SJ-Astronomy Imaging SIG Meetings, 20 Apr 2021

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From YouTube: SJAA Imaging Special Interest Group April 20, 2021 - The Namid Remote Observatory

Description

This month we're very excited to welcome back long time member and former host of the Imaging SIG, Mark Striebeck. Mark, along with his friends Manoj, & Richard, is part of a 3 man team that threw in together to create the Namid Remote Observatory. Mark will be sharing some of their experiences getting up and running down in New Mexico.

Mark Striebeck graduated from Brunel University in London in 1992. Since then he has worked at several different companies. One of these companies being Google where he has been the Engineering Director since 2005.

Please be sure to check out Mark's Blog and his Astrobin Page at:

https://mstriebeck-astrophotography.blogspot.com/

&

https://www.astrobin.com/users/mstriebeck/

Please also bring along your recent images to share with the group after the main presentation!

A

I want to welcome everybody to the april 2021 meeting of the san jose astronomical association, imaging special interest scoop. A group tonight we have mark streebeck joining us mark is a former host of the imaging sig and uh handed it down to me a few years ago.

B

A

We're very happy to have him back again and he's going to talk about an observatory that he and a couple of friends put together down in new mexico called the namid observatory um without further ado. I'm going to hand it over to you mark.

C

Cool, thank you um so yeah, as we said, I'm with the sorby now for quite a number of years started out as most of us telescope in the backyard at some point something bigger, went to star parties and again at some point, there's probably most of us that yeah like okay, maybe setting up a telescope somewhere else and then two years ago or one and a half years ago.

C

um Somebody approached me at google. That's why I'm working um he's also into this hobby. A guy called manage and he's like. Well, I have this idea and do you want to do this, and so we talked a little bit about it and then, as it so happened, there was in the advanced imaging conference in 2019, and so we went there and then literally in the last minute, actually saw tolga that many of you probably know from from from tolga astro.

C

um He introduced us to another guy, rich from boston who apparently talked to him and he's like well he's thinking about it too. So he got us three together we spent, I don't know like half an hour or an hour talking to each other and said: okay, let's, let's actually do this, then we collaborated and organized. I mean literally everything online and, I think mostly via email. I don't think we actually had any zoom meeting or anything but trying to figure out what we want to buy.

C

um One of the good ideas that managed to write at the beginning was um one person buys the mount one person, the camera, one person the scope, and then we can use the remaining equipment again from filters to cables to to web power switch and everything. We use the remaining equipment to make it roughly equal that everybody pays roughly the same amount and so then the site that we call uh that we selected it's dark sky in new mexico, as you can see here on the map, um it is far south.

C

I mean when you're there. You see these hills these mountains over here that are already in in mexico um and, as you can imagine, it is insanely dark like there's nothing around it like you, can see actually a little bit the um the sort of light down from from phoenix and somewhere estus on uh yeah, it's tucson, but that's it apart from that, but it's not a real light dome. It's just on one side of the horizon.

C

You can see that there's sort of some type of shine, but for the most part it's insanely dark, but because it's fairly close to phoenix, you actually drive. I think three hours from phoenix to the side here, so it was also. You can go there and again from here we can fly. I mean it's like 45 minutes or or an hour like. I can't remember how long the flight is so also having something where we can actually get to fairly easily um and of all the sites that we sort of looked into.

C

It was actually one of the cheaper sites we pay. um I can't remember exactly like something like 400 dollars a month to have our scope there, which is then again power uh internet having the scope there, everything around it and again they have people on site. So if something small happens, we can just ask them to do it like to check if the cable is unplugged or something.

C

um This is the site itself here, this big white building, that's the main farmhouse, where the couple who is running this enterprise lives this here with the red roof, that's where our scope is in and all these are basically smaller buildings that they have all with these roll-off roofs that roll off in the evening where people have the other telescopes. So this is one of the larger buildings.

C

When we got in there, they have placed space for nine telescopes and we were the eighth and I think by now they actually rented out the ninth one, and so the next thing that they do is they will build another house somewhere here.

C

um What we didn't realize it like the staff there again the couple who's running it, they're insanely, friendly insanely, some product, like she actually invited us for dinner pretty much every evening when we were there, um which was awesome but yeah when again, when we needed something at the beginning or while the telescope was there something they're, insanely friendly, really try to make it work um super helpful with absolutely everything over here. This is a trailer.

C

This is where elvis l is the guy who runs all the I.t in that uh in um for for dark sky new mexico he's actually the former communications officer of air force one.

C

So this guy knows everything about electronics and cables, and what have you and then michael, the guy who owns this, he's actually a former core of engineer sergeant or something? So he knows everything about mechanics, so both of these two together lots and lots of knowledge super helpful.

C

The other thing that we also didn't know is they have a full machine shop there like all kinds of tools anyway, but really a machine shop where you can do everything. So when we needed something either we had it or at some point we needed to drill some holes, for I think one of the plates or something not a big deal.

C

They have everything they are super useful, so we didn't even have to bring any tools, they have absolutely everything there and then the final piece- and this is something that I that was cool- they have really good accommodation. In many of these places you have nothing like when you go there, you either stay in your car, or maybe you come with a tent or you have to drive every night again 40-50 miles to the nearest airbnb or something here they actually have a couple of buildings.

C

This here is actually a building where you have these small rooms and here's another building where you can stay, and so that is super awesome that in the evening, when you're done again, it's very dry, your tires and everything you have a proper place to go in yeah, you have an air conditioned place, a proper bed.

C

This was really really cool, um and so then we talked a lot about. So what type of equipment do we want to get? And of course you do this, you put it up there in this dark environment. So of course you try to put together the best possible equipment that you can afford and that you want to have so a plane wave cdk14, the 10 micron gm 3000. That's not 300! It's 3, 000, um an fli, 5100, microline, camera 65 millimeter filters, because it's a really big chip, moonlight night trawler.

C

Folks, I like everything from the best and then the cool thing was they told us at the site? We can ship everything there and they will keep it for us. So when we come that we don't have to bring a lot of stuff, but that they have everything there and- and we can use it there well, the downside is: we got our hands on all the equipment for the very first time and we actually arrived at the site.

C

So we spent an insane amount of time before we went to trying to make sure we have all the adapters all the cables. Everything checked it twice three times four times making sure that everything fits together that plates everything is there um but yeah. Basically, what you have to do is this is our pier how it was when we came just appeared nothing around it.

C

You go from this to this in seven days and, as you can imagine like it's again a lot of work and especially because you put it together for the first time, so you will make mistakes. You will have to do things again, um so that was really really intimidating. Once we realized, when we came, then we saw all these crates with the mount with the scope and everything like. Oh my gosh, we really have to figure this out.

C

First, two days went amazingly well, there was pretty much no hiccup, we got the mount up. Getting the mounted by the way was huge. This thing is super super heavy, so just getting it from the ground on this platform from the platform up here again it is super heavy, it doesn't have a handlebar or anything.

C

um So that was just a challenge by itself, but we got the mount up: the scope, all the imaging trains, the focuser filter, will camera filters into the filter, wheel, guide, scope, cabling we're pretty much at the end of the second day we actually at the end of the second day at night, we actually had a session with the scope to trying to figure out how do we do power alignment and everything, but then the one thing that we saw- and we tried to ignore this- is the roof of the of the observatory and if we moved the scope so that it's really pointing high up, they were like two inches between the scope and the roof here, and everybody was really really uncomfortable about it again.

C

Something happens like can the scope get stuck, there can again something lower a little bit, uh so I said initially we tried to ignore it, but then we agreed okay, let's take everything down and then again michael knew everyone there's a guy nearby who was actually designing or building these piers for him. So he was like look. I can get this pier over there. He will cut it.

C

Take some part out, I think, take five six inches out and then weld it back together again, so we took everything down, he brought it over there and then the next day when we picked it up like this, was like a scene out of mad max. It was unbelievable, like it's in the middle of the desert there and there's a small oasis with some trees, and he has this shop and he actually builds these things. That again look like something from mad max and he actually offered us like. This is actually one.

C

C

To drive around there, but we didn't have the time and here's the pier and here you can see like he cut something out, welded it back together and then we moved it back, and so now we have to set up everything again and I I never know how videos work through zoom. So hopefully you can see something.

C

This is a time lapse. Now. Does the video come through.

A

Yep we see the video.

C

That's it looks good getting though you're first up there leveling the pier michael help with that now we have the mount which first puts these plates on it. We need to put the mount on top of it.

