Gstar Lagoon

[jjjnettie]

Taken on the 8th of April.
Gstar Ex camera through 80mm refractor. 20 frames at 128x senseup.
Stacked in DSS, processed in PaintShopPro.

[allan gould]

You are getting better and better with your setup Jeanette. Was this on the Cube? and did you get a new handset?
Allan

[jjjnettie]

Yes Allan, I used the Cube.
I've put a new 2" microfocuser on the little refractor too which makes all the difference in the world.
I've had trouble with the handset only once since that night at Jons. So I haven't worried about a changing it over.

[5ash]

Hi Jeanette,
starting to look good:thumbsup:.I think you'll get less noise in your pics if you take more frames.When i take pictures of nebula using the g star i stack more than 500 light frames and 500 dark frames using DSS.
Quote from steve Quirk on g star forum
" I have been making my recordings in batches of 100 frames, that's equal to 4 minutes and 16 seconds. I do this to keep the file sizes managable and processing fairly quick in Registax.
1. For bright objects like globulars and open clusters I do 200 frames (8
min 32s). These don't need to be pushed so much in the processing.
2. For galaxies, neby etc. I do 400 frames (17 mins).
3. Some objects I have done 800 frames (34 mins) and this really helps to
cancel noise when pushing the hell out of an image"


regards philip:)

[winensky]

Ok I am really green here. What is 'The Cube'?

[renormalised]

Matt, go here:

http://www.sirius-optics.com.au/ioptron_mount.htm

[winensky]

Thanks

[jjjnettie]

Phillip,
Once the Lagoon is up at a more favourable time, I'll make the effort to capture more frames.
I don't use the Gstar capture program , I record to a DVD recorder then have to edit my frames from the .avi's manually using Virtual Dub. It's a bit of a chore.
If you have any tips on how to make my laptop work with the Gstar, I'd be eternally grateful.
.
Thanks for the tips.

[5ash]

whats the problem with your laptop.I have a 3 year old compaq presario with only 256meg ram and a usb2 card that slots in the side opening and connects to a usb2 tevion dvd maker. It works ok
regards philip

[jjjnettie]

I can get the camera to work perfectly with my Dell desktop computer that is 5 years old.
With the laptop I can only get it to work at the very lowest resolution. Which is useless.
The lappy originally ran on Vista but was downgraded to XP. Now it will only recognise the USB 2 ports as USB 1. I've contacted the manufacturers and they told me to change the Chipset Drivers, which I did. It made no difference. I suspect that I should downgrade to XP video drivers too.
It would be lovely to take advantage of the Gstar capture program, everything would be so much simpler.

[5ash]

Hi Jeanette,
perhaps you should reformat the laptop and reinstall xp, if that doesnt work buy a pcmcia usb2 card and slip it into the lhs slot( a small opening with a push open door) of the laptop, less than $20 on ebay, that includes postage ,worth a try.
regards philip

[jjjnettie]

I've thought of reformatting. But I'd have to load Vista because it's the only OS that I have the disks for.

Another solution is to wait till the observatory is finished, then move the old Dell desktop computer out there and use the lappy just for processing.

[renormalised]

Unless you can buy a copy of XP and download the previous version of the chipset and video drivers for your computer, the only way you'll be able to get it to all work is get the updated drivers for the vista compatible version of the software. What chipset does your laptop use?? You maybe able to get a copy of XP from a computer store. Might just have to shop around a bit.