locked
Re: What Platform Do You Use To Run ExploreStars?
#poll-notice
#poll
#ExploreScientific
#ExploreStars
I use a MacBook Pro with Kstars and Stellarium
On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 6:27 AM Jerry Hubbell - Explore Scientific VP Engineering <jrh@...> wrote:
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Steven Romero Location: Houston, TX and surrounding environs (50%) Midland,TX and a large swath of West, TX (50%) Mount: EXOS2-GT PMC-8 Scope: ED102 APO Eyepieces: 24mm, 11mm, 6.5mm (82 deg) Software: Kstars, Stellarium (OS X)
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Re: Astrophotography Done with the iEXOS-100, EXOS 2, and G11 Post your Pictures and Details! Lets Show What These Mounts Can Do.
#G11
#astrophotography
#iEXOS-100
#EXOS2
W.F.
Hello togehter,
as i said in the GoTo livestream at monday i did some pictures at the 23 of june. I did both pictures with this equipment: iEXOS-100 PMC-8 Canon 1000D unmodified TS Photoline APO 72/432 TS Flattner MGEN 2 standalone autoguider I did 10 flatfield pictures All pictures done with ISO 800 Exposure time 180 sec. The M 101 is stakked with Sequator and i did 29 single pictures for this, so i collected the light for 89 min. The M 36 is also stakked with Sequator, 13 single pictures = 39 min. Then i used also Fitswork and Photoshop 7 for finish the pictures. Well there was no Moon but i was near by an orange streetlight and it was a little bit windy. And Andromeda was in the lightpolution of Frankfurt/ am Main, and also the astronomical darknees was over. But i am happy with this pictures because i still learn how to use my equipment. Well the iEXOS 100 is a great travelmount and i am stil surpriesed about the payload for astrophotography. A really good mount!! Greetings from Germany, Wolfgang.
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locked
Re: What Platform Do You Use To Run ExploreStars?
#poll-notice
#poll
#ExploreScientific
#ExploreStars
On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 11:26 AM, Doug Doonan wrote:
I wish that the W10 version was identical to the Android version.We are currently testing the updated Windows version and will announce when we will release it. -- Jerry Hubbell Vice President of Engineering Explore Scientific, LLC. jrh at explorescientific.com www.explorescientificusa.com 1010 S. 48th Street Springdale, AR 72762 1-866-252-3811 Author: Scientific Astrophotography: How Amateurs Can Generate and Use Professional Imaging Data Remote Observatories for Amateur Astronomers: Using High-Powered Telescopes From Home Mark Slade Remote Observatory (MSRO) IAU MPC W54 Equipment Wilderness, VA Mounts: ES PMC-Eight G11 + Telescope Drive Master (TDM) Scopes: ES 165 FPL-53 ED APO CF, ES 102 FCD100 ED APO CF Cameras: QHY174M-GPS + FW, QHY163C Misc: 3-inch 0.7x Focal Reducer Field Flattener, Filters: Luminance, Red, V-band Photometric, Diffuser, 200 lpmm Spectral Grating Software: MaxIm DL 6, Cartes du Ciel, Astrometrica, AstroImageJ, AutoStakkert!
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locked
Re: What Platform Do You Use To Run ExploreStars?
#poll-notice
#poll
#ExploreScientific
#ExploreStars
Doug Doonan
HI,
I run wifi using both Android App on tablet, and wifi using W10. I wish that the W10 version was identical to the Android version.
Doug Doonan
-- Doug Doonan HomeBru 6 inch Reflector f 6.6 HomeBru 85 mm Refractor f 5.6 PMC-8, EXOS 2 Long retired EE.
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Re: Guiding
#astrophotography
#iEXOS-100
brian skinner
Agree chaps, I particularly like the idea of the Polar scope adapted adaptor. Hopefully Jerry and his colleagues will develop this for when I am ready to make the leap to guiding!
Kind regards, Brian
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locked
What Platform Do You Use To Run ExploreStars?
