PRISM | Hyperion Astronomy

I’m really not sure on those chips. Different than my UBlox chip. I ended up having to load the ublox tool each time I want to use the gps and I have to go to the CFG and change settings. It then works. Here is the link to my ublox support forum post about this issue : https://portal.u-blox.com/s/qu...

Can you tell us the chip model for the gps? I purchased a cheap gps off of amazon and it turns out that the stream it was outputting was not compatible. I would get the number of satellites in view and similar to you but it would never finish getting the coords etc. The fix was to load up the gps ch...

Hamza Touhami started a Google Hangout's group and we meet every Saturday night I think most folks are participating on Facebook now instead of the forums. If you have facebook lookup Hyperion Astronomy and join the group. The Hangout Link is : https://hangouts.google.com/call/0GaZatsmh58pcApdG95BA...

Hi Joe, If you are using the native ZWO camera drivers (picked ZWO when setting up the camera in Prism) then there is a tab in your camera 1 box when it's connected (i don't recall the tab label off the top of my head) but if you go from tab to tab you should find gain and offset with a "set" button...

Can you post the actual FITS files to dropbox or similar? Can't really tell from the screen caps, need to work with the data.

I'm going to have to defer to @Hamza Touhami on this one. I've only really used the GSC for what I need to do.

Not sure I can help on this one. Hamza Touhami calling you in ! :) From the first screenshot I can tell you my personal experience with Prism is that it's plate solving likes to have a 2x2 binned image for whatever reason this works wonders for my ZWO cameras. If I feed the prism plate solver a shor...

Steve, This is a well known thing several of us have ZWO camera's and experience the same thing, thought I can hint that it does get better with a recent update, but not totally eliminated. What I've done in the past was to use the Native driver for the main imaging camera and the ASCOM driver for t...

Your window size thing might be a windows (OS) setting. I had to set mine to 100% size (I'm sorry off the top of my head I don't remember exactly where this is). Prism seems to use the OS to draw all it's windows and if you have any screen scaling turned on it messes with the windows. Glad you were ...

I'm not sure on the airmass. The screenshots you showed look to be the locations used for if you have a weather station / monitor hooked up. I have not found a way to insert these unless I manually do it because I do not own a weather station. If you own one that's ASCOM compliant I think Prism woul...

Hi Joe, Sorry I have been away from the forums for a bit and just saw this. Honestly I've been using the Guide Star Catalog (GSC) that comes built-in with Prism and have had no issues with it after I got my Focal Length and such correctly entered. I think by default this one should load with the pri...

Found it! Open a sub (something that already has the coords imbedded into the FITS header), if not plate solve as I talked about. Go to EDIT, Edit Header Information, click on the Plate solve / Photometry tab , next to the RA/DEC is a button labeled "GO!" this will point the scope to the image cente...

I have to setup the simulators on my machine to test, but I did find something that might help you. If you right click a point in the skychart you can "Add this point to the Object's List [OBL], that way you could get the coords of the exact point you want and even run the Auto Observation off that ...

I recently was messing around trying to figure out how to add my own object into the SkyChart if I know the orbital elements. This is usually done for you automatically when you update the Asteroid or Comet databases by using the SkyChart settings, and navigating and clicking on the internet downloa...

Did you setup a dark image for the 290? I had that same thing I think Prism might have been trying to calabrate/guide on a hot pixel or something. I can now tell when I'm going to get a good calibration and when I am not based on the numbers I see in the box, I know if I see less than 10 it won't ca...

Hey that's an interesting one that I had not thought about before. Up till now I have been using the skymap to select an object in order to get centering coordinates. So the workflow you want to do is open a prior image, plate solve it, then have Prism slew the mount to the center pixel coordinates ...

You've got much better equipment than I do, so I'm not sure if this would be helpful or maybe you can just laugh at me... I've had that issue also with my Moonlight (I have the 2.5" model, the older "standard" focuser). In my case I was having issues with Windows not wanting to assign the COM ports ...

I had some of that last night, but with as bright as the moon was I wasn't really surprised, all that extra light bouncing around didn't help anything at all. I've just switched to the ZWO OAG and eliminated a separate guide scope. Calibration went pretty smoothly, but I did that really quickly afte...

I don’t speak or read Russian, but when I put this through google translate it appears to be some kind of spam for auto glass replacement??

If someone would kindly confirm that to be the case I will remove the post. However I don’t want to remove a valid post if the translation is wrong.