C

At some point, I think we take a break in a second.

D

E

That's when mark has to go uh come visit here.

C

Oh lifting this mount up there. As I said it's, it looks easy here, but putting everything back on counterweights um next thing is uh the plates uh for the scope, cables yeah right. We have to put the cables first through the mount before we put on the plates at the top um got the plate up there, um putting the scope up uh some cables uh more cables.

C

I think next is the imaging train. Oh yeah,.

F

C

Scope guide camera cabling that up uh now the imaging train we left it together, so focus on filter, wheel, everything cables. uh Now everything is up there. Next, you can see. This is something that the 10 micron mount. Does it basically has a program that that tells you if your scope is fully balanced in in both directions. This is what it was when it sort of moves it forwards backwards, yep, that's basically it and then just getting all the software and everything back installed, some of the cables making sure that everything is there.

C

That was it, so we managed to put everything back together in less than two hours, which was pretty amazing.

C

So, at the end of the third night, we basically had the scope set up, how we needed it, but then it's still an insane amount of stuff and again it's something that you totally underestimate, because we usually set our scopes up in our backyards or something, and so we do this over many many weeks and sometimes months again, install the software and everything, and here just software, starting from like I mean as com, just the basic package, all the drivers doing the network configuration port forwarding that we can go to it from the outside.

C

Installing all the software time sync dimension for the plain wave software, then the imaging software tsx polar alignment itself. We spent, I think one night figuring out how to do the polar alignment and then one night actually do the polar around that then doing the web power switch um the flat panel, as you can see here, so we mounted the flat panel actually to drive towards the end of the week to get this mount here.

C

We we forgot that we need something like this, so this is a tv mount and then we put the flat panel up here and then we have basically the parking position of the scope such that it points to the flat panel. So in the parking position we can take our flight images and then we installed a small webcam that we can basically see everything.

C

So after eight days rich- and I left one thing that happened in the middle- actually two things we didn't have: there was one cable for the 10 micron mount and an adapter for the guide, camera and manage was pretty bummed. He couldn't come, but it was super cool that he could actually go to my place. Get the get the cable from one of my mounts.

C

He still had an adapter for the camera and then he could fedex it over there that we, I think, on the seventh day, got everything that we could then put everything together.

C

So it felt pretty good. Had everything done.

C

One thing that happened on the last day on the flat panel after we installed that the control box that we had for the flat panel, so we had to take this off, so we couldn't take um flats with a flat panel, but then we thought, okay, we can take at least sky flats initially, and so the first experience is the fli or the fl 5100. I mean it's an awesome camera.

C

It's basically two chips, two really large ships together, but it has the unfortunate effect that both chips have very different characteristics, um both halves of the chip. It has quite a lot of defects like.

E

E

It's like it has. It has five features and 10 usability issues. You know it's like one of those cameras where it's like it's a square law. Almost on the usability issues. I know it was an expensive camera. We tried it because the chip was big and the field of move narrow and all of that, but I think so far you kind of hit an issue every week. Almost it's not. I don't know it's like.

E

Maybe there's an easier camera to use.

C

Actually yeah and then it turns out it is a camera that really stretches fli too, like they don't have a lot of experience with it, and so, when we talk to them how to take flight, so anything like we really don't know like we. We put this together because it creates an awesome field of view, but you're, basically on your own, so yeah. We, I think the majority of our time give you right. Now we probably spend on the camera trying to figure something out with it, um and then we realized.

C

We can't really take sky flats because of the two different paths. We have completely different characteristics. We couldn't figure out, I mean in theory, you should be able with proper darks and bias frames you should. You would think that you are able to get the two different halves here out of the darks and bias frames.

C

We could never figure this out. We could never figure it out to do the calibration that it basically equalizes both halves. The other thing that we then found is that our dark and bias frames weren't really dark. That I mean the camera has a shutter, but it doesn't shut completely.

C

So we realize at some point that we actually have some artifacts, usually in the middle of the image, that it's not fully dark, and so we took we started to take end images anyway.

C

One thing that we realized guiding didn't work and we suspected that something is loose on the on the guide scope on the guide, camera unguiding.

C

We still don't know why we can't get up to 30 minutes one by one winning one by one images like 50 of the images have like in elongated stars: it's uh yeah, it doesn't stay on it and then the plane wave software, one of the main or the main thing that we use it for it actually has mirror heaters to make sure that no no dew forms um theory. It shouldn't happen too often, but it can get actually pretty cold there at night.

C

Sometimes, um and so it's a software, that's that's pretty cool that basically keeps the mirrors just slightly above ambient temperature. So so it has a uh it has a sensor outside and it sends us on the mirrors itself.

C

um But one thing that we had is it actually crashed pretty much every night after we used it for a little bit and what it turned out to be. Torga also told us this that um it actually needed too much power, and so when the heating kicked in and then we did something else with the mount or with the scope, the mount or focusing or something it actually exceeded it, and then the the software crashed.

C

So I had to go back so then I went back two or three months later with my wife. She actually loved it. It's pretty beautiful down there, so we spent a couple of days replaced the flat panel. The control box had the same issue. Again it blew up again and so what it what it did is when we moved the flat panel to.

C

I think it has 250 steps when we moved it above 100 the the fuse basically blew off the control box and I went through, I don't know five or six different fuses, and then I had two left until I realized what happened, and then we at least took calibration files manually so that I knew okay, I can't regulate it too high um and then we covered the scope completely took some uh some bias and dark frames replace the guide camera. The guide camera that we initially had had a pretty small field of view.

C

So it's sometimes it promised to actually find the guide star.

C

Tighten the guide scope, hopefully hope that we can get the issues like flexure out of it, install the second power supply and then redid the whole polar alignment and pretty much as it was the first time all these things usually take a little bit longer than one night. It was not clear, so finished everything literally in the last minute, but didn't have the time to really do one full imaging run to say like okay, let's take again proper images, let's see if absolutely everything worked, I thought it worked.

C

um So we had now one set of calibration frames um guiding still didn't work and we couldn't figure it out until today why it doesn't work, it's basically some diff. It has to be some differential flexure, but I tried everything I mean when I was there. The second time I checked every screw, that is, between the scope and the guide, scope and the camera. I tightened everything like crazy. When I do something I can't see any play, but somewhere there is some.

C

um I then wrote it picks inside script to basically equalize these two halves, so it basically takes from every script that you basically mark a dark region in your in your images and say, like okay measure the level at these dark regions, where there's no stars figure out what the difference is and basically multiply everything on one side of the of the image with this factor to get both halves at the same level, and then I had to go through it and manually mark all the bad columns that are in the sensor.

C

Cool thing is this is the first and I have to say software, only image that we got out of the scope of m51 that we took, I mean once everything is together. It is amazing what the scope does like the again. It's the location, it's dark, the scope itself. It's I mean I took images of m51 before this was unbelievable to see the amount of detail that we get the dust lanes to get like things in the background and everything.

E

Yes, I actually, I just want to say that I mean the same image. I mean this is a fairly big and bright target right, but look at the sort of dust loops that we can get from the back side. It's uh almost insane. Like I mean I don't have mark, you can highlight the dust loop on the lower part.

D

E

And this wasn't even like, I don't think we had a lot of hours on this either right mark like six hours, something like that. It's nothing extraordinary yeah, it's insane, I mean so. The the spot is really good yeah. I think the challenge is the equipment right and getting that dialed in, especially during covert times where we cannot travel all that much, um but yeah, mark and rich did all the heavy lifting, literally fun intelligence.

C

You know and that's a cool thing like the images that you can take at these locations. I mean it blows everything the way that I know even from star parties again, even at star parties. You have some straight line there. Actually, the the second time we're there. As I said this one night, it was actually overcast and from the observatory to the place where we stayed this house, it's like two or three hundred feet and I wanted to walk from the observatory to our house and it's pitched dark.

C

You couldn't see anything like I've never been in a place where it's just absolutely dark, where you don't even see like some contours or something it's just dark, so yeah it's. It is cool and the air because down there in south new mexico, it's it's pretty high up. So the air is really really calm. So that's the other thing that it's there's not much turbulence or anything. So it's it's actually from the location, it's a pretty fantastic site and yeah. So what we have now is so, as I said, we still have the differential flexure.

