Automated focuser testing

08/08/21 --  Tested the Shoestring Astronomy FCUSB with the Orion Accufocuser in the house in the daylight to confirm smooth operation focusing in and out and to test the connection with Indi/Ekos/KStars. This evening has no moon, but sufficient mid-level clouds to be non-optimal for imaging... but good for testing hardware.  Set up the CN10 on the CGEM DX on the back deck for this basic focusing test.  Started setup at 7:30pm with leveling and basic (compass-based...Polaris buried behind trees) alignment.  Started with Beta Draconis (Rastaban) as an initial location for drift alignment.  After several iterations got the drift error below 3'.  Found phd2 still not connecting to Indi on the Odroid XU4, so used X11 forwarded over ssh (with compression) to run phd2 remotely from the Odroid connected directly to the camera and ST4 guide port.

Ultimately, set up a job in the scheduler for NGC 6995 with track, focus, align and guide steps.  This completed automatically successfully with guided imaging starting at 11:39pm.

The focus module after successfully reaching focus after six iterations (shown below).  This was close due to earlier test runs that had iterated four or five times to bring the focus error down (so little was adjusted in this final run from within the scheduler).  Ultimately collected 42 light frames before the OTA passed over the roof line of the house, ending collection at ~3:15am.


Within Astro Pixel Processor, statistics from the star map from each session show some improvement relative to manual focusing (minimum FWHM goes from 3.67 to 2.36).  In the figure below, the left plot illustrates statistics from the 08/05/2021 sessions with no automatic focusing vs the statistics from the session on 08/08 with Indi performing focusing on the right.

The combination of this session with the previous session for half the eastern veil nebula ends up like this (with levels set in the GIMP):



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Markarian's Chain

Image
Started a mult-session collection on 03/26 (52) and continuing on 04/15 (47), 04/16 (109) and 04/19 (~20) against Markarian's chain  with the venerable Orion ST80 using the generic dual narrow-band filter , clear Astronomik EOS clip-in filter (for consistent focusing with the EOS CLS clip-in filter) and Canon T3I (astro modded for Ha sensitivity).  180s collections used for each (except for 3/26 at 300s) and flats collected against morning blue sky when needed based on re-focusing (03/26, 04/16).  Canon configured with UTC time.  Based this collection in Kstars/Ekos/Indi by centering on  NGC 4438 . For this processing, utilized both 60x180s and 30x300s darks as well as 130 bias (all at ISO1600) frames for calibration.    Collection notes from 04/19:   Ran entirely on the Odroid XU4 via remote desktop protocol (rdesktop client with compression) to simulate a remote location and provide some robustness for network / wifi drop-outs. ...
Read more

Great North American Eclipse

Image
4/8/2024 On Akron OH captured a time-lapse of short exposures through Baeder solar film through the venerable Orion Short Tube 80 with the Svbony 405cc using AstroDMx Capture until totality. Results were great considering the high level cirrus clouds.  After light editing in digikam, found some evidence of corona!
Read more

M94 and M106

Image
 3/7/24 -- first moonless, cloudless night with workable temps.  Attempting to capture M94 high in the north sky from the Meade LX10 EMC with UV/IR cut filter, Meade 0.63 focal reducer and the Svbony 405cc camera.  Set camera temp to 0C and using 0 gain and 0 offset. Telescopius simulator result for M94 using the SCT with the 0.63 focal reducer and the SV405CC camera. Telescopius M95 altitude plot for 03/07/24. Cleardarksky forecast for 3/7/24 for Montgomery County showing fairly clear skies and reasonable seeing expected after midnight. Meteoblue forecast for 03/07/2024 for Silver Spring illustrating clear skies expected for the evening. Before mounting the OTA and counterweights, checked the mount as level and utilized the polar scope (due to a clear view of Polaris through the backyard tree -- a rarity).  Adjusted the altitude up slightly and did a sanity check to ensure ~39 degrees. Initial alignment measured with PHD2 from the Odroid was ~ -11 after several minu...
Read more