Triangulum Galaxy

[oopfan]

Right, that's one of the things that I don't like about phones: lack of hover, unless someone knows how to do it. Green is 'rising in the east' and Blue is 'setting in the west'. Hopefully you also see the up or down arrow printed in the box.

Also, regarding:
Preferences: {clusters, galaxies, nebulae, anything interesting}

You can't specify more than one. The only thing that comes close is 'any'.

[oopfan]

Frank,

You probably figured it out by now. If you specify a time window like 18:00-06:00, those 12 hourly periods are represented like this:

Screenshot 2026-01-06 at 1.26.10 PM.png (30.47 KiB) Viewed 551 times

Each TV Set is an hour. An up-arrow indicates that the object is rising in the east at that hour. A down-arrow indicates it is setting in the west. No arrow indicates it is not visible at that hour. Objects that are not visible during the time window are not shown in the list.

Brian

[StarzSkies]

Got it.
It’s beautiful out today and looks like it will be for rest of the day, sky is clear and clean from the rain.
Heading out tonight.
Moon will be at 87 percent but won’t rise until 9pm.
Frank

[oopfan]

"Not visible" means it is below your specified Minimum Altitude. In this example it must be 30 degrees above the horizon. Minimum Altitude is meant for it to clear any obstructions, or with regards to astrophotography below that altitude the atmosphere is thick and unstable, so you want to avoid it.

[oopfan]

Frank,

How did it go last night?

Brian

[StarzSkies]

Hi Brian.
So, unfortunately not so good.
I was going through my setup, Focus, PA, GoTo. Everything going smoothy.
I started to LiveStack with the settings and everything was rejecting. I was at a loss and went over my process flow thinking I missed something but could not find anything.
What I ended up doing was increasing the Exposure. First to 90s, all rejects, then I figure just go to 120s. At that point the rejects stopped and I was able to get to 100 stacked frames.
What I ended up with was not good. Even the image being built was just not materializing as it did with my first attempt.
My first result was "light years better" lol.
I ended up dumping the entire session this morning.
What i did find out is that the Filter i was using is rated for a F5 or slower scope. Never caught that detail prior to purchasing.
Think maybe this was causing the issues.
I'm going to go back to my UV/IR cut and reduce the exposure time this weekend and give it another go.
I still have use for duo filter on my other scope but going to hold off buying the one you suggested for a while.
It was a beautiful night though. I wrapped up around 11:00PM and could have gone much longer.
Not disappointed, just part of the learning process and will get better over time.
On another note, based on the travel of Orion, I'll have several hours of integration time with no obstructions. It's in a great position for me.
Frank

[oopfan]

Sorry to hear that. Cuiv has a good video on that effect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4snlZYduNg
Manufacturers don't make that abundantly clear, at least I didn't see the caveat the other day.
You did the right thing by increasing exposure.
Go back to the UV/IR filter, just try to wait for the Moon to be less of a factor.

Possibly your focus was off. It's a challenge getting focus with a narrowband filter.

[StarzSkies]

I'll take a look.
Also, it occurred to me that my Darks at that point were probably causing issues since I created the master Dark based on the settings I was going to work with. So I would expect after the Exposure change, they would not be good.
I think based on my current image train, I am going to create several at different exposures just to have ready if I encounter this again.
Not sure this is the right approach but sounds reasonable.
I create the Master Dark and Master Flat with the SC capture feature.
Correct me if I am wrong, the Master flat creation is driven by getting the histogram in the areas as Robin explained in one of his posts.
I follow those guidelines closely. With that, would you be able to use that Master Flat with multiple Master Darks?
If this happened again, I could select a new Dark and start a new stack using the same Flat.
Hope i am clear.
Frank

[StarzSkies]

I just saw your last line.
The focus looked great. I used the B mask and if I zoomed on the stars they looked sharp.
Frank

[oopfan]

Your flats are captured at a much shorter exposure then your lights and darks, so once you got a good set of flats you can use them with any exposure of lights. The purpose of flats is to compensate for dust bunnies and field curvature. Dust on the sensor window is most common, but also dust on the filter can show. So what I'm saying is that you can reuse flats as long as the sensor isn't rotated with respect to the filter. But I kind of think that is the least of your concerns.

I think the greater concern are your darks. Darks are captured at the same exposure as your lights but with the objective covered. If you were using 3-minute darks with 70-second lights then that's a problem.