C

So we decided after trying it twice, it's probably something that we can't figure out, so we will replace it with an off axis guider um we used or we use acp which, for this type of observatory on one side, it's awesome because you basically enter some targets and acp figures out which target is high enough in the sky. How much images can I take it moves to the other ones. It does all the scheduling itself, um together with the um with the observatory.

C

They basically put like a small file there that we can then use to see if if the roof is open or not so it starts up itself, it calls the whole startup routine. So it does everything, so it's amazing when it works, but it also seems to be one of the software sap that's kind of finicky, like it crashes from time to time.

C

um The other thing is the scheduling again on one side: it's awesome that it does it, but we now have. I can't remember like 15 targets, and only one or two targets are fully imaged. All the other ones are like seventy percent and eighty percent and ninety percent.

E

Now, but my that's probably my part, though I mean it's actually it's it's um once you get the hang of it. It's actually pretty. I mean it's just an algorithm right at the end of the day, it's nothing magical, but that's exactly what it's supposed to do. It's just that. You know. If you look at our targets right, a lot of them, um you know be either intentionally or unintentionally, have horizon constraints or moon constraints that don't that don't fire right and as a result, it doesn't image them yeah.

E

uh We even have like rising climate delays and things like that. It's basically uh two things I want to say about acp right. I mean the software ux, like the user experience and the interface is pretty crap. I think like we just we should just put it out there. It's like you know, 1960s called can have a ui back right. It's it's like pretty terrible, but I could score, though it's fairly stable, it crashes, whenever an under it depends on a lot of things.

E

Right depends on a lot of ascon drivers, devices being connected being on the same com. Port, like this there's a whole bunch of things. Any of that changes it will crash right, that's pretty much. All it can do is not I mean, there's nothing much.

E

It can do um and, as a result, we're seeing some of those crashes, but I think we can clean that up right once the scheduling works, though I mean I have targets which are running for more than a year at this point, so you know these may be winter targets or whatever- and I have like- I don't know, 100 hours, 50 happens in 2020, 50 happens in 2021 right, but it's kind of nice that you can actually do that for multiple years and still collect like massive quantities of data right with optimal conditions.

E

I just I just want to say that, because it's not, I don't think the software is buggy right. It's not it. It's just very convoluted to use to be honest.

E

Weather files I mean just last week, I think you know mark and I and rich we realized they changed the location of the weather file, so it couldn't access the weather file anymore and it's default assumption which, by the way, it's the right thing to do.

E

If I can't hit a weather file, that's recent, I'm gonna assume everything is unsafe, so it assumed everything was unsafe and it didn't image anything for like six days right. But but you know that's not necessarily the software's fault right. It's just. We don't know where the weather file is and if it's safe to image, so it has some. It's like. You know, new answers that you need to know, but I mean it works for the most part.

E

If you get it dialed in it's actually pretty nice to be able to enter targets for the next five years. Right, like I mean I have on my home observatory, I have like I don't know 60 targets at this point and it just images. Whatever is right at the right time and some targets finish, I mean, of course you need to have like a 10 db. Drive but whenever something finishes is when I process it right, but it is challenging to get it up and running to a you know reasonable speed in the beginning, though,.

C

As you can hear, manoj and I have slightly different opinions about acp.

G

So I got a question so when you get crashes and crap like that, um are you able to deal with it remotely? Okay? You know you can. You know worst case power cycle the computer and it comes back up and you're at least able to debug and and stuff. You ever have any issues where the remote aspect of the computer is a problem.

C

Yeah so far, we only had one instance where we had to ask the guys on site to restart the computer, because what we have is we have the web power switch, so we can remotely um turn everything on and off um and then again the moment the computer gets turned on it reboots and everything. So it should work well, it didn't work the other day and we couldn't figure out really why it was. um It was actually a problem that I think it was two problems.

C

Somehow our computer was stuck and we couldn't get any longer to the web power switch, and so we had to ask them to just restart everything, and then we started it and then we could get back to it.

E

So yes yeah, but if it crashes in our restart, usually just fix this, I mean what I've noticed is acp, like you know, let's say underneath that right, it's using the 10 micron driver right. In our case this isn't a 10 micron driver, it's using the fli ass contractor right. If one of those crashes, there is no graceful degradation right, it'll just crash the whole, the whole thing will just crash and unfortunately, the only way to recover is to restart everything um but yeah. For the most part, restarting everything seems to work.

E

I mean in preparation. Mark knows this right in preparation, for this I'd have pretty much the same setup here in my backyard, and the goal was to never go into the observatory right. It's just everything is robotic, so it was pretty much the same setup and it would crash all the time at 10 micro.

E

I was using some version of the driver which had some issue where, if you connected both the ethernet port and the rs232c, it will crash like it's just this weird bug that the 10 micron driver has where, if both of these interfaces are active and you did a specific command sequence, it would crash right.

E

But what you see on a real life use case is that http crashed and your sequence halted right. Then you start unwrapping that button and you realize oh yeah. This is what it is. You fix the driver, the acp is behaving fine. The other situation is, you know, sometimes, um if it's not able to control certain devices, but you know it's executing scripts, but it's not. The script. Fails it'll fail right.

E

So there are those things that you have the underlying things that you have to uh fix, but if you assume that everything that it depends on is perfect, it'll keep working right. I mean it's mostly just an automation, uh time-based, automation, stuff, um but it does take getting getting used to right and to march point. You know the question really is: is it simpler for us to go? Every night and just bootstrap everything and take a target and run it and shut it down in the morning.

E

This is the question right I mean you could use something like I don't know sgp pro or uh there was another one mark. I think that you had brought your attention right, which was newer, which are much better user experience yeah they have much better user interfaces uh stuff. Like that, the one reason I keep coming back to sap and using it is because of the the kind of fill it and forget it kind of a user experience right in the sense that you can just enter targets.

E

You don't even know how to care. When it's going to be up right, you could be up in december you're sitting in april. You go hit the target and you enter it and it'll image it in december right right, so that's sort of what happens for me is you know I go look at an airport picture or some I don't know like. As for the image of the day or whatever the target looks interesting, I just go enter into the acp and it'll it'll image.

E

It whenever it's right to image of it right so that sort of automation is the only reason I keep coming back to it, but to mark's point it is a warthog and you cannot have to love a warthog to be able to get get around those issues, but once you do it, it keeps working like I mean right now in my one in san jose I haven't had to go in in about. I don't know eight months nine months and I haven't gone into the observatory right, but it's it's running every night.

E

It comes up at sunset, 15 minutes after sunset, whatever images, the right targets and then shuts down, if there isn't enough work, it does the right thing stuff like this, but to get there, it took me a year and a half right.

F

But you you keep talking about acp, but it actually forces you to use maximum dl to do the actual.

E

And that's a big downside. I think I I agree with you. I mean maxim is another watercolor right. I mean it's just this. This thing that tried to do way more than it was supposed to do, and it's kind of like all these artifacts, which are insanely, painful um and you're. Right. I mean that is a downside like there are these downsides right that you have to use the maxim, but I mean with my maxim right now: I'm just using astron driver. It's pretty much just uh image acquisition tool right it doesn't.

E

I don't do any guiding or anything like that with maxim, uh so it's primarily just a a mechanism to acquire pixels right, but yes, you're right. It does have that shortcoming right.

F

Yeah, it seems like the the there needs to be a new ecosystem for this kind of thing, because those two tools are really aging and insist on using each other.

C

Yeah yeah the one thing that that we looked into it it's unfortunately not there is. um This is other program called voyager, which I started to use for my my telescopes in the backyard. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a scheduler yet they're, basically working on that too. Basically, it's a similar idea to acv, where you have one program that basically does take this. That takes care of all the imaging and then a second pro and then the second program that says.

C

Okay, I tell you which image to take where to go, how many frames to take and everything um that at least from my experience so far, is also a questionable ui, but it's much much more stable and it's really really well thought through, but but yeah the full automation, but again full automation.

C

I would say once a week you have to pay attention to something that acp does or doesn't do we again, we have to look in sometimes again, as we found out now. It's like hey the file, wasn't updated the weather file, so it didn't take any images.

C

Acp doesn't send you a a message saying like hey the the file seems to be outdated for all. We know it looks like well, it maybe was cloudy every night, so it didn't take any images. um So, as I said like it does most of it automatically.

C

You still have to pay quite a lot of attention actually to make sure that it works and maybe over time it will get better, but at least so far.

