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How can you solve this? No DSO In The Stacked Image

Processing Deep Sky M101 Troubleshooting Messier Objects
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Szijártó Áron avatar
Szijártó Áron avatar
Hello and welcome! I would like to reach out to anyone who uses Seastar for astrophotography or knows how to troubleshoot issues related to it. Recently, I started capturing frames of the M101 Pinwheel Galaxy. When I first began imaging this deep sky object, the results looked fine, despite some noise. However, now, the stacked images show no signs of the galaxy, only the stars.  I’m really confused about what’s happening. I checked the weather statistics, and maybe thick clouds covered the sky, but that wasn't the case.  
I’m starting to worry that my Seastar might not be capable of astrophotography anymore. Even when I applied intelligent denoising to the images, they still appeared blurry.  Does anyone have any insights on how to resolve this problem? I’ve never encountered this issue before, and I’m at a loss for how to deal with it. Thank you!

https://we.tl/t-78vjN63aOp
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kgav8r avatar
kgav8r avatar
It looks to me like these two images linked are not even of the same area. It’s as though the telescope got bumped off to another section of the sky.
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Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
Agreed, it's not the same field.
Szijártó Áron avatar
Szijártó Áron avatar
It looks to me like these two images linked are not even of the same area. It’s as though the telescope got bumped off to another section of the sky.

What do you mean by "bumped"? I'm sure I placed the telescope on a stable surface, and I only moved it for objects other than deep sky targets. Could the leveling be off? I have a level adjuster, but I don't use it much since resetting the values in the app usually defaults to zero. Should I also calibrate the compass? What steps should I take to fix this?
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Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
Something upset the point of the telescope, no one can tell you what caused it. It could have been an animal or a gust of wind, who knows. All we can tell is the telescope plate solving/pointing is way off. Honestly you should have recognized this while taking the images. Next time, just make sure that you set it up as solidly and accurately as you can. Keep an eye on your framing as the images come in. If there is a mechanic fault, it will repeat eventually.
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Szijártó Áron avatar
Szijártó Áron avatar
Tony Gondola:
Something upset the point of the telescope, no one can tell you what caused it. It could have been an animal or a gust of wind, who knows. All we can tell is the telescope plate solving/pointing is way off. Honestly you should have recognized this while taking the images. Next time, just make sure that you set it up as solidly and accurately as you can. Keep an eye on your framing as the images come in. If there is a mechanic fault, it will repeat eventually.

So what you say is that this can be another disadvantage of every Alt AZ telescope? Cause l noticed that when there's windy weather, the seastar sometimes starts to go to the object several times, and only the fourth time, it manages to do the enhancing. Also, I noticed that as well when there is a little wind, the seastar has a hard time tracking the object.  Not sure if it's related to it or it's related to the object's position cause sometimes I see that the telescopes can work faster, and sometimes it's hardly doing the enhancing. I wonder if this also can happen if the telescope is in eq mode or if you can avoid this by having the seastar in an eq wedge?
Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
The fact is, most small telescopes, even ones that are solidly mounted are affected to one degree or another by gusts of wind. A small, light unit that's not solidly tied down will be affected more. Have you seen a correlation with tracking and plate solving issues on windy nights? It should be obvious to you if there is.
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Szijártó Áron avatar
Szijártó Áron avatar
Tony Gondola:
The fact is, most small telescopes, even ones that are solidly mounted are affected to one degree or another by gusts of wind. A small, light unit that's not solidly tied down will be affected more. Have you seen a correlation between tracking and plate-solving issues on windy nights? It should be obvious to you if there is.

Well, I'm not really running into those forums that talk about this stuff, so no.
Btw is it could be solved by restarting the telescope or redo the goto?  All I know is that if I restart it, it means that I'm performing a factory reset on the telescope; it should fix it, right?  This issue only happens to me with the messier 101-deep sky object.
Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
Another cause I just thought of because you said it's happening one one particular target is this. Was the target close to directly overhead? Alt/Az mounts have trouble near the zenith. If you've ever observed with a hand pushed Dobsonian you'll know what I'm talking about. Any alt/az targeting will fail in this zone.
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Szijártó Áron avatar
Szijártó Áron avatar
Tony Gondola:
Another cause I just thought of because you said it's happening one particular target is this. Was the target close to directly overhead? Alt/Az mounts have trouble near the zenith. If you've ever observed with a hand pushed Dobsonian you'll know what I'm talking about. Any alt/az targeting will fail in this zone.

Ah. Yeah, I do know.  But the thing here is that the object wasn't really near the zenith. It was at 60° degreess when I was trying to capture it. I guess It was too high for an alt AZ telescope to keep track of the target? If so, then it means I might need to find a perfect time and position for the object. It is positioned below the zenith way further, more like around nighttime, because the time when I was tried to capture it was around dawn.
And I guess only an EQ telescope could capture objects in that degree, right?
Tony Gondola avatar
Tony Gondola avatar
60 degrees isn't a problem but if the sky was brightening because you were imaging near dawn it's possible that there wasn't sufficient signal for the plate solving to work properly.
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