Xplode

Here's an early luminance image taken over a few evenings, it's just been stretched. It includes some images that i don't have flats for, they will be removed for the final stack when i'm done gathering data. This is 70x120s, i'm up to around 200x120s and i'm hoping to get 500x120s

It's definitely AR coated, but i still see some reflections on bright stars that i'm not sure where is coming from. It's nowhere near as bad as ASI1600/QHY163.,

Interesting project! Guidecameras usually don't have IR filters so if anything that's the camera that will get any effect from the IR light.

Happy to be of help!

Not sure why you're looking on the Ascom website, it has a very little percentage of all Ascom drivers. If you searched on Google you would have already found that there is an Ascom driver for Sony cameras https://github.com/Axlns/ascom.sony.camera

It's amazing that with your supposed education and skill doesn't know that numbers aren't everything, you're also trying to make unimportant things seem like they are making the AVX better than the HEQ5 while you're completely disregarding the fact that people that have tried both mounts says the HEQ5 is performing better. Seeing that the OP has a 200PDS i would recommend the HEQ5, it will handle that scope better than the AVX even if the tripod isn't as sturdy, it's plenty sturdy for the 200PDS.

What a load of rubbish. Most people don't slew around the sky all night so 3.4 vs 4° per sec will save a person seconds to max a few minutes during the night. USB vs direct serial connection doesn't matter...why? Because the AVX just has an integrated serial adapter so it will be exact the same speed of communication as the HEQ5...which is more than enough for the communication a mount needs. You don't even seem to know the difference between EQ5 and HEQ5, they are different mounts with a different mount head, HEQ5 has only been sold with stepper motors, EQ5 has been sold without motors, with 1/2 servo motors and with stepper motors. It's pretty funny that you say the HEQ5 is monkey rigged and doesn't pass QE control while the AVX is so much better...fun fact for you, they are made by the same company and goes through the same quality control.

Looks like a hair on the sensor

Since the moon is disturbing deep sky AP the moon itself is a target... During testing i found that i can get a "lot" more than the avertised FPS for full resolution, i did actually get something between 3 and 3.5fps which isn't too shabby thinking that each frame is 120 MB. To not fill the harddrive too fast and get higher fps i did choose to use ROI to fit the moon. This is the best 15% of 2075 frames taken through a TOA150 with 67FL flattener. Conditions where varying from average to what i would say is actually very good (for Norway). Make sure to click on the image and check out the full version, it can even take zoom pretty well without getting blurry.

First light...120s of the Pleiades, not centered or anything, but it shows of the still large FOV at 1100mm. It has been downsized to 25%. We also tried a 600s exposure and stars are still perfectly round, at 0.7" i would not have expected it, but i guess it's because of the stiffness of the setup. Flattener to sensor distansce seem to have been pretty spot on by guessing the adapter length, i can see there is a little tilt thou, stars in the bottom corners are a little elongated. Camera mounted on the TOA150. A 3d printed M68 male-male adapter was used during testing so it won't be run unattended, a metal adapter arrives tomorrow together with a Baader 3.5nm Ha, this will be mounted at the same time as the 7nm Ha filter so a comparison can be made.

First light will be later today

Camera and filter wheel arrived today. Everything mounted including the required extensions and a 3d printed M68 cover. Since the OAG might not be used for guiding i'm gonna try to 3D print a M42x0.75 cover for it in black PETG just because it will look better.

Got a ZWO 2" Duo band filter today with some other stuff, the filter was free, the rest wasn't

The pattern probably comes from you taking a screenshot of VNC, it's most likely a smooth gradient without the steps if you look at it locally. If it works as a flat is something that can only be said for sure by actually calibrating an image with the flat. It does look weird as a flat thou, but since you haven't said anything about your gear i don't have any info to guess how it should look

I've used both the 16200 and QHY163m which has the same size pixels as the ASI6200 on a TOA150@1100mm and i can definitely see more details in the QHY163m image. At 0.71"/px it will definitely be oversampled most of the time, but that doesn't mean it can't result in a higher resolution image. I definitely see larger variations in FWHM, but that's just they way it will be when oversampled and seeing varies.

