Just one of those nights !!! - Forums

Topic starter

Apr 22, 2022 · Edited: Apr 22, 2022

Anyone else had a night like this?

I'm sitting here at after 1am having only just got my imaging capture going. It went like this:

1) Got the scope set up during the day: levelled, balanced and all the cables run back to the house and checked.
2) Just after dusk I polar aligned it with SharpCap to the level where SharpCap said it was "Execellently" aligned … that's actually quite tough to achieve on an HEQ5 Pro
3) Decided to calibrate PHD2 with a star in the south west at near the equatorial line
4) Once that had finished, I platesolved and synced the position

Then it all went tits-up

I must have synched the mount wrongly at some point, so I ended up spending 3 hours trying to work out why my guiding was awful and my gotos weren't going where I expected. The PHD2 graph was off the scale and I couldn't target a single item.

Eventually (after about 2 hours) I gave up, parked the mount, powered it all off and started again having cleared out all sync positions.

Surprise, surprise it all worked flawlessy the second time. Guiding is sub 0.5 arc seconds and it is merrily taking it's images.

When will I learn that my setup is fine and, if it is behaving stupidly it is probably me (the stupid operator) who has done something wrong?

Lesson to self: give it 30 mins max next time before starting again from the beginning.

Helpful Engaging

Olaf Fritsche

Apr 22, 2022

Poor Andy! Another one of those mean lessons we all know.

Some time ago I had a similar problem. Because several nights in a row the weather was good, I left the tripod outside even during the day. This always made the PA go very fast and the results were good. But one night the deviation increased steadily over hours. Even a renewed PA did not help. I had to stop the measurement.
The next morning, it turned out that the screw for extending and clamping the tripod legs had loosened a bit on one leg and the leg was slowly getting shorter and shorter. I was lucky that everything did not collapse while the telescope was still mounted on the tripod.
Since then, I check all screws for tightness before each setup.
One of those nights …

Helpful Engaging Supportive

kuechlew

Apr 22, 2022

Welcome to my world Andy …

Thomas

Apr 22, 2022

Welcome to my world Andy ...

I'm living in the same world.
My favorite activity is messing around with guiding issues.

Sean van Drogen

Apr 22, 2022

my winning story on this would be around 30 minutes of trying to figure why PHD2 could not find a guidestar.
Did reinstall reboot etc before i noticed I left the cap on the guidescope.

Steve Solon

Apr 22, 2022

No, Andy, never had a bad night - ever, ever in my whole AP career. The sky's always been clear, my setup has always worked perfectly, the wind and smoky skies have never been a factor, my attention span to detail is always sharp as a tack, the howling coyotes have never scared the pants off me, etc., etc., etc.. Now, you're familiar with the story of Pinocchio, whose nose grew every time he told a lie? My beak is out the door, buddy!!

- - Steve the Liar

Well Written Insightful Respectful Engaging

Dale Penkala

Apr 22, 2022

We all have had nights like that! Welcome to the world of AP!

I have a list of things that I go through and check if I'm having problems. If I second guess myself then I'll go back and double check cords, bolts are tight (though my setup is in an observatory so mostly not an issue as they have been gone through already) etc… If I exhaust all everything on the checklist and can't figure it out then I shut everything down and step away to let things set for a few minutes and head inside for a coffee or SCOTCH

(usually Scotch). I head out and look at the setup after my break, and then go back through my startup and try it again. 9 times out of 10 I missed a procedure or something stupid, and it then just works.

Dale

Helpful Respectful Engaging Supportive

Lynn K

Apr 22, 2022

I have a permanent remotely run set up, and still there can be issues. Usually software related.

However, I have to pull a travel trailer 5 hours to my dark site in north central Pennsylvania. There you get a lot of Great Lakes cloudy nights, and clear ones are rare. I try to get two set ups going and possibly three to take advantage of the clear dark skies. During the day time I got two set ups fully connected and all was working well. I run the rigs remotely from inside the trailer. Out side I was talking to a astro buddy and heard the fans running on my cameras. I thought that can't be good, I should cut the power. Windows 10 didn't like that, and would not connect to the set ups. It seemed all ASCOM drivers had been corrupted. No enternet. After hours into early morning after changing out laptops, I finally got one st up connected. The other one would never recognize the mount and after returning home, I found the USB cable had gone bad. What's the chance of that?

