Wave 100i 101 cont'd

9/27/2026. I have no clue why the finder shenanigans don't work any better than they do. Will keep at it. But as for more precise goto's, these tips apply:

• When using the iPhone based Polar Align Pro app, get the compass working well, rough align, then turn the compass off and use gyros alone to finish the alignment. Otherwise, the alignment drifts and is inconsistent despite the use of the nonmagnetic support bits I cobbled up.
  
  
• Use the PAE utility in the Synscan handset. Goto a target, manually center it, enter the PAE utility and press ENTER a few times. The exact sequence needs to be worked out, noted, and practiced, but when it works, it works beautifully.
  
  

The first lovely, clear, cool skies of autumn arrived with the full Moon, but that matters little enough while knocking the bugs out of how to use the 100i strainwave mount casually with a long lens and the R6. Under clear skies, short, 15-20 second exposures at ISO 800-1600 are ueful despite the Moonlight. Take from a few to a hundred subs, manufacture a flat, and go for it. Recent successes with M57 and M13 are encouraging. I'm practicing tonight on M56 and M27 (weather willing). Guided, narrow-band imaging can wait a little while as I work my back using this newer, lighter, kit.

But! Then I was bitten by a known firmware bug. After lining up on M27, the mount simply did not track. Per Google: "The issue you are experiencing with the Sky-Watcher Wave 100i -- dropping out of Right Ascension (RA) tracking immediately after a GoTo slew when using only the SynScan V5 Hand Controller -- is a known firmware bug. When the Wave 100i first launched, many of the SynScan V5 handsets shipped with older factory firmware (typically v06.00.07 [mine!]). That version is incompatible with Sky-Watcher’s new strain-wave mounts and forces the mount to disable tracking the moment a GoTo command finishes." Why did it work so well until right now? Anyway, until I can pull the kit together to flash the firmware, there's a workaround to try: after a goto, restart sidereal tracking manually (Menu / tracking / sidereal / enter).

First, I'll clean the contacts under the buttons and the cable connections. Then try it again. Then flash the firmware. Then find or make a softcase to keep dust, pollen, and dew away.

As for post, the workflow for OSC images in PixInsight is: Calibrate ➔ Debayer ➔ Align ➔ Stack. You can manufacture a pretty good flat from any single light provided there are no overwhelming luminaries in the frame. Use StarXterminator, then Multiscale Median Transform with only a high-order, 6th or 7th layer, enabled to produce a large-scale mean. Save the implicit flat it in the same format -- 32 bit floating point -- as the lights. If, after applying the flat, a color gradient remains (center to edge), be aggressive with background extraction (divide) to minimize it. M13, M57, M56 efforts have all been quite successful despite a full Moon (which likely contributed spurious "star clouds" around M56 -- worth another look without excess light). I nailed polar alignment and focus; used 20s exposures at ISO 1600 and got good results with anywhere from 40 to 116 subs, unguided.

9/29/2026. Cleaning completed. Not quite as through and through as shown in this video, but a good cut at what I think is not the problem. This link skips ahead to a very patient man doing the job on a handset identical to mine in near real-time:

https://youtu.be/KvINTfvS8TM?si=6nOWWMVpWTJapDaU&t=818

Hanging and reluctant slews are fixed, and the workaround for the "freeze after goto" firmware bug works. As long as I remember to restart tracking, all is well. I'm enjoying near-perfect gotos on both sides of the meridian (which I think is down to good polar alignment w/o magnetic compass complications more than to the cleaning). Last night, the ESC key was sticking slightly. So today I did it again, getting into more of the nooks and crannies around the key holes and sleeves.

135x20s, 400mm F2.8, R6, ISO 1600

9/30/2026. Another clear night. I started with M22, and suffered bad drifting. Look at this, and try not to compare it to the shot above:

No, you can't make it bigger. It's bad enoujgh as it is.

That's a full-rez crop of a 20-second subframe using the 400mm. The image scale is 3 seconds per pixel, the drift is 10-ish pixels, the implied polar alignment error is 6 or 7 degrees! WTF? I rebuilt the bracketry that holds an iPhone for digital polar alignment, and I unpacked a polar scope to use for plausibility checks.

Drift from polar alignment error: http://celestialwonders.com/tools/driftRateCalc.html

After a few additional frames (NGC 7023, NGC 7000) with at best indistinguished results (and at worst failure to find the target), I had a nice Falcon Heavy launch for a consolation prize. A Falcon Heavy carried NROL-97 to orbit shortly after Moonrise. Here, with a fast 105mm lens (make it big):

R6, 105mm F1.4 Sigma, 1/15s, ISO 25,600.

Now, back to debugging the portable rig.

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