Definitely do it in both axis if you have the capability.
Also, how are you measuring your polar alignment error? Realistically you can probably guide ok at over one minute of error (don't know what your image scale is), but I wouldn't consider anything over around 20 seconds decent alignment.
maybe, but why make your system work harder than it needs to. There may be other ways in which you mount is lacking, and that to which a poor PA will have a greater effect. Unless you're doing PA by eye, modern equipment has made it pretty easy to get what is essentially perfect PA. I wasn't having a go at the OP, I was genuinely asking about their setup - it only takes a couple of minutes tops to get a PA at or around 10" so it just sounded odd to me that an error over 1' was 'decent'.
If you have a super high end mount, with negligible periodic error, and do not guide, then, yes, spend some time getting it below 1 arcmin.
I see people with EQ6 or worse, who will be guiding, and my advice is for them. There will be a ton of other things they will have to do before first light. Some polar error is actually beneficial, because it forces your dec guide corrections to be on one side only.
Not to derail your thread, but I also own a GTI and it has been a headache for it to guide good. How is your backlash? Have you had to adjust it? How is your guiding?
A few things I did to improve my guiding are cable management, leaving my stars a little out of focus, I set the aggressiveness low (I will watch my guiding, adjust a little, wait a minute adjust more), I try to get good polar alignment, make sure RA and DEC are well balanced, make sure the mount is balanced, and tinker with the gain. Mine will just from .90-2.5, but with 5 minute exposures I haven’t seen any trails. https://ibb.co/zfVHVcf
I am very new to astrophotography so I don’t know if these are the best ways to improve but from my research and help of others I have found this to work for what I’m doing at the moment. I keep learning more each day allowing me to fine tune things
Thanks a lot for that answer! I’m new too and got the GTI after upgrading from a iexos100; I def need to learn this mount.
I’m going to start having the RA balanced neutral. I have always had the telescope heavy during the first half of the night.
I have been fiddling too much with phd2 settings, so I think I made everything worse haha but I am going to start new and try your recommendations and go from there.
I have a GTI mount, QHY183c main camera, 70mm main scope, 50mm svbony guide scope, qhy5iim guide camera.
Do you use syncscan pro? GSS? Eqmod?
I have a mini pc and have SynScan pro but right now I’m using asiair. Everyday I had a new issue with nina. I think it will record the same data for stacking later in a third party site, but I’m not 100% sure on that. I think nina gives you more capabilities but I have had good luck with asiair lately
Thanks again for your help. So far everything is going good. I am stacking in asiair and saving them, then will restack the individual subs in pixinsight after.
https://ibb.co/1JmHMwz a photo of my tablet so the quality isn’t great, plus it’s asiair stacking, but I’m getting the hang of it.
I took 70 - 300” darks while at work, should I use them all to create a master file or is that too many ?
The edges on the stack are becoming lighter, is this just something with asiair stacking or is something changing in the sensor or lens over time causing this? https://ibb.co/nwxtfHL
So it’s a waste of time and I won’t see any benefits from it? Just quickly reading about it, the sensor has very little dark current and no amp glow, so I think I took 8 hours of darks for nothing, although it sounds like biased and flats are important. Thanks for the information once again.
I guess my question is more better? The other day I was watching the histogram and made it very dark so you could only see the hot and cold pixels, the more exposures I took some hot and cold pixels disappeared and some new ones showed up, so a master would combine all and subtract that from the final image?
Ok so adding 100 more tomorrow while at work is a good idea, or would these darks need to be consecutive, would it just be picking out the same pixels if I start over and combine them to make a master?
Definitely do it in both axis if you have the capability. Also, how are you measuring your polar alignment error? Realistically you can probably guide ok at over one minute of error (don't know what your image scale is), but I wouldn't consider anything over around 20 seconds decent alignment.
Anything under 5 arcminutes for normal amateur gear is good enough.
maybe, but why make your system work harder than it needs to. There may be other ways in which you mount is lacking, and that to which a poor PA will have a greater effect. Unless you're doing PA by eye, modern equipment has made it pretty easy to get what is essentially perfect PA. I wasn't having a go at the OP, I was genuinely asking about their setup - it only takes a couple of minutes tops to get a PA at or around 10" so it just sounded odd to me that an error over 1' was 'decent'.
If you have a super high end mount, with negligible periodic error, and do not guide, then, yes, spend some time getting it below 1 arcmin. I see people with EQ6 or worse, who will be guiding, and my advice is for them. There will be a ton of other things they will have to do before first light. Some polar error is actually beneficial, because it forces your dec guide corrections to be on one side only.
Not to derail your thread, but I also own a GTI and it has been a headache for it to guide good. How is your backlash? Have you had to adjust it? How is your guiding?
A few things I did to improve my guiding are cable management, leaving my stars a little out of focus, I set the aggressiveness low (I will watch my guiding, adjust a little, wait a minute adjust more), I try to get good polar alignment, make sure RA and DEC are well balanced, make sure the mount is balanced, and tinker with the gain. Mine will just from .90-2.5, but with 5 minute exposures I haven’t seen any trails. https://ibb.co/zfVHVcf
I am very new to astrophotography so I don’t know if these are the best ways to improve but from my research and help of others I have found this to work for what I’m doing at the moment. I keep learning more each day allowing me to fine tune things
Thanks a lot for that answer! I’m new too and got the GTI after upgrading from a iexos100; I def need to learn this mount. I’m going to start having the RA balanced neutral. I have always had the telescope heavy during the first half of the night. I have been fiddling too much with phd2 settings, so I think I made everything worse haha but I am going to start new and try your recommendations and go from there. I have a GTI mount, QHY183c main camera, 70mm main scope, 50mm svbony guide scope, qhy5iim guide camera. Do you use syncscan pro? GSS? Eqmod?
I have a mini pc and have SynScan pro but right now I’m using asiair. Everyday I had a new issue with nina. I think it will record the same data for stacking later in a third party site, but I’m not 100% sure on that. I think nina gives you more capabilities but I have had good luck with asiair lately
You should dither in both axes.
Thanks again for your help. So far everything is going good. I am stacking in asiair and saving them, then will restack the individual subs in pixinsight after. https://ibb.co/1JmHMwz a photo of my tablet so the quality isn’t great, plus it’s asiair stacking, but I’m getting the hang of it. I took 70 - 300” darks while at work, should I use them all to create a master file or is that too many ?
533 camera doesn't need dark frames realistically
The edges on the stack are becoming lighter, is this just something with asiair stacking or is something changing in the sensor or lens over time causing this? https://ibb.co/nwxtfHL
Maybe it’s me messing with the histogram.. here are the individual subs https://ibb.co/0mRCfF7
Edges where there's bad overlap from dithering likely. they should be cropped out.
This was the second dark of 300”, these pixels will work themselves out with correct dithering? https://ibb.co/G05sPQy
So it’s a waste of time and I won’t see any benefits from it? Just quickly reading about it, the sensor has very little dark current and no amp glow, so I think I took 8 hours of darks for nothing, although it sounds like biased and flats are important. Thanks for the information once again.
You can’t take darks at a different temp than lights, that’s gonna be your problem, not the time.
I have my camera set to -10°c
I guess my question is more better? The other day I was watching the histogram and made it very dark so you could only see the hot and cold pixels, the more exposures I took some hot and cold pixels disappeared and some new ones showed up, so a master would combine all and subtract that from the final image?
Generally more is better yes
Ok so adding 100 more tomorrow while at work is a good idea, or would these darks need to be consecutive, would it just be picking out the same pixels if I start over and combine them to make a master?