John created a new topic ' Darks, Flats and bias frames' in the forum. 2 years ago

As I have become a bit more comfortable with my asrtoberry setup and using kstars/ekos I would like to start taking additional frames to hopefully help with my stacking.  I was already taking dark frames, but I guess I want to check if I am doing all this right.

For dark frames I cover my scope and take 20 or so frames at the same conditions as the subs  I took.  I then drop all of those frames into DSS with my light subs and stack.
Flats confuse me still.  I covered my telescope with some white cloth and tried to get even lighting (have a light on the way) and used the calibration wizard or whatever in ekos.  I just selected Flats > dust cap with light > and then number of frames I wanted.
I am lost on the difference between bias and darks.

So my questions are what are bias frames and how do you take them? For flats do I need to do any post processing or does it work just like darks and I throw them all into dss for it to make a master flat file (do I need to do any histogram editing or anything first)?  I want to figure this out because the biggest issue I have with my pictures now is vignetting and then gradient circle stemming out from the center ( I assume this may be light pollution).
 

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John replied to the topic 'Can I adjust gain in ekos?' in the forum. 2 years ago

That did the trick. When you say the two dashes mean “do not change”. Does that mean it hasn’t been changed or it is automatically at the suggested setting?

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John replied to the topic 'Can I adjust gain in ekos?' in the forum. 2 years ago

I will have to set it up tomorrow and check it. It seemed like I couldn’t click the box for gain. It was like it was locked out or not available. I assume the camera tab is the correct place to be doing this correct?  The letters next to it are greyed out unlike all the others. I will set up tomorrow and give it a try again. 

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John created a new topic ' Can I adjust gain in ekos?' in the forum. 2 years ago

I am still pretty new to using my astroberry with kstars and ekos.

Currently I open ekos and in the camera tab I will set my exposure and amount of pictures I want.  I notice there is a lot of noise in my pictures.  It may  just be my camera (a 224mc).  I see the box for gain, but mine just has 2 dashes in it.  Does that mean I can't adjust the gain on my camera? Or am I just doing this in the wrong place?

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Aligned the mount from the handset then connected to k-stars. Was able to do a little plate solving and now moving around to different targets. Sadly some clouds rolled in so I am on pause, but I would say I mostly back to my normal learning curve of putting in the right settings for photos. The auto focus was pretty nice. Thanks for all of the help on this @inder @astromuni and anyone else.

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So you mean at the actual telescope I need to do a quick align? Like using the hand control and on screen alignment there? Then after that connect to the pi and ekos/kstars?

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I will have to figure how to use the simulator. I have clear skies tonight so I am hoping to can accomplish something.

At one point ekos says my mount is t aligned. Do I need to preform alignment on my mount from the handset first before doing platesolving?

Still haven’t figured out the WiFi issue but it isn’t a showstopper. It is just an extra step.

When I plate solve do I have to pick a target in kstars or can I just point it anywhere in the sky and it will see what stars are there and figure it out?

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Yeah I am not sure. I put in the information for my home network and I changed the priorities based on what I read online. The odd thing is that my network doesn't show up in the network list, but if I go to "Connect to Hidden Network" I can select my network profile from the drop down list and everything connects just fine. I have set my priorities both ways trying to figure it out.

Additional questions:
1. Tonight I worked on my profile for location and FOV and such. I picked the city closest to me which is within 10-15 miles. I was going to manually type in my coordinates but it wouldn't let me. Should this be good?

2. I have heard it is better to run Kstar and such on your desktop and connect through VNC. I got VNC working and was able to connect, but I was still unclear on the order of what I need to do. Do I need to open anything on the astroberry? Do I just open kstars on my personal computer? I tried to setup kstars on my personal computer and it said everything was connected, but when I tried to manually slew the mount nothing happened.

I think that is all for now until I get some clear skies to test again.

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I will give that a look. Have you ever had issues with astroberry not automatically connecting to your WiFi? I have set the priorities but for some reason anytime I restart the pi I have to connect to the astroberry hotspot and then click join hidden network and then I can select the network profile I built.

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So I got my telescope outside just to test things, but I am having a lot of issues platesolving. I keep getting the following message about checking sufficient stars and FOV. For some reason with 5 second long pictures I am getting pretty bad streaking and I never had that issue before. That is causing issues with focusing it seems. I was hoping to at least figure this out tonight, but it looks like I have more homework.

My set up is a 6se with a hyperstar on it and a 224mc camera.

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