Can't answer directly on those models. I've got a 290 mini and a 1600mm-cool. Up till recently I was using ASCOM driver for one and the native ZWO driver for the other in Advanced. With the latest two updates I noticed that there have been a lot of fixes specifically around ZWO camera's, there's eve...

wiping your laptop (the windows installation?) is a very impactful activity... not great for a user to have to do to get software working. I know it works sometimes and is a tool of final resort... but it's just not great to have to even be forced to try that. I think you may have misunderstood, I ...

For the moment I'm using native ZWO driver for both camera's and everything is running flawlessly thus far (except I just had some clouds start to roll in) I'm going to let Auto-Obs run so that I get some data to process, but after tonight I'll try with the ASCOM camera drivers to see if there is an...

Going to mark this one as solved also. In case you did not see my other thread, I completely wiped my laptop and re-installed all software and drivers on it. This did wonders for me and whereas before I couldn't hardly get data, now I'm able to get 30 min subs with excellent guiding and I'm running ...

I completely wiped my laptop and reinstalled all software and drivers. Doing this seems to have fixed my issues. I couldn't get any good data last night, and tonight I was able to get a 30 min sub done with excellent guiding. I still have a little ways to go but I'm sucessfully getting good looking ...

Hi Cyril, I'm happy to provide anything that would be of assistance. Today I had extra time on my hands so I decided that I would wipe my laptop and start from scratch. I have been using this laptop for a while now and I have gone through several software packages prior to buying prism. So I could h...

I've decided to try doing a wipe and re-load of the laptop. I'm going to uninstall all the software and drivers all the way down to ASCOM, run a registry cleaning tool, wipe the program files directories etc. Then I'll start reinstalling from ASCOM back up. Kind needs to happen anyway since I have e...

Hey Hamza Touhami , Here is my Auto-Obs log from last night, I'm still having issues but here is what I ended up doing to get going again: After I was getting the errors I posted about in another thread I rolled Prism back to the prior version. That seemed to help at first (I was able to get guiding...

Hey guys, I've also run into the "access error" in another area.

I'm using the 64bit version and I am trying to calibrate and stack the auto-flats from last night, screenshots of these errors attached. Let me know what other log files etc. you need/want to see in relation to these!

Last night I ended up changing the main camera (ZWO 1600mm) to using the ASCOM driver as well. This is not ideal because I cannot change the Gain and Offset settings without disconnecting the camera and setting those in the ASCOM Driver before re-connecting the camera (I change Gain to 75 offset 10 ...

I'm not a programmer but let me give my "from a user" perspective and see if it helps... My only clue here at all is "EOS" I'm assuming that might have to do with my Canon 70D that was clicking away at the time. I had it setup on a Sequence, take 1x 5sec exposure, with 90 sec delay between exposures...

@Hamza Touhami @Cyril Cavadore

I got these tonight and Prism crashed out (back to windows desktop).

This is an "all sky" timelapse done using Prism to capture the frames and Davinci Resolve to produce the video: https://youtu.be/l10XD_8Ka3Y I used my "poor man's" allsky setup that I detailed on a hang-outs session. This is a Canon 70D DSLR with a Rokinon Fisheye II lens. I simply set the camera on...

On another note with this rig I think I've finally solved my backfocus issue. It turns out that the Moonlight focuser came with a 1.25" extension ring mounted on it. I never realized that this was not part of the main body of the focuser itself. Previously I was never able to get to focus with my fl...

Hello all, I've got the rig setup again on the back patio and I let auto obs run last night while I slept. Looks like it did fairly well for most of the night but when I got up this morning I noticed that I didn't have my skyflats. Looking at the log at the end there's an error that downloading from...

I hope this doesn't sound crazy, but I was just thinking... Prism knows where my Dark and Bias masters are. Prism can take my flats automagically. Can I have (script or in a future version) Prism calibrate a nights' imaging run of subs after the flats are done? From a logic perspective it might look...

A quick update... For the price I went forward with ordering the ZWO OAG and their non-rotating focuser for it, figured I could always sell it or send it back if it doesn't work out. However after talking to a couple folks at my local club and doing more internet reading I think this is going to wor...

Awesome!

I ran a cloudy nights thread as well just to get a bit more exposure (ha!) anyway... I think the general consensus at this point is that it's definitely some flexture. Considering I have the ZWO 290 mono mini, which is supposed to be an excellent guide cam, I'm thinking about going to an OAG. I woul...

Hi all, While I was watching the "Hangout with Hamza" (TM)-lol last night I was also trying to grab some narrowband data. After slewing around (see what I did there) for a while I finally decided to start grabbing data on the Witches Broom. But my 10 min subs came out with some wonky oblong stars. T...

