Let project Vela begin…. Well partly.

[@BehindEarthTamil]

I love it sir 😊

[@deep_space_dave]

Just admit it, even though you are frustrated, you love it LOL. I think we are all a little masochistic to ourselves as we are explorers first and imagers second. So we are always pushing the edge of our equipment sometimes to the point of breaking but that is the fun of it! Then that great rush of fulfillment when we finally get it all working! I have been doing the same thing on my few precious clear nights in the north between freezing cold and snow. I finally produced a image finally with round stars from an unguided mount (luckily with encoders) as I found the seeing is so bad near Chicago USA, it make guiding even difficult! I am glad you did get a very hauntingly beautiful image completed, so the rig is working, just will take time for it to let you tame it 😄 Just remember, if you are trying to make something work but it doesn't, it's not a wasted night but another life lesson! Clear Skies!

[@denodan]

The Joys of astronomy when things dont go right. Had an issue with my ipolar camera, it packed a sad, so could not polar align quickly, as this has me able to align in less than 3 mins or so. Was out of warrenty, but Astronz fixed it outside of warranty free, needed a new camera board. Mind you really had to repair it under NZ consumer act which state even outside of warranty the appliance must still run without issues for a reasonable ammount of time, so never bother with extended warranties as here your still covered. Anyway they were great, no issues or problems, had it for 18 months before it packed up and has a manufactures warranty of 12 months. Think here and Australia we do get looked after better

[@DavesAstrophotography]

Love the setup........ Would it not be easier to get small 1TB USB3 connected SSDs and plug them into the Eagle, and then configure nina to save the images onto it, you can then just velcro it onto the eagle, so can remove it easily for taking the images into you main pc for processing. I was using the 1TB Verbatim Store 'n' Go on my solar rig and worked great.

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

Thanks mate, I do have a great deal of spare USB ports these days. I’ve just installed a USB 4 port hub but even then I might be almost out. I’ve managed to upgrade the internal hard drive now from a 120gb to a 240gb drive.

[@OlliesSpace]

Goon on ya Steve trying to manage three RASAs like this. I can only imagine how tricky that is trying to manage all the synching requirements. Hope you get some clear it's been awful here in Victoria.

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

Thanks mate, it’s a huge step up from running a twin system. You think just adding another telescope is simple but there is so much more to it. It’s fun but crazy at the same time. Hope you guys get some clear skies. Things haven’t been too bad here, I’ve had to pull the system apart and rebuild some sections.

[@CDigata]

if the filters are at the bottom, surly that is the weakest part of the train as has less camera support.. this is why we always try to have slider inserts at top?

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

The filter inserts are magnetic and very stable / solid. It’s a good design for the RASA, so no problems with filters and stability at all :)

[@Dog_vs_Wild]

Holy Trinity

[@craiglowery4427]

I love your setup Steve. I bet PLL would build you a custom Eagle for free because of how you showcase their technology for scientific purposes

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

Haha I doubt they would give me anything for free lol.

[@JarrodMcKitterick]

Only into the first 6 minutes.. queue the Woody Harrelson Crying Meme.. j/k I love your setup. Thank you for sharing.

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

🤣🤣🤣

[@LogansAstro]

Well they do say dealing with triplets is not easy 🤣. I know what you mean by the time taken to do the synchronised dithering - on my dual setup it certainly slows things down a lot. Hopefully you get the issues sorted and can get back to collecting data on this region because there is a lot of cool looking nebulosity to be captured threre.

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

Yeah that sync dither is a bit buggy too I feel. Sometimes it will skip the dither and carry on for an extra frame and then go into sync dither mode. I’m wondering if I spend a night with no dither, using unity gain the noise levels are much lower than zero gain. I’m still working out the best trade off.

[@nikaxstrophotography]

I'm still waiting for a set of clear nights so I can finish my Vela mosaic, it's unbelievably frustrating!!!!

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

How many panels are you up too? It’s going to look amazing.

[@nikaxstrophotography]

@@StevenMorrisPhotography 6 out of 12 so far it's coming along but I need just a few good nights in a roiw I might even expand it a little further

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

Wow that’s a nice large mosaic your building there. It’s going to look amazing!

[@Astrophilth]

Hey Steve! I’ve been planning to do exactly this with 3 edgeHD 8s and hyperstars on my eq8. I’ve currently got two set up but wanting to move onto 3. Could you explain the setup you have gone with regards the losmandy plates?

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

It’s really trial and error at the moment, I’m still playing around with the setup because of flex. I’ve used all Primaluce lab plates. One being 750mm and another being 450mm that sits on top as a backbone to reinforce. The smaller 350 I think is mounted North South to provide mounting to the mount. I’ve then recently used risers and 3D printed ones to help raise the centre scope to match the height of the outers. I’m still yet to test this iteration of the setup.

