[Billking]

For similar prices, and perhaps a lot more flexibility, I'd suggest either of the Pentax DA* 200mm or DA* 300mm. Both of these work well on full-frame (i.e. K-1), despite nominally being APS-C lenses. And. both are highly rated in the camera reviews here for sharpness.

Astrotracer works fine with the DA* 300mm: First try of Astrotracer - Venus in the Pleiades - Not too bad! - PentaxForums.com

I have got some OK shots with the K1 and DA 300mm in middle suburbia.

Back in lockdown - no 6 - so I might be doing some more bright sky astro over coming days.

[MossyRocks]

I have got some OK shots with the K1 and DA 300mm in middle suburbia.

Back in lockdown - no 6 - so I might be doing some more bright sky astro over coming days.

With effort under surburban skies (bortle 5) once can get some good shots of things, even using astrotracer..

[kayasaman]

Thanks so much for the great advice and pictures guys!

The pics are really amazing!!

Actually, seeing what can be done makes me wana go and play with my K1 in the field more. Though for now I'm waiting on a tripod, backpack and a few more lenses before heading out properly.


I tried a few shots which unfortunately all came out blurred due to low light and camera shake. It was a little frustrating to be honest though just a fact of physics

Indilib allows you to control shutter via USB thus obviating the need for a cable release/intervalometer. For my setup I have a rugged Intel NUC running Indiserver attached to the telescope, mount and guidescope and connect remotely from my desktop indoors where it's warm (important in winter!).
I guess you already read recommendations to prioritise the mount. I can't say I have a vast range of experience, but it looks like the soundest of advice.
The K1 being full frame gives telescopes a wider field of view than APSc, and I'm finding my Askar FRA400 to be quite a useful focal length

This is interesting! I'll need to look at the usb camera control. I haven't seen it so far in my reading.

Ps. The Askar 400mm is a really nice lens. I've seen some of what its capable of which looks pretty amazing.

---------- Post added 08-05-21 at 04:10 PM ----------

Ohh, and of you think photography is expensive, wait until you go down the rabbit hole of astrophotography. Here's my equipment list:

Cameras: Pentax K1ii, K1, K3, K5 astro mod, K-01 full spectrum, Samsung Mini, ZWO ASI178MC, ZWO ASI290MC, ZWO ASI533MC, QHY 5III 178 mono, QHY 5III462C, Astrel AST183-X-M-FW-7F, QHYCCD 294 M-Pro with Antlia SHO 3nm 36mm Pro, and Antlia LRGB 36mm Pro.

Scopes: TMB 92SS, Meade LX850 12", Orion ST 120, Celestron CR 150-HD, ES David Levy Comet Hunter, Lunt LS50THa, Meade SN10, Tak Epsilon 160, SharpStar 15028HNT, WO Redcat, Daystar 80mm, Skywatcher MN190, Orion 10RC, Borg 55FL, ES 127CF FCD100, RASA 11, Meade LX200 10".

Mounts: Modded go-to CG5, iOptron CEM25EC, CEM25P, CEM40, IEQ45, GEM45, CEM60 Pro with tri-pier, CEM70G with tri-pier, 2x Meade LX850 with Starlock, Orion HDX 110. 4x MGEN II autoguiders.

Feel free to check out my Astrobin here: Scotty Bishop's gallery - AstroBin

And

Thank you and I will definitely do so

Being an engineer by day trade I'm no stranger to having lots of kit.

After all its both a hobby and passion for me.

This is totally off-topic but a thread I started a while back on designing a building control and automation system.

When we had the ground floor modernized I started out by designing the layout using 3d CAD.

The electrical layout and panel I also built and designed. I even went as far to build my own controller using a $30 Pine64-LTS and then consequently wrote lots of lines of code for automating the setup.

Tying in here, I maybe able to do something similar using a Pine SBC. I'll need to see if there's a BSD (Berkley university developed OS in the late 70s) port of indilib for Arm architecture.
That might work really well as a mobile Astro server.
(Idea based on the Intel NUC concept mentioned above)

By the way the building control thread is located here for anyone who is interested:

Competing with Industrial BMS systems - the house that runs its self :-) - Share your Projects! - Home Assistant Community

[kayasaman]

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with Celestron?

Mounts & Tripods | Celestron

They claim to have co-worked with PlaneWave in developing their software.