Jason Cyril has actually just finished working on an issue coming from the framing inside the driver of the ZWO cameras, a fix is in place already and an update will be pushed in the next couple of days. This is, potentially, what is causing the exception error. Great news this is going to help me ...

@Hamza Touhami might be able to help you out. I don't know a thing about AO setups. Have you tried getting on one of the hangout sessions? (the live google hangout's where you can share your screen?)

Google Hangouts link: https://hangouts.google.com/call/0GaZat ... pdG95BAEEE

I believe these are just about every Sat or Sun night starting around 7:30pm MT 8:30pm CT 9:30 ET (US)

As part of the stacking and registration process you can set limits on these two numbers and it will automatically reject frames that are too far out.

I think this might be covered in Hamza’s YouTube tutorial I’ll have to look when I get a chance.

Hey John, I was looking at the screenshot and wanted to pass along some things I learned at one of the hangout sessions. If you look at the right side of that window you will see some Fwhm numbers and an L/H %. Full width half max is basically how focused the closer to 0/1 the better. Your numbers a...

Hi Mark,

Sorry for the delay, it was a long day today...

I found the setting, click on Settings Menu at the top, Software Settings, go to the Telescope Tab, and the bottom option is "Use focuser with encoder steps only"

Backstory, questions below: I don't get to travel with my mobile rig as much as I would like. I currently have it setup on a rolling wooden platform which has shopping cart wheels on it that lock. I have been rolling it (completely setup) from my garage to the end of the driveway, polar aligning, an...

Hi Mark, I had a similar issue but I'm using a ZWO EFW 8 slot with a Moonlight focuser, there is a checkbox for the focuser settings to get it off of "steps" and over to microns, i have to get in front of prism to find it again Hamza Touhami showed this to me on one of our Google Hangouts sessions. ...

Hi Steve, I'm not familiar with that equipment myself but I have two ZWO camera's and the native driver for ZWO camera's has issues with having more than one at a time. So I ended up using the ASCOM driver for my guider and the native driver for my imaging camera. That error is trying to point you t...

Thanks Dan. My only hesitation is that I end up using 3 focal lengths with my equipment and I have to double check but I’m pretty sure I need multiple catalogs. 667mm - my scope plus focal reducer Flattener 952 mm - my scope with a Flattener 1904mm - my scope with a 2x Barlow , now I know that it’s ...

I thought this might be a good forum topic for folks to reference back to one day. Now that my rig is running much better thanks to Hamza I am starting to go down some new "rabbit holes" to make my setup the best it can possibly be. One of those aspects is automatic focuser temperature compensation....

Jason - I would be interested in seeing that tutorial whenever you have a chance to work on it. Like Dan I've been able to get the embedded function to work and once it extracts the stars it solves nearly instantly, but there are occasions when it will fail (I think this has to do with use error on ...

First hangout was great! It's a wonderful method for collaborating with other users and getting questions answered.

Hamza was even able to spot an issue that I didn't even know I had with my focuser setup! Thank you for doing these sessions!!

Hi John,

The stars in your image look a little odd to me. Were you having tracking issues that run? Any issues with Focus or dew buildup that night? Anything else happen that could have been unusual, maybe stiff winds ?

Focuser's only have 3 options, None, DLL Plugin, or ASCOM

So if you don't have a direct DLL you'll need an ASCOM driver for it.

Hi Steve, I cannot say for certain, but what I can tell you is that I went into hardware setup in Prism and under filter wheels you can select the following: None, ASCOM, CFW10 SBIG, FLI, or APOGEE Under APOGEE they list these: 50_9R , 50_7S , 30_7R , 50_5R , 25_4R So I cannot tell you for any certa...

@Hamza Touhami - Hey hope things are going well. I was just curious if you had a change to download that PANSTARRS data I posted?

Can you post some more of your guiding setup numbers and your calibration info? I can see in the screenshot you posted that the guider requested quite a huge move from the mount, that could be as you said a poor polar alignment, or it could be something else going on with the mount. We need more inf...

If there were a reputation gifting system on this board I'd give you points!!!

This is amazing stuff, thank you for posting this!!! I will be referring back to your blog post a lot I think!

Update: It's been a long time but I tracked down the answer. This GPS unit is a bit of a pain to configure, and by default is not setup to output what Prism is looking for, so Prism get's confused. If anyone else out there is using a U-Blox GPS, the fix is to go into the U-Center Software, open View...

@Hamza Touhami Please let me know if that dropbox location doesn't work for you. I can send you the data either via dropbox or email etc.

