Posts Made By: Floyd Blue

Hi all, well here is my last image done last night of M11. Not guided, 96 frames of 42.4 seconds, 80mm WO APO LXD650 mount, DSI II Color camera with a full Moon and some upper level haze. But not too bad. The stars are not touched up, they are actually round! I did a bit more adjustments on the RA and some new PEC training and I am getting the error down.

Yeah, the Meade DSI Pro arrived! I made little covers for the filter slide on the front housing and it should be ready for duty as the guide camera. Tomorrow night I will give it a try. 8)

Hello all,
Well, in preparation for tonight, I have set up PHD guiding software and had it connect to the GPUSB and the DSI Pro camera. No problems with either one, they just came right up.
The question I have for someone using this setup is this. Now I will have two DSI cameras connected to the laptop. When I connect to PHD and my imaging sofware, how do I keep the two cameras separate and identified, especially with PHD. Envisage does have the ability to choose the camera used, but I do not see that capability or option in PHD, just the choice of type of camera. So, do you set up the PHD first with the DSI Pro and then plug in the DSI II Color and start the imaging software?

I am out in the backyard testing the PHD and DSI Pro I as an autoguiding setup and it seems to be working well. I did a 4min, 5 min, 8min sub and am now taking a 15min to see how it goes. The subs so far have had very nice round stars!
More later after I get a chance to check things out better. I am not trying to take images, I have no darks for these length exposures. I am just checking out how things are working together.

Well, I got out and did 9 x 4 minute exposure of M27 to see how the guiding was going. Here is the photo, I think it is improved.

Well, I had a little luck with the weather, but only so much luck with the photography. Had some dark frame problems due to quickly changing temperatures. But did manage to get a couple of images.
The Helix.

How many here use a bias frame and flat frame with their dark frames?
I have been reading about these and have watched some demos regarding their implementation, but am not sure that it is worth the extra time and effort to produce all these flats for each exposure setting as suggested. This would increase the time to make one image by quite a bit. :S

I remember that it was said the the darks taken by Envisage were a different size and could not be used by another program for applying the dark, unless it was resized. The thing is, I opened a Dark frame in CS2 made by Envisage and one made by just capping the camera and taking a Mono image and saving it as Dark_4min_19c.fts and they are identical in size, pixel count and everything. However, they look completely different.
First one is the Envisage Dark taken by the imaging program.
My questions are, why can't you use the Evisage darks and why do the two darks not look anything alike?
I found the CCDStack will use the Envisage darks, no problem. It applies them to the fts files and they look fine.
The darks taken with the camera as exposures on the other hand, lighten the fts files as well as they do not seem to do the same thing when applied.
So, did I not take the dark frames properly with the camera when I just capped it and took a mono exposure?
I have looked in my books and the darks they show look like the ones made by Envisage, not like the ones I took as exposures.
So, which ones are the right format?

Here is my setup, minus the cameras. I had not aligned or drifted yet, so the cameras were not in place. But the top scope, Meade 80mm f/11.3 uses the DSI Pro I for the guide and the DSI II Color WO 80mm f/6 APO is the imaging camera. LXD650 mount, Toshiba laptop are the other parts to it. I have a new light box for the laptop though and hope to try it out tonight. On top of the old one you can see the 3 triangle Hartman Mask that I was trying for a focus aid. I have two others now that I will try tonight, a 3 round hole Hartman and a cross hair style. I will post what I find in trying them.

I thought I would post a picture of my imaging rig. WO 80mm f/6 APO imaging scope, Meade 80mm f/11.3 guide scope. The cameras (not mounted) are DSI Pro I for guiding, DSI II Color for imaging. Meade LXD650 Mount for a platform and it works pretty well.
I have had success with up to 15 minute exposures so far, but mostly I am taking 4-6 minute subs.