New toys vs Mother Nature

Looks like tracking issues. Unless you have a 1 in a million mount with perfect tracking and a almost perfect Polar Alignment that will happen. More tha 30 sec exposures on my mount I can start to see star elongation.

On the plus side you captured stars and some dust!(y)
 
oh, it’s tracking. The mount bounces +3/-3 on the guide tracking for RA/DEC. looks like a rough ocean. Total RMS is 1.88 range and SNR for scope is 0.0.

5FD61EDD-93D0-41AC-80CF-B48A8D6F641A.jpeg
 
I deleted all my youtube videos. One of them explained how I fix the issue your seeing.
 
I think the main issue is the DEC portion of the mount is tight. Found a video on loosening it so that’s on the agenda for later today or tomorrow.
 
Flashed v1.7.2 to see the same screens as you.

I set my guide cam gain at 40 with an offset of 2 (ASI120MM Mini) and run exp of 1.5 seconds.

Try setting your guide aggression and other settings here:

SM Guide spec.png
 
Think I figured out one of the major issues... even with the weight rod on, when the mount was parallel to the ground, it would slowly move downward from the weight. Did a "little" adjusting thanks to YouTube video I found... now, when you unlock it and hold it parallel, it immediately rotates downward.

 
The RA adjustments I did went from the scope only needing 1 weight to balance to actually requiring both now, so pretty good indicator whomever assembled the mount over tightened it for RA.
 
Not to mention the stuff they use for grease is more like TAR!
 
Not to mention the stuff they use for grease is more like TAR!
I stripped all that crap off and went in some Krytox I had from my motorcycle days.

This looks a little different from the other night.
FB225119-8060-4EE0-A4F2-F42589DC26DB.jpeg
 
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How balanced is your rig? You might try leaving it a little heavy on the camera end. And if you can get the total RMS below 1.00 you can rely on it.....

Another rule of thumb, don't chase guiding in a poor sky. My starts stay nice and round with any RMS below 3.5
 
It's slightly camera heavy... not much.
But found out one thing... nothing works well when you drop below 11.9 volts on the battery. It's 4 years old and I got about 3 hours out of it.... so time for an upgrade to a lithium ion I guess. 🤑
 
Yup voltage is king! How long of exposure were you using on you guide cam?
 
Yup voltage is king! How long of exposure were you using on you guide cam?
Default of 2.00. Not sure what it should be.

EDIT:
Having much better luck with it set at 1.250....
 
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Looks like I may have gotten some decent captures tonight. M-1 did REALLY well... now I just have to figure out how to stack and process them!

Now, if I can just beat sunrise, I'm getting some good data from NGC3077.
 
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Use WBPP in PixInSight. Your ASI533MM P probably doesn't even need Darks or Flats. "KISS" theory applies here. OR APP.

Script>Batch Processing>WeightedBatcthPreprocessing
 
In the processing of messing with the stacking program... but this is one of the luminance captures of M-1 from last night. Other than starting of stacking (and it taken as a save from the normalizing process) nothing has been done to it.
150s exposure, 101 gain 50 offset.

M_1_Light_Luminance_150_secs_2022-09-14T04-36-53_002-St.png
 
Looks good. What happened with the stacking? Did you save your raw data as. fits files?
 
Looks good. What happened with the stacking? Did you save your raw data as. fits files?
Yes, they were saved as .fits file format... but for some reason PixInsight thinks they are all mono, and what it does process only comes back as black and white. There is no color at all visible... It apparently can't detect (even though the file name is such) that there WAS a filter applied - it simply says "no filter".
And for some strange reason... the image that I showed above.... it all disappears when processed.... so I'm doing something wrong. I'm pretty sure the captures are decent (as evident by the FITs file I saved out as a PNG from the stacker program).
 
Ah they ARE all mono! You won't see color until you do a LRGB combine! Guess I shouldn't have deleted my videos......

I will be busy until tomorrow afternoon, I'll put something together.
 
Stacked in ASTAP... I'm wondering if my filter wheel is actually rotating.

M 1, 2022-09-14, 21x150L, SynScan, ZWO CCD ASI533MM Pro_average_stacked.jpg
 
That is is fairly to tell. Open PixInSight. Import your .fit image from where you saved it. Go to the Process>All Processes> Curves Transformation. In the Curves Transformation at the extreme right on the line that has "R","G".... is a tab that is labeled "S". The "S" tab adjusts the color intensity, Here I would open a preview screen with the "O" lower left corner.

With your mouse pointer you can drag the Curves line to change the intensity of the colors. You can use the curves line to do compound changes. These changes at this stage only effect the preview screen you've opened. Once satisfied the change are the way you want click the square box (lower left corner) and the changes will be applies to your screen image.

Couple words of warning, my preview screen is always a bit darker than my main screen image. IF you use the "R", "G".... tab it will introduce changes to the color wavelength.

Video is the easiest way to explain Pix... Guy that uses the name "VisibleDark" has a youtube channel. He is a wise man!!!!! Here is a link (and this link is a direct link to explaining how to use your version of WBPP in Pix). He has all sorts of useful vids....
 
Thanks... I'll watch the video once I get my polar scope back into alignment...
Some things I'm anal retentive on and having the 0 at around where the 5 would be was driving me bonkers.. so I got it aligned so that the 0 is where it should be... but now I have to center the polar scope so it rotates around a fixed point.
Upside down view and 3 screws to adjust....

I also added it to the Gallery in the How-To guides..
 
Hoping my adjustments worked after cracking the polar scope lens.
This was with 5 minutes of ruin time.
89F21A75-08FF-457A-9E35-F763C21A2EED.jpeg
 
Looks good. You can use the mouse roller to shrink the lines on the graph. This also seems to lower the Total RMS.
 
I bought a Risingcam imx571 a little over a month ago and still have not had a chance to use it.
 
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