TSX – IMT3b Observatory

Viewing Report 26th May 2023 (M101)

22:47 – 03:15

M101 for me this evening to try and get there RGB data in one night. GingerGeek has come round to test out his travel setup, he has a Takahashi FSQ85, QHY268C and the Pegasus NYX-101 harmonic mount.

Focused at 20,105 on Luminance so RGB will be 21,105

1 x 300s Red

Taking 2 minute exposures for each colour at -25℃. I then realised 5 minutes is so much better. So at 1:30am I then started exposing at 5 minutes with the plan to combine both data sets. The SkyX worked brilliantly as can be seen below, looking after the guiding and image capture.

The main challenge I had early on was the the dome shutting unexpectedly. I will attempt to find out why over the next few months. The camera noise continues to be an issue but less so tonight so I think it may be USB related, again I will troubleshoot and check there cable lengths.

GingerGeek had a productive night troubleshooting a multitude of problems on his untested travel kit and was pleased with the results including taking his first image of a supernova in M101.

Viewing Report 20th May 2023

22:27 – 03:12

Imaging from IMT3b this evening using the 12″ CDK. Decided to test and see what my image scale would look like compared to Bob’s 17″ CDK. Bob had recently taken an image of Hickson 68 and in particular NGC 5353, a spiral galaxy in Canes Ventatici.

So I’m out and all is clear and calm, temperature is around 12℃ after a pleasantly warm day of 21℃. I am now shooting 1 minutes exposures as did Bob and I will take 70 of these. Of course to be comparable I would need at least 4 times the amount give the light grasp from Bob’s 17″.

By 1.13am I had finished 70 x 60s exposures for NGC 5353 including flats and darks. Then I slewed to M101 to start collecting RGB frames, however I needed to get the camera rotated back to the right position. Firstly PixInsight’s plate solving script had gone from my install since the recent update so I need to fix that. So instead I used image link in TSX. Using the following process I managed to correct my FoV frame and then sync the rotator to the current view. I then opened the M101 image from the 21st April and used that as a reference to then rotate the rotator to align.

Take a photo and Image Link it
Rotate the FoV Indicator to match the position angle and synch it
Unlink the image
Open the original M101 photo
Rotate the FoV Indicator to match the linked photo and tell the rotator to rotate

Finally got the imaging run on M101 started at 3am for RGB taking 2min subs. I remembered to move the focus position out by 1,000. So I went from luminance at 19,329 to Red 20,329

Need more flats and darks for M101 later tonight.

Autoguider Troubleshooting 12″ OS

8th April 2023

After a successful morning of Luke helping me rewire the 12″ due to the removal of all computers apart from the Mac Mini, I looked at why the guider kept disconnecting last night and then not calibrating. It transpired to be the length of the USB run. I was hoping through 3 hubs and many meters of cable. On replacing the cable with a shorter one and plugging it into a single hub, the connection error went away. The only thing left to do was test auto guiding at night.

So roll on evening and I went out early to catch the first starts. Luke and I had replaced the All Sky Camera during the day so we wanted to see what that looked like, It is fair to say the ZWO ASI178MC is an amazing upgrade to the rubbish little ZWO ASI120MC I had been using.

New ASC with wider lens

So after much messing about with trying a camera other than the SX Lodestar, trying several pieces of software including PHD2 that I could not get working, I settled on TSX for guiding and managed to get it calibrated. On swapping the side of the mount and recalibrating I had a similar problem, however I think the brightness of the guidestar, along with the exposure time and the order I was doing things in had caused the issue.

Below are the settings used for the working system, note the calibration distance is 30 arcsecs which is fine if you calibrate on a star rather than a hot pixel.

Relay Settings including Direct Guide! 30 arc seconds for calibration distance

Successful calibration East side of mount

Successful calibration West side of mount

Guide Target Method

Settings

X2 Plugin and remove hot pixels

Autoguide tab – long exposure and subframe selected

more settings

Final settings

Success!

So you must select a bright enough star.

You must put a subframe round it.

You must them expose on that subframe.

You must then calibrate that subframe.

Viewing Report 4th April 2023

18:20 – 03:00

Before sunset I wanted to reset the dome parameters in TSX as these had got corrupted since loosing the NUC. I now have a set of working settings.

So I have managed to get the dome rotation working. The settings can be seen here for the OS12 and are documented for the other 2 scopes which are piggybacked in my TOSA manual.

OS 12″ Dome Settings

Skywatcher 120 Esprit Dome Settings

Skywatcher 5″ Dome Settings

Serial Device used for Dome

Unfortunately the night did not produce any images as the last thing I could not get working was guiding, I will take and look tomorrow. The main problem was I could get TSX, PHD2 or a 3rd party piece of software to calibrate the guider.

Viewing Report 10th December 2022

23:00 – 00:20

So it’s about time I tried to find a replacement for SGPro, given the continued problems with it, it’s less than intuitive design and find something that does not cause friction in my desire to capture more photons from the distant universe! So after looking at NINA briefly earlier this year, I have gone for it this evening to see if I can indeed capture some images.

The problem that set me back once before with NINA was the lack of connection to the FLI focuser. I just simply got an ASCOM error (I really dislike ASCOM). So after some educated guessing I got it connected. Instead of connecting to the FLI focuser directly I actually went through ASCOM which bizarrely cured the error.

With that done. I could now run autofocus, and only the 2nd time in my life this astronomy programme focused on the first go. The only other piece of software that good is the ZWO ASIAIR that I really enjoy because it just works.

I have now connected NINA to PHD2, also to TSX and left TSX to control the dome. I may change this later, however it works just fine and has not caused any problems. The only reason may be to further automate the dome for closing and reporting on status if that is a feature of NINA, something to look into later.

Managed to take 5 or 6 Ha images of 600s this evening before the cloud rolled in. I can use the flats from yesterday. A good evening testing given conditions including the almost full but waining Moon.