E

It's yeah more. We need to have a manager on the team right I mean I I mean to me to be frank. I I I'm with you guys on on all of the downsides it has and and to mark's point. I actually tried to replicate everything that the acp does in uh sgp pro okay, I mean basically what I did was. I took all the targets that I had entered into scheduler and I recreated those targets in sgp.

E

You know in a single um what they call it project or whatever right with different start times and start dates, and all that, like I tried to do it, it was just way more work right. It was easier to fix the underlying issues and make them stable and just have acp goods thing like the weather file. Those are controllables right, like those are things you can control and it's a one-time fix right.

E

If you just make sure that the weather file is always in the same place, you don't actually have to go back and tweak a cp. You can just work so when I had full control of the system like in my observatory.

E

I I just fix the underlying things and just use jcp, but if you do have these sort of variables that are outside of http, then it's probably very painful to use right, I mean which so far it's been painfully used in new mexico compared to in san jose, which is very different experiences, and that's mostly because of the underlying systems.

C

And that's exactly it's like it did something. It's amazing I or I was quite surprised when we set this up.

C

How many things I can't easily fix, because again we have our scopes in our backyard, and I again I I thought I have my scopes fully automated, but apparently I go quite often out there and do something: filter, a cable, that's stuck or something so just figuring. All this out that it's super reliable runs every night doesn't crash and everything it's actually quite a lot of work um yeah.

C

The other thing that we have is, as I said like I had to sort of mark all these bad columns in our chip manually and what I didn't realize when we took more images, these bad columns, they are not stable and it's not that we get more and more over time. It's actually some bad columns are suddenly good columns again and we reached out to fli.

C

They couldn't explain it, they couldn't figure it out, so it means for every image we basically have to go through it like you, go through all your frames and check whether you have a bad column that you can calibrate it out.

C

Let us that we said. Maybe we need to get a different camera. This camera is just way too finicky.

A

I'm really surprised that fli isn't standing behind their product. I mean their their reputation is that they make the best cameras out there and I understand we're small part of their revenue. But how can they claim to be the best and sell cameras that are like 10 grand when you have problems right out of the box and they can and they just kind of say, gee? Sorry, uh not our problem. Yeah.

C

So it's actually no hang on fly was actually bought two years ago, yeah, the guy who ran it actually stepped down he's not with the company and the new company just looks purely at the revenue. If they actually go to the fly website, they discontinued eighty percent of their cameras and eighty percent of their filter wheels. They just I mean shrank it down.

E

Right, it's the microscopy that they're focused on now yeah, but uh bruce to your point right when we met back in sick right, which is when uh mark and I actually came up, we kind of figured out- we would do an observatory in new mexico when I went to their booth and I showed them all the images I captured uh with the 5100. The first thing he said gary was oh wow.

E

Look at that no scene now back then I didn't realize the significance of what he was saying, but now I do right because they probably heard it from every one of their customers and I hadn't done much to fix it right.

E

uh In fact, I I ended up doing a vc with one of the engineers and they tried to look at. They were showing me some of the calibration uh tests that they're doing and you could still see the scene right. I mean. The point is the point I'm trying to make is: is it a problem big enough for them to fix right, and I contend that from a revenue perspective? It's not.

C

Yeah yeah and since they were bought, I think it's very clear that the focus is now on again medical equipment and wherever they need these cameras. But it's not again. I think, since uh jim left again he's into a in into astrophotography himself, and I think since he left it's basically just a sideshow for them, but yeah. It's kind of sad.

C

um The other thing that we now saw in some of the images recently is is this effect here that we have in the upper third like different levels and this weird thing in the middle, and we can't figure that out- and this is not in every image, so there's no way that we can calibrate this out um and yeah. So, as I said, I think, with the camera sooner or later, we'll probably say: let's, let's get a different camera. Let's get something. That's more established, more tested, more more stable. I.

A

You know if it was like this out of the box, though I would hope that they could take it back or if you got.

B

A

From tolga that he would stand behind it because you know that's a big investment.

E

It is yeah I bought it directly from them. Maybe I should contact them and see if they'll take it back. I don't think they will. To be honest, I mean yeah at this point. Probably not yeah. Forget that's okay. It's like the basically.

E

That the one that mark is showing right now, it's completely perplexing, I'm not sure uh what that is. We have to figure that out, um but the seam has always been there from day. One right and their claim was.

B

E

That your calibration frames would take care of it. It would, depending on the signal level and all that, but once you start moving into a dark skies, part you're, imaging things that have very low signal and so that channel gain difference that you have starts showing up more prominently right and to mark's point the the challenge with that stream, and he knows how I used to deal with it before I would just deal with it by hand right. There was no script, nothing after stacking.

E

I would just correct it, but when you stack right, the seam is moving because of digging or whatever it's moving between the frames. It's kind of like you have this band? Actually, it's not it's, not even a seam anymore. It's a it's, a band that you have to correct.

E

um It's still possible, though, and it's not too bad, but you get this massive field of view right and it's low noise and all of that.

E

But these kind of issues like you know which are not predictable, is the one that's really hard right. You know you start having new dark columns or light columns and like hot pixels whatever or like this kind of stuff, where you just start having random bands. That's the hard part is like. There is no way to deal with that right because it changes image of our image and, like we can't at least set like it's just so much work to process like you know, mark or richard. They have to process their images yeah.

E

It's just insane amount of work right.

F

Yeah regarding the the bad columns, uh I've noticed that uh one of the pix insight scripts that I've been using lately seems to figure that out and remove them without me having to go in and say you know, column, five, eleven, seven, fifteen or whatever you just check box uh create bit to fix bad columns, and it just does it.

C

Let me follow up, I would love to I. I tried this. I could never figure this out. I spent. I would not know what.

F

The script is about auto, integrate dot, js.

C

Yeah I I tried that yeah. The other thing, for example, was again coming back to flies again. We can see that the two different ships have slightly different games, not just different levels, but also different games, and they insist. It's not possible. It's the same chip, just two different physical instances of the chip, but they should have exactly the same game and we're like look. We can see it, we can measure it, but yeah. It just means.

C

Fli literally, doesn't know how to calibrate things which, as I said, it's bad, but they don't sell the camera any longer either. So, as I said for them, I think this is not something that they will spend a lot of time, trying to help us with yeah bruce.

E

If you're interested, I'm in the camera.

C

Yeah, the other thing that we then had was, let me actually go back here, um yeah, that we then realized we have to move our flat panel much much closer to the scope, because right now, if we do it like this, we actually don't get the chip evenly illuminated. We get the matching on top of the scope vignetting on the sides and, as you can see, it's a quite a lot of distance that we have to cover here.

C

So we have to figure out how to put this whole mount and move it yeah, sort of a solid foot or something closer to the scope. The second challenge that we have is this wall. Here, it's not 100 stable, like it's quite often pretty windy there, and this wall moves a little bit back and forth.

C

So if we now move our flat panel really close to the scope at some point, this wall moves and then it will actually hit the scope.

A

You try a heavy-duty light stand, maybe that you could.

C

Mount it to, we actually talked to them, michael the guy who's running. It doesn't like the idea that something is standing on the floor because they somehow have to go into the building, to clean it or to repair something, and he doesn't want to have anything that he accidentally might knock over or might kick or something. So here.

F

C

Let me just discuss this is something where the l chimed in and he's like. Look if we, if you do it on the pier you put sort of an uneven load on the pier and he he was very uncomfortable with the idea and normally I would say like well, it's a pretty stable, pier l was the guy who told us from day one look. Your scope is too close to the roof. I think you will have to take it down. I ignored else advice once and it was pretty bad.

C

So I'm, like you know something about this. If you tell me this could cause issues, then it might cause issues, so I might not push it.

F

I guess a flip flat would be another possible approach right. That's mounted on the ota.

E

C

Yeah yeah, unfortunately, flip flips are not made in that size.

E

So we have to do this and it's too right- it's not made for us. I mean it actually, uh because this is a trust, tube scope. You know the way you do the flip flight is. You have to tighten that that zip tie whatever it's actually going to put undue stress on the trusses, so we investigated flip flops.

C

To be honest, right, yeah so michael told us that this wall they will make it much more stable, because I think they were even getting a little bit afraid of it. How much it moves so, hopefully they make this wall more stable and then we can somehow figure out again how to basically put a wooden block here or something to move this flat. This panel really really close to the scope, um but yeah. That's one thing that we have to figure out.

C

We have a new control box for the five panels that actually shouldn't have this issue any longer. So main thing is: we have to do another trip down there.

