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Thank Brian.? I will do that this morning.? One question I am curious about, with the SW 0.77 FR, did you add spacers between it and your scope, then more behind the FR?? Basically spacers in front and behind FR.

Hello,
Apologies if this isn't the right forum but I'm not sure where to ask for advice.
I'm helping out a local college who has a Losmandy titan. From what I've been told the mount was misbehaving to the point of being useless.
The science teacher asked me for help and I'm trying to get it working reliably enough to use with students.
So far to solve the uncommanded goto actions I've had the Gemini controller sent away to a Losmandy recommended expert who replaced the processor.
I then found the casing on the DEC gearbox was split so I've replaced that and made a tripod for the mount so I can test it away from the school.
I've set it up on with a small refractor and it connect and seems to work with the PC but it refuses to guide and PHD just ping at me after a few seconds.
I can see the stars on the guide cam, but they just seem to go on by as if it's not tracking, when the scope says it it. It seems to move okay at slew speeds and I have tried several times at getting this to work a variety of errors (some suggesting hardware failures or Motor stalls) from the RA axis.
I've swapped the motor and cables to see if it is one of those but no joy. I've tried pointing with the Goto but this always seems significantly off.
I'm not sure what direction to take next and would welcome any advice as what steps or how to diagnose the issues!
Many thanks
Andrew

Answering myself, I see Brian says in
/g/Losmandy_users/message/66451
that PHD2 does not measure Losmandy backlash accurately because of the spring-loaded worms.? That may be why I am seeing such absurd numbers.? I'd like to know a little more about why that is so, but in any case the actual performance of the mount is what matters. Thank goodness PHD2 does not refuse to calibrate, as it used to do with my CGEM.

I'm new to Losmandy, not new to astrophotography (previous mounts have been an iOptron GEM45 and a CGEM and AVX).

This is the second night out with my new GM811G, and the first on which I've done guiding.? PHD2 reports the dec backlash as enormous (more than 17,000 ms).? Yet I am getting excellent guiding, largely because I have a very good polar alignment, so there are very few dec corrections needed, and they are all in the same direction (which makes sense; they are correcting the small remaining PA error).??

Calibration with PHD2 also has a hard time clearing backlash in dec.? In fact, that is the first place I noticed the large backlash.

Do I have something wrong with my dec gearbox?? Some setting wrong in the Gemini-2?

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I am going to post this here since I've requested help elsewhere.? Please delete if not appropriate.

I am having a major problem trying to achieve focus (without coma) on my images.? I have the backspacing of my Esprit 120, with SW 0.77FR and 2-inch ZWO filter wheel set at 56mm and I cannot get focus and the focus tube of the scope is close to 200 mm (almost as far as it will go in).? Even at that point I still cannot get stars to focus and I run out of room on the focus tube.? I've then set the spacers to 51 mm and I can achieve focus BUT now each corner of the images are showing coma's facing each corner, which means to camera is too close to the FR....HELP!!

FYI; the SW-FR requires a 90+mm backspace but if you use the included spacers (which I am) you only need to stick with the 56mm spacing afterwards.? I never noticed the problem before until I started doing mosaics and now see the image when trying to create the mosaics.

?

ANY HELP will be appreciated.? I am at a complete loss here and I find the advice on the Losmandy group tends to be the best.

Hi aughtago

The pier height really depends on the obs, but for me I went with a 36" pier height. I have a rolloff observatory (temp) so i didn't have to worry about the height relative to the walls, but generally i only image above 30 degrees (abs minimum) and more like 45-55 deg


Brian

It is pretty scary just how much storage you need as an imager even with a modestly sized mono camera these days.?As a working photographer 10 years ago I really needed some long term storage so I built a Thecus 5-bay NAS with 20TB (5x4TB) of fast Seagate Barracuda drives. At the time the Thecus was very fast for a single 1Gbit Ethernet port NAS. Operating in RAID6 I only got about 12TB working space and it was slower when writing than RAID10 but the double drive redundancy was more attractive than the 2-3x faster write speed for a long term storage system. This was fine for the photography work I was doing with the 1Ds and 1Dx and my sports shooting was lower volume.?

