Choosing targets, planning and framing - with N.I.N.A., SkySafari, and others
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- Опубликовано: 9 июл 2020
- In this video I talk about my method of choosing my next targets to image, using lists on public forums, Astrobin, SkySafari, and of course NINA - I also go into the NINA framing wizard, its mosaic option, and how it is related to the sequencer.
My method is very random, so your mileage may vary!
Goofi's list of Narrowband Targets: www.cloudynights.com/topic/51...
Goofi was always so helpful and friendly, and he guided me a lot through my initial steps in the hobby...
My Instagram: / cuivlazygeek
My Facebook page: / cuivlazygeek
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Telescopius.com is the best online tool for planning and framing. Love your videos.
Thank you! Other comments mentioned it, and it is indeed quite amazing.
So much great information, thank you Cuiv. You introduced me to N.I.N.A., trained me to use it, and now giving inspiration to exploit its capabilities in conjunction with other tools. I've now explored some basic mosaic principles using N.I.N.A. (works great) in preparation for a six panel Veil Nebula using my ES102-ASI294 pair. BTW - its also very handy in N.I.N.A. to load the image in the Framing Wizard then switch between profiles of my other imaging configurations (RC-8) and/or variations (barlows, reducers. etc.). Works great. I'm looking forward to your mosaic video.
Excellent to hear Kevin! I haven't yet started doing mosaics this year - it's hard in Tokyo, when SNR takes so long to get that by the time you're ready for the second panel, the season has advanced so much that the target reaches Meridian before astronomical darkness :-) I will get there though!
Hi Cuiv, another great video, thank you, I will start planning a lot of sessions in NINA, greetings, you have the blessing of rain, we at the Mexican northeast have fire 40 Celsius every day and not a single drop of water!
Wow, that is hot! I hope you do get some rain... so... errr... wishing you Rainy Skies? I hope you guys are not getting a drought...
Hey Cuiv, great job. I do pretty much the same thing only I use Stellarium rather than SkySafari. I have been using NINA for more stuff lately, flats, darks, and some planning. Your video answered more questions I had - so thanks. If you do a search in Astrobin, there is a Sort button at the top left and if you select upload times it does it arranges them with the most recent first - I find the most recent images to be the best. - Cheers Kurt
Thank you Kurt! Stellarium indeed comes highly recommended - plus it's open-source. I'm going to give it a go! And thanks for the tip concerning Astrobin, I had never realized you could easily sort through the images, that's great!
thank you for this.:D GREAT VIDEO and INFORMATION
Thank you for your work.
My pleasure, thanks for the feedback!
Again great video ,so inspiring THANKS
Thank you! There is so much out there begging to be imaged :-)
Another fantastic video, Cuiv. I was wondering if you have, or could do a video in doing a mosaic. Start to finish. Thanks and continue the great work.
It's in the plans! But I need clear skies for that...
I saw that you have not made a full video of mosaic yet. Therefore, you can make a video for example how to make a mosaic of Veil Nebula. For my astro camera this would be 6 panels, but the ratio is also important. I once read somewhere that you can load this via an existing FITS file from your previous sequence via the Framing tab. Clear Sky's 😉
I will make a mosaic at some point :) So many things to do, so little time! Yes indeed, you can load an image file using the "File" option in the framing wizard - it will then automatically get plate solved. It's quite convenient!
! Great video. Thanks
Thank you!
Apologies for the bad weather... Bought a 14" the 19th
Great video as always. You touched on Mosaic and was wondering if you would do a video capturing a mosaic and then processing? This is one of my goals this year but not sure how it all comes together.
Quite a lot of people are asking for this, so it's on my list! I just need to weather to cooperate! Thank you & clear skies
Manual is the way to go. IMO people spend way too much time planning and fussing over what they want to do instead of just doing it. Recently Dylan O'Donnell and Chucks astrophotography make photos on a certain part of a much bigger target that looked interesting to them. That's all it took and that's the fun way to do it I feel. Just hop around on stellarium, frame it up and use NINA to build the sequence and done!
Exactly! It's fun to just browse around :-)
Very informative video. The name of the object in your framing wizard is SH2-171, or NGC 7822. I think Nina filled in the name for you. 😁
Thank you Brian! NINA is ever so helpful and reliable :) This may end up being my next target :)
Others have mentioned telescopius.com, which is a great tool. I also use the imaging toolbox at www.blackwaterskies.co.uk/imaging-toolbox It's easy to scroll around and set up framing, similar to N.I.N.A.'s framing wizard, but with some other features. The only thing I don't like about the imaging toolbox is I can't save my camera and scope selection, so I need to choose them again the next time I visit the site.