A

Regarding your, you need to go to an off axis guider. uh I know that you you've voiced uh displeasure with off axis guiders in the past.

A

um I have had bad luck with off axis guiding also, um and uh I don't know if it would work with your cdk, your uh you know your your scope, but uh the uh onag has worked wonders for me. You know, as far as being able to use the whole frame for guiding and just works really well, and you can also use it for focusing if you want to.

G

A

So that might be something worth investigating if you can fit it in your imaging train.

E

uh It doesn't cover the full chip, but if you switch to a different camera right now, that is by the way I I I have to say I don't know I try to use online. I've had it for about four years now. I've never managed to use it successfully. This software is just too um too painful. I don't know like. Maybe it's just me I'll just say to my own in my own defense, that I have used acp and that's pretty painful as well. I just don't know I couldn't get on active work right.

E

It's just super painful to get it to work.

A

um Glenn and I use it uh yeah, it does definitely work, but uh they have a newer version of the software. Also uh that came.

E

Out yeah, I mean this. This chip wouldn't work with on anger I already investigated, um but if you went to a different chip, that's that is an option um that we can consider, and I guess it also gives you focus assistance right, because it has that that focus, lock.

F

Yeah, yeah and and not that I've been 100 successful, but I'm not much of a machinist or whatever. But you know I've been goofing around with making my own on egg, so you know you can you can buy a cold mirror in whatever size you need if you've got a three inch image circle or whatever, and you know, do the machining and everything, but that's a pretty major project, but it is doable.

E

You know the theory that we went in with with right um is that we don't need guiding activity like I just that was not my.

C

E

C

To put it out there, these kind of things like look, let's have a guide out. We don't know how it works like oh no, this is this is stable enough.

E

Yeah I mean rich and I were like look this mount can do I unguided okay, let's just go and get it right and then marco, no no. We should at least have a backup yeah. We can't go there on a day's note this right. um What I I mean I don't know like you know, I'm running the exact same amount here and it's running unguided for about two years now right and I've only put aligned it once so there is something to be. I mean the amount, I think can do it.

E

It's just that you have to get so many other things right before it can actually be fully unguided right at like sub pixel, precisions and all right, which is, I mean this field of view. uh I think the pixel resolution is uh half an arc. Second right mark. I think it's about half an hour second yeah and so yeah. It does put a lot of demand on the model that you create in 10 micron. But it's you know it's getting there right. It has the precision to be able to do it. It's just we.

E

We are not there yet right. So we do have a guider, but maybe I mean now we got a sagitta right. I think we're gonna try that next for the guider and we'll see the other thing.

E

Also is you know if you remove that the one we're using is a takahashi uh really long focal length glider, because we wanted to match it to the field of view right, uh and that obviously, is like you know- has really long moment: arms right when we go with sagittar we're going to be removing that, and that probably may make it a little bit more stable as well in terms of the kind of momentum it's putting on the mount right, because we saw these things I don't know mark.

E

If you, you didn't, have it in your slides. But when we see these things where in one direction it would have worse uh start raising other directions. So there were some indications that maybe something was dragging it in one direction of tracking right. It wasn't strictly related to just just uh imbalance or anything. um Sorry, now I mean a lot of experiments to do still. I think yeah.

C

But again, it's the same thing again, it's like so we do. All our homework are trying to figure out which method we need, which offer access guide, which camera and everything in the end. It will be the same thing again. It's like you go you have, I don't know a few days integrate it and hopefully it works. Because then you leave again.

C

That's that's really the thing that I I definitely underestimated like again. If you really can't just go and do something small or try this out or integrate this or something it's like, you take something, and it basically has to work pretty much out of the box. You don't have a lot of time to integrate it, troubleshoot it or something um so mark you're going to have that you can't easily fly there. I think otherwise we might have flown out there a little bit more often.

G

Mark you're a googler, um so what's your post-mortem here I mean a lot of people have remote observatories. I'm not saying it's easy, but I think yours is on the lower end of experiences.

G

So you know what would you you know like I mean so obviously, you'd get a different camera, but is there a higher level? You know? Maybe you shot too high. What do you think what what's.

C

So I think one thing that we should have done is- and this is actually something coming back to this guy l- that's what he told us. What we should do is, I think, what you should do is don't ship all your stuff to the remote side and then assemble it there ship it to someone assemble it where you can really take your time, figure everything out all the screws, all the cables everything make. It basically work in your backyard and then disassemble it and send it.

C

I think that would have been probably that would have made our trip easier and we probably would have seen a couple of these issues that we then saw that you then on site can't easily troubleshoot and can't easily fix that, I think, is one of the things it's it's fairly expensive to ship it first here and there, but I think that was doing it and that's actually, as I said, that's what they recommended um that they said like look. Do it first and then package it up and send it here, and we.

E

Need actually, in the sense that I mean we replicated the mount in the camera, but not the scope right, which is a big part of it. I ran the same camera on the on the same mount here, uh but I ran it on a refractor right with a much broader field of view.

E

C

The focuser was new to us, the yeah, it's gonna open everything, so I mean the guide scope. The differential flexure. We probably could have figured this out if we had it set up somewhere else. I mean it's, it's fairly obvious. Once you.

E

Yeah replicating the setup somewhere else or doing a setup somewhere else. First reading out, all the bugs, so you know exactly sort of uh what are the issues you're gonna have will be way easier once you once you go remote right, because everything becomes a little bit harder once you're removed, even even if your sro right, that's still like three hours drive, plus sleeping in your car right.

E

It's not easy, uh and I think you know you better, be very quick to sort of get to the root of the problem and fix it, which is harder for us right now, because we don't have a replica of this.

E

C

Think the other thing again, this is where we were lucky again that they have the full machine shop there and everything we didn't expect it. We didn't realize we wouldn't need it again. I think, if you put your scope somewhere, really understand the side really well, what is there? What can they help? You with? We were super lucky that we had again two people on site that could help us, the guy who could like cut down the pier and weld it again like.

C

We were lucky that this all worked, because they have literally everything there, but not every side is sort of similarly equipped, and I think that's the other thing that I would make next time. I would do it in a different side. I would make sure that I understand really really well everything that the site has and offers, and everything that I have to bring, or I have to take care.

C

Beforehand, yeah, I think those are the two main things.

A

Having a a hosting.

B

A

An expert in in uh you know the uh networking is fantastic, but you it would be even more helpful to have somebody who can really engineer your mount and scopes and get ready to help. You solve the problems that you're having so.

C

I mean actually they they offered us to do it, but in the end it's like do I now want somebody else to figure all the stuff out. I mean for him. It's also new we're like look it's again. I think that's the thing all this equipment is so proprietary that it would probably take him almost as much time as us to figure this out.

C

I actually think I have to say like having the two guys, michael, who knows everything that there is about mechanical engineering and having l. That knows everything that is about electrical and network engineering. I think that was probably the most helpful thing that that we could use.

C

These are things that I'm just not good at I'm good with computers, I'm fairly good with with with the equipment, but these are things that I would struggle with and that that was fantastic.

C

Well, at the same time, I mean this might sound like boy. That's like it's cool like going there, setting it up being at the side. I mean again most of us. We are in it not just to take cool images. Most of us are able to tinker around with the equipment. You definitely do like. I enjoy every minute that I spent on this thing. Even if I sometimes think man it would be nice if it would just work.

C

It's still pretty cool. Like you log in remotely you can see through your webcam, it points it does things. You have the super dark sky.

E

I mean, unfortunately, our timing. Wasn't all that great, uh we didn't. We didn't talk to covet before we and we didn't kind of coordinate. uh If this hadn't happened in 2020, I I don't think this presentation would have looked much different right. I should carry out that I think a lot of our challenges is because of covet.

E

We haven't been able to make as many clips as we would have liked to and fixed a lot of these issues right, mark and rich were gracious enough to go a couple of times even during covet and all that, but that made it a lot harder right, because even the site, you know, wasn't allowing a lot of remote visitors, and so it made it a little bit more challenging.

E

But if you were to do it in normal times, even with all of these issues, you would make progress much quicker right literally, I think right mark you guys went in was it april or may or franklin right right after all the lockdowns yeah. That was the first setup right, so you can imagine you know. Some of our issues have been met as well.

E

C

Was one of the cool things when we had crazy lockdowns in california and you'll go literally in the middle of nowhere? You feel pretty safe there, god get infected like it's.

E

But yeah 2020 I.

