Here's a behind the scenes look at my setup of NINA astrophotography software running while I am imaging the Elephant's Trunk nebula in IC1396. #astrophotography #NINA #astronomy
Wow, thanks! I really appreciate the detailed review of each function. I was surprised when I opened it and saw how many functions it has. Pretty intimidating, actually. I'm just starting with a new (proper HEQ 5) mount, and live in really cold climate, so am trying to master the automated photography thing now while it's warm. :) I hope to be running NINA, PHD2 and Stellarium for the first time together next weekend, and I feel so much more confident that I can do it now! Thanks again! Fair Winds and Clear Skies!
I am deciding between NINA and APT as I want to use a more comprehensive tool for my astroimaging sessions,, and now after your introduction, I will try monkeying around with NINA
Thanks Cheryl. Awesome! Glad it was helpful. I've been able to get to know NINA a lot better now having used it more. Really a great program! Thanks for watching and clear skies!
Thanks for the video! I am not a newbie to astro imaging, but have been out of the loop for 10 years so am a newbie to current software. Trying to decide between Astro Photography Tool and Nina.
Switch is a simple Ascom on off switches. Turn on a light and so on. I plan to use it hopefully when I wish to place auto bahtinov mask, or Flat light etc automatically. Maybe even a remote observatory startup sequence for remote sites.
I Just love NINA been using it for about 8 months now and it just keeps getting better. BTW Shawn set the rotator to manual then you set rotation in framing then to sequence you will get a popup when you plate solve to manually rotate your camera left or right and by how much until it matches what you set in framing . give a try works great . I even made a scale in photoshop and added to my focuser draw tube for reference
This is brilliant. I was doing it with Stellarium and a star Adventurer (no mount, no NINA, just downloaded) and just approximating how much the camera was turned. I now have a proper mount, but no rotator. A printed scale is what I need! :)
Thank you for this video! Great job. Just ordered my first cooled OSC, I've been using APT with a dslr, have been thinking about SGP or NINA. This video kinda sold me on it ;o)
I think I moved to NINA about 3 or so weeks before you did and likewise have had a very very nice experience. I'm going to have to get used to using the manual rotator. I relied on platesolve II image angle in degrees in SGP. I also prefer ASTAP so going back to platesolve II isn't desired.
Awesome tutorial Shawn! I am fairly new to the hobby and have been doing mostly planetary imaging in Sharpcap. With encouragement from your chaneel and others, I am now delving into DSO imagining and just downloaded NINA . Your tutorial was a great help with setting everything up.... now I just need some clear skies to try it out. Just have one question for you: In sharpcap, I optimized my gain & exposure by looking at the histogram. How do you determine the best gain per given exposure time in NINA? Thanks in advance....
Yeah I am thinking to change to NINA but so far I have seen that everybody has already created a profile, or they don't start from scratch. Also some aspects of the user interface are not so friendly. I open it and almos immediately I push something that got stuck and I had to abort the program to come out and start again...and instructions from the NINA site...well, they don't look like a user manual. Anyway I believe it should be a nice software, so with the new release I will give another try. Your videos are very useful, so thanks for that.
Takes a bit to understand the new sequencer in NINA, but the good news is, once you use it a few times it does get easier. Took me a couple clear nights to figure it out.
Telescope side of pier is fine when set to OFF for most mounts. My EQ5PRO mount flipped in DEC only and the scope ended up horizontal pointing north... So i set it to ON and it works perfectly now... Maybe that's a fluke? So I'm not going to mess around with it... BTW, my mount tolerance needs a minimum of 10 minutes past meridian to function
Great video. I'm planning to start using NINA, and your video is really helpful. I see you are remotely desktopped into your astrominipc. Do you need a powerful pc at your telescope to run this? What minipc are you using? Thanks!
I presume the switch feature is an ASCOM power switch like Maxim DL has. eg if you are remote imaging or in bed asleep it will turn off the power to your devices (telescope, camera etc)
Thank you for this great video it’s very informative. I’m still new to this hobby and I don’t know if I missed it or not but can you use NINA for planetary photography too or do I have to use another software such as Fire Capture?
