along with gathering some frames on M53 through all 3 scopes (along with Darks and Flats for the Esprit), as we only got some frames through the Tak yesterday. I also hope to try out the Mak 180 Sky-Watcher on the portable mount at the same time from the garden. I will also join the BAS Zoom meeting with all the rest of the gang on as we go through the night, which we have been doing for the past 11 days due to this unprecedented lockdown of society globally due to the Coronavirus, Covid-19 SARS-Coronavirus2 outbreak.

So progressed well tonight, spent the whole night on Zoom with the other astronomers so good company. Managed to image the following Lunar 100 objects, L13 – L30 – L42 – L53 – L59 – L65 – L68 as well as Venus which was at a phase of 44.75%.

@23:53 finished imaging with the Mak 180

Unfortunately M35 has now set and Bob is still imaging the Moon so I will have to grab M35 tomorrow early if it is clear……

I saw big problems with calibration with PHD2 which need to be looked at on the Tak.

@4:21am went to bed whilst the IMT3 was taking Darks

Things to still resolve

Check out why WSX is loosing connection and shutting the dome
Clean filters for the 12″ to get rid of doughnuts
Clean sensor for QHY168C

Viewing Report 3rd April 2020 – IMT3

Viewing time period – 18:56 – 00:59

So early on as always I opened the dome to cool down. Tonight Bob, Gingergeek and I want to image Venus in the Pleiades. Even before it got dark and as I slewed the telescopes to Venus, it was visible straight away so I took a quick image, 0.001s from both the 12″ and Bob’s FS102.

Venus 0.001s exposure from the OS 12″ during daytime

Venus 0.001s exposure from the Tak FS102 during daytime

I then went off to watch TV with Helen whilst Gingergeek and Bob grabbed some more images of Venus.

Around 10pm I re-joined Bob and GingerGeek and we set about imaging Venus as it passed by M45 Pleiades in the Tak FS 102. We then went on to perform autofocus on the Tak followed buy setting up the autofocus on the Esprit 120ED

Before the clouds decided to put a stop to play, we took some images of M53 the globular cluster on the Esprit around 00:10am using the Luminance filter.

Quick stack and stretch of M53 from Skywatcher Esprit 120 ED

By 00:59 the clouds finished play 🙁

Viewing Report 31st March 2020 – IMT3 12″ – Sync and Solve

Viewing time period – 20:30 – 22:20

Tonight GingerGeek, Bob and I wanted to make sure the newly installed version update for SGPro was working. In particular we wanted to get the sync and solve working, so that we could centre an object, but also the autofocus as the was a major update.

In SGPro take a quick 5s image of the object

In SGPro click the Solve and Sync button on the bottom left

In SGPro the image is now solved and synced to in SGPro

In SGPro right mouse click on the object and select Center Here from the menu

In SGPro select Yes on the Center Telescope window

In SGPro take another 5s image using Frame and Focus

In SGPro the object should now be in the centre

In TSX from the Telescope tab click on the Start Up button and select Star Synchronisation

In TSX make sure Synchronize mount into existing model is selected and click on Sync

In TSX notice the FoV indicator from the camera has shifted to a new position

In SGPro the resulting image should not have moved

The mount in TSX and SGPro are now synced to the correct position in the sky.

Viewing Report 27th March 2020 – IMT3 12″

Viewing time period – 17:18 – 02:07

Cooling down telescope ready for tonights viewing

M94 and NGC 3395/3396 are the 2 targets for tonight, some luminance on M94 and RGB on NGC 3395/3396 if I get enough time. I always try to open the dome early to give at least 2-4 hours cooling before I use.

When I was about to start with autofocus I tried to recenter back on the target but the mount respond and it transpired that the mount thought it was out of balance. I went to the dome and the mount was beeping proving it was out of balance. So I turned the mount off, manually moved the scopes pack to the park position and then turned the mount back on and all was well.

@19:57 I performed the autofocus for the night on Luminance which scammer in at a position of 75282 on the focuser.

@20:10 I started an imaging run of 24 x NGC 3395/3396 with Luminance filter. Once done I planned on grabbing RGB frames before moving on to M94.

@22:32 I started on the RGB frames for NGC 3395/3396 after refocusing on the Red filter.

@1:40 I slewed to M94 and changed the filter to Luminance. I performed a refocus and shifted from 77895 to 75884 on Red filter by accident. So we (I had Bob on Zoom by this point) refocused on the Luminance and the new focus position was 74884. So the difference is 1000 for Luminance to Red. I also changed the step size for the focuser temperature compensation from 531 to 431 to see if the HFR is more stable.

