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[joofcorn]

I've recently decided to get a mini pc and purchase stellar mate OS to help drive my astrophotography sessions, but finding the UI and experience not quite as smooth as I hoped. I've got a few problems I was running into that I'm hoping people have tips to help me out. ~bortle 5 backyard skies and Atlas eq-g Mount fyi. Any other tips outside these questions for helping me down this path are also appreciated.

1) polar alignment solving. This is probably the most frustrating thing the last couple nights I went out. For some reason if I'm pointed near or directly at Polaris, stellarmate won't solve the image and just keeps shooting until I purposely make my alignment worse until it's able to solve. This has been especially frustrating cause as I'm learning the system, I've often had to change settings and reset the system, then align again. Any tips for improving the solving? Shooting with a Canon t6s, iso 12000 when doing alignment images, 8 sec exposure. Scope (zenithstar 61 with flat 61r) and camera settings all look correct, less sure about sensor pixel count as I see it set to 6000x4000 in one spot, and 6024x4022 I think in another.

2) time/date/location setup without gps on a tablet. When using my phone it's fine since everything comes from gps, but with my tablet, the time was off by about 3 hours for some reason. I tried manually setting it on the mount settings, but couldn't get the sky map or available targets to update. Is there a better way to manage this from the tablet?

3) guiding tips. I did last night complete my goal of figuring out auto guiding (fully new to guiding) after substantial headache. I seemed to have a hard time finding stars in frame, and sometimes settings would just stop being updated and I'd have to reset stellarmate. I've just got a sv305 through a generic 50mm f4 refractor. Running 0 gain, 10 sec subs, and 2x2 binning. I tried increasing gain but the nose noise levels got bad quickly, and I can't figure out how to use dark frames when guiding. Any tips for improving guiding setup?

Edited by joofcorn, 02 October 2024 - 11:41 AM.

[Cliff Hipsher]

1:  Do not setup pointing at Polaris.  Polaris is ~ 1 degree away from the North Celestial Pole.  You want the Right Ascension axis of the mount aligned to the NCP.  Use a compass app that has a HEADING/True North option and use you phone/tablet to align the mount to point at 0 degrees North.  Keep the phone/tablet away from the motors in the mount.  The magnets will throw the compass app off.  Before you run the polar alignment routine you need to verify that the telescope is focused.  Refer to the Stellarmate documentation and use their Auto Focus functionality.  8 second exposure time is way too much.

 

2.  Get a tablet that has GPS functionality.

 

3.  If the guide camera is Color, switch to a mono (black and white) camera.  Also, make sure the camera is in focus. And lastly, 10 second exposure is way too much. 2 to 3 seconds is better.  One final point, if that camera has a "guider port,"  DO NOT USE IT.