Fantastic video as always. Very informative. Glad I have switched to NINA from APT. Is there a way to set a defined park position for the mount in NINA?
Hellooo Cuiv, Hope you are well. Just had one clear night after two to three weeks of clouds in this part of UK. One clear night. YES. So what do I hunt today? Comet Neowise / F3 and Cuiv, my second sighting of a Comet. First was when I was about 30 years old and more than 30 years later I see the second. 10:45pm today. Binoculars - standard olympus handheld birding binos. Left of Capella in the Northern sky, faint in twilight. But not elusive. Quite amazing. Have a go. Take care.
I wish the weather would clear so I could glance Neowise... I really want to get a glimpse of it, pictures of it are amazing!
Great video again full of tips, thanks! May I ask what version of SkySafari you use? I can see up to 3 versions in the App Store (SkySafari, SkySafari 6 plus and SkySafari 6 Pro), with quite different prices each one.
Thanks for the feedback! I use the Plus version, as it has telescope control, which is very nice for my AZ Mount Pro. For pure framing, I think the basic version works fine, but I am not 100% sure. Other comments recommend using Telescopius and Stellarium (PC based) so you may want to look into that as well! Clear skies!
Skysafari is invaluable for FOV and easily locating objects
I really like it! If I have one gripe with it, it's that it sometimes reverts to smartphone gyroscope control, and I have no idea why. I never want to use it via gyroscope, just via the touchscreen. But that's more likely user error than anything else!
Hi Cuiv, As always I there is a little gem of information in your videos. I had completely overlooked the framing tool in NINA. It is exactly the tool I have been looking for.
One question I have is on how you combine mosaic images, is it simply a question of registering the images in something like Pixinsight, or is there a mosaic tool to do that? That might be a good video for a rainy period over there in Japan.
Thanks Graham! The framing tool in NINA is amazing, plus you can load previous pictures you've already taken, and frame based on that.
So yes, there are multiple methods in PI for mosaics, some of them indeed involve using the registration tool, although there are some good scripts around to do mosaics. I'm adding that to my list of video ideas :)
Good topic
Thank you!
Great stuff as always ! I have been planning my observing/imaging sessions for two weeks now. Clouds, clouds, clouds. So not much else to do. Have you gotten a chance to spot Comet NEOWISE ?
Thank you! I am dying to get a glimpse of Neowise, but the weather has not been cooperative... I am waiting and waiting and waiting... Sigh
@@CuivTheLazyGeek same here, every time I read is getting a bit dimmer, my heart skips a beat. I'm hoping to catch it at sunset. So I'll make the necessary sacrifices & rituals to keep the clouds away.
tutti bellissimi e molto interessanti i tuoi video! Complimenti! Grazie ai tuoi tutorial apprendo con più facilità l'utilizzo dei software! Ti faccio una domanda.. una volta scattato il mosaico come lo componi? come lo fondi in un unica foto? Io ci ho provato ma le immagini risultano diverse nella luminosità e nei colori e non allineate perfettamente! Grazie anticipatamente per la tua risposta.
Thank you! There are tools in PixInisight like GradientMergeMosaic to do that. You can check a method here: www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorial-preparing-a-mosaic.html
I'm about to switch to NINA from ASIAir .. thanks in part to these videos.
I bought the ASIair for the easy Polar align...and it's quite easy.
How easy is the Polar align on NINA? Should I use another software for that? .. You should do a video on that!
NINA has a specific methodology for polar alignment that, while very precise, is not as easy or as quick as what is in ASIAir. I am planning on featuring it on the channel, but the weather is not cooperative these days! So I use Sharpcap instead, and you can see how it works here: ruclips.net/video/iw8AfoPmrIM/видео.html . I very highly recommend it! Thanks for the feedback & clear skies!
Another great video, but you said something that confused me (Newbee here) My scope is in a Pod in the backyard in a sky shed Pod. so when I am planning etc during the day I cannot connect to it from in the house (Yet-I am working on that, but even after setting up remote viewing I think that i do not want to leave my laptop out there during the extreme temperature changes) . You showed how i can plan and set up sequences , yet everything else i have tried to do in Nina while disconnected from my gear has been very limited . Can I actually do what you show without being connected to my mount and camera?
great video, how do you convert your FOV to know they will fit in arc minutes?
