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Yes - I know what you mean !

M51 NGC5194 Messier Objects Galaxy Deep Sky
Astro-bloopers - likes to laughs •7 replies•228 views
James (Jim) Poulette avatar
James (Jim) Poulette avatar
Bloopers i got !

For some reason - on this evening I could not get ASIAIR+ to "center" on M51.

The procedure is automated, fast, and works very well usually using ~100 stars. But this time it was using >500 starts to center and it never finished, even after I restarted it several times. The next evening it worked fine. Go figure.

So here is my contribution, 60 - 60" RGB exposures, 12 Apr 2023, stacked but unprocessed.

Good luck to all blooper enthusiasts !

Engaging Supportive
Tom Gray avatar
Tom Gray avatar
Despite all our gadgets, they don’t always play - either glitches or in my case I give the tripod an accidental kick, and the object rapidly drifts out of the bottom of the frame.  Nice post Jim.
John Favalessa avatar
John Favalessa avatar
well framed 😂🤪.     too many 🍺's?  -john
James (Jim) Poulette avatar
James (Jim) Poulette avatar
Maybe someone can figure this out......

Here are 5 raw consecutive 60-sec lights (from a 180 frame set) that show what I've experienced a few times now. Frame 61 is fine, frames 62, 63, and 64 (a total of 3 minutes) it does it's 'funky thing' (re-focus routine I suspect), then frame 65 is back to fine. No biggee really, as I just blink them out. But, I'm fairly new to ASIAIR+, so if anyone can confirm please do !

So out of 180 lights, I lost 11 to airplanes and 3 to this 'funky thing' !

Tom Gray avatar
Tom Gray avatar
Could be a focus routine with out pausing image capture, or perhaps insufficient power to mount, resulting in loss of tracking - I've had this recently with my Stellarmate RPi4 setup - which is what the Asiair is, albeit locked to ZWO cameras. My RPi4 needs a steady 3 Amps minimum and focus motors (steppers) draw quite a lot of current.
James (Jim) Poulette avatar
James (Jim) Poulette avatar
Tom Gray:
Could be a focus routine with out pausing image capture, or perhaps insufficient power to mount, resulting in loss of tracking - I've had this recently with my Stellarmate RPi4 setup - which is what the Asiair is, albeit locked to ZWO cameras. My RPi4 needs a steady 3 Amps minimum and focus motors (steppers) draw quite a lot of current.

I'm using a 10A power supply, so I doubt it's power. The AM5 takes 3A max all by itself so I'm somewhere >5A easy.

I agree on the 'focus w/o pause' theory. I will dig further into that.
John Favalessa avatar
John Favalessa avatar
I'm running with AISAIRs and haven't seen a focus w/o pause option, in fact while it's focusing I cannot get out of that screen until finished.  Interestingly, my AM5 mount started making terrible noises one very cold night…had to immediately shut down as sounded damaged.  ZWO support said to wrap the power supply in a towel or get a bigger power supply.  the towel trick worked.  I did buy a 10A power supply 🤑.  Hopefully this problem will just go away for you.  -john
Tom Marsala avatar
Tom Marsala avatar
James (Jim) Poulette:
Bloopers i got !

For some reason - on this evening I could not get ASIAIR+ to "center" on M51.

The procedure is automated, fast, and works very well usually using ~100 stars. But this time it was using >500 starts to center and it never finished, even after I restarted it several times. The next evening it worked fine. Go figure.

So here is my contribution, 60 - 60" RGB exposures, 12 Apr 2023, stacked but unprocessed.

Good luck to all blooper enthusiasts !



Man, your stars look good, though!