[@denodan]

I accually have a USB extender, with 4 USB ports, thought I would need it as I only have 2 USB ports, it plugs into my USB C port

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

I’ve also recently done the same, I’m just working out where to mount the USB hub. I’ve just recently purchased some smaller usb cables to try and tidy cable management up some more.

[@SimonT65]

Hi Steve, I upgraded my SSD on my Eagle 4 to a 2TB Samsung 980 M.2. Copying Windows Enterprise from the original PrimaLuce SSD is easy - nothing too difficult (if you can master 3x RASA's then it will be a doddle for you 🙂). Recently I kept getting an Unhandled Exception Error which turned out to be a .net framework error that couldn't be fixed as PrimaLuce locks WEnterprise down which meant I couldn't fix it (there's a post on Cloudy Nights about the same issue) . Anyways, I decided to wipe the new drive and stick W11 pro on it and it now works flawlessly on the Eagle even with the PrimaLuce EagleManager 4.2 startup screen (PrimaLuce give instructions on how to set up the EagleManager from scratch in their Eagle instructions). What I'm getting at, don't be afraid to stick in a larger/faster SSD as its easy to do even to the extend of putting W11 Pro on it. Cheers

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

Thanks mate, I will check all this out and if my hard drive ever arrives I’ll be able to try it out lol.

[@Smokeyr67]

I'm waiting for the next version, quint 14 inch RASA's...

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

That’s at 1 million subscribers 🤣🤣🤣

[@Smokeyr67]

@@StevenMorrisPhotography Well, I'll subscribe twice, not sure that that'll make up the numbers :)

[@anata5127]

If you can get 3 RASA, then get loaded Z-book from HP for 5-6K. It will handle your data without blinking an eye.

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

Oh I’m broke now lol. My I7 laptop can handle the data so far as well as the i7 on the triplets. I might build a new computer in the future for faster processing and stacking… but that will have to wait for now :)

[@anata5127]

@@StevenMorrisPhotography Comet processing was benchmark. I needed to remove stars from 300 frames (generated by 294mm; binning 2x2). My home i9 has done this for 30h. Z8 desktop (my work comp) has done it within 4 hours.

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

Wow that’s a huge difference in time due to processing performance.

[@anata5127]

@@StevenMorrisPhotography Yes, in work, I get a lot of microscope pictures. I can justify fast computer. Organization 💰. Z8 price is a lot, 8K. I just wonder, maybe I need to borrow camera from microscope as well and stick into telescope 😀. Just to see effect. It is Teledyne research grade CMOS. Very tempting 🤪.

[@stephenduke2081]

What are you using to get rid of tilt on your Rasa / Camera system?

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

I use the Baader FCCT II system for sensor alignment

[@denodan]

When you going for 6 Rasa's .LOL

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

100k subscribers lmao 🤣

[@FAstroHD]

Mate you need an observatory!

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

I know….. still a little while away that.

[@LM-ek2hb]

Roughly what is the size of each image file? Have you considered a Thunderbolt drive at 10Gb/s dump rate? My 4s has a thunderbolt port.. I'm overloading the 4s with iOptron Commander, SharpcapX2, the guider, an f4 scope and an f7 scope all running. Plus ASCOM, focusers, etc, etc. :) I'm experimenting with offloading the mount, guider and focusers to a second NUC pc. But lately, my 4s just seems to drop the network for no apparent reason and never seems to come back unless I reboot. I'm now starting to experiment with very shielded USB3 cables. Really interested in how you progress on the throughput issue! Thanks!

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

I believe they are somewhere around 22mb per file which isn’t a great deal when my Z7 is up around 90mb. I’ve found offloading the data onto the hard drive is the best solution, I’m trying a larger hard drive and see how that goes. At the moment I just need to get a connection from my SSD hard drive to mirror the hard drive in the Eagle. I have the base model eagle 4 so it doesn’t have a thunderbolt connection.

[@ijontichy7179]

Seven is the lucky number! HSO-LRGB! SEVEN! :)

[@Your_Imagin8ion]

My wallet hurts just watching this

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

So does mine, I hope it’s all over with now and I can start saving again lol.

[@suma126]

you need a permanent setup steve so you can focus on imaging not setup

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

I couldn’t agree more, unfortunately that’s still some time away.

[@denodan]

Could you not have just got an SSD external drive? Did this with my Planetary imaging, so got a 512GB SSD Samsung. My internal drive is only 128GB and for planets just not enough.

[@StevenMorrisPhotography]

I could but I don’t have anymore usb ports available, especially with what else I’m doing lol.