C

Mean I think that was a lot of times as well. We actually selected the site so that we could make fast trips and, yes, as manager said we just can't. Otherwise again it is a site we could go over a weekend. We could fly out saturday morning be there afternoon, spend the whole night do something and then fly back on on sunday and it's not a big deal like. That was exactly one of the reasons why we why we picked the site, that's again accessible and that's definitely not the thing that we could do.

F

Hey, I have another acp related question. If this is the appropriate time, um are you guys? Are you using another planning tool to to to populate acp like sky tools imaging or you just you just use acp.

E

Just straight up acp you just I mean basically what we're doing is whenever we find an interesting target um which is going and entering the uh coordinates and the times for the image the scheduler basically from the web forms right. So each one of us has a login and we just go and log in and enter the targets um yeah. I I don't think we've had any issues with that per se.

E

C

No like just setting up the user accounts like there was so many things at the beginning.

E

I don't like anything for a week. I think right now, I I kind of went in after after mark and rich set up everything and the nook that we had in there and created the remote uh logins etc. I went in it took me about a week plus to get acp up and running right with all the software installed on the drivers and stuff like that. Also I mean I wouldn't say all of that. You know it's just housekeeping right. Most of it is bookkeeping and install the right software, get it up and running.

E

I don't think it's too painful, but the planning itself, because it's the scheduler that we're using you don't need a separate planner right, because the schedule is the planner. uh The premise is that you should just be able to say what you want to image.

B

E

Image it at the right time and that's sort of what we've been doing except there's these other things we have to resolve right and, and one of the challenges is because we're using guiding- and someone rightfully pointed out earlier acp uses maxim um right now. The guiding is in maxim and things like this- I mean in theory. None of that is a real problem, but anytime you're using software that you don't normally use like. I don't normally use maxim right. I'm gonna use something else.

E

It's a learning curve that you have to go through and that learning curve some find it fun. Some, maybe not so much right, but that's what it is. But I think for us, the goal was have a remote setup. Each one of one of us goes finds interesting targets during our regular lives, and then we just want to be able to enter into a database and it gets imaged, uh and our group rules are that everybody gets the data right. It's not you know it's not marketed at target only market, the data.

E

So the idea is it's sort of like a community project almost right, so each of us go enter interesting targets and then everybody has interesting data to process at the end of it, for which scheduler works pretty well, actually right, because you can just go enter targets uh whenever you feel like it and it will image it whenever it's ready right whenever it's right, um so the theory is promising.

E

We just had to get into a spot where it's it's coming along nicely, and I would say you know we have some issues right like guiding is one. The chip is another. If you resolve those two big ones, I think you're on a good trajectory. I.

C

Actually have to say that this is something that that worked really well thanks to manage who sort of said at the beginning. Like look, here's the rules, how we do it again, we share the images we all agreed.

C

If somebody wants to leave, the group has sort of first rights to buy, so you can't just say: look I want to leave and I take my scope, it's like if the group says now we would like to keep it. The group can keep it and this might sound a little bit. I don't know administrative, but I think it's actually pretty cool because again it's in the end, quite a lot of money that you have there, and I think it was great that manoj like look.

C

Let's just set up these rules that we all know what we're getting into.

C

I think the other thing that I would say, which was, I think, helpful, all three of us, my knowledge rich, and I I we it's not that anyone is really rich, but we never had troubles to say like oh somebody spent 50 dollars more or 50 less or I go one more time. I have to pay like. I think that is the other thing that made it fairly, relaxing that nobody really looked into how much time, and in particular, how much money everybody spends it's like. We, we try to make it even like.

C

When we now bought the off axis guider. We said: okay, um manageboard, the the guider I bought the adapter. We take manager's lodestar camera in the end. That makes it super relaxing that you never feel. Oh, my god, I spend too much or somebody says something or somebody else has to spend it like that. I think it's really important that you find people who sort of have the same attitude towards it, that this doesn't cause any issues.

A

Definitely important that you get along with your partners in a venture like this.

E

Yeah, it's, I think, also. I think the marks point right. You are, it's almost inevitable that you're going to have unexpected expenses after your initial planning, that's the key to realize is yeah. There is no good stuff, that's going to happen right, and so you want to be with partners.

E

It's kind of like doing a road trip right. You want to have the people in the car you want to have fun like you know, you don't want them to say. Are you there yet I'll? Be there like? That's not going to work uh again, we kind of tried our best to kind of keep each person's investment about the same, but, more importantly, an adapter here and after there you don't want to nitpick on that right. That's the key.

E

The goal is clear: if you want to get this rig up and running right- and I think every one of us is kind of like that, um but yeah I don't know I you know a lot of that actually came. I don't know if uh rob is here is rob here.

E

I I spoke to rob actually office sro experience and he had done it and I don't know I mean he'd done it a while back, but this he didn't say in as many words, but a lot of these sort of sentiments came along right. You know one of us was pulling more weight than the other there's like all these little things, which I just wanted to resolve. Out of the start right like and that's I think- and this is one of the first things I told mark- is look dude like if we do it.

E

This is never going to happen. It's like yeah, you're kind of like yeah. You did not happen right, so I think that's key, because the problem is, if you, if you end up getting into those sort of I don't know arguments, it can only go sideways right.

C

Yeah, I think I think like again, despite all these issues, that we have, we really have lots of fun doing it and I think that's the main thing it's like again in the end. That's why we're doing this? It's not that you do it to get like with minimum effort. The most perfect images I mean. That's that's the goal. Sure.

A

So, what's the driving time from here to there, because personally, if if I were you guys, I'd I'd, get an rv or something and I'd take a rig.

G

A portable rig down.

A

There go down there on a new moon week and set up my stuff and do what you normally do in your backyard and work.

C

A

Work on your rig and have an ex you have an excuse for a little.

F

A

F

A

F

A

F

The problems go with the square of the number of rigs right. You should know that bruce. That's.

A

True but well you know you have to have more than one person.

C

I guess no, but that's actually what what michael and diane told us like many people actually do that that they I mean.

G

C

Who don't have a set up there? Who just visit the side to just set up a telescope for a couple of nights and then go back?

C

E

Suggested it initially and mark was like. Are you crazy? It's so much easier to just fly right. It is 14 15 hours right. It's not! I don't think it's trivial it's it's I mean it could be fun right. Of course, if mark and I did it together- it would be fun, but um again it was 2020 and yeah.

E

Road trips are even more challenging than just doing a flight right sure.

A

What kind of temperature ranges do you guys see there depending on time of year? I guess, but.

C

So during the day it can get really really hot. I mean not not quite as much as arizona because it is higher up. um It gets above 100, but not that much um and then because again it is desert and it's pretty high up.

C

I can't remember, I think, we've seen it getting like not quite to freezing, but at certain times at certain nights it can get close to freezing.

A

I guess, unless it's monsoon season doing.

E

A

Not really a problem.

A

No monsoon season there at all.

E

Now they have dust, they have dust season like gypsum salt dust or whatever.

C

It is actually amazing, like one time when I was there with beth a thunderstorm came through it and you could see that it's raining, but the rain doesn't hit the ground.

A

I've seen that too.

C

This was the weirdest experience, it's dark, you can see, some rain is coming, but it stays dry on the ground. So this is amazing. Humidity is not a problem at all yeah, but.

E

The the gypsum salt dust, though, does present a problem for open cross scopes. I mean, I think you guys saw that we have a shroud around it. I mean we are inside and observatory in a dark sky spot. You don't really need a shroud, but the reason you need it is because it does. You know I I think also right mark you guys park it like. I think the way you set the parking position is, it's pointed down, so the mirror actually uh faces down. So the dust actually doesn't settle on there.

E

Just some minor things to keep in mind right with these kind of sights.

B

You mentioned that you were the site is in the middle of nowhere and your internet requirements, I would think, would be considerable. How does the host arranged to have good internet service in the middle of nowhere yeah.

C

That is one of the coolest things you drive there. You have no mobile signals, nothing, then you come to the site and they have like wi-fi everywhere on site and suddenly you have the best internet. You ever had in your life, and I I can only imagine like they actually really exchange it to a fiber connection, and I think they do it.

C

It's sort of part of their um their investment there that they put these internet connections from either the nearest town or I don't know if you can get the speeds that we see through a micro um connection. I don't know, but that's basically something that is part of the service that you get.

B

Do you think they may have had fiber run to the site? They they have no fiber, they they just upgraded.

C

Their internet connection.