Fast forward to 2022 and 12TB is a drop in the bucket for a serious astroimager. It seems like you will need to buy multiple NAS or really high capacity drives and at least 6-8 bays to last much time unless you toss out everything not 100% perfect.??


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Chip Louie Chief Daydreamer Imagination Hardware?

? ?Astropheric Weather Forecast - South Pasadena, CA?

I am ready to pull the trigger on a G11, however, I must first completely rebuild my observatory. I have a CPC1100 EDGE HD on a wedge, I plan to defork it and put it on a G11. I'm designing the new ROR Observatory and was wondering if anyone had that scope on a G11 or just general insight as to how high the pier should be relative to the walls, how much clearance around the 11" scope with a G11. any other input before I place a shovel in the ground.

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jamie.amendolagine@...

Good point, Brian.

You want UPS battery backup if for no other reason than to ensure an orderly shutdown and buffer flush. In my configuration there are two UPS units -- one feeds the NAS units, the network switch and firewall, the server is on the other. Enough battery capacity to run things for an hour. An orderly shutdown of the arrays and server starts after 30 minutes of power outage. The observatory PC has two SSDs -- the images from the night (or day) get flushed to the server while I am closing. Nothing is retained there -- it all moves to the network.

g

Thanks all you your inputs.? I am not sure what I was thinking.? I really need 20 plus TBytes of storage.? I have ~1.5Tbytes of Canon 6D / 5DMkIV terrestrial images to store also.

For astro stuff I retain the Lights, Flats, Registered and PI Projects for each target.? That adds up fast.? Especially if I image from my backyard.? I usually have 150 plus Light subs.? I usually zip stuff up too.? RAID 1 is sufficient for my needs.? I may archive stuff that's more than 4 years old to USB3 HDD's.

The?Synology DS920+ is at the top of my list.

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Jim W
Phoenix, AZ. USA

Losmandy G11G, NINA 2.0 Beta / ASTAP, ASI2600MC Pro, Sky-Watcher Scopes

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Jim,
After I got my DEC spike problem solved with my 811 (the key adjustment was to reset the tension on my SLW boxes, as per a Scott Losmandy video that Brian sent me - the adjustments eliminated the backlash and loosened the box so that it would float as designed - it was over tightened and frozen) I went back to AP adventures. Last month I wanted to try and put together a mosaic of the Cygnus Loop. I spent seven sessions gathering data for the four panels with my ASI2600 MC Pro. I am using NINA for acquisition and PI and a trial license with APP for mosaic processing. ?As I got into the processing, I found that my astro files (9 months of data and processing on about 35 DSO's) had maxed out my 2 TB SSD drive. I had a storage problem.

I began to read and watch videos and talk to a few nearby friends. It seemed I was in the market for a NAS. Most of the advice suggested that I get a unit that could handle five years of data collection as I look to the future. That made sense. They also suggested the 3-2-1 strategy, 3 copies of your data on 2 different media with 1 offsite. I thought that was probably a bit of overkill for me. A third piece of advice had to do with read/write speeds of hard drives and transfer speeds between my computer in the NAS unit. ?

I purchased a Synology DS218+ double bay unit, but swapped it out for a DS940+ 4 bay unit when I discovered the 218+ could not accept future expansion units. The setup was simple enough even for someone like me without any networking experience. I installed 2 10TB hard drives (leaving 2 bays available for future expansion), plugged it into my router, managed to set up a storage pool, a couple volumes, some folders, and transferred my Astro data over. I also ran an ethernet 6 cable from my router to my workstation. It all seems to work quite well, and I am pleased with it at this point.

