OK, now we have a new disaster. You can just call me Calamity Steve, the unluckiest amateur astronomer ever.

I finally traced the previous issues to dew. We had entered a cold humid spell and I happened to notice heavy dew on the forward lens. I procured a dew shield and the proper connectors to my power supply, and was ready to jump back in.

Then disaster struck. A really heavy wind knocked my setup over. The only visible damage was a dent to the forward guard of the optical tube. The lens cap would not fit. Fortunately Tucson has telescope shops and I was quickly able to get it repaired (including a collimation). I put everything back together, got the scope level and pointing north, roughly to Polaris, as it had before. Things weren't going too well and then I happened to notice that all gotos were not working. The mount itself did not appear to be damaged, its motors whir just as always. The telescope parks to the home position like a champ. But it seemed like it had lost its mind. All gotos were at least a quarter of the sky off. Some that should have been above the horizon saw the scope pointing below it.

I looked at the GPS dongle. That did not seem to be working (although the time was). The cgps command showed no satellite input, although the clock worked. I had had KStars set up so that GPS controlled all devices. Thinking that was the problem I changed the setting to have KStars update all devices and made sure it had my correct location and time. That didn't help. Then the GPS started working again, and I reset Kstars to letting GPS control everything. The bad goto behavior persisted through all of this.

I think the above rules out GPS as the culprit. The mount, though its mechanical functions work, seems to have lost its intelligence of the sky. An additional test of using the hand controller to do gotos has the same problem, so that seems to take KStars off the hook.

I do not know what the "brains" of the Celestron AVX mount are like. Is it possible that the fall of the scope could have caused damage to the logic circuits of the mount without damaging its mechanical functionality? How would I or anyone be able to tell? Is there some sort of diagnostic available?

Hello Steve.

The first thing to do would be to plug the mount into the power supply and test it on its own with the racket. If it works like this, the problem is with the battery, which is not powerful enough for all devices. Especially with heating strips, which can quickly drain a battery.

If the mount does not work on its own, a factory reset would be good as a second step.

If the issue is still present, the third thing to do would be to check if a cable has come loose inside. See, perhaps damaged during the shock. A discussion thread on this problem www.cloudynights.com/topic/677180-avx-de...ting-problem-solved/

Thanks, sc!

1. I really don’t think it’s the battery. Power supply is a BLUETTI EB3A which should be able handle it PLUS I have not needed to
plug in the dew shield these past two nights as there’s been low humidity, so that’s not the issue. And I assume by “racket” you mean the hand controller.

2. What is factory reset? An item on the hand controller menu? And didn’t you mean to suggest I do that if I HAVE ruled out the battery?

3. I could, I suppose, open the case and check for loose cables but if it isn’t obviously apparent, doing electronics repair on the level described in the Clody Nights link is not something I want to or have the ability to spend time on. Would a telescope shop such as Stellarvision in Tucson be able to handle this and would the charge be worth it?

Great if you think your power supply is delivering the right amperage.

Reset factory and a function in the menu of your remote control

As for whether your telescope store can handle this and the price, only they could answer that.

Factory reset did the trick! I wish I understood why it was necessary. I asked the guy in the telescope store and he told me to try it first. Thanks again.

Some values ​​are cached in memory. Only factory reset allows them to be erased.

Thanks for the explanation.

OK, so we've been through in the past two months, the following:1) camera captures returning all green screens. - Initally thought camera was bad, but testing revealed this was only a problem with KStars/Ekos, and eventually, some setting change I don't remember cause it to go away.2) problems with dew - obtained heated dew shield3) rig blowing over in wind, - requiring repair to the open end of the optical tube.4) mount "losing its mind" - resolved by factory reset.5) weeks of unseaso nably cloudy weatherFinally, last night a fairly good observing night, fired up the rig, and it's -- back to issue 1 - the green capture.



This morning I fired it up again just to see what would happen and this is how a clear blue sky captures


I am not suspecting the camera anymore. The most logical assumption I can come up with is configuration, but nothing seems amiss to me.I am attaching my indi and kstars config files for the camera, a ZWO ASI533. Can someone have a look and tell me what I've done wrong? Or suggest some other avenue to investigate? Thanks.

Have you tried opening your image in another fit image viewer?

Thanks!. It certainly seems like that the viewer used could make a difference.

I brought the image up in nFITSviewer, a program I found on the internet. It gave me an image that was all black. Is there a "reference" app that shows what the file SHOULD look like? Is there one you recommend?

If the issue is with the KStars FITS viewer what are the tweaks I would need to get rid of the green?

I have the same camera as you and no problem with the Kstars viewer.

There is probably a configuration error. Have you looked under configuration/fits to see if you have checked automatic Bayer filter?

Maybe the issue comes from the file handling the 533 in the .indi folder? Move it elsewhere so that Kstars creates another one.

Your diagnosis was correct. Turning the auto-debayer setting off made the problem go away, while KStars was running. It came back upon quitting and restarting KStars. And the setting was back ON.

Then I tried your suggestion of moving the original config somewhere so a new one would be created. This made the problem go away permanently.

However, I don't understand any of this. A search within the file for "bayer" returns nothing. I suppose it could be hiding under some other setting name in the config file. But I like to understand the problems I find.