The FOV in Astronomy.tools is expressed in degrees, and one degree is 60 arcminutes, so that's pretty much it :)
When you add mosaics-patterns NINA will shoot twice the time (if for example you have 2 panels). Is it gonna shoot first all the exposures of 1 panel and then all exposures of the other one? This is gonna mess with the PHD tracking at that time, because it will slew until it centers the next panel. How do we suppose to handle this?
Thanks Cuiv,
Regarding framing, are the Image Sources (e.g. NASA Sky Survey), sourced locally or does this require an internet connection? The reason I ask is that I don't always plan ahead when I trek out to my goto dark location, which doesn't have internet service. Cheers!
It's an online service (far too much data to store locally), but there is an offline SkyAtlas function in there, that shows you the delimitation of each target, so you can use that when out of network coverage!
Thanks, I'll take a look.
Can Nina be connected to stellarium and show where the telescope is pointing as you can in APT
Right now NINA can receive coordinates from Stellarium, but that's a one way connection - so basically get coordinates for your sequence from Stellarium
Cuiv, The Lazy Geek it would be a nice addition in the future but I guess the framing wizard does a similar job. Also going of on a tangent, I currently use unity gain and offset on my AA183 camera. Now in APT the histogram shows a nice gap on the left side but in Nina the histogram shows that it is clipping data on the left side. Is this to do with the stretch setting for autofocus? I have left it at standard settings
Cuiv, it is the rainy season in Japan now, so........more videos than usual?
Hahaha, I'm actually slowly running out of video topics that I can have without actually doing astrophography! So I really need clear skies to come back soon!
Sorry, one other subject if you can do please is EAA. Is this something you can give us your experience please? Thanks. This is one way I can share this hobby with others. Rather than peer through a telescope, I can get friends family, community to see some of these great targets on a computer monitor or a television. Thanks.
That's a very good suggestion! I have never really done EAA before however... :-) So I'll need to learn first. I would assume it would involve real-time stacking in Sharpcap or DSS
Cuiv, The Lazy Geek Thanks. Years ago, one night when we were in london I managed to do this using a Samsung sb200 cctv camera and sharp cap. Never could replicate it again successfully simply because I can’t get my head round that part of sharpcap to save my life. It will take someone like you who knows sharpcap well and also imaging much better to do it and explain in your inimitable style to the rest of us. You have that gift of knowing a subject and also the ability to explain it well. Hope skies clear up for you .
CUIV, can you point me to a video that explains how to frame same DSO on multi nights so the framing is as exact as possible? I have to work for a long time each night to get to the same framing from the previous night.
Hi Gary! I have an upcoming video addressing just that! It's going to be out in a couple of weeks, but basically in NINA you want to go to the Framing wizard, set the source as "File", select a light frame from your previous imaging session, and it will plate solve that light frame and get you the exact same framing - then you just need to create a sequence based on that (or slew and plate solve directly from the framing wizard). Otherwise, make sure to save the sequence - the framing gets saved at the same time.
@@CuivTheLazyGeek can’t wait, in the meantime, do I answer yes or no to the use reference question?
@@garybarr7116 answer yes!
Cuiv, after I have created the mosaic panels in the sequencer. How do you kick it off to do each one in turn? So one exposer per panel and then back around the first. With my WO GT 71 the heart nebula will take 4 panels. I think it would be got to get a 1 exposer per panel then move back to the start. Thanks.
You'd have to use the Advanced Sequencer in NINA - but that kind of imaging would be extremely wasteful in terms of imaging time with a lot of overframe between subs, so I really don't recommend it!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek interesting. How would you suggest running the. Nina sequence for a mosaic. I saw how to select and frame but how do you run a sequence of frames? Thanks heaps
@@ricklaird2218 Check videos on the Sequencer! And the Advanced Sequencer! Also Patriot Astro RUclips channel - and the NINA Discord :-)
@@CuivTheLazyGeek Awesome thanks. You have made my astrophotography journey so must easier. Thanks for answering my questions.
Hi
What is Switch function use for in nina?
I have not used it, but I believe it's a way to control devices that have a Switch type of ASCOM drivers, so devices like the Pegasus Power box, with which you can turn on and off DC ports.