Mohamed replied to the topic 'ZWO ASI533MM-P Support?' in the forum. 2 years ago

I'm using ZWO ASI533MC in my permanent setup and it is stable

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I'm not familiar with your driver, but all EKOS/Indi settings are saved under /home/stellarmate/.indi directory as XML files. You can edit them directly there

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Mohamed replied to the topic 'Color camera capture format question' in the forum. 2 years ago

Thank you Jassem for your response. It makes sense now. Also, I was reading about that after I did my post. I think this is called 16-bit High-Color images as described below...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_color

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Mohamed created a new topic ' Color camera capture format question' in the forum. 2 years ago

Hello,

I have ZWO CCD ASI533MC Pro. In INDI, it has 4 capture formats available: Raw 8-bit, Raw 16-bit, RGB 24, and Luma.

For almost a year, I was capturing using Raw 16-bit, and it produced a 16-bit single channel (not RGB image), but somehow, when I process using WBPP in PixInsight I get the final image as RGB and it is a very beautiful one. Although I was very satisfied with the results, capturing grayscale single-channel 16-bit to produce RGB was bothering me, so last night I tried to capture everything in RGB 24-bit format. The file is bigger (understandable), but the image has less quality even when shown in KStars viewer. I have attached sample images



My questions are:
1. Can someone explain how KSTARS views grayscale 16-bit as a color image?
2. What is the best practice format to follow with MC Pro cameras?


Thank you in advance...

Mohamed

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The way I manage this is by setting the Linux box time upfront (I'm using RTC) and making sure it is updated, then I run KStars and it is set up to allow KStars to control the time and location of everything else (e.g. the mount)

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Thanks @jasem, I think you are right in your theory. Below are my findings that match yours. The question is when we can get this update (when losing guide star go to plate solving and restart guiding)?

 


 

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I was not attending EKOS when this happened with the images from 20-25 as given by example, but I have seen the guide totally stop and resume again trying to find a guide star. To be sure, I have attached the log file generated and clipped it only to the events between generation of img020 till img025.
 

File Attachment:

File Name: M_82_guide_img20-img25.txt
File Size: 546 KB


Also, to easy asses the guide behavior, I filtered only the guide logs (in the same scope) in a separate log file
 

File Attachment:

File Name: M_82_guide_img20-img25_GuideLogs.txt
File Size: 94 KB


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Hi jasem, no, I didn’t abort the guiding. Just checking every now and then, and found the target off center FOV.

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I was going to suggest performing plate-solving when the guiding star is lost for more than 2-3 frames. IMO adding plate solving to the beginning of the job is not going to solve this problem, as it happens AFTER the job is already started and in progress (in the above example it happened from img20 to img25), and plate-solving EACH captured frame is so resource-intensive.

@Jasem
I don't understand this behavior of the internal guider (IG). I believe what is happening is that the IG was tracking the guide star, then lose it for a frame or two, then another star pops up from the cloud in the periphery of the captured image, IG search and find this new star and ASSUME it is the same guide star it was tracking and tries to bring it to its original location. If we treat the newly auto found star as a new guide star and just keep guiding based on the new parameters (just trust the mount), I think this will fix many problems. Adding a plate-solving option after losing the guide star will assure accuracy.

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Hello,

In the past few weeks, I had little time with clear skies, but I noticed that when a cloud briefly crosses the FOV, the EQMOD mount shifts a little and don't preserve the primary object (in my case was M82) in the center of the FOV. Here is an example...


The solution that i have is to restart the scheduler so that the plate solver would center the target again. Did anyone faced similar situation, and how to prevent it?

Thank you
      

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Mohamed replied to the topic 'Archiving raw FITS' in the forum. 2 years ago

I found and currently evaluating the "Observatory" application codeobsession.com

It doesn't do the archiving part (I guess everyone just stores somewhere), but it does cataloging and tagging images for future search. I still have difficulty using it, but it is the only one of its kind that I can find (on Mac only)...

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for me, the symptom of bad cable was intermittent mount connection. While it is working, INDI loses connection, and when restarting INDI, it worked fine

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Mohamed created a new topic ' Archiving raw FITS' in the forum. 2 years ago

Hello

Is there is a software or solution out there for archiving the raw FITS and may be processed images? currently, I just zip them and save them on an external HDD...

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