I will post comparison images and probably raw data for people to look at too when it's up and running and i get some photons from the M81 area to hit the sensor. ASI6200 supports custom ROI. I want to do shorter exposures to avoid guiding, longer exposures shouldn't be a problem unguided either, but it's better to stay on the safe side

The plan is to take 120s (like i've done with the QHY163m at 1100mm FL and unguided to avoid chasing the seeing) so dealing with so many of the large files will definitely be interesting, thankfully i got a pretty powerfull computer with a 16 core AMD Ryzen 3950x and 64gb of ram, but i might still have problems with PI using up all the RAM with the big files when i run many threads, i had problems with 32gb ram and 32 threads of 32mb files. I did actually find a supplier with 1 filter wheel in stock that i ordered from and it should be here early next week, i also found a UK supplier with 2 filter wheels in stock. Yeah 3nm filters are expensive, i do actually co-own a setup with 3x 50.8mm 3nm Chroma filters, thankfully there's 3 of us sharing the cost. Comparing the cost between 3nm Chroma and Astrodon is interesting nowadays, Astrodon was like 40-50% more expensive last i checked. My friend has a 7nm Baader filter already, but it might be replaced with a Baader 3.5nm Ha filter. For a start he will loan the Baader SII and OIII filters we replaced with Chroma filters to see if works ok with his setup, they seem to create reflections/halos with some setups, but not others.

Images are 120MB

I ordered a camera for my friends observatory the other day, out with the old Moravian G3-16200 mono CCD and in with the ZWO ASI6200 mono CMOS! Camera should arrive next week, unfortunately there's no filter wheels available so it will be used for luminance for a while, FW might not be shipping from ZWO to suppliers till April from i got when i asked. The camera will be used on a Takahashi TOA150 with a 67-FL flattener and FSQ130ED with and without 645 0.7x focal reducer. It will be interesting to see the difference between this and the already sold G3-16200 and the QHY163m he has on loan from me currently. I will post some images when the cameras arrives and hope i can get some comparison shots of M81-M82 that i have imaged with the TOA150 with both the QHY163m and G3-16200 earlier.

It looks like it was clipped and then "brought back from the edge" I've seen people use it as "noise removal", but it can be unintenional in cases too with automatic processes. My own image to show how this works. Here it's easy to see how this affects the histogram and the background, in my opinion it looks "fake" and lifeless Color calibration and black level adjustment in astrophotography is pretty hard and for manual adjusting it depends a lot on the gear too, quality of the screen and how well it's calibrated, the light level in the room where the work is done. For automatic adjustments it's easier, but can often be problematic too, if calibrating on stars the saturation will matter. The image in this post seems to suffer from some kind of color separation that i bet would affect an automatic color calibration process(artifact of superpixel debayering?)

Here's a narrowband image from SkyEyE Observatory in Spain that we did over 2-3 months. Ola Skarpen did most of the editing while i sharpened and did noise removal. Gear: AG Optical Convergent FA14 14.5" reflector (1855mm/f5) 10 Micron GM2000 Optec Gemini focusing rotator Moravian G3-16200 (pixel scale 0.67") ZWO ASI174MM Mini (OAG) Exposures Chroma Ha 3nm 50mm: 152x600" Chroma OIII 3nm 50mm: 77x600" Baader SII 8nm 50mm: 26x600" Total time 42,5 hours Image is cropped it's not the 100% FOV Thanks for any and all comments

You really need 10+ images per filter per panel and at least 3 dithers to remove noise succesfully. It would be interesting to take a look at your uncalibrated images if possible? Maybe you could share 1-2 panels with calibration images?

You need evenly illuminated images and all good SNR per panel, without both those you won't be able to create a good quality mosaic. Your images seems pretty low SNR...there's also some weird patterns? Do yhou dither?

I don't understand why you want com ports? In my opinion it's better to use good quality usb/serial adapters. Less and less gear use com/serial too, ethernet seems to be getting more use and of course most gear already use USB or USB with a inbuild serial adapter.

They have 6x USB3, they just aren't blue like many USB3 ports. Easy easy to see from the SS (superspeed) logo