fwm891

14 minutes ago, iwols said:

great for 1 night what scope did you use please

It's an Altair Wave Series 115EDT-APO. It's listed with the other kit and images above.

I've recently bought an ASI294MC Pro camera from FLO and really enjoying the results.

Came with extension tubes, adapters and cables so it was easy to switch from the DSLR to the 294MC straight off. I've tried mounting the camera to three different scopes so far: W.O. ZS73 APO with 1x flattener, an Altair 115EDT-Apo and a Celestron Edge HD 8. Initially I just put the camera on these scopes in daylight to establish a focus position and note the focus tube scale readings to make it easier at night. having read a number of reviews and watched a few Y-tube videos I was aware that I could expect results with shorter sub lengths and use more of them. What I wasn't expecting was how much shorter the subs could be. With my CCD I typically used subs in the 5 - 10 min range with 15-20 mins not unknown. The ASI294MC Pro I'm down to 120s to 300s typically. 

The light backgrounds of the summer skies record very easily so I've found. Here I think I will need to reduce subs to 1 min and capture more of them to increase the ratio between the subject and background, using dither between frames to reduce noise.

I've added a couple of images from this camera on my Altair 115 EDT-APO refractor and iOptron CEM60 mount. Images are guided with a TS 80mm guide scope and ASI120MM camera.

This is just a short review of my dip into OSC cooled camera imaging. I've a lot to learn about this camera but just using basic settings to start with has for me yielded so surprising results:

Mammoth session for me last night packing on at 04:30 with M33. I tried a few subs on M45 but the background was just too bright.

Subs on these images were 120s, 240s and 360s. Gain 122 and offset 15. Scope: AA 115EDT-APO with 80mm TS guidescope and ASI120MM guide camera. (Number of subs per image below). Cooler set to -20° C but hovered around -17-18°C until about 02:00 when it reached the set temp.

Processed in PI: Debayer, Cosmetic Corr, Align, Integrate, DBE, Backgound neutralise, saturation, curves transform, SCNR (-green) and Histogram transform - saved as 16 bit tiff's then resized in PS - full frames no crop.

M20: 6x 120s, 4x 240s, 4x 360s

NGC6960: 3x 120s, 5x 240s 5x 360s

NGC7635: 3x 240s

NGC7023: 5x 120s, 5x 240s 6x 360s

M33:  6x 120s, 3x 360s

Sky background remained quite blue throughout and was difficult to control. I also made do with dark masters of different lengths to the subs. Quite evident in some images.

Hope you like

I'm still playing tonight. M20 until it hid behind a neighbours roof, Moved up to M16 till it did the same - now on NGC6960 and maybe later M52...

I started with DSLR's (and still have them), one a standard Nikon 800E the other a modified, full spectrum mono D5100. I have a cooled mono SXTrius 825 which I use in conjunction with a filterwheel with LRGBHa filters. I have however just bought a ZWO ASI294MC Pro Cooled CMOS camera.

Before moving house my kit was observatory based and when skies cleared it was easy to just start imaging. After the move I had to set-up each time I wanted to image and shooting filtered images proved to be frustrating because I never seemed able to complete a sequence of filters on a given night. Now I have a new observatory perhaps I'll go back to shooting filtered mono but the new ASI294MC Pro is far more of a camera than I first thought possible with an OSC. I still feel that some objects are more suited to mono others to OSC where colours are more subtle and have a more natural look.

Starting out now I'd go with a CMOS OSC and add mono later.

Change of scopes last night as low cloud to the south robbed me of any chance to add further sub data to the M20/M8 image. So put the ASI294MC Pro on the AA 115EDT-APO and took a look at M27. 25x 120s subs. Processing in PI. Added a cosmetic correction step this time after the debayer step.

1 minute ago, sloz1664 said:

Great images Francis, I can't believe the amount of detail you have collected from such short exposures. Time to have a look in the piggy bank, me thinks

Steve

Thanks Steve - I've reprocessed these. 02:30 was not the hour to do it in the first place.

A little reprocessing of the above at a more reasonable time in the morning. Images replaced

Two more captures tonight:

M8 + M20 25 x 120s  Gain 122 Offset 15 Processed in PI aligned, stacked, saturation and levels

NGC7000 8 x 120s (as above settings/process)

I tried applying bias and darks but the images just washed out of colour and left with magenta stars.

11 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

yeah, the shorter subs work well with this super sensitive chip. i think this is where a lot of the early compaints for this camera came from, people pushing the sub length too far.

what driver are you using? i thought the offset was locked in the latest driver. 

Anthony - I have two drivers loaded:

ZWO_ASI_Camera_ASCOM

ZWO_ASI_Camera_Driver

I'm capturing through SGPro and SGP allows me to enter both gain and offset values either from camera settings (red arrows) or (blue arrow) via event settings.

Screen shot from the ZWO ASI294MC Pro web page - support/software... Red arrows indicate which software/drivers I have loaded.

The ZWO ASI120MM cameras are very good. Use mine for both piggy back guiding and with an OAG.