C

That's what I just said like two weeks ago: they installed a new connection that is no fiber connection, so oh way way faster now, wow so before they had fiber yeah right.

A

Well, even without fiber and in the middle of nowhere now you can use starlink for for something maybe.

C

Yeah I mean it's not something that you expect like it's.

D

And then you miss the starling telescope, specifically right.

A

Yeah, it would be good to uh get an advantage from storylink, eventually we'll use it.

C

I mean I have to say, like one of the I think the coolest moment was really again. Second or third night. We had the telescope together and then richard and I were basically in the observatory waiting for the roof to open up that we can actually start using the skull.

C

In that moment, when you sit there, you sit in a normal building with a roof, and it's the coolest thing. I have to say, like the roof rolls off you have this amazing sky. Above you, you have seven other telescopes who suddenly all start doing stuff you're sitting. Next to your scope, you see some of the first images and again the moment you look up. You have the most amazing view of the milky way.

C

This was for me by far the coolest moment and then one night we actually then had a zoom call with manage who was at home and he's like man, that's cool, like yeah. You have no idea how cool it is.

C

Yeah. It looks ridiculously cool.

E

It's alive right, everything just comes alive. Suddenly you know it's uh yeah, I mean it's been fun right. I mean you know with all the problems we haven't done. A lot of imaging um you've gotten some owner data, which has been difficult to process and all that but and I mean we still had fun and learned a lot mark's written some.

E

A

Well, that's the most important thing. Definitely.

A

You know I was wondering hi. uh Are you aware of any uh scheduling for k-stars ecos.

G

Scheduling function.

A

For that type of thing,.

G

We have the basic you know. I did a time stuff right. We don't have anything fancier than that. It's probably similar to what sgp and mina have that level of functionality. Okay,.

F

Well, as far as planning you know, I mentioned sky tools for imaging, but it actually outputs in acp language, uh and so, in my view, somebody needs to write. You know: convert write, a converter that puts that in a sgp sequence or a k, stars script or whatever.

E

Actually, uh that's a actually. I didn't think about that. That's right, maybe hi you and I can talk about it. The planner output, maybe there's a way to ingest it into ecos. Actually, the planner output is pretty much the same as what the scheduler does. Except it's a little bit. I mean the time scales are different right.

E

If I, if I remember right, I don't know what you're asking so so, there's a thing called uh acp planner and that basically, what it does is for a particular night. You can enter a bunch of targets and then it'll spit out when each one of them should be imaged right. It's almost like that. It's kind of like a calendar entry creates a target that you specified and it does it for each night.

E

You read on it for the next night. You do it again so on and so forth. There may be. I think what the suggestion was that to take something like that and have an integration into like e cos or sgp right I mean, but you work on eco size is saying: ecos you use acp planner. You enter your targets that spits out a plan for the night, which is then ingested directly into ecos.

G

Yeah, I suppose you know it's just an xml file that the scheduler, the you know, eco scheduler reads, so it would be an easy. You know you just if you could yeah that's a trivial integration that you restart ecos every night with the new schedule that you know you could, I suppose you could. You know, run the whole thing on bash yeah. There.

F

G

F

Now we know that you, you can't be sued for uh copyright infringement on an api right. That's.

E

Right, actually, the acp file is just plain text with some, I think, there's some uh uh tags on it like hashtags, but that's about it. It should be fairly simple actually to translate that into the xml. Actually, the song structure, but we'll chat, we'll chat later. That's a good idea. Actually yeah.

E

Then we can get away with from.

A

Acp moving forward.

C

No, no because that is something I have to say, that's something that the acp scheduler does really well, that it can take a lot of constraints into accounts, actually, like that that you set for your targets. It needs to be at least minimum height this one. The moon needs to be this far away or the moon needs to be fully down or depending on the face of the moon. How far away does it need to be like there's actually a lot of things that the scheduler itself really takes into account?

C

And then I have to say, like that's a problem that we never had, that we took an image and the image itself was bad because again the moon was too close too bright, or it was not dark enough or it was below the horizon or something that's actually something. I'm super impressed like that's something that they really figured out how to and.

F

I I wonder why and I keep bringing up the sky tools imaging. I guess, because I've been exposed to that more than acp, but why does that exist with an output for acp? If acp can do all that same stuff, because sky tool imaging does everything you just mentioned uh as well?.

E

I think one additional thing that sky tools does is actually, uh if I remember right from using that, you can also figure out how many subframes to take for a particular target right. Yeah acp scheduler doesn't do that. So, basically, sky tools and also sky tools is purely just uh it's not in itself driving any of the astronomic programs, which is why, then, basically, you enter a target.

E

It figures out when to invest it based on all these constraints and also how many sub-frames, based on the surface brightness of the target, whatever creates an acp plan and then gives it to acp, which can then actually do the the automation of it right. That's the way I understand it like acp is then driving all the astronomy equipment. Sky tools doesn't do the astronomy equipment piece right, the scheduler, on the other hand, except for the number of subframe frames piece, it's doing everything else right. The only thing they don't do is given a target.

E

How many sub frames should it have based on their chip, dimensions and chip characteristics.

F

And how long should they be and yeah.

E

Yeah, but basically, what mark uh myself and rich use is. I have a similar spreadsheet that I created it's a tool, basically, uh which is using some noise characteristics and skype brightness, and all that for the region and from that it actually spits out how many subframes we want for a particular snr target right. So you can.

B

Say I want that's on.

E

Our target of 10 and here's sort of the sky brightness, here's all the target brightness and then it will split our image for 30 hours with 600, second subs or whatever right and that's what we are using.

F

Yeah right now, I think, francesco does something similar to.

F

E

Mean I'm happy to share that that that spreadsheet tool that I have with everybody here I mean I can it's it's nothing extraordinary. You just take some characteristics of the chip and then figures out sort of what the optimal uh subframe length is and the total length for a particular signature.

E

Noise, short noise and green noise read noise alone, and then the full full uh stack is based on the shot, noise and and the other stuff. How.

A

E

A

Cmos cameras versus ccd cameras because I know uh skype tools uh had an issue where I mean the developer and glenn had talked about it and basically it was really ccd oriented and he really didn't know how to deal with cmos cameras for as far.

E

A

E

Share with me, actually it's big for ccds, because they're more deterministic with cmos, I mean beyond a certain threshold, though they kind of start behaving like ccds, because it averages out right so once you're above sort of the minute threshold. I think it's fine.

E

I've been using it with my cmos at the qhy 600m and it works just fine, uh but if you're under that, then I don't think the calculations hold anymore, because they're doing perfect so uh circuits to be ccd is not right, so that we know is the way it varies, and all that is different between cmos and ccd right. I think bruce you- and I have spoken about this, like with my cmos. The one thing I'm doing is I'm using the same calculations, but I don't do biostreams, I'm just doing dark and black.

F

Well and the the other thing is um in sky tools for imaging, you know he's making assumptions about binning based on ccds and there really isn't any advantage to you. Don't get the the read boy's advantage from memory, uh you know from the you know, I don't know who this.

E

Is that's speaking, it's his iphone, but um um one thing I'm doing with the cmos is because you know it's usb 3 on the 600 mm, at least it's usb3, and I want you guys, should know this. The ml 5100 is a 50 megapixel camera.

E

It's on usb 2.. The download of a single sub frame takes upwards of 18 seconds. Okay. This is something to keep in mind with my qhy 600m. It's 100 megapixels, but it's usb3 and it takes about three seconds. So I'm not even doing binning anymore. I mean I just shoot one by one. Everything is one by one so that keeps the map simple.

E

It also keeps my subframe length simple, uh and I anyway, you know that the amount of chances you get to do rgb is very low enemies right I mean where I'm using it now, which is here, but even if, even if we were to do it in new mexico or something because it's only three seconds, we'll probably just do one by one. If you want to use the cmos camera, yeah disk is cheap right, I mean you, don't really care about the disk space.

E

It's really the time it takes to download images and as long as.

F

You know I was just talking about the the assumptions in the planning software right that, especially where he's predicting you know subframes and exposure times and stuff. So you know you can't you can't do anything with the binning uh if you're using cmos because he's assuming ccd.

E

Yeah, I've cross-validated my calculations with the sky tools and it seems fairly close like this. I think my my numbers are right, like my math is right, I'm happy to share this question. Yeah yeah and I you know basically what I do is I just use a rule of thumb at some point. I you know you don't even it doesn't even matter anymore, to go between targets and what this one is lower surface product somewhere, not just nothing.

