Just purchased the Skywave Collimator for my AGO iDK17". Of all the videos I've looked at yours has concrete, actionable information. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
I just had a chance to use your tutorial and collimate my RC with your method. A million thanks to you ( also to the guy who wrote that useful spreadsheet). This is making things a lot more smooth and straightforward, especially for the collimation of the secondary wich was still quite tedious to do in skywave. I'll start looking into developping a plug in for nina that will just do all the images without having to fill 9 coordinates by hand ( don't know if I will succeed but this is worth a look).
Hi @Antiath, as well as you I'm just starting to develope something to avoid filling the 9 cohordinates by hand. Actually I was thinking to build a sequence with Powerups variables instead of a plugin. Did you succed in building yours and you can share it?
@@davidecattani8282 nope. I'm really not familiar with xml and the documentation of nina for plug in development is not helpful in this regard. I just managed to build a blank plug in but getting to something useful proved to be a bigger challenge than expected for me. So this is postponed until my othe projects are done, wich could end up being forever. If you manage to build something where we don't have to compute and fill the 9 coordinates ourselves , please do share you results.
Hi Peter, I am new to Skywave and found your video extremely useful. Is the spreadsheet you created to calculate the coordinates for off-axis test stars still available somewhere? It seems that the Dropbox link on Cloudy Nights is no longer active. Thank you!
HI Peter, thanks for your video. I bought a PPU to colimate my RC scope, and was looking around for some (Home made) instructions, so Ifound your "fresh" one !
Hi Peter, slightly ota question: did you get appreciable/measurable improvements in you stars fwhm after the collimation procedure? Many thanks for your very informative video btw!
Hi Peter, could you share the Excel sheet for creating the sequence in N.I.N.A.? The file posted on Cloudynights is no longer available. Thank you for this great, understandable video about the Skywave Colliminator.
Hello Peter, thank you for this video. Question about Nina sequence which is very interesting. Do you have a tip to share with us in order to generate this sequence easily based on the first image ? I'm looking for a solution to generate the sequence based on the centered star position. William
That is a neat idea. Maybe this can done with the help of a NINA plugin ! I never developped any but I will certainly look into it, this could be very useful.
Hello. Planning on buying a new RC. I have never used one. I am still doing some prior research. Do you feel it will be enough just to use the skywave system for collimation? I mean to say what if i do not wish to use/buy any other physical collimation tools. Thank you for the great video. ashv
Fellow RC user here. I would advise to still get at least a good laser collimator. Before I started using Skywave, I already owned a Farpoint laser and a Takahashi microscope to perform rough collimation. They were never enough to properly collimate the RC, I had to rely on Star tests to fine tune collimation ( now I fine tune with Skywave). But they were useful to do the rough alignement and they still are. Normally, those tubes hold collimation quite well and they are collimated in the factory (and sometimes by the vendor too) so you would only need to use Skywave after that to fine tune. But if you were to disassemble everything to clean the mirrors, you completely lose this tuning. That's where a good laser can help get everything back to a point where Skywave can work. And by good laser, I mean a well collimated one. Even a cheap chinese laser cando the job if its own collimation is checked and ajustable.
Interesting, thanks. One question, each time a star is calculated, will a credit be spent? That is, in your example you spent at least 9 credits, one for coma and eight for astigmatism. Is this correct?
Credits are only consumed once per image, not per star. And credits are only consumed if the collimation score of the star you analyse has a score better than 6 or so.
Just purchased the Skywave Collimator for my AGO iDK17". Of all the videos I've looked at yours has concrete, actionable information. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
I just had a chance to use your tutorial and collimate my RC with your method. A million thanks to you ( also to the guy who wrote that useful spreadsheet). This is making things a lot more smooth and straightforward, especially for the collimation of the secondary wich was still quite tedious to do in skywave. I'll start looking into developping a plug in for nina that will just do all the images without having to fill 9 coordinates by hand ( don't know if I will succeed but this is worth a look).
Thanks, I'm glad it was useful! It would be amazing to have a Nina plugin that would do that work. Please let me know if you are successful.
Hello.
Im really interested in plugin for NINA.
Hi @Antiath, as well as you I'm just starting to develope something to avoid filling the 9 cohordinates by hand. Actually I was thinking to build a sequence with Powerups variables instead of a plugin. Did you succed in building yours and you can share it?
@@davidecattani8282 nope. I'm really not familiar with xml and the documentation of nina for plug in development is not helpful in this regard. I just managed to build a blank plug in but getting to something useful proved to be a bigger challenge than expected for me. So this is postponed until my othe projects are done, wich could end up being forever. If you manage to build something where we don't have to compute and fill the 9 coordinates ourselves , please do share you results.
Hi Peter,
I am new to Skywave and found your video extremely useful. Is the spreadsheet you created to calculate the coordinates for off-axis test stars still available somewhere? It seems that the Dropbox link on Cloudy Nights is no longer active. Thank you!
HI Peter, thanks for your video. I bought a PPU to colimate my RC scope, and was looking around for some (Home made) instructions, so Ifound your "fresh" one !
Glad to help!
Hi Peter, slightly ota question: did you get appreciable/measurable improvements in you stars fwhm after the collimation procedure?
Many thanks for your very informative video btw!
Hey just stumbled upon your video, great stuff! Do you mind sharing your sequence with us?
Hi Peter, could you share the Excel sheet for creating the sequence in N.I.N.A.? The file posted on Cloudynights is no longer available.
Thank you for this great, understandable video about the Skywave Colliminator.
Hello Peter, thank you for this video.
Question about Nina sequence which is very interesting. Do you have a tip to share with us in order to generate this sequence easily based on the first image ? I'm looking for a solution to generate the sequence based on the centered star position.
William
That is a neat idea. Maybe this can done with the help of a NINA plugin ! I never developped any but I will certainly look into it, this could be very useful.
Hello. Planning on buying a new RC. I have never used one. I am still doing some prior research.
Do you feel it will be enough just to use the skywave system for collimation? I mean to say what if i do not wish to use/buy any other physical collimation tools.
Thank you for the great video.
ashv
Fellow RC user here. I would advise to still get at least a good laser collimator. Before I started using Skywave, I already owned a Farpoint laser and a Takahashi microscope to perform rough collimation. They were never enough to properly collimate the RC, I had to rely on Star tests to fine tune collimation ( now I fine tune with Skywave). But they were useful to do the rough alignement and they still are. Normally, those tubes hold collimation quite well and they are collimated in the factory (and sometimes by the vendor too) so you would only need to use Skywave after that to fine tune. But if you were to disassemble everything to clean the mirrors, you completely lose this tuning. That's where a good laser can help get everything back to a point where Skywave can work. And by good laser, I mean a well collimated one. Even a cheap chinese laser cando the job if its own collimation is checked and ajustable.
@@Antiath Thank you for the advice
Does it work for Newtonian telescopes ?
Interesting, thanks. One question, each time a star is calculated, will a credit be spent? That is, in your example you spent at least 9 credits, one for coma and eight for astigmatism. Is this correct?
Credits are only consumed once per image, not per star. And credits are only consumed if the collimation score of the star you analyse has a score better than 6 or so.
So you can analyse as many stars in a given image as you want at the cost of at most one credit
@@PeterCoxPhoto thank you for you response since in the web page it's not clear enogh