Good question. I've only used NINA for deep sky imaging. I know for planetary Sharcap and Fire Capture are often used. Perhaps if a viewer knows more they can comment here.
I did a shoot of the Leo Triplet last night and used both NINA and Sharpcap. The NINA shots had a green stripe on the left 1/3 of the frame and a purple stripe on the right side. Have you seen or heard of this?
Thanks for another very informative video Shawn, come at just the right time as ive used Nina twice now and will be again tonight, im really liking it. Shawn how do you find the cooling duration on your cam? i usually do it manually in increments of 5 but its annoying to sit there waiting while doing it, is 5 mins enough to cool to -10 without any thermal shock?
Hey Daniel - I've cooled to -10 in 5 min with no issues. Right now with it being summer and hot though, I cool a few degrees at time just to not overwhelm the camera cooler.
@@VisibledarkAstro thanks shawn, thats what I'm looking for. In APT I could set how many degrees at a time but can't seem to find that in nina unless I'm being silly !
I "played" with both, as well as APT and SharpCap. I still use SharpCap for its polar alignment routine, but I found as I became more comforatble with sequencing that NINA is (to me) more intuitive. It also make better use of multiple threads/parallel processing than SGP, which is still pretty much a single threaded app from what I've read/researched. I do find some of SGP's functions more 'mature' than NINA, particularly as regards error trapping.
Thanks Shawn, I see what you mean. What threw me was the selection of stars (1 star, 2 star etc) so thought I could just enter a star name and it would find it, nope. Cheers.
Hi,subscribed, im watching your video as i write this and have a couple of questions ( i will ask more as i keep watching)but for now , besides PHD2 ,do you use any other software while imaging and on the auto meridian flip part of the interface ,the use telescope side of pier ,you say you have to look it up ,where do you look it up ? are there any sites for doing this ? and last one ,if by ignorance i deleted some panes on the imaging part ,how do i get them again? thank you so much ,as you can see i am a total rookie ,and i appreciate any help ,clear skies
Great video! Is ASTAP less prone to failure than platesolve2? I find platesolve2 needs the scope to slew damn near where it is supposed to be to be successful. Also, is NINA more stable than SGP? SGP is prone to crashing if any other software has an issue. When SGP crashes it shuts everything down and only a fresh computer rebooth fixes things, meaning re-centering on target, cooling the camera down. A real pain! Thanks
I've not had any crashes with NINA. And ASTAP seems better than Platesolve2. I used Platesolve2 for many years. ASTAP is definitely faster and very precise.
Great video. I know that there is a Flat wizard, but there's NOTHING in the documentation about taking Darks or Bias. So how do you take a sequence of Darks or Bias without specifying a Target and then not allowing the mount to slew or track?
You can just use the basic sequencer to take darks, bias frames. Go to sequencer in the left side menu, click add new target, call it "darks" as example, and don't add a target and leave everything disabled (slew, center, guiding, meridian flip etc). Then just set it for the length of exposure you need, if your light frames were 5min, then your darks will be 5min as well. Input how many you want to take, 30 is a good number. Save the sequence for future use. Then in bottom right corner, click to run the sequence. NINA will take the dark exposures and won't slew or track etc. Make sure you have your lens cover on the scope for taking darks!
I'm only on my third clear night with NINA and I LOVE IT. The only issue I am having is in file management... It seems to make a new folder for each sub...this is a major time management issue to have to move each photo individually before pre-processing. I have looked everywhere for folder/file option but I can't seem to find anything other than the main save directory. Anyone else experiencing this or know how to change it? Thanks guys!
I don't think you can. The only stars available are under the imaging window, manual focus targets tab (stars). It shows bright stars currently visible. You can select one and slew to it.
I want to use NINA but so far it does not support my Canon EOS Ra. Let me know if you know otherwise. I would love to use NINA. But I also use ASIair Pro. It works great but it does not support the EOS RA either. And I want that full frame the EOS Ra offers as my 294MC Pro crops more of he image than I like. I'm using a William Optics GT102 as my OTA. It works well with the ASIair Pro . But I could get more of the image if I can use my full frame camera. Can't wait for NINA and ASIair Pro to support the EOS Ra. ;o)
You just click and drag windows around. Drop them where you want. NINA will pop up a guide for where you can drop them, line them up. A little hard to explain but have a look at the NINA instructions, its in there how to do it I believe I saw it.