#poll-notice
#poll
#ExploreScientific
#ExploreStars
Please select the platform you prefer to run ExploreStars on
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Re: Listen Live Today at 4 pm CDT, 5 pm EDT
#OpenGOTOLive
Please join us today for the "OpenGOTO Community Live!" Episode 15
Today's show will be at 4:00 pm CDT, 5:00 pm EDT, and 2:00 pm PDT. We will be continuing our talk about how to install the latest version of Stellarium and how to configure it to control your iEXOS PMC-Eight Mount and demonstrate it. https://www.facebook.com/ExploreScientificUSA/
I look forward to talking to you then. -- Jerry Hubbell Vice President of Engineering Explore Scientific, LLC. jrh at explorescientific.com www.explorescientificusa.com 1010 S. 48th Street Springdale, AR 72762 1-866-252-3811 Author: Scientific Astrophotography: How Amateurs Can Generate and Use Professional Imaging Data Remote Observatories for Amateur Astronomers: Using High-Powered Telescopes From Home Mark Slade Remote Observatory (MSRO) IAU MPC W54 Equipment Wilderness, VA Mounts: ES PMC-Eight G11 + Telescope Drive Master (TDM) Scopes: ES 165 FPL-53 ED APO CF, ES 102 FCD100 ED APO CF Cameras: QHY174M-GPS + FW, QHY163C Misc: 3-inch 0.7x Focal Reducer Field Flattener, Filters: Luminance, Red, V-band Photometric, Diffuser, 200 lpmm Spectral Grating Software: MaxIm DL 6, Cartes du Ciel, Astrometrica, AstroImageJ, AutoStakkert!
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Re: Astrophotography Done with the iEXOS-100, EXOS 2, and G11 Post your Pictures and Details! Lets Show What These Mounts Can Do.
#G11
#astrophotography
#iEXOS-100
#EXOS2
Gernot Schreider
Hi Bill,
Thanks for your reply. I have no focuser so far but I am considering buying one in the future. I hear what you are saying regarding seeing conditions and altitude of the target. I was aware of the altitude influence but I have no practical experience on this so far. So good to hear your advice about the 40 degree rule of thumb. I have seen the focus assistant in SharpCap but I have not tried it by myself so far. clear skies Gernot -- location: 49,55N, 7,89E; mount: EXOS-2 PMC; telescope: Meade 10" ACF; guidescope: Orion 50mm, cameras: Sony Alpha 6000, ASI 120MC-S, laptop: Lenovo; OS: Windows 10 64bit, software: Cartes du Ciel, Sharpcap, Ascom platform, AstroTortilla,
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Re: Listen Live Today at 4 pm CDT, 5 pm EDT
#OpenGOTOLive
Please join us today for the "OpenGOTO Community Live!" Episode 14
Today's show will be at 4:00 pm CDT, 5:00 pm EDT, and 2:00 pm PDT. https://www.facebook.com/ExploreScientificUSA/I look forward to talking to you then. -- Jerry Hubbell Vice President of Engineering Explore Scientific, LLC. jrh at explorescientific.com www.explorescientificusa.com 1010 S. 48th Street Springdale, AR 72762 1-866-252-3811 Author: Scientific Astrophotography: How Amateurs Can Generate and Use Professional Imaging Data Remote Observatories for Amateur Astronomers: Using High-Powered Telescopes From Home Mark Slade Remote Observatory (MSRO) IAU MPC W54 Equipment Wilderness, VA Mounts: ES PMC-Eight G11 + Telescope Drive Master (TDM) Scopes: ES 165 FPL-53 ED APO CF, ES 102 FCD100 ED APO CF Cameras: QHY174M-GPS + FW, QHY163C Misc: 3-inch 0.7x Focal Reducer Field Flattener, Filters: Luminance, Red, V-band Photometric, Diffuser, 200 lpmm Spectral Grating Software: MaxIm DL 6, Cartes du Ciel, Astrometrica, AstroImageJ, AutoStakkert!
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Re: Guiding
#astrophotography
#iEXOS-100
On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 11:00 AM, Robert Hoskin wrote:
If ES were to develop a variant of that adapter, that one could attach a guidescope to, that would answer it for the iExos-100 camera folks...Hi Bob, I will add that to our list of Feature Requests on the Feature Request subgroup. Thanks! -- Jerry Hubbell Vice President of Engineering Explore Scientific, LLC. jrh at explorescientific.com www.explorescientificusa.com 1010 S. 48th Street Springdale, AR 72762 1-866-252-3811 Author: Scientific Astrophotography: How Amateurs Can Generate and Use Professional Imaging Data Remote Observatories for Amateur Astronomers: Using High-Powered Telescopes From Home Mark Slade Remote Observatory (MSRO) IAU MPC W54 Equipment Wilderness, VA Mounts: ES PMC-Eight G11 + Telescope Drive Master (TDM) Scopes: ES 165 FPL-53 ED APO CF, ES 102 FCD100 ED APO CF Cameras: QHY174M-GPS + FW, QHY163C Misc: 3-inch 0.7x Focal Reducer Field Flattener, Filters: Luminance, Red, V-band Photometric, Diffuser, 200 lpmm Spectral Grating Software: MaxIm DL 6, Cartes du Ciel, Astrometrica, AstroImageJ, AutoStakkert!