I noticed tonight that PHD2 lost the Use Direct Guide check mark twice and thus complained about pulse guide not being supported. I had to stop guiding, disconnect the mount in PHD2 and go into the settings, check the Use Direct Guide and reconnect the mount and start guiding again. Something to look into possibly.

Quick frame and focus 20s of M94 Luminance

@02:07 I went to bed and left the scope gathering another 2 hours of Luminance data on M94.

Addendum …….

The following day I took the ZWO ASI1600MM CMOS Camera off the back of the 12″ and cleaned the sensor window. What I found was the dark dust doughnuts disappeared and the rest for the doughnuts were actually on the filters.

Before cleaning Flat from Luminance on ASI1600MM

Flat from Red after cleaning sensor window

Flat from Green after cleaning sensor window

Flat from Blue after cleaning sensor window

Things to still resolve……..

Check out why WSX is loosing connection and shutting the dome
Fix Slew Here and Centre Here in SGPro that does not work
Clean filters for the 12″ to get rid of doughnuts
Clean sensor for QHY168C

Viewing Report 25th March 2020 – IMT3 12″

Viewing time period – 19:15 – 23:05

As I found last night I need to get Temperature Compensation working for the focuser if I am to produce any decent images. SGPro has a Temperature Compensation Trainer which I will follow.

Temperature Compensation Trainer in SGPro under Tools menu

I started @19:35 by taking an image of a star field to make sure there were no bright stars and then ran the autofocus routine. This came back with a focus position of 76974 at 11.5℃.

Next I started the Temperature Compensation wizard which seems to measure the difference in focus position over a 5℃ decrease in temperature. It takes the initial reading above and then you wait until the temperature has dropped by 5℃.

Temperature Compensation Trainer Starting figures

It took 3.5 hours for the temperature to drop by 5℃. So @23:08 I then ran the autofocus routine and got the next image and result. This resulted in 531 steps per 1℃ of temperature change.

Viewing Report 24th March 2020 – IMT3 12″

Viewing time period – 18:16 – 01:43

Tonight I plan on setting the 12″ imaging M94, a Messier galaxy in Canes Venatici.

I slewed to nearby star and focused using SGPro after changing a couple of settings in the step size and amount of data points to be used, I set step size to 100 from previous 1000 and data point to 5 from previous 10 and got a much better focus. Focus landed up first time around at 738840

I had tried to get @focus working in TSX but it would fail every time on the galaxy with not enough stars. This meant I could not use TSX to solve and sync to centre M94.

I then tried to centre with SGPro and that also failed so instead I used TSX to connect to the camera and manually moved M94 to the centre of the chip. I ned to get the local plate solver working as it was not running.

@ 20:32 I took an initial 5min sub to see what the image would be like after setting PHD2 guiding running.

@1:20 and after gathering 3 hours of data I moved to other side of mount so meridian flip. I refocused as it had drifted a lot. I now need to consider setting up focus move for temp as the focus shift is dramatic. I also changed PHD2 Hysteresis setting to 0.20 from 0.10 as the PHD was having problems guiding.

I struggled to find guide star and landed up exposing for 15s and then having to increase, possibly needs recalibrating on this side of the mount. But also I need to find a brighter guide star by moving the mount offsetting the galaxy. The other way is using one of the piggy backed scopes which I may do next time.

@1:43 the dome closed, not sure why, might have been high cloud but probably because the WSX software lost contact with the WSX hardware. I did a reset and reconnected and then it was fine, but as the dome had closed I packed up with 3 hours of Luminance data on M94. I now need to take flats on the morning.

Learning’s for next time……….

Update the SGPro Equipment profile with the changes for step size and data points for autofocus
Make sure the local plate solver is working and online at localhost
Review Anydesk bug that changes mapping of keyboard
Check out why WSX is loosing connection and shutting the dome
Work out how to use temperature compensation for the focuser in SGPro

Flats from the following day at the same focus point

Viewing Report 23rd March 2020 – Travel Scope

Viewing time period – 18:23 – 04:08

@18:28 took flats for last night

PixInsight Flats from 120ED Esprit and QHY168C

@18:47 finished 20x -25℃ Flats 0.06s now taking Darks, will do more flats later when the cooler can get to -35℃ which right now it can’t as ambient outside temp is 7℃ so I can only get to -33℃ at 100%

ZWO Ezcap software for acquisition of Flats and Darks

@21:47 just finished Flats at -35℃

@22:49 started imaging Whale and Hockey Stick for Herschel 400

@00:47 I have 2 hours worth of data, performed meridian flip and continued to image the Whale for another 2 hours whilst I went to bed

@4:08 finished imaging and packed up