@@VisibledarkAstro Hi, just discovered your page. Awesome nice! I was immediately impressed with how you organize your windows in the user interface. Unfortunately I'm not able do to so like you explain. When I drag and drop a window, it is either full screen or detached, never like a small portion of the screen like yours.... Does it depend one some other windows related setting? Thanks. Kristof
NINA will become just like the others SGP and Voyager NINA plan is to rope all of you in the comes the 80$ price Do you really think NINA is going to stay free Voyager Starkeeper is the best and most stable.
Then you are free to choose the software you like. Free for 6 months, 12 months, it's still free at the moment and I don't think there are any plans to start charging
You are aware what "Open Source" means, right? The software will stay freely available for everyone, if not a compiled version then the source code itself. That is the nature of Open Source. There are no plans whatsoever to monetize NINA. If people want to support the project monetarily there is the Patreon and Donation options, but neither is a need and only helps the creator (Stefan Berg).
Thanks for tuning in! Please consider subscribing to my astrophotography channel! Clear skies! :)
Very good video Shawn. Thank you for this description of NINA. Very well explained.
Excellent video. Very informative.
Great overview many thanks
Hi, for me you make these AP programs user friendly whereas many other tech presenters complicate even the language. Thank you.
Awesome video! It was a big help figuring out which program to utilize for my image processing!
Just discovered NINA! great startup video.
Wow, thanks! I really appreciate the detailed review of each function. I was surprised when I opened it and saw how many functions it has. Pretty intimidating, actually.
I'm just starting with a new (proper HEQ 5) mount, and live in really cold climate, so am trying to master the automated photography thing now while it's warm. :)
I hope to be running NINA, PHD2 and Stellarium for the first time together next weekend, and I feel so much more confident that I can do it now! Thanks again!
Fair Winds and Clear Skies!
Awesome review. Thanks
I am deciding between NINA and APT as I want to use a more comprehensive tool for my astroimaging sessions,, and now after your introduction, I will try monkeying around with NINA
This is great, Shawn ! Thanks for tutorial on NINA
Thanks for watching! Cheers!
Great tutorial Shawn
I really got alot out of this - thankyou!
Thanks Cheryl. Awesome! Glad it was helpful. I've been able to get to know NINA a lot better now having used it more. Really a great program! Thanks for watching and clear skies!
Thanks for the video! I am not a newbie to astro imaging, but have been out of the loop for 10 years so am a newbie to current software. Trying to decide between Astro Photography Tool and Nina.
Switch is a simple Ascom on off switches. Turn on a light and so on. I plan to use it hopefully when I wish to place auto bahtinov mask, or Flat light etc automatically. Maybe even a remote observatory startup sequence for remote sites.
I Just love NINA been using it for about 8 months now and it just keeps getting better. BTW Shawn set the rotator to manual then you set rotation in framing then to sequence you will get a popup when you plate solve to manually rotate your camera left or right and by how much until it matches what you set in framing . give a try works great . I even made a scale in photoshop and added to my focuser draw tube for reference
This is brilliant. I was doing it with Stellarium and a star Adventurer (no mount, no NINA, just downloaded) and just approximating how much the camera was turned. I now have a proper mount, but no rotator.
A printed scale is what I need! :)
Thank you for this video! Great job. Just ordered my first cooled OSC, I've been using APT with a dslr, have been thinking about SGP or NINA. This video kinda sold me on it ;o)
I think I moved to NINA about 3 or so weeks before you did and likewise have had a very very nice experience. I'm going to have to get used to using the manual rotator. I relied on platesolve II image angle in degrees in SGP. I also prefer ASTAP so going back to platesolve II isn't desired.
I see they are going to add Dome support as well. If this works with my system I think I could move off SGP .
Awesome tutorial Shawn! I am fairly new to the hobby and have been doing mostly planetary imaging in Sharpcap. With encouragement from your chaneel and others, I am now delving into DSO imagining and just downloaded NINA . Your tutorial was a great help with setting everything up.... now I just need some clear skies to try it out. Just have one question for you: In sharpcap, I optimized my gain & exposure by looking at the histogram. How do you determine the best gain per given exposure time in NINA? Thanks in advance....
