Taking Off the Training Wheels--Corona Australis

[kiwiapple]

I have made the switch from ASIAIR-assisted imaging to the far more powerful, but far more complicated, NINA system. This was prompted by my buying a rotator for my rig, which meant ditching an off-axis guider, which meant adding a guide scope, which led to my running out of USB ports, which meant buying a switch, and the switch is incompatible with the ASIAIR (which doesn't play well with equipment made by other companies). NINA is open-source so it works with all my gear (and with the dome that will one day be part of my observatory), and it has some really powerful features, but it's not always obvious how to set them up. I had a little issue on Wednesday night while shooting this target, but I sorted that out on Thursday and as a result Thursday night went without a hitch, and resulted in this 14-1/2 hour image, shot as a two-panel mosaic with a mono camera, of the Corona Australis region.

 

[JimFox]

That was one serious set of dominoes that fell for you from that one tiny purchase.

This is really great, and awesome to see you are getting the hang of NINA.

 

[kiwiapple]

That was one serious set of dominoes that fell for you from that one tiny purchase.

This is really great, and awesome to see you are getting the hang of NINA.

Yeah, it was quite the domino tumble! And now I am toying with replacing the ASIAIR on my other rig with a NINA installation too...

 

[Mike Lewis]

Very nice result! These type of dark nebulae are always very compelling when well exceuted like this one.

As Jim said, good to see you getting into NINA - it really is an amazing program. It is like a lot of other software in that it can appear somewhat complicated when first using it, but once you get some experience with it and also realize you do not have to utilize every feature it starts to get easier. The program is made very powerful by all of the plug-ins that are available as well. I am certainly not the most sophisticated user myself, but I do now have quite a few hours on it, so if you do run into issues or questions about it don't hesitate to reach out as perhaps I can give you a tip or 2 that will help. I am currently getting sorted on the Target Scheduler, which allows for a totally hands off imaging experience if you wish. Not something that is really warranted for local setups, but more compelling for folks who have remote setups like me. I will still be interacting with my gear to a degree regardless as I like to have more say in which filters might be collected on a target for a specific evening, and I also just like to watch the data come rolling in and make sure things are performing as expected. But anyway, a great program that I think you will really come to love the more you use it.

ML

 

[kiwiapple]

Very nice result! These type of dark nebulae are always very compelling when well exceuted like this one.

As Jim said, good to see you getting into NINA - it really is an amazing program. It is like a lot of other software in that it can appear somewhat complicated when first using it, but once you get some experience with it and also realize you do not have to utilize every feature it starts to get easier. The program is made very powerful by all of the plug-ins that are available as well. I am certainly not the most sophisticated user myself, but I do now have quite a few hours on it, so if you do run into issues or questions about it don't hesitate to reach out as perhaps I can give you a tip or 2 that will help. I am currently getting sorted on the Target Scheduler, which allows for a totally hands off imaging experience if you wish. Not something that is really warranted for local setups, but more compelling for folks who have remote setups like me. I will still be interacting with my gear to a degree regardless as I like to have more say in which filters might be collected on a target for a specific evening, and I also just like to watch the data come rolling in and make sure things are performing as expected. But anyway, a great program that I think you will really come to love the more you use it.

ML

Thank you, but you may regret offering to help! As it is, I was using the Target Scheduler this past week, giving it two targets to keep in mind for me, the Corona Australis that I posted and M8 and M20. Unfortunately, I failed to include in the instructions the requirement that M8/M20 be above a certain altitude to be considered, so the images it took the first night are mostly of my roof. I also had not set up the meridian flip properly (it seems that NINA and the ZWO AM5 speak a different language with one another than other mounts, so it needed a specific set of instructions that I had not implemented). As a result of that, the flip that should have happened didn't and the rig just stopped shooting after my target passed from east to west overhead. I have made a lot of use of Claude AI to help me get these issues sorted, and it's worked pretty well.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Sounds like some teething problems, but you have gotten things more sorted now. I find myself sometimes not agreeing with what the Target Scheduler wants to do for selecting which filters to shoot through on a given night. No doubt part of the moon avoidance logic, which has some inscrutable settings that I ended up just copying from someone else. I might end up turning that part off and doing it myself. And somethimes, when a target is well placed I just forego the Target Scheduler completely and go back to my standard single target script to collect data. The meridian flipping has been very consistent for me, both with a Software Bisque mount and also with an Astro-Physics mount. I have not tried to run my AM5N with NINA though, so that sounds like I should actually be talking to you if I ever want to try that...

ML

 

[kiwiapple]

It's a simple fix--just a matter of putting the right settings into the AM5 mount app, but it was not immediately obvious that it needs to be done. I'm also using a new Svbony switch to power everything, and that has a rather opaque interface, too, but someone created an alternative that I loaded from Github last night that seems much more user-friendly. This whole hobby is just one long slippery slope....