I am able to plate solve all the samples, and I can blink them, I'm just not understanding why the Asteroid finding tool is erroring out.

I was wondering if anyone was using Prism's automatic astroid finding features to process other data set's? A friend of my in the local club gave me some FITS files from the PANSTARRS survey. People can apply and search for asteroids using Astrometrica. I was hoping that I would be able to process s...

Not sure why I just thought about this: Type of Observatory setting which filters down to a few things... Right now Prism assumes a fixed observatory site with dome, allsky camera, weather monitoring etc. As a "portable observatory" I need to be able to adjust the software for this. So for example a...

Daniel,

Those are amazing, sounds like you have some very engaged and enthusiastic students!

I have a lot of information to digest yet on this topic. Am I correct in assuming that Prism will work for the capturing of the data, but I will need something like RSpec in order to analyse the data?

Hi Hamza,

Curious if you had heard back on this?

Thank you!

A friend of mine in the local astronomy club posted a message about RSpec and the SA-100, SA-200 "filter" Grating. He was telling me that this could be something that can be done while waiting for astronomical dark before the start of an imaging session. Now that I have my 3 camera's working with Pr...

Wow, how late am I to this party? If it's not completely to late... I love all the above suggestions. My comment would be around an overall polish on the hardware connection experience. I know of a few of us that have had some difficulties that turned out to be our camera drivers etc, but the error ...

Hi John, I had this same issue, Hamza helped me out with it. You're not seeing the 1600 under Ascom because there is a seperate download on ZWO's site. I missed it the first couple of times I looked for it also. Go to : https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software-drivers The "native drivers" secti...

Hey Hamza, happy to help out. Here's two methods of building a local horizon file: I want to display my local horizon onto the skymap, how do I do that? There are a few ways to accomplish this but I will detail two, manual method, and a photographically accurate method ( requires a 3rd party smart p...

I got a note that this has to do with the Canon drivers and my model of camera (in this case the 70D). It's not an error just a warning message.

I just have to click the OK button each time I connect this camera is all.

Thanks

Your awesome, thank you!

Hopefully a quick question... In my setup I have an Explore Scientific 127 ED, the 3" ES focal reducer/flatenner and then my filter wheel and ZWO 1600mm-cool. If I want to take out the flatener/reducer to get a little more Focal Length, do I only need to adjust the focal length setting in the camera...

Thank you Hamza! I need to re-watch your processing video's on YouTube a few more times. Would it be possible for the JANUS team's workflow to be posted? (As in the steps they take when processing?) I think I'm going to start keeping my data in a similar way. Here is what I am thinking: Top level fo...

I'm fairly new to Prism, and didn't see options for this either. I was curious though if there is another software that's able to do this? I looked through PixInsight and SGP and did not see an option for this either. I believe it would require an already plate-solved image to know what direction N ...

I have not had any more issues with this in my last 2 sessions. I increased the exposure times for these plate solves from 10 sec to 30 sec, and now they extract and solve within seconds. While on the front end it seems like more time since you're increasing the exposure time an extra 20 seconds, it...

Hi Hamza, I did find the windowing options, I apparently clicked one before taking my flats I guess. I set it back to "Full Frame" and have not had the issue again. I am supposed to have clear skies tonight so I will try another sequence with a loop and see if I get the same result. I'll try and tak...

OK I'm not that smart... SO my baader filters ARE parfocal, I just went through and re-ran all my data and my Focuser was at 1867 after autofocus for Lum, it came up with 1824, 1826, and 1870 for R G and B respectively. So very very close. I FINALLY figured out where the offsets are stored, you have...

Well I suppose I might as well post it since it's a result.... :oops: https://astrob.in/405906/0/rawthumb/gallery/get.jpg?insecure So this is about 1.8 hours of data. I messed up my session (I have some question threads outstanding about that). Here are some details, all frames were 300sec (5Min) sh...

I did not figure out what I did wrong but at least last night I was able to use Automatic Observations to get some M101 data... I created an LRGB sequence using the button "Duplicate for LRGB" after adding my object. I selected the option "Loop this Sequence" with Infinite, and I had assumed that th...

I need some help understanding how I messed up... Let's start with the camera, a ZWO 1600MM-Cool Generation 2. The 1x1 images are 4656 x 3520 pixels Somehow I managed to capture lights and flats which are 3493 x 2641 Prism error's when calibrating them because the sizes don't match. I genuinely have...