I have invested considerable into high in equipment to avoid isues. The equipment alway performs. It's is always software issue that screw things up for me.

Lynn K.

Justin

Apr 22, 2022 · Edited: Apr 22, 2022

Hello Andy,
As others have already said, welcome to the world of AP!
A few weeks ago, I had a very similar issue. First, it started with SharpCap not wanting to plate solve for PA no matter how much I tweaked the settings, restarted the program, or unplugged and replugged the guide camera (I'm still having issues with this). Finally, I opted for visually polar aligning with the polar scope and that took 5 minutes and was just fine. Then, I plate solved and synced and the guiding was awful and my 2-minute subs were terrible. I unplugged everything, restarted my laptop, redid PHD2 calibration (3 times!), and still, the same problem. By this point, I was at my dark site (a 25-mile drive from my house, one way) for an hour and 40 minutes, and my precious clear sky time was slipping away. In an act of desperation, I turned the mount off in preparation for packing down for the night. It then occurred to me that with all the restarts and unplugging and plugging things in, I never restarted the mount. Needless to say, within 10 minutes of doing that, everything was running smoothly and I was seeing sub-arc-second guiding and the subs started rolling in. Below is a short list of stupid mistakes and issues that have caused me plenty of angry nights:

-Forgot to remove lens caps (both guide scope and main scope)
-Attempted polar alignment on Kochab (multiply times, both manually and with SharpCap)
-Forgetting to level the mount
-USB hub with a short that disconnected my camera if it move the wrong way
-Exploding AA battery and not having any spares (I was using an iOptron Smart EQ Pro at the time)
-Forgetting to turn on the dew heaters (this one happens all the time to me, and since I image in Florida, dew heaters are an absolute necessity)
-Leaving my DSLR to take jpegs instead of RAWs
-Pausing my imaging run to check for cable snags and forgetting to press start and taking a nap (I lost over an hour of exposures on that one!)
-When first using my new mount (iOptron GEM28 ), I didn't setup the EQ base properly and the counter weight kept hitting the ALT adjustment knob
-And many more that I have, no doubt, locked away in my sub-conscience for fear of permanent, long-term mental damage!

Anyways, this is what makes this hobby so rewarding. It is such a headache to do just about anything, even if you buy the best equipment, that when you finally do see some success, you feel like you really earned it!

Helpful Engaging Supportive

Stuart Taylor

Apr 22, 2022 · Edited: Apr 22, 2022

my sympathies. We've all been there.

I had a very frustrating experience last night too actually.

I set up my brand new Edge 9,25 on the mount, attached the camera and then spent 2h trying to focus on something. Since the scope was out of the box, the focus could have been literally anywhere. And there are a LOT of turns on that focus knob to work through. As you all know when a scope is very far from focus, you can't see anything expect black. Also my ASI2600 only manages about 3fps, so it's very very very slow turning the knob and looking at the screen to see if any donuts appear. And no point in connecting an eyepiece as it wouldn't be parfocal with the camera (whether in a diagonal or not). So then I thought "ok, point at Arcturus as that's nice and bright - you surely can't miss that" But trying to line up a 2.3m focal length scope by eye is a nightmare. Then I thought, ok swap the big camera for a little one with a higher frame rate.. more zooming around the sky and twiddling focus knob. I even tried strapping my green laser pointer to the side of the OTA and aiming at Arcturus that way. To no avail. After about 1.5h I was ready to give up - I figured I'd have to wait for the moon (as anyone can find that!). I had to go in and have a cup of tea. Refreshed, I came out again and finally managed to see Arcturus skate across the FOV and I had to tighten the clutches without loosening it (as I was on manual).

After 2h, I had focus and could start imaging.

Wow! These long FL scopes have challenges all their own.

Helpful Engaging Supportive

Benny Colyn

Apr 25, 2022 · Edited: Apr 25, 2022

I work in IT.

For these kinds of problems we follow the Words of Moss:

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Well Written

Robert Winslow

Apr 25, 2022

Man, I feel like i live this every night. I just love when PHD2 decides to fight the mount, and cause it to track worse. I always end up needing to re-calibrate PHD2 and things work fine after.

I also love when Shapcap stops platesolving and gives cryptic errors, in the end I had to reset the platesolving software, I must have changed something on mistake.

I also remember spending 4 hours on a nebula, to find I was not capturing RAW. Data was not processable. .

Engaging