Scooot

Yes. I don’t think the problem was with the ASIair. After the flip M35 was a bit lower in the frame so I was cutting off part of the Jellyfish. My mount was set up on my stony path in the garden, EQ35 and it’s difficult to get my head over the bubble to check how level it is. My Polar alignment was to about 0.7” and guiding was around 1” but I noticed the target had drifted a little in the subs leading up to the flip. I’d been using a 10 pixel dither so maybe that was part of the problem or maybe my mount wasn’t quite level? I’m not experienced enough to know. It wasn’t very much but enough to be annoying. If my target was in the centre of the image it wouldn’t have been a problem, but because both were near the edge of the frame it was a bit more critical. The plate solve with Asiair is very good, the goto usually puts the target very near the centre. If I want it dead centre I only need to press goto again and it’ll be spot on.

Thanks Martin, pleased you like it. I managed to get the framing right in the end with the help of ASIairs plate solve and annotation, I took a screen shot on my iPad see below. I had to get up for the meridian flip because it didn’t realign correctly on the first night. Quite enjoyed trying to capture this though.

A bit of info. When I first bought the ASIair I was using my Canon 450d and it was great for polar aligning. However, I’d been used to focusing it through the camera viewfinder with a Bahtinov mask. I tried focusing it using my iPad screen and the Asiair, but it was quite time consuming because the canon images don’t download as quickly as a dedicated Astro camera, not even the mini, and I had to wait for the camera to settle too long after touching it to manually focus. In the end I preferred to focus it the old way looking through the camera screen. The Asiair was great for finding targets because it could platesolve your whereabouts very quickly. Once I’d seen what it can do it incentivised me to buying a dedicated Astro camera and electronic focuser so it was a slippery slope to spending more money.

I use the Asi120 mini guidecam with the Asi. This combination with the mini scope. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-cameras/zwo-mini-finder-guider-asi120mm-bundle.html

Found it. You have to “Add a preset” then choose other.

I’ve upgraded to the Sky Safari 7, only on my phone at the moment, beginning to wish I hadn’t at the moment. Anyone know where the telescope settings have gone to. Old App new app

This is about 5.75 hours of lights taken over the 3rd & 4th with the baby tak and Asi2600MC osc. It’s the first time I used PI’s separate debayering and stacking of the RGB channels which worked quite well. I’ve downsampled it by 3. NGC 2158 is just to right of M35, the bright star is 3.3 & 6.15 mag Propus although you can’t tell it’s a double in this image. PI counted about 49,000 stars I knew the Jellyfish is very faint so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I set out to take this. On the first night I missed it completely in the frame but I’m pleased I persevered with it.

When you stacked it did you drizzle. I used to get a failure which was due to me not changing the arc/sec per pixel after I’d drizzled. I’ve since realised I don’t need to drizzle.

I think I read that somewhere as well once, cloudynights site I think. Yes I use the auto on Asiair too, I use one my late Granny’s very old white cotton napkins, I have to fold it so I’m shooting through 4 layers. The brightest point of the histogram is always dead centre with a little spilling over to the right.

I must confess I’m very pleased with mine Lately, after polar aligning I’ve been going to the home position, and then doing it again for a few times, maybe 2 to four. So I spend a few extra minutes doing this. I find it’s usually changed slightly from the first. Each time I fine tune it and tighten it up, and I then get it very close without much movement, it makes my guiding more accurate.

This is a calibrated image (sub) I'm working on at the moment, just a screen stretch and resized to see it. It looks OK to me? The flat was 290ms but a bit longer than normal because I accidentally took the 3 minute exposures at gain 24 (the same as the guidescope) instead of my intended 100. and the master flat for info, I took 30.

My Sky flats are usually between 190 and 290 ms on a bright clear morning, maybe only 50 to 80ms on a cloudy morning. These seem to work very well.

I’ve just had a quick look on the Asi forum and was quite surprised I couldn’t find any mention of it.

I also only take darks, flats and dark flats with my 2600mc pro. The bias is in the Dark Flat that’s subtracted from the Flat. The bias is also in the main Dark that’s subtracted from the lights, hence no need for a separate bias. As they’re all perfectly matched by temperature this works perfectly. I take Sky flats the morning after and the flat darks at the same time, which is all quite easy.

Marvellous. It looks great.

It’s very easy with an Asiair, it accepts many dslr’s but not all. You can then use a smart phone (or iPad) as your screen.

Thanks

Lovely image. I quite like the blurred trees, it draws your attention to the background Sky.

Hi smashing image. Out of curiosity I uploaded it to astrometry.net, the Planetary Nebula is IC1295.

A lovely image. Stars look great to me. I can’t remember if you use Pixinsight & wondered if you’d used their new debayer and alignment of RGB data separately to better align the stars. I haven’t yet but it looks as if it would certainly better align the colour focus on osc cameras.

This is about 7 hours worth of 5 minute lights with my baby tak and ASI2600 MC Pro taken earlier this month with no moon. Many thanks to @vlaiv who helped me replace some over exposed pixels in the star cores with those from some 2 second subs. I've down sampled it by 3, hope it's still not too large The Garnet Star has always fascinated me because it's so large that if it was put in place of the Sun it would extend midway between the orbits of Jupiter & Saturn.

That’s a cracker. Looks great zooming in and surfing around it.

They’re great results. I love the wide field version

Ah, thinking about that it’s Pythagoras, it’s all clear now. Thanks for the hint.

Thank you Vlaiv, I’m sorry to say I don’t remember Vectors from maths but I’ll look it up.