I have had to make one important adjustment in my processing workflow. The Cygnus Loop mosaic project has been massive, with 1400 X 60s subs, gathered over seven sessions and stacked into four different panels. As you know, Jim, our ASI2600s produce 52 MB subs! Then there were the layers of folders to get from the subs, to integrated masters, through the assembly process.?I ended up with 28 masters for my panels that were 940 MB each, before I ever got to my a final master. ?When I tried to handle this workflow with my computer hardwired to my NAS unit, the data transfer was too slow. So what I ended up doing was transferring all the subs to my newly empty SSD drive and plugging it directly into my computer until my processing was completed. That resolved any transfer delay issues. After I am done, I will plug the SSD into the NAS UBS3 port and transfer all the data back to the NAS. Easy to do.?

I will be very interested to know how you resolve the data storage issue.

I am also very interested to know what data of people keep long term. I assume that I will be adding fresh data to my DSO folders in the future and will want to process everything again. I also assume that the software is developing so rapidly that reprocessing my data with the new software competencies will sooner or later be worth doing. So what should I keep? I would really prefer not to have to keep everything. Do I keep the raw fits files with the calibration data? I assume that I keep my masters. I noted that some people said they kept only their registered folders plus their masters. But if you wanted to preserve your ability to re-process, wouldn't you have to keep something earlier, like perhaps the calibration folders? I'd be glad for any advice.

Geoff Chapman

If it is just drives then higher end drives from the main manufacturers should be fine. I have had the Seagate Ironwolf and Barracudas in a Netgear ReadyNAS (not sure they are still made) for years without any real issues - caveat:- use Raid 5 or other as you will replace mechanical drives at some point in time.

+1 with Gregory's comment of Gigabit networking - along with a Gigabit and 10Gigabit interface on the NAS (a lot have both these days).

Good luck,
Ken

I have a couple of QNAP nas devices -- with my Windows 2012r2 file server have roughly 36TB of accessible storage (I keep multiple copies as an alternative to backups). You will want gigabit connections -- AP raw images are huge. Started with 4TB drives, those are considered small now. While I used USB connected drives for years, I never found them truly reliable.

I am getting tired of USB3 SSD's and HDD's floating around that I use to store my PI Projects.? Its no problem for me to build a NAS but I don't have the time or parts.? I have no experience with off-the-shelf NAS Drives.? What are good manufacturers and models to start looking at?? I am currently checking out Western Digital and?Asustor.? What do other do to store images?

I would need RAID 1 (minimum) and about 6 to 8TBytes of total data 'HDD' 7,200 RPM SATA II storage.? Network performance is a big consideration.? My house is hard-wired for 100Mbps.? Software capabilities is another consideration.

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Jim W
Phoenix, AZ. USA

Losmandy G11G, NINA 2.0 Beta / ASTAP, ASI2600MC Pro, Sky-Watcher Scopes

Hi Ken,

Yours is probably one generation i7 newer than mine. I have a very low profile Skull Canyon i7 NUC kit that I installed 32GB RAM & 1TB NVMe.

With the conventional Intel NUC box then mounting it to the scope is kinda goofy but on the large Losmandy HD tripod legs it would disappear. I much prefer the very tidy cabling of an on scope computer. Alternately the addition of the compact Pegasus Ultimate Power Box V2 allows you to run a single power cord and USB 3.1 cable to the optic with full control and minimum cable routing issues.?




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Chip Louie Chief Daydreamer Imagination Hardware?

? ?Astropheric Weather Forecast - South Pasadena, CA?

On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 08:10 AM, Chip Louie wrote:

Which NUC do you have?

8iBEHS - old 8 and yes there is VESA plate on it - will look at a table or zigsawed plate.

Thanks Chip
Ken

Thanks all - plenty of food for thought. I also saw some two tiered metal framed tables with electric neutral levels that will fit under the tripod too - lower level for my LiPo4 battery and upper level for the NUC and other bits.

Will close here.

Thanks again.
Ken