PlaneWave mainly do full scale observatory style telescopes:

CDK Telescopes | PlaneWave Instruments


I've also found some information regarding the control of the K1 using indilib:

https://www.indilib.org/ccds/gphoto.html

I'll check the Gphoto library now as they do say Pentax DSLR's are supported. Hopefully the K1 will be listed

[damianc]

Cloudy Nights forums are a great source of technical info across a wide range of gear, technique and more. Likely as not you'll find a majority of your questions already answered there with some expertise!
There's a 3rd party driver for Pentax cameras with Indilib that definitely supports the K1/K1-ii using AFAIK the Ricoh SDK. I can't remember whether I had to do my own build of indilib to get it all working. I live in the Scottish Highlands and we still don't have enough darkness yet for me to get the scope and NUC back out.
Quite a few people use a Raspberry Pi as a remote Indi server. The latest generation devices are quite powerful and cost effective. There's a fair degree of complexity getting everything to talk together properly: camera, guidescope, mount, KStars etc, that any means to simplify setup is worth it, at least to start with

[kayasaman]

Cloudy Nights forums are a great source of technical info across a wide range of gear, technique and more. Likely as not you'll find a majority of your questions already answered there with some expertise!
There's a 3rd party driver for Pentax cameras with Indilib that definitely supports the K1/K1-ii using AFAIK the Ricoh SDK. I can't remember whether I had to do my own build of indilib to get it all working. I live in the Scottish Highlands and we still don't have enough darkness yet for me to get the scope and NUC back out.
Quite a few people use a Raspberry Pi as a remote Indi server. The latest generation devices are quite powerful and cost effective. There's a fair degree of complexity getting everything to talk together properly: camera, guidescope, mount, KStars etc, that any means to simplify setup is worth it, at least to start with

Thanks. I did start a post there but unfortunately haven't got many responses:

Start out with deep sky imaging - equipment recommendations? - Beginning Deep Sky Imaging - Cloudy Nights

I thought I'd reach out to the Pentax community directly to get a better scope of what will work with my K1.

[kayasaman]

This is just an FYI, it seems the K1 has not been added to the indlib DB yet....

I put a question directly related to getting support for it here: Pentax K1 support? - INDI Forum

Hopefully this will be added at some point to increase the user experience with more Pentax models.



As far as mount is concerned, I found the RST135 from Rainbow Astro: http://www.rainbowastro.com/rst-135/
It's a little pricey but perfect for what I'm looking for: lightweight and solidly built.

I'll start looking for reviews on it and if all is positive then start saving up for it! :P

[damianc]

it seems the K1 has not been added to the indlib DB yet....

There is a third party indi driver supporting the K1 indi-3rdparty/README.md at master · karlrees/indi-3rdparty · GitHub
I can't remember whether I did my own build of indilib and/or pulled one from the openSUSE community, but it definitely works

There's some discussion started by the developer on the INDI forum New Pentax Driver Testing - INDI Forum

[kayasaman]

There is a third party indi driver supporting the K1 indi-3rdparty/README.md at master · karlrees/indi-3rdparty · GitHub
I can't remember whether I did my own build of indilib and/or pulled one from the openSUSE community, but it definitely works

There's some discussion started by the developer on the INDI forum New Pentax Driver Testing - INDI Forum

FANTASTIC!

Thank you so much for the Github link. After cloning the git repo then using the build instructions I have managed to get it working.

The key for me was to launch Ekos from Kstars then start the indi server from there.

I set the driver of the CCD to Pentax Native, filled out the requested information on resolution and sensor pitch:

7360 x 4912
35.9 x 24

After that I took a few preview shots using both USB protocols that the K1 supports (PTP and MSC). Both worked fine.


Now I just need to get the rest of the parts together and then start trying to capture the night sky I'm really looking forward to it now!

[damianc]

I have managed to get it working.

Brilliant! now the real fun begins
I run Indiweb on my NUC to control starting/stopping devices which can be launched from Ekos I think.

One Issue I cam across which caused me hassle (I may not properly understand the ekos/indi interface properly) is where to store images. If I allow images to copy across from the indi server to my desktop then it performs a very time consuming conversion from RAW to FITS meaning there's a long lag between shots which means there's less imaging time. My solution was to store images locally on the remote indiserver and use rsync to keep my desktop in sync

[kayasaman]

Brilliant! now the real fun begins
I run Indiweb on my NUC to control starting/stopping devices which can be launched from Ekos I think.

One Issue I cam across which caused me hassle (I may not properly understand the ekos/indi interface properly) is where to store images. If I allow images to copy across from the indi server to my desktop then it performs a very time consuming conversion from RAW to FITS meaning there's a long lag between shots which means there's less imaging time. My solution was to store images locally on the remote indiserver and use rsync to keep my desktop in sync

The conversion process is most likely cpu specific so if you are running a low power cpu on your NUC, then that might be the cause.

However, having said that it takes a while on my laptop too when the camera is linked directly. It's an all-be-it old dual core i7.


rsync is a great approach! I use it for many things including high volume transfers of many terrabytes.


