Official StarTools support forum

Thanks Ron. I do think that setting my mirror distance correctly (i.e. for minimum spherical aberration, not to spec) has tightened up the stars a bit, although getting the secondary correctly aligned will also have helped. The PPU models are not that expensive, and Gaston is very helpful. If you do...

Hey thanks Mike. Dark skies? - I wish! Maps say I'm bortle 6 but ASTAP background measurement reckons I'm in Bortle 7 territory.
Scope does seem to be sharper since tweaking the collimation with SkyWave though.
Fair point about the noise....might try another version.

Clear skies

Paul

I've had some excellent help on yesterdays troubleshooting thread, which allowed me to sort out an issue with my darks. So using the "fixed" darks, here is 6.3 hours of OSC data - RC6, CCDT67, ASI294MC Pro, stacked in ASTAP. Amazing how much better StarTools works when you give it a correctly calibr...

Ok that went much quicker than I expected! Key finding - I have numerous sets of darks dating from when I first got the camera in late 2018. While waiting for numerous sets of ASTAP stacks to run, I've opened sample dark frames from all my sets of darks, including some 30sec and 20sec darks that I t...

Mike, that analysis is so useful - many thanks. I'm running the various stacking trials that Ivo recommended as we speak, so I expect the "lights and master flats only" test (no darks) to provide an improved result - though clearly not as good as with correct darks. I'll also take a new set of darks...

Just a quick holding reply to express my thanks to you all. What a helpful forum and community! Loads to investigate here, I'll report back.

Paul

Thanks both....really useful input. I'll add some single frames into the dropbox folder (now done, see below). That gradient on the darks is definitely worth a look. It runs from lightest at top left to darkest at bottom R. Values from 2100-ish to 2700-ish. And now you mention it, where has the amp ...

Apologies for the length of this post! I have been struggling for some time to get decent calibration and stacking of my lights. I started out using DSS for stacking but changed to ASTAP as it seems to give me cleaner, lower noise results. I use an ASI294MC pro, which has a reputation for occasional...

I did say I would report back. New PC build is going well but not finished. System is core i5 11600k, 32GB ram, M2 NVME drive, Z590 mobo. I'm keeping my GTX960 GPU but haven't fitted it yet, so currently running on the iGPU. I'm running windows 11 as per original post. StarTools running fine on wind...

Good to know guys, thanks very much. Will probably be 2-3 weeks before I have all the bits and time to do the assembly. I'll report back.

Paul