I ended up getting a ton of data on this over most of April as I chased equipment issues: camera and issues with focus. I ended up ditching all my luminance and got a sharper result making up a synthetic luminance from the RGB.The problem finally traced to my flattener which provided a quite flat field but lousy offsets between R and B which made luminance focus worse than focusing individually between each RGB filter. And finally after a year of pain with the new SX-46 (5 different main camera boards) I feel confident that the issues are totally resolved. Over the last year I had project after project never complete due to these issues. This time I was just determined to get "something!" So, this was overkill, no doubt, with 10 hours of RGB (5 min subs) and 16 hours of Ha (15 min subs). Overkill or not, this much good data certainly made certain aspects of processing easier.
A fantastic image Peter - certainly worth exploring at high resolution. Wow, 5 circuit boards, and the flattener. Sometimes we must be really patient in this hobby of ours. But now it looks like you have a wonderfully capable cosmic photon collector
Honestly, these issues and others (not to mention a dec motor failure that took a long time to properly diagnose and then get parts from the USA) just about did my head in. In spite of a ton of help from Martin Pugh I was unable to make headway with the two issues and made the hard decision to pull my gear out of Yass. I brought it home and temporarily setup out back and spent two weeks experimenting. Finally what was going wrong revealed itself. A new reducer/flattener is on its way to Los Angeles where I will pick it up next week. But, as I'm currently packing up my house for a sale and moving, I think it will be a long time before I image again. That is, unless I succumb to a back of the mind nagging thought that I "might" buy a portable mount. I beat down that thought every day but it won't die. Die I say, die!
Hi Peter,
A very very good image indeed!
Sorry, you had so much equipment trouble. Can I ask, what was the exact issue with the PME2 dec assembly??
Cheers,
Tim
Hi Peter,
A very very good image indeed!
Sorry, you had so much equipment trouble. Can I ask, what was the exact issue with the PME2 dec assembly??
Cheers,
Tim
Hi Tim,
Well suddenly the MEII wouldn't home properly. I've forgotten some of the details but Software Bisque thought it had to be a cable issue. So, cables were sent and did not solve the problem. Then SB said it must be the MKS5000 control board. I was unconvinced since RA worked fine. More time passed and I drove to Yass and convinced myself that the board was fine by swapping the RA and Dec motors on the board. The RA motor ran fine from the dec plug on the board so that proved that the board was fine. The dec motor wouldn't run from the RA side of the board so that finally proved the issue was actually in the dec motor. The dec motor would spin. Finally a dec motor was shipped and the problem resolved. It was most likely a failed encoder on the dec motor. I hear that is a very rare event, so naturally it happened to me!
Thanks for that Peter.
I have had some mild to moderate hysteresis of the dec from day 1 with my PME2 that is annoying, but unexplained and unresponsive to troubleshooting and adjustment so far.
Regards,
Tim
Sorry to hear about that declination problem. Do you see it as a N/S spread in the T-Point RMS scatter plot? I've seen that on occasion too but mine is responsive to cam and plunger adjustment. There is one other adjustment that might make a difference but you need to be super careful to not tighten too much. I'm speaking about the large hex bolt on the end of the worm block that keeps the worm from moving laterally. You may discover that it is too loose. First be sure to read all the docs on adjusting this.
Hi Peter,
Thanks very much.
Yes, it is a N/S spread on the TPoint scatter plot exactly.
Thanks for the tip, I haven't noticed the large hex bolt being loose, but I will investigate that for sure.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Tim
Good to see that you stuck with it Peter. The results show that the effort was worth it. I always say that if this hobby was too easy we would probably find something else more challenging to explore anyway
Thanks so much, Pete. I realised the other day that I made so many revisions during processing that I doubt if I could generate the same image again from my data. Kind of a strange thought, actually. Perhaps a good one in that these "works of art" are more art than we sometimes imagine.
