Software – Page 3 – IMT3b Observatory

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 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

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 3rd March 2020 – Travel Scope

Viewing time period – 19:37 – 22:35

Back out again tonight for a short period to look at guiding again. So with everything setup and a longer USB 2 cable in use I am now sitting in the warm Orangery. I will try again with the PHD2 software to guide and EzCap to acquire images from the QHY168C. I have set the Gain to 7 and Offset to 30 as previously used on my other QHY168C when used in Tenerife.

I polar aligned using PoleMaster. Then set about syncing the scope with Betelgeuse. It was only off slightly. The sync worked fine tonight. I then slewed to M35 and started the PHD2 guider software, selected a guide star and calibrated the guider. This worked well first time proving my new step size of 4 using a small ms time for the pulse worked.

Then I started guiding and very quickly realised the same problem as yesterday with DEC drift upwards. No amount of fiddling with the setting such as Hysteresis or Aggressiveness changes the constant upwards drift. I then remembered that I could calibrate the settings as the other night under Guider Assistant. I ran this made the changes but still the upward drift.

I then remembered that on the Paramount MEII in the dome I had to drift align with PHD2 to get it properly polar aligned and that PoleMaster was only good enough for short exposures or rough guiding. So I set about drift aligning.

The first thing to note is that the polar alignment was out by a fair bit to get the accuracy I require in both azimuth and altitude. I have now adjusted both and the graph seems a lot smoother.

So in all it took me around 1 hour to drift align and just as I was about to test the clouds rolled in!

Viewing Report 1st March 2020 – Travel Scope

Viewing time period – 17:35 – 23:00

First time out for a very long time with the travel setup. I need to get the guiding working before the Tenerife holiday in July. I have left Bob to play with the IMT3 whilst I work through the bugs.

The challenge is at first remembering how to set everything up. I found after some effort I was actually missing a cable, it was in the black wheelie case in the garage with the laptop tent and scope daytime cover, but more about that later.

So So after finding a place on the patio where I could feed the USB cable through the Orangery window, I put the Berlebach tripod down and placed the MyT mount on top. I tightened the screws and then placed the Sky-Watcher Esprit 120 ED on top of the Versa Plate. Once in position I balanced the scope then connected the various cables, now all through the mount due to my good friend Bob making up some power connectors for me.

So I tried to guide through PHD2. There was a large wind blowing. On trying to calibrate the scope would not move. After what seemed like an hour I remembered that cable, this was again the ST4 guider cable that is needed on the Mac if you are guiding with PHD2 as there is no ASCOM. So I connected the ST4 cable and it worked.

What I could not achieve tonight was to get the guide graph behaving, it was a mess. The wind was at fault but still there were other issues, not least the slider to control the contrast of the screen was causing anything above 0.5s to become white.

After many hours I gave up and brought the rig in. I had been using TheSkyX to slew there scope, PHD2 to guide and EzCap to connect to the QHY168C camera and take images. I will try again tomorrow night.

Analysis Report for first partial Exoplanet Data – IMT3 Observatory

I managed to get only 45 minutes worth of data the other night to test if I could both acquire data and then process it. It took some time to get the downloaded HOPS software from the ExoClock mission working on my Mac, but with the help of Angelos from the project. So I opened the 46 images, I did not capture darks or flats and of course no bias due to it being a CMOS camera. I added information about the observatory and then ran the reduction and alignment code.

Completion of details and opening of 46 images

So the initial chart looked promising, I had taken the first set of frames almost on time for the transit even though you are supposed to start 1 hour before. This was because it took me so long to setup. So the data looks like it shows a decrease in brightness over the 45mins, however I have asked Angelos for his opinion and await a response.

I then selected the target star, KELT-18 with the red circle below, along with 5 comparison stars. I may have selected stars incorrectly here as they are probably suppose to be not variable.

The resulting table appeared with the size of the box for each star and its position.

I then ran the photometry code and the following chart was created which to me showed I had done something wrong given the scatter.

Graph output with actual photometric values and PSF in red

I then for fun ran the fitting code from this screen.

The fitting showed and increase in brightness which was clearly incorrect. So I have learned a few things with this, first is to read up on using the software for analysis, second is to gain more data and calibration frames.

Resulting output clearly showing problems with data

Viewing Report 1st December 2019 – IMT3 Observatory

Viewing time period – 19:03 – 21:27

Tonight I wanted to get the PHD2 guiding working when doing a meridian flip without the need to calibrate. A month ago we still failed to get this done, however a little experimenting tonight and changing a single setting has corrected the problem. The setting was the ‘Reverse Dec Outputted After Meridian Flip’ one within the Guiding table of the Advanced Setup, for which I ticked and this fixed the issue.