E

I mean I just have one sort of recipe that I use for lrgb and another recipe that I use for show, and I just rinse repeat right: yeah for the most.

B

E

You might lose some faint velocity whatever, but.

F

Yeah, no, that's pretty much what I what I do too, um but I need to learn to uh you know at some point with the bortle seven or eight skies you. You can't pick a target, that's dimmer than the light pollution, no matter how many hours.

B

You're willing to.

F

Put in right, it's just not going to show up. I know.

C

Yeah, I think, yeah one one final thing: we just said about sort of um download times and everything. That's I think something that we did really well again saying something positive about. Google google drive is actually really cool. How we use it that we basically set up. Google drive with an account that we all have access to, and so google drive on one side. It uploads all the images immediately to the cloud, and then we can download it all to our computers.

C

That is the one part that we never had a problem with. That's actually really cool like how do we get files on and off that machine there? It just happens sort of overnight and we all have access to it. That's very nice!

C

There is one thing that we figured out.

F

The file transfer and sharing, but what about edge computing.

C

Nothing fancy like that. It's called old client server.

A

Well, uh I look forward to an update from you guys when you get all these issues whipped.

C

Because we get to the next.

F

Level of issues where do you you guys don't post on on like astropin, right mark, you use your blog or it's both.

C

I usually have sort of more sort of explanations and everything on my blog, but I usually have all my images on estrogen, but that's how you can see it's like. We have the equipment up now for almost a year. We literally got one image out of it. So far we have a lot of partial data, but yeah.

A

It's 20 20., where it was anyway um well. Thank you very much for uh oh hi, kids, hello.

A

Thank you very much for sharing all these uh uh adventures with us. We all.

B

A

It and like I said.

B

We look forward.

A

To an update, I'm sure you're gonna whip all these problems um and um hopefully we'll all get out under the stars together sometime soon things are loosening up in our region here so glenn do you have anything to uh announce about workshops or anything like that? What have you heard from the open space authority lately?

A

F

We're in that place where I keep pinging, terry and and nothing comes back, so um no updates yet, but I've been putting in way too many hours on. uh You know how to stream from from telescope computers, both for for the for imaging uh workshops.

F

I've got it nailed pretty well, how we'll do it um and then I'm also working on you know little raspberry pies with cameras that that could be dropped in at regular star parties for visual observers and the point is to to stream to people's the public smartphones without any prerequisites or internet requirements.

F

um So to make it more socially distancing. You know: you're, not sharing eyepieces you're, not touching multiple scopes and stuff.

F

So that's that's an ongoing project that I'm that I'm working on uh that'll help at some point, but yeah, that's a that's, and then I I posted you know I um set up the the club rig in the yard and and redoing all the software and stuff. And it's it's. You know it's it's been a year, so there's lots of everything basically needed to be updated and stuff. So it was interesting to set up a new rig after a year and and get my hands dirty, remembering all of the little steps and stuff.

F

So that's good for me anyway, but hopefully I'll be able to share that with people in the field soon.

C

Actually, one thing where you just say it like, so I bought one of these. um What was it unistella ev scopes? Yeah, I don't know if you ever looked into it. I think they could be fantastic for public viewing yeah, because one thing I didn't realize it you can. Actually, if people install the software on their phones, you can actually connect to the scope with many many phones at the same time, and everybody can basically see the image on their own phone yeah.

F

That was actually the inspiration for for this, um so that the club has uh just purchased one for the school star party program, and we will definitely also uh check it out for for star parties. But, um frankly, you know the the the club has plenty of money. What we don't have is enough volunteers right.

F

We've got this the same cast of characters that that you know are both in many cases, both board members and running a program and they're already at their their max capacity right, and so what we really need is more club members to to step up and volunteer to do something like that and run with it. It's like and- and I don't mean to pick on you mark, but it's like well.

C

I think it's one spectacular.

B

I'm going to show.

C

Up at the star party.

F

And I'm going to operate this thing and I'm going to train other people how to use it too, and you know that's that's kind of what we need.

E

Yeah, I actually uh glenn, that's a good point. I mean I just can't I think, dropped off. You know I still under the lunar program right, it's just yeah yeah. Sometimes life gets in the way of living right.

F

E

Know, but I I would love to I mean I'd, love to try and be a volunteer for one of these things again. uh I think it was doing this stuff. You know that binoculars targeting some of these are really interesting to me right yeah, to mark's point. uh I did actually participate in the school thing I mean. I think I taught in one of the schools here for a couple years, but yeah I just couldn't sustain it. You know it's like time, pressures and whatnot yeah.

F

So there needs to be, and again I'm not directing this at anybody necessarily on this call, and I'm just saying this. This is what I see the club one way the club is lacking right. So there needs to be a constant flow of new volunteers that come in and do stuff and then maybe they move on and that's fine, but you know right now: that's what's that's.

F

What's limiting us to and and we're you know, we've done an amazing amount of stuff with the armchair star parties and we have people from all over the country watching those and stuff. But um you know we could we could do even more. You know if we had more human capital.

F

E

Yeah I mean it would be good. I mean right now I wouldn't know. Even if I wanted to become a volunteer, this is just a suggestion right, I wouldn't even know where you guys have gaps to be honest, yeah, uh there's just some easy way of figuring out if there are areas where I want like now, that's of interest to me as well or maybe marking me together, because we're running a remote observatory, whatever.

B

E

Right uh having a list of things that you guys are looking to do, but don't have, the human capital would be good yeah. I don't know what that is. It probably already exists, but.

F

We need a vice.

D

President um good plan, good plan, yeah I'll talk to you, offline, okay,.

F

Yeah, so I guess bruce that's pretty much what what I had!

F

Oh, I do have something else, and so I've been keeping this to myself very selfishly, and I just can't in good conscience do this anymore, but I am super happy with this uh auto integrate.js script that I didn't know about and telescope.live included a plug for it in one of their newsletters, and I am just so much happier in fix insight and going so much further in fix insight. Now, with this script, I just love it to death it.

F

It wants pre-calibrated files which you could do with uh weighted batch reprocessing if you didn't have calibrated files already, um but it just takes you all the way through to where you're you're you've got a tiff file, that's ready to go into photoshop and uh in one one or two button presses it's just amazing both for narrow band and for rgb, wow and lrgb, and uh I just it's just amazing. It really.

F

I think if you look at the you could probably look at my asp bin and you can probably see you know the the the improvements and even the things I went back and reprocessed would stand out. So I'm just really happy and, like I said I can't keep it to myself anymore. So it's not it's not in a repository. You have to get it from like a github and install it, um but you know just google, auto, integrate.js and, and you can download the zip file from the github and put it in.

E

Is anybody else doing astro, pixel processing.

F

I've I keep seeing people saying you know I couldn't deal with pix insight, and so I'm trying something else. Yeah.

E

I I've been using it it's actually. I mean you can't deal with chips like a 5100 with different gains and all that, but on easier chips, it's been working out pretty. Well, I mean it's uh yeah, it's smart enough to auto, assign masters to channels and do integration by channel and things like that, uh local normalization. It does all of those things right. Let me everything, you'd expect seems to work pretty.

E

Well I mean it's uh is multi-threaded and stuff like that I'll check out this auto integrate as well, but so far I've been using uh astropixel processor yeah, but it's not too expensive either.

F

Well- and I you know- I it took me a long time to get even started in pix insight and I pretty much just been using. You know weighted batch pre-processing and the easy, whatever sweet, whatever that's called the easy processing suite. So I I don't haven't really gotten into the individual processes like you're supposed to, but that's where the script? Just you know you don't have to it's just you press the button and it goes through the whole thing for you. So um I've been really happy with it.

A

Definitely I have to check that out.

F

Yeah well and you've got some data now too. uh Yes,.

A

A

Anybody uh have any questions or images that you guys have come up with in the past month or so that you wanted to share.

A

No takers, okay, well, um I'm actually going to be away in the middle of next month. So uh I would say I'll see you, but I don't know if I'll have a connection where I'm going so we'll see, um I'm sure somebody's going to grab the reins and host the next meeting and we're working on something interesting. So.

A

Have fun at the next meeting, I hope to see you there all right, um so I guess this uh will conclude our imaging sig meeting for the month thanks for coming everybody. Thank you. So much.

B

You yeah thanks, barry again guys.

A

C

Thank you guys again.

E

Everybody all right, bye, all.

F

Thanks take care.