OK. I've been letting the camera run this afternoon (not gathering photons) but generating master darks. I've processed the darks in PI via the usual route for darks and bias integration but the results rather floored me - I was not expecting the outcome. A quick G**le showed me that this is 'normal' 🙏

Posted below are 2 min, 3 min and 5 min dark masters. Plus a bias master. All captured using SG Pro. Gain 122 Offset 15. Camera temp -15°C.

1 hour ago, smr said:

was it a light pollution filter?

NO. Standard UV / IR cut filter to reduce star bloat.

Thanks - I'm not going to try to calibrate these images (I have now cleaned the filter!) but I will revisit the objects and try putting together longer runs of 2 - 3 min . I'm currently gathering dark and bias frames with the camera at -20°C below ambient in preparation.

25 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Nice Francis, lots of potential here.

Thanks - What I've found with this is that shorter exposures really seem to work. M27 image with only 15x 30s subs shows a lot more detail than I ever expected. The M16 image is mainly 2 min subs...

Definitely need to pursue this further. Couple with dither between frames and that seems an easy way of reducing background noise.

Great night for first light with my new ASI294MC Pro: Full moon, high cloud, bright sky... Oh yeah Dust bunnies!

Started with M27, sky quite bright and shoot 15 x 30s subs. Gain set to 122 and off-set to 15 (no idea about the offset setting. Took the gain from the plots on ZWO's 294 details page and set fractionally higher.

Then moved to M16. Subs: 5x 120s 2x 300s. Gain / offset as before

Finally NGC6888. Subs: 3x 180s other settings the same.

M27 and NGC6888 were captured via SG Pro with M16 captured with Sharpcap. All as fit files.

Processing via PI typically: Debayer, Star align, Integrate, DBE, Saturation, Curves transformation, SCNR and Histogram Transformation - Save Tif and jpg.

No calibration frames used.

Filter: I added a Baader UV/IR cut filter immediately before the sensor

Scope: Altair Astro Wave Series 115 EDT-APO

Mount CEM60

Guided with PHD2 and ASI120mm on TS 80mm guidescope.

Waiting now for darker skies but really quite pleased with last nights trial.

As long as you take the camera to a few degrees above 0°C the camera it's self will then slowly warm to ambient temp. I set mine at +5°C and allow the camera to continue warming to ambient in it's own time.

Well speedy dispatch of my ASI294MC Pro camera. Arrived today and it works - Great. Your attempt however to nullify cloud cover by not putting a label on the box didn't work... 🤔 Perhaps I should have bought the cloud gun too!

Great start James 👍

Quote

9 minutes ago, Star101 said:

Thanks for this. I was trying to test Sarnet myself but then thought, surely someone has already done the test

Saved me a lot of time.

From your results, it looks to me that STRIDE affects the background as well as the stars. The higher the number the smoother the background. Unless that's just my laptop screen 

 

For me the stride 64 seemed best on this image. They're quite small crops so the effects are probably exaggerated to some extent. Not thried it but I think you can enter your own stride settings.

14 hours ago, alan potts said:

Must track that one down , don't seem to have IC numbers on my C du C program. Very nice capture you have taken.

Alan

Alan - This might help?

Just purchased a 294MC from FLO, I already have lots of 12VDC power supplies so no need for another - all the spacers and extn rings played a part as they're included.

45 minutes ago, Adam J said:

I would not expect any actual technical level information from Astro Backyard its more show and tell level advertising. 

My personal opinion is that all things considered the ASI071mc Pro is a better camera, no amp glow, no weird dark frame calibration issues leaving background artefacts.  

Certainly some of the more modern OSC cameras coming out like the QHY268c will blow it out of the water if you can afford it. 

Narrow band with OSC cameras can be achieved and some of the new duel narrow band filters are a step forward but most people with them are not processing the data correctly currently leaving the images red dominated, part of the issue also being the lower transmission of the Green / Blue micro filters to OIII. But if your going to spend that much money and want to do narrow band you are still much better off with a mono camera. 

I would say get a mono camera, in the long run you will be more happy with it. 

Adam 

 

 

 

Thanks Adam - understand what you're saying. I have an SX825 mono, filterwheel + LRGB Ha filters so I'm used to building up mono images in PI and other software.  I'm looking at the 294MC Pro for these shorter warm nights and to cut down on some of the hassle.

The more I read on the 294 MC the more talk is of ampglow - anyone any examples of this please. Seen examples on CN but I don't know if they've been cooked or not 😲

Does anyone on the forum use a ZWO ASI 294 MC Cooled camera? Can you tell me something about it's performance please.

I've trawled through Astro Backyard videos and a few others trying to get 'useful' information about the camera and it's operation.

Some of the imagery I've seen as a straight colour camera look great, some imagers using it with narrowband filters? Is this hype or a reality. I have reasonable bortle 4 skies so I'm wondering can I use this camera to it's potential.

I will be using it with an Altair 115EDT-APO, Celestron Edge HD8 and a WO ZS73 APO which means sampling will be fine with the 115, need to bin with the EdgeHD and a bit oversampled with the ZS73

Thanks