Reverse DEC output after meridian flip needed ticking!

I then decided to try 2 objects either side of the meridian and that worked manually slewing to each and then guiding. What did not work was the slewing automatically to the object in terms of centring on the screen. It slewed to the star, I could see it on the screen, the first object Almach worked ok, but the second object, Deneb appeared on the screen but failed to centre with the error ‘ Failed to auto centre, aborting sequence’ followed by ‘ failed to centre on object with an error less than 50 pixels’. Plate solving works fine, well at least it comes back with success.

So I tried different sets of co-ordinates from TSX including the Topocentric and 2000.0 sets. Neither made a difference, with 2000.0 data used I still got this set of errors which shows an error in pixels of more than 50 in DEC.

So I decided it might be the very bright object I had picked, star in this case, that was causing the problem. So to further my experimentation this evening I choose two different and less bright objects, M36 and M39, once again on different sides of the Meridian. Success !!

So after fixing this I am now happy to go off to bed early (9:30 work tomorrow) with a job well done.

Clear Skies 🙂

Viewing Report 27th/28th October 2019 – IMT3 Observatory

Viewing time period – 19:01 – 00:05

GingerGeek and I tried to sort a few things last night, namely PHD2 guiding on both sides of the mount without any recalibration, automated meridian flip within SGPro, focusing and plate solving. After nearly 2 hours we had not fixed any of these problems. So we need further research/reading to resolve.

Instead @9pm I decided to take some more images of M76 since it was due to be fairly clear all night. What I found was this was quite simple to now setup and get working as long as I did not mind performing a manual flip at 11:30pm.

There was one other issue last night which was around the dome closing, it suddenly did this around 10pm, not sure why, I think (I now in the light of day cannot be sure) the relay went off. Looking at the Keogram and then the ASC movie for last night it does coincide with a set of cloud going over so maybe that is why it closed. It will be nice to then get it to reopen when clear, another thing to fix at some point.

So as I say, setting up for the run was straightforward and I used TSX rather than SGPro to centre and platesolve M76 as normal. I then took a sample image of 60 seconds found that the focus was more or less spot on for OIII, despite earlier challenges with focus not working and all was ready to go.

On the point of focus problems, we could not get an accurate V-Curve earlier in the evening, SGPro kept coming up with different focus points after each run and eventually we put this down to the dome and scope not having had time to cool given it only being 30 minutes or so. The outside temperature was around 3℃ whilst the inside was just shy of 9℃. Later in the evening the difference was much smaller (I should remember to record this). I can get the ambient temp for the outside the next day from the FITS header but I have no record of the inside ambient temp, something else to fix.

So I went off to bed just after the meridian flip around 11:30pm and after watching a few frames come down. This morning I took flats and darks and closed the dome which was still open with the first frost of the season having set in and frost was covering the inside of the dome.

Viewing Report 22nd/23rd October 2019 – IMT3 Observatory

Viewing time period – 21:38 – 01:50

Quick set of images this evening to take some more data of M76. I can image for 3 hours before a meridian flip. I need to get the automated flip working and thus the plate solving that seems to be having issues. For now I will open the dome and just set it running on OIII through the 12″.

After entering with TSX connected to the ASI camera I started guiding and for setup reasons I have included the guide star here.

@00:45 I managed to do the manual meridian flip and then headed off to be after collecting another 2 hours of OIII data. I left the scope running for the rest of the night knowing that the dome would shut if the sky clouded up.

So I am now up at 7am and indeed the dome closed when the clouds rolled in. I have no real notification of when that occurred so I have now set the HitecWeather station software to log on the triggering of the relay to a file so I can see the time it closed.

This will allow me to compare to the Keogram from the ASC and double check the dome is closing at the appropriate time.

Fortunately SGPro is connected to the weather station as a safety monitor and stops imaging if the dome closes. I can see the clouds started to roll in around 1:30am for a few minutes then just before 2pm there were more and by 2:43am after they covered the sky. The good thing is it looks like, although I cannot be sure, the dome would have closed at around 1:50am which is the time of the last image taken assuming the date stamp is the completion of the image.

Safety enabled

I have now taken flats and darks and parked the scope and it is ready for it’s next outing, I also remembered to turn the dehumidifier back on this time. Both the dehumidifier and the flat panel need connecting to an Arduino to automate turning on and off.

View from cameras when in position to flat panel on 12″

Viewing Report 14th/15th September 2019 – IMT3 TPoint

Viewing time period – 19:47 – 02:58

Tonight Bob and myself had a couple of things to achieve on the dome so that it would be ready for Autumn. As the Moon was out in full force, Bob decided to have a go at ironing out some more configuration bugs with guiding whilst I later in the night would test out the automated TPoint run.