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Re: Astrophotography Done with the iEXOS-100, EXOS 2, and G11 Post your Pictures and Details! Lets Show What These Mounts Can Do.
#G11
#astrophotography
#iEXOS-100
#EXOS2
Tony
I'm a Newbie, so please be gentle with me! Third time out with the EXOS2-GT PMC8 and the Explore Scientific 208 f/3.9. Had a frustrating night, took me two hours to get the guidecam to see enough stars to do a polar alignment in sharpcap. I finally started imaging just after midnight, and had to pack up around 2am. I managed to crash the tube into the tripod once, and then waited a little too long to do a meridian flip. Both times, simply parking the scope and realigning the arrows got me back in the game. Go-to's with the new firmware are incredibly good, considering I have a zero star alignment. M16 is clear on the other side of the sky from Polaris, and the go-to got it in the first camera shot. Two iterations of plate-solving and the target was dead centered. We had 9-10 MPH winds last night, but since we haven't had clear skies in a while, I had to get out there while I could. PHD-2 had some trouble holding the target with the gusts, leading to some blurred stars. But when it wasn't gusting, it held under .5 RMS fairly regularly. This was from bortle 6 skies, 20 miles outside of NYC, shooting directly in between street lamps and over my neighbors porch lights and towards the heavier light pollution. Not too much I can do about that though. Target: M16 - Eagle Nebula 15x60" RGB (No Filter)
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Astrophotography done with ESPMC-8
#astrophotography
#EXOS2
Chris Welliver
Hello everyone, I’ve been following this group for a while now, trying to learn the ins and outs of astrophotography with my EXOS2 gt Mount. I took this photo last weekend with my William optics Spacecat 51,(after the sky glow and atmosphere cleared up), and I’m pretty happy with it. Hope y’all like it.
-- Chris Welliver EXOS2 mount ES 102EDAPO Carbon Fiber ZWO asi178mc ZWO asi120mm PrimaLuceLab Sesto Senso focuser William optics Spacecat 51 ascom phd2 stellarium pegasus Astro pocket power box
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Re: Guiding
#astrophotography
#iEXOS-100
Huh... That looks pretty similar to the polar finder adapter for the iExos-100. If ES were to develop a variant of that adapter, that one could attach a guidescope to, that would answer it for the iExos-100 camera folks...
On Tue, Jun 23, 2020, at 10:47, Chris Tardif wrote:
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Mounts: ES PMC-8 EXOS2
Scopes: SV 102EDT, ZWO 60/280 Guide
Cameras: Nikon D5300, Altair GPCAM2 290M
Software: ASCOM, CdC, AstroTortilla, BYN Pro, Sharpcap, PHD2 Computer: Thinkpad x230, Win7Pro/64
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Re: Guiding
#astrophotography
#iEXOS-100
Chris Tardif
Oh, I have also tried the L-bracket approach too as shown by Peter Zelinka: https://www.peterzelinka.com/blog/2019/4/auto-guiding-with-the-skyguider-pro
-- Mounts: Explore Scientific IEXOS-100 w Celestron CG5 tripod, iOptron CEM 40 Scopes: Explore Scientific FCD-100 ED-102CF, Various Canon lenses, ZWO mini-guidescope, StarField 60mm guide-scope. Camera: ASI120MM Mini (mono), Altair GPCAM 130 Control PC: Intel NUC Loc: 44 -79
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Re: Guiding
#astrophotography
#iEXOS-100
Chris Tardif
Some are better at it than I am, but I was never able to get side-by-side balanced well enough for me. I found a longer dove tail with the guide scope mounted under worked really well. It's a much cheaper config too. You just need a long bar...long enough to make sure the guide camera doesn'tclip the mount.
-- Mounts: Explore Scientific IEXOS-100 w Celestron CG5 tripod, iOptron CEM 40 Scopes: Explore Scientific FCD-100 ED-102CF, Various Canon lenses, ZWO mini-guidescope, StarField 60mm guide-scope. Camera: ASI120MM Mini (mono), Altair GPCAM 130 Control PC: Intel NUC Loc: 44 -79
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Re: Astrophotography Done with the iEXOS-100, EXOS 2, and G11 Post your Pictures and Details! Lets Show What These Mounts Can Do.
