Sooo many mistakes in 1 night...

[Larry 1969]

Finally a decent evening here in Pittsburgh PA so I set up to do a little imaging.
The clear sky took me a bit off guard. I didn't notice it until about 9:30 PM. I usually set up a little earlier but I had plenty of time.
I struggle a bit with the initial alignment. I have a 9X50 RACI finder but still struggle to get the stars in there.
"Alignment successful"!!!! OK. Time to focus! As I mentioned in my earlier thread, I do not yet have a Bahtinov mask.
I find a bright star, zoom in 10X and focus until I get the smallest body and single diffraction spikes. Well, That wasn't happening last night.....
I could center the star in my FOV (on my computer screen) but when I zoomed in it would be off the screen??????? I couldn't even slew around to find it.....
I adjusted the focus as best I could with no zoom but that left room for error....... Which I didn't realize until after stacking just now........
I wanted M81 and I was having less than ideal gotos. After 2 or 3 more 2-star alignments and about 45 min of torture I realize I input the wrong time into the hand controller....:Boo:
I was off by 1 hour so I fix that and align again.... Goto M27...... Good! M81? not so much. Found M57 and clicked away...... I was bound to get something right?
Yeah..... A decent stack of slightly out of focus pictures....... Wasted night? I say no.... An opportunity to eliminate some mistakes next time!

Main question: What might cause the star to leave my FOV when I zoom 10X? This has worked well in the past.

Could it be the adapters I'm using to get the camera into my focuser? Something not straight? Not sure what zoom would have to do with that....

BTW I'm using APT to control the camera.

Thanks!

Larry

[JayTee]

In APT, the zoom function zooms around the inset rectangle in the screen image of your camera's field of view. If you move that rectangle to anywhere other than the center of the screen image and your star was in the center of the screen field of view image (and not in the zoom box) then your star will not appear in the zoomed image once you zoom in.

Man, I hope that made sense.

Cheers,
JT

[Larry 1969]

Thanks JayTee!
That actually DID make sense!
But it WAS centered in the zoom box.....

[JayTee]

Hey Larry, if you could construct a signature for yourself that shows all your gear it's usually easier to answer your gear-specific questions.

Cheers,
JT

[Larry 1969]

Oops! I was reminded about that on the previous forum as well....

I'm on it!

Larry

[OleCuss]

I think there are plenty of us who could claim more and bigger mistakes in one night than the ones you listed!

[JimMinCT]

What I used to do before getting my Bhat mask, was focus on Alcor and Mizar and get the biggest separation between the pair.
Since you're in the neighborhood, you could give it a try.

[Larry 1969]

Thanks!

Bhat mask is on the way.

I wanted to try to get out last night but I was so tired from not getting any sleep the night before I just couldn't do it.
I laid awake after that last messed up session just wondering where I went wrong.....
And now the forecast is 10 days of rain.......

Larry