Yeah I am thinking to change to NINA but so far I have seen that everybody has already created a profile, or they don't start from scratch. Also some aspects of the user interface are not so friendly. I open it and almos immediately I push something that got stuck and I had to abort the program to come out and start again...and instructions from the NINA site...well, they don't look like a user manual. Anyway I believe it should be a nice software, so with the new release I will give another try. Your videos are very useful, so thanks for that.
Takes a bit to understand the new sequencer in NINA, but the good news is, once you use it a few times it does get easier. Took me a couple clear nights to figure it out.
Telescope side of pier is fine when set to OFF for most mounts. My EQ5PRO mount flipped in DEC only and the scope ended up horizontal pointing north... So i set it to ON and it works perfectly now... Maybe that's a fluke? So I'm not going to mess around with it... BTW, my mount tolerance needs a minimum of 10 minutes past meridian to function
Isbeorn is working on a 2.0 version of planning. Should be awesome!
Great video. I'm planning to start using NINA, and your video is really helpful. I see you are remotely desktopped into your astrominipc. Do you need a powerful pc at your telescope to run this? What minipc are you using? Thanks!
I presume the switch feature is an ASCOM power switch like Maxim DL has. eg if you are remote imaging or in bed asleep it will turn off the power to your devices (telescope, camera etc)
Woohoo! Some more N.I.N.A. goodness! I have to watch the whole video, but will do so - any lingering issues you may be having?
So far so good! Its been working smoothly. Really liking it. Looking forward to added features coming.
Thanks for this video! Does NINA have a control button for enabling and disabling tracking of an ASCOM Telescope device?
Thank you for this great video it’s very informative. I’m still new to this hobby and I don’t know if I missed it or not but can you use NINA for planetary photography too or do I have to use another software such as Fire Capture?
Good question. I've only used NINA for deep sky imaging. I know for planetary Sharcap and Fire Capture are often used. Perhaps if a viewer knows more they can comment here.
I did a shoot of the Leo Triplet last night and used both NINA and Sharpcap. The NINA shots had a green stripe on the left 1/3 of the frame and a purple stripe on the right side. Have you seen or heard of this?
Thanks for another very informative video Shawn, come at just the right time as ive used Nina twice now and will be again tonight, im really liking it. Shawn how do you find the cooling duration on your cam? i usually do it manually in increments of 5 but its annoying to sit there waiting while doing it, is 5 mins enough to cool to -10 without any thermal shock?
Hey Daniel - I've cooled to -10 in 5 min with no issues. Right now with it being summer and hot though, I cool a few degrees at time just to not overwhelm the camera cooler.
@@VisibledarkAstro thanks shawn, thats what I'm looking for. In APT I could set how many degrees at a time but can't seem to find that in nina unless I'm being silly !
Great video. I can’t get it to find my Nikon DSLR. Have all the ASCOM drivers etc etc.
I "played" with both, as well as APT and SharpCap. I still use SharpCap for its polar alignment routine, but I found as I became more comforatble with sequencing that NINA is (to me) more intuitive. It also make better use of multiple threads/parallel processing than SGP, which is still pretty much a single threaded app from what I've read/researched. I do find some of SGP's functions more 'mature' than NINA, particularly as regards error trapping.
Good points! Thanks watching and commenting. Clear Skies!
Thanks Shawn, I see what you mean. What threw me was the selection of stars (1 star, 2 star etc) so thought I could just enter a star name and it would find it, nope. Cheers.
Hi,subscribed, im watching your video as i write this and have a couple of questions ( i will ask more as i keep watching)but for now , besides PHD2 ,do you use any other software while imaging and on the auto meridian flip part of the interface ,the use telescope side of pier ,you say you have to look it up ,where do you look it up ? are there any sites for doing this ? and last one ,if by ignorance i deleted some panes on the imaging part ,how do i get them again? thank you so much ,as you can see i am a total rookie ,and i appreciate any help ,clear skies
Great video!
Is ASTAP less prone to failure than platesolve2? I find platesolve2 needs the scope to slew damn near where it is supposed to be to be successful.