I'm connecting a Canon 70D as my 3rd camera to do some wider (250mm) shots that go with targets to do "regional views"... When I connect my DSLR to Prism I always get the battery warning, even though I'm using the AC power for the camera. I was curious if Prism is detecting that from the Canon Drive...

Per another thread I'm re-building a new Calibration Frame Library and letting Prism generate it. I have a possible bug or maybe feature enhancement I'm not sure. If you launch more than one instance of the Capture wizard, let's say for example I'm capturing Bias frames from my Canon 70D DSLR and my...

I'm not sure where to put this topic so I guessed Processing. I have a list of related questions: 1) CPA vs FITS format - I saw mention that the CPA format is a lossless compression, I assume there are more advantages over FITS as well, is there a list of things/reasons why CPA would be the better w...

Platesolving is is very fast, but the part that is slowing me down is the star extraction part. It's taking nearly a full minute. "Amount of stars extracted from image, 1st pass 42186, 2nd pass 1496, computation time : 58.02 sec" Is there any tips/tricks for speeding up that part of the process? If ...

Tutorial (series?) suggestion: Your Mount and Prism - PEC training - (goes along with the already done pointing model video) I think this would be a good couple of videos to produce and it would go along with the Pointing Model video you already did. Could start out with a brief summary about types ...

Tutorial suggestion: Using Prism to determine best time/date to image a target | Alternative Using Prism for planning my clear sky nights I got to thinking about this because I've had so many cloudy nights that I decided to buy some time on a remote scope to get some data to work with (Chilescope if...

Thanks Hamza!

I realized something today. There's basically just one help file page that tells you how to do this. For those who end up at this thread wondering how to get an image to show on the skychart: Once you have a platesolved image open go to the skychart window and right click, go to Data Connect -> Merg...

Oh my goodness this is SO AWESOME!!! Couple of quick follow up questions now that I'm all depressed (we're having a thunderstorm in my area tonight and the forecast is for solid clouds for at least the next 8 days). I figured out if you check the box for "User Defined CCD" that unlocks the "User CCD...

Much appreciated!!

What focuser are you using? I have a moonlight 2.5" and I don't get those buttons either.

My procedure has been to get "close" using a Bahtinov mask, then kick-off the automatic focus routine, let it run, and voila.

Is it possible to visualize your various camera fields of view at the same time from platesolved images? I’ve always been curious as to what my main camera “see’s” vs what my guider is looking at, and now with Prism Advanced my DSLR that’s piggybacked onto my scope. I know you can setup one FOV disp...

I saw this just the other night. There is a setting in your prism setup a checkbox that says something to the effect of “use prism from a remote site images will not be displayed”

I think it’s supposed to save on bandwidth or screen refresh time. Uncheck it

Hey Hamza, I think this one might be a bug. I used this same GPS to update the location inside EQMOD and it worked. I've used this GPS unit for a couple of other (non-astro) programs as well. As I said above Prism will tell me how many GPS satellites it can see but it will just continue to display "...

Thank you!

Ed, I can't really say with 100% certainty as I'm still learning Prism and I find out more and more everyday that I did not know about this hobby. I'm using an Orion Atlas mount via EQmod. The behavior appears to be that if you command a slew there is no sync sent. If I then take an image and plates...

So after getting help and getting up and running, here is my real "first light" with Prism This is M13 11 Lum's of 30sec , calibrated and stacked in Prism. I have not learned processing yet in Prism so I used PixInsight to do the Stretching, conversion to JPG, and I used a process in PI called "ACDN...

If I want to use 2x2 binned images for R G and B for example, do I need shoot bias and darks with 2x2 binning, or can I use my 1x1 calibration masters and bin them in prism? My camera is the ZWO1600mm-cool so there is no hardware binning as far as I understand. You can set the camera in the driver t...

cannot thank Hamza enough. thank you thank you... So couple things with my setup... 1 - I'm using two of the same brand camera's, the 1600 and the 290mini from ZWO. We switched one to the ASCOM driver and the other to the native ZWO driver, and that cleared up all the issues with guiding and plateso...

Tonight's error - After platesolve completed and I click YES to sync "Telescope ASCOM general error into order loop, harware link dropped [EQMOD ASCOM Driver] -> Cannot invert matrix with Determinant=0" The typo exists in the error string so I left it in case someone has a match. So I cannot build a...

I'll try here in a few minutes, but for those of us who I would term to be "mobile imagers" (we move around a bit more)... I usually manually slew my scope, place a T-Shirt and I use an old Gen 1 iPad with an app called "screen light", to take flats. So I can use the observatory Flat wizard in the s...

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