#G11
#astrophotography
#iEXOS-100
#EXOS2
Bill Black
Hi Gernot,
Thanks! I'm glad it is useful. For focusing at long focal lengths, I'm going to say the most important factor by far is the "seeing". I've tried automated focus routines, like the ones in the SharpCap tools, and I've used my Bahtinov mask as well. They work pretty good, but they work much better when the seeing is good. If the seeing is bad, none of them work for me and you end up fiddling back and forth and get no real improvement. When I shot the footage of Jupiter the other night, the seeing was very good. I focused without using any tools other than my eyes and electronic focuser buttons. I added a Crayford focuser to my SCT and modified it with an Orion AccuFocus kit (little electric motor that attaches to the shaft on your focuser). However, if the seeing is good, I think you can achieve decent focus with the stock equipment. Atmospheric is a great tool for predicting what your seeing will be like. It's a weather forecast, so its not 100% accurate, but it seems more accurate than others I've tried. https://www.astrospheric.com/ Another thing that will affect your seeing is the altitude of your target. The higher the altitude of your target, the better the seeing, because there is less atmosphere to contend with. The other night, Jupiter was less than 40 degrees above the horizon, which is really to low to even be trying in my opinion, but the seeing seemed very stable, so I gave it a shot. Really, I would rather my target be at 50 degrees plus. Mars is a great planetary target this year because it is climbing above 60 degrees. Decent focus will be easier to achieve on M57 and M13 for a couple of reasons, I think. One is that they were probably above 50 degrees and two is that you were able to use a shorter focal length (less magnification). I'm curious what others do for focusing as well, especially at long focal lengths. It is still one of my biggest struggles after many years in this hobby. -- Bill Mounts: EXOS II PMC-Eight, LXD75 Cameras: ZWO ASI294MCPro, ASI385
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Re: Guiding
#astrophotography
#iEXOS-100
brian skinner
Hi Daniel, at present I use just a DSLR but not guiding (yet). You can by a side by side saddle to mount 2 items next to each other, I.e your DSLR and guide scope/camera.
Brian
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Re: EXOS2 GT
Personal preference mainly. Kstars interface in Linux may be different than on a Mac, but I find it less intuitive. The sky image isn’t as representative and the catalogue seems incomplete vs whats included with Stellarium. I’m not familiar with using the DSS sky surveys. Steve
On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 8:17 AM Vince White <vnwhite@...> wrote:
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Steven Romero Location: Houston, TX and surrounding environs (50%) Midland,TX and a large swath of West, TX (50%) Mount: EXOS2-GT PMC-8 Scope: ED102 APO Eyepieces: 24mm, 11mm, 6.5mm (82 deg) Software: Kstars, Stellarium (OS X)
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Re: Astrophotography Done with the iEXOS-100, EXOS 2, and G11 Post your Pictures and Details! Lets Show What These Mounts Can Do.
#G11
#astrophotography
#iEXOS-100
#EXOS2
Gernot Schreider
Hi Bill & all,
Thanks for sharing Bill. Your writeup is very helpful information for a newbie and it is useful for me to see how you are proceeding. I tried last night to get some pictures of Jupiter and Saturn but I was struggling mainly with focusing, I guess. I also saw that Jupiter is quite bright compared to the moons, so I could not find a good exposure to get both well covered. So my learning from this is if you want a good picture of Jupiter and the moons you need to combine two pictures. If there are experts out there who know how to do it differently, please speak up. My main issue however was with focusing. I have reduced the exposure to be able to better judge on the sharpness of but since I have no focuser it was very much fiddling and no good result. As a side note I had less issues with M57 or M13; less not meaning no issues... How do you focus -especially planets? I would appreciate to get some hints as I am new to astrophotography. Comments from anyone very much welcome ! Greetings Gernot -- location: Germany 49,55N, 7,89E; mount: EXOS-2 PMC; telescope: Meade 8" ACF; guidescope: Orion 50mm, cameras: Sony Alpha 6000, ASI 120MC-S, laptop: Lenovo; OS: Windows 10 64bit, software: Stellarium, Sharpcap, Ascom platform, AstroTortilla, Sony Remote
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Re: EXOS2 GT
Vince White
Hey Steve, What is it you don't like about KStars? I've found it works fairly well and I use the DSS sky survey image to see what I'm looking at with the FOV of my current setup. Regards, Vince
On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 1:11 PM Steven Romero <steven.romero@...> wrote: Bob, --
Mount: ES PMC-8 EXOS2-GT
Scopes: BRESSER 208mm f/3.9 Newt + ES HR Coma Corrector, Celestron C90 Mak, generic 50/191mm guide scope
Cameras: Canon 5DmkII, Canon EOSm, T7C (ZWO ASI120MC clone)
Misc: 2" Optolong UHC filter, Raspberry PI 4 Software: INDI + Kstars + EKOS, DeepSkyStacker, GIMP, Lightroom
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