Thank you for showing your INDI panel. Are you sure that that is what the 12 bit stretch-option is doing?

I believe the darker appearance of your guiding images might be due to a difference in stretching, that is affecting the apparent brightness of the image.

If I press the toggle stretch button in the guding module of Ekos the images get much darke, the background is basically black, and only the brighter stars are seen as pinpoints of light. This is different from the mangled images I have been talking about. They too do have the blacker background, but as one can see on my previously posted screenshot from within Ekos, most of the stars remain visible. But, instead of being pinpoints of white, they are big fat white blobs. just as big as can be seen in the other screenshot, although devoid of any radial gradient to the whiteness.

I do not know whether this at all matters for my guiding. I have not been able to notice any dips in guiding precision occuring when the images look like that. Though, overall, I do have pretty poor guiding performance with my recently acquired EQ6-R( about 1.5 arcseconds with lots of horrible spikes at irregular intervals and in directions). I do believe this is due to mechanical issues, and has nothing to do with the svbony camera, I simply am curious as to why the occasional image has that freaky appearance.

Hi !

I added the "stretch factor" mainly for live view streaming purpose.
FitsViewer does a better and smarter stretching.

In this use case, you stretch two times :
- basic x16 stretching
- + FitsViewer stretching

So, a tiny variation in you background sky will result in a huge visual variation.
I won't recommend to use the stretch factor outside live view streaming.

Best regards,

Thx8411

Hi Collin,

hadn’t thought about it beyond “fill all bits is better” type of thing.

I usually have stretch turned on when guiding as well so am double stretching I suppose. Did mention I’m a beginner didn’t I

On the next clear night I will try it without having the stretch setting in the indi driver set and see what happens.

Does anyone support SV405CC for INDI Driver?
I know the SV405CC is now available, can't wait for it to be INDI compliant.
www.svbony.com/sv405cc-cooled-color-osc-...R73z-ke2w_vt8KsJlle4

Hi Tkakura,

I just saw the SV405CC availability this morning.
I wish to get one also.

I just asked Rita from SVBony to buy one 5mn ago.
As soon as I get the device, I will work on INDI support.

Right now, the SV305 driver doesn't support temperature control at all.

Best regards !

Thx8411

Hi Collin

was just having a quick look through the sv305 and notice in the disconnect routine the camera mutex lock is commented out. Is this correct. I also noticed there’s a TODO in the abortexposure routine, is something missing here? I’ve had a couple of times where trying to stop exposures seems to result in problems though I’m not sure that was the sv305 camera or sony. Hmm the abort property is also commented out earlier so I (not having read the docs ) probably means the routines not used.

Regards

Nigel

Hello Nigel,

<< in the disconnect routine the camera mutex lock is commented out >>

It has been done by purpose : If something goes wrong, and the mutex stay locked, we should be able to stop de camera.
But you're right, the "unlock" line should be commented as well.

<< I also noticed there’s a TODO in the abortexposure routine >>

The previous SVBony SDK provided an abort method, but it disappeared in the new one.
I tried a couple different solutions (stopping the camera, disconnecting, etc.), but nothing worked.
So, I disabled the "CCD_CAN_ABORT", leaving the code in, and waiting for a miracle to happen

Thanks for your comments !

Best regards !

Thx8411

Hi Simon,
well finally a vaguely clear night last night - just a nearly full moon and some thin cloud to contend with - not worth imaging so had a play.

First image is my usual guide - 300 gain, 16 bit stretch default/fit screen zoom.


second zoomed in one or two clicks


Next is with 16 bit stretch off (and pointing elsewhere - think ic 342 is the blob at 11 o’clock from the central star)


and zoomed in to actual size



Please ignore the guiding figures as I only had a quick go at doing PA - phd was showing me out by over 10 arc min…

During last nights messing around - not really clear due to high level cloud, nearly full moon and the usual light pollution- I thought I would take a set of images using my guide scope (an sv106) with the sv305 and see what happens over different exposure times. Basically I’m a beginner trying to get a handle on what happens when.

This was unguided ( I did try having it guiding but for some reason I couldn’t image and guide with the same camera doh ) and poorly polar aligned.

The images showed stars quite happily at 1 sec, 10, 20 and 30 but at 40 they seemed to become blurry and above that up to at least 3 minutes the images seemed to be blank.

Anyone got ideas as to what was happening?

Hi Nigel,

Your images look a bit out of focus.

When guiding with a color camera, I usually use bin 2x2, to avoid debayer artifacts.
The SV305 sensor (imx290) has a pretty small pitch (2.9um). Unless you image at very long focal length, I think you will get better results, with better SNR.

Best regards,

Thx8411

Hi Collin

yes the camera was probably a bit out of focus as it was at a setting for a couple of weeks ago. It could also have been down to the misty clouds or the moon as usually the snr is in the hundreds.

The sv106 with its helical focuser seems rather difficult to focus. I’ve tried using astrodmx as it gives quite rapid feedback. Do you have any suggestions about what could help?

Regards

Nigel

ok can ignore my question about the disappearing stars. Basically it appears that the sky was so bright that after 40 seconds the image was becoming over-exposed. At least that seems to be what I’m seeing in fits liberator. Next time I will check the histogram as I could see things move to the right as the exposure time increased until things basically dropped off the end.
Rookie mistake