Something I had not appreciated about an automated run was that instead of selecting bright stars, slewing and manually centering as you would when doing a non-automated Tpoint run, the automated run takes images of random or selected areas in the sky rather than centering on a star and then determine how far off it is from where it thought. Unlike a Closed Loop Slew that would take 2 images, one when it completes the initial slew and another when it has shifted to account for the error and plate solving to make sure it is now in the right place, the automated Tpoint just takes that single image then moves on, registering the error as it goes, building the model and applying the correcting to make the pointing better.

So at 23:27 Bob had finished attempting to setup guiding in PHD2 on for the QHY5 guide camera on the Talk 102. There wee still some problems, especially around a little trailing in 2-3 minute images. I suspect that the guider was being over aggressive in correcting in RA and possibly DEC causing the issue. Bob started to play with the parameters but decided to try again another night after reading the PHD2 manual.

Now for the automated TPointing run. We had to go in and setup The SkyX (TSX) so that it could control not only the dome and mount but also the camera on the back of the OS12″. Once that was done we setup the automated calibration run settings to find 10 targets evenly spread around the sky and avoiding the North Celestial Pole.

What we did have a challenge with was the Moon, which being very bright does not lend itself well to being able to plate solve next to it with a large telescope, mainly due to light scatter within the tube and an ever increasing brightness in the background.

So the first major obstacle when we clicked start, was once it slewed to the first star field, plate solving there. This proved rather difficult to get working, about 1.5 hours of rather difficult! It kept failing to plate solve. So after reading the manual (RTFM) I realised that there was really only 1 parameter that needed to be changed to get this working and that was increasing the exposure.

After changing this for 30s to 60s and then again to 120s the solving worked. Why? Well because the Signal to Noise Ration (SNR) was simply not high enough due to the background glow caused by a full Moon.

Now the first target was solved the mount went on slewing, the dome turning and the camera imaging until I reached target 6 of 10 and then it failed again. However looking at the downloaded image it was not hard to see why, clearly the Moon was just off to one side.

So I skipped this target and carried on to complete the set. So with an initial 7 targets solved (a few others were near the Moon) that was enough for the mount to land on the target every time and each time the solving got quicker to the point of being sub second.

With the understanding of how to do an automated Tpoint firmly in the bag we decided to shut down the IMT3 for the night and await a cold dark evening after the clocks go back on 21st September to perform a large Tpoint run of around or possibly over 300 targets.

All Sky Camera Initial Thoughts

I find I notice some interesting things on the All Sky Camera, which is a USB 3 ZWO ASI120MC-S CMOS camera inside a purpose built casing and clear dome. Firstly I land up with beautiful clouds rolling past. I also noticed the light pollution as I mentioned in a previous post from the bathroom window upstairs. This image is when I had the camera on the ground by the observatory as I was testing the maximum length of powered USB I could get away with before data loss caused issues.

When the light is turned off it is noticeably darker.

Sometimes I get visitors to the camera.

and sometimes I unexpectedly capture a meteor 🙂

So it transpires I can use a single 3m powered USB cable to the USB hub, I cannot use 2 x 3m powered USB as that causes data loss and hangs and I cannot use a single unpowered cable either.

Image processing notes for travel setup

So I managed to go out and quickly bag a few images of M13 to test the travel scope on the night of the 1^st to the 2^nd September. It was relatively cool and clear. The main aim was could I take images that were not overexposed on stars whilst capturing the fainter stars at the same time. Also I wanted to make sure I could process an image too.

So all in I took 10 x 5 minute exposures but unfortunately I had not read the Skywatcher manual and had not locked up the focus tube. This meant that the first 3 frames were out of focus so I tightened the locking latch and then took the other 7.

On processing the image I noted the black (white) band to the top and right of the image where I had not switched off the setting for Overscan. I could not PixInsight to recognise it properly so I simply pre-processed the image and then cropped it out before processing.

I managed to get Photometric Colour Calibration working which helped get the colour just right. I then processed in my usual way using the following workflow.

Calibrate with Flats and Darks only no Bias as it is a CMOS camera
Integrate the frames
Align
Perform Cosmetic Correction
Debayer
Crop
ABE
Background Neutralisation
Platesolve
Photometric Colour Calibration
Histogram Stretch
TGVDenoise
ACDNR
Curves
Dark Structure Enhance
Exponential Transformation
2nd set of Curves
SCNR for green

The final image was ok for the short amount of data I obtained and proved my capture setting and workflow worked