Also, is NINA more stable than SGP? SGP is prone to crashing if any other software has an issue. When SGP crashes it shuts everything down and only a fresh computer rebooth fixes things, meaning re-centering on target, cooling the camera down. A real pain! Thanks
I've not had any crashes with NINA. And ASTAP seems better than Platesolve2. I used Platesolve2 for many years. ASTAP is definitely faster and very precise.
Great video. I know that there is a Flat wizard, but there's NOTHING in the documentation about taking Darks or Bias. So how do you take a sequence of Darks or Bias without specifying a Target and then not allowing the mount to slew or track?
You can just use the basic sequencer to take darks, bias frames. Go to sequencer in the left side menu, click add new target, call it "darks" as example, and don't add a target and leave everything disabled (slew, center, guiding, meridian flip etc). Then just set it for the length of exposure you need, if your light frames were 5min, then your darks will be 5min as well. Input how many you want to take, 30 is a good number. Save the sequence for future use. Then in bottom right corner, click to run the sequence. NINA will take the dark exposures and won't slew or track etc. Make sure you have your lens cover on the scope for taking darks!
Cool video. Can NINA do planetary capture like Fire Fox or SharpCap?
I'd say NINA is really just for deepsky imaging. Planetary I personally use sharpcap.
I'm only on my third clear night with NINA and I LOVE IT. The only issue I am having is in file management... It seems to make a new folder for each sub...this is a major time management issue to have to move each photo individually before pre-processing. I have looked everywhere for folder/file option but I can't seem to find anything other than the main save directory. Anyone else experiencing this or know how to change it? Thanks guys!
The switch is your PowerBox. It will bring all those controls into Nina.
OK great. Thanks for the input. Clear skies!
Wish this program was out when I was buying SGP. There is no reason for me to switch now since I have SGP but this would have saved me a lot of money
I used SGP for years. It's good. If it works for you great. I just happened to try NINA, out of curiosity, and really liked it. Got hooked!
Hey Shawn any idea how to search for stars in NINA? Cheers.
I don't think you can. The only stars available are under the imaging window, manual focus targets tab (stars). It shows bright stars currently visible. You can select one and slew to it.
switch will allow control of the pegasus power boxwes
Great! Thanks for letting us know. Cheers.
I want to use NINA but so far it does not support my Canon EOS Ra. Let me know if you know otherwise. I would love to use NINA. But I also use ASIair Pro. It works great but it does not support the EOS RA either. And I want that full frame the EOS Ra offers as my 294MC Pro crops more of he image than I like. I'm using a William Optics GT102 as my OTA. It works well with the ASIair Pro . But I could get more of the image if I can use my full frame camera. Can't wait for NINA and ASIair Pro to support the EOS Ra. ;o)
How do you get all these individual windows lined up? I haven't found how to do it.
You just click and drag windows around. Drop them where you want. NINA will pop up a guide for where you can drop them, line them up. A little hard to explain but have a look at the NINA instructions, its in there how to do it I believe I saw it.
Got it! Thx.👍
@@VisibledarkAstro Hi, just discovered your page. Awesome nice! I was immediately impressed with how you organize your windows in the user interface. Unfortunately I'm not able do to so like you explain. When I drag and drop a window, it is either full screen or detached, never like a small portion of the screen like yours.... Does it depend one some other windows related setting? Thanks. Kristof
Can you use Nina with a DSLR?
I haven't used it with a DSLR but I don't see why not. I'm sure the DSLR can be connected through NINA and work just fine!
NINA will become just like the others SGP and Voyager NINA plan is to rope all of you in the comes the 80$ price
Do you really think NINA is going to stay free Voyager Starkeeper is the best and most stable.
Then you are free to choose the software you like. Free for 6 months, 12 months, it's still free at the moment and I don't think there are any plans to start charging
You are aware what "Open Source" means, right? The software will stay freely available for everyone, if not a compiled version then the source code itself. That is the nature of Open Source. There are no plans whatsoever to monetize NINA. If people want to support the project monetarily there is the Patreon and Donation options, but neither is a need and only helps the creator (Stefan Berg).
@@rootdarkarchon exactly is the freedom to develop as opposed free to purchase albeit that is a pro.