In EKOS there is a way to keep the original file format which I have tried but they did not automatically get stored locally? I think they might be on the camera SD drive though taking a brief look just now. With that being the case, things should become easier.


Ps. here are some pictures of my Pine64-LTS project:

Dropbox - Media - Simplify your life

The one with the green LCD has a Garmin 18x OEM GPS receiver linked which interfaces with GPSd using NMEA sentences and PPS. NTP then links to GPSd and synchronizes the time through there.

The Pine with the blue LCD I am using as a network capable pseudo Industrial style Astronomic clock. I couldn't find any astro clock on the market with network capability or that synchronized to NTP..... so I ended up building my own.

I got advise to use the Pine over the Raspberry or other SBC (single board computer) boards because of the chipset it uses which is rated to be much better then the rest... at least for a software development perspective.


Finally having read a lot more and cross-compare different models and makes of equipment I think the Rainbow Astro mount will be an excellent choice for me:

http://www.rainbowastro.com/rst-135/

Coupled with a Takahashi scope would provide a very powerful package.


I'm really excited now, though I need to start small to gain experience with the fundamentals. Hence, once I finally get a tripod, it will mean using my Samyang 24mm with Astro Tracer and improving blending foreground and background images together.

After that I can look at going deeper to planets and galaxies.

[damianc]

if you are running a low power cpu on your NUC

Yeah, the NUC is a celeron, the desktop an overclocked modern i7. I don't really need FITS files until post processing and that can all be done in Siril. I just never figured a way to force Indi/Ekos to write just RAW.

I did consider a Raspberry Pi, but compared to the NUC I already had it was a bit under powered. Not being a hardware sort of person I also figured I would do whatever needed in software


I've not come across the Rainbow Astro before - probably as it was out of my budget, but it seems to have sparked a lot of discussion on Cloudy Nights, and looks really portable. As for the Takahashi - you probably can't go wrong there.

I did have a play with my Tamron 70-200 and astrotracer and was quite impressed with the results. That's what spurred me on to get the Askar

[kayasaman]

Yeah, the NUC is a celeron, the desktop an overclocked modern i7. I don't really need FITS files until post processing and that can all be done in Siril. I just never figured a way to force Indi/Ekos to write just RAW.

I did consider a Raspberry Pi, but compared to the NUC I already had it was a bit under powered. Not being a hardware sort of person I also figured I would do whatever needed in software


I've not come across the Rainbow Astro before - probably as it was out of my budget, but it seems to have sparked a lot of discussion on Cloudy Nights, and looks really portable. As for the Takahashi - you probably can't go wrong there.

I did have a play with my Tamron 70-200 and astrotracer and was quite impressed with the results. That's what spurred me on to get the Askar

In the indi control panel when you select the tab for the Pentax CCD, under "Options" (I think) is where you can choose the format to be saved. I chose the "Native" option but it kept getting reverted back to "FITS only".

I'm not sure if this is a bug or I just don't know how to use it yet?

There is also an option to specify the Raw file path too, though I don't know how this works when running a remote instance of indilib in server only mode.


I need to play around more and figure the software out as it's not that intuitive.... though I already managed to crash the camera once running in PTP mode. The only way out of it was to remove the battery


If you have any tech needs or ideas, feel free to ping me any time! Hopefully I will able to help

[damianc]

I'm not sure if this is a bug

It may well be? I've upgraded my OS, and when the nights start drawing in a bit I'll take a look. I've reasoned that the M2 ssd in my NUC is way faster than my flakey WiFi, so rsync is the obvious route. Next job when I get more time is sorting out backlash on my mount and concentrating on getting autoguiding improvements.

There is also an option to specify the Raw file path

ISTR select 'local storage ' and just set the path. I did try doing this over NFS, but it's just inherently less robust than rsync

[kayasaman]

It may well be? I've upgraded my OS, and when the nights start drawing in a bit I'll take a look. I've reasoned that the M2 ssd in my NUC is way faster than my flakey WiFi, so rsync is the obvious route. Next job when I get more time is sorting out backlash on my mount and concentrating on getting autoguiding improvements.



ISTR select 'local storage ' and just set the path. I did try doing this over NFS, but it's just inherently less robust than rsync

I just did an update now the "Native" image part works though I still get an image in the FITS viewer but no images in the FITS folder, my guess is that it has been fixed!

Unfortunately the RAW files are not getting stored to my updated location and always appear in my 'home folder'.

Overall the software seems much more stable

Ps. NFS over wifi is never going to achieve the best performance. If you were able to connect a cable between your astro rig and the desktop that would be the best case scenario. Unfortunately it may not always be doable or practical though