Catanonia

From Bortle 8, excellent Yeah another wow from me and not just the image, but 29 hours.

Nice, I am trying this tonight with the RASA 8, if only the clouds would stay away

Update I got a 7amp 12vDC mains power supply and everything seems to be working fine, even with the mount plugged into the ASI Air Pro. Will update more when I have final results, but looking good (touch wood). I do now have an additional 5amp 12DC supply (the old one) in case I have to power the mount separately.

Having the exact same combo, I aspire to this If ONLY I had your skies Olly

In preparation for the Winter season, I am using the time to get to grips with my new RASA8 setup and ZWO 2600 MC Pro / ASI Air Pro This time Dithering and Drizzle to 2x zoom into the main player - Elephants Trunk. Also refining my SHO processing of the OSC 2600. About 2 hours of subs @ 5min 1x bin. Full sized image posted below as a TIFF. Trunk Large.tif

Nice scope. Yeah I had thought to power mount separately but wanted to reduce cables and it worked for a while until recently. Wondering if I overloaded the 5a brick and the 7a will solve t.

Anyone else hit the power limitations of an ASI Air Pro. I have the following 12v - 1 x 8 inch dew heater = 14w = 1.2a 12v - 1 x 1 inch dew heater = 2w = 0.2a 12v - NEQ6 Pro Mount = 25w = 2a max on slew 12v - ZWO 2600 MC Pro = 30w = 2.3a for cooler and dew heater USB 3 - ZWO 2600 MC Pro = 4.7w = 0.4a for camera (not sure if this counts as the 2600 has the 12v plugged in as recommended) USB 3 for Mount - unknown, but likely small USB 2 for ZWO EAF = 6w = 0.5a on max turns USB 2 for flash drive = unknown but will increase in watts when writing USB 2 for ZWO 120mm = 2w = 0.17a - plugged into 2600 USB2 port, again unknown if this will draw power from the 12v 2600 input. I have been running this all off a 12v 5a power brick and recently I have been having disconnects from USB items. Switching out dew heaters sorts the problem = looks like a power limitation. It was all working fine for about 2 weeks and recently it stopped working with camera drop outs and other random issues From what I can get from google the ASI Air Pro supports, but no idea how this all sums up in my combination 12v - 4x 12v @ 3a each USB - 6W max across 2x USB3 and 2xUSB2 (from PI4 Specs) I have on order a 12v 7a power brick, hoping this will help it out. I know the ASI Air Pro recommends 2a - 6a, hoping the 7a will be sufficient for when the mount slews with everything else maxed out. When the mount is tracking , it only takes 1/2 power 12.5w / 1a so a lot of saving there for 99% of the time. I don't want to run another other power cables as I am trying to keep the cables to the scope at a minimum and hence the ASI Air Pro Anyone else hit this problem and how did you solve it ?

If you are using the ASI AIR, try these 2 tricks for framing. Take a preview image and then do a long press somewhere on the the picture with your finger. ASIAIr will let you centre to where you long pressed. With practice you can centre where you like. MUCH easier than messing with cursor controls. Once you are framed and have a picture, you can view it anytime in the image management section and there is an option to goto that precise location by plate solving. VERY handy if you re-visit a target you have previously framed. Hope this helps

Excellent and glad it worked out.

Use dither on you guiding to move the image by a few pixels for each frame. This means then you can use Drizzle in PI to double or triple the size of the image using approximations. Using 2x or 3x bin will not increase your image size, it will reduce the image size and give you 2x2 pixels or 3x3 pixels for each pixel instead of one at 1xbin and therefore you will lose resolution, but gain signal.

Not sure, my 2600 MC Pro has a anti dew function, don't know about your camera.

With the RASA8, I gain speed for the loss of focal length. Does this mean small planetary nebula are out of reach for me. Only one way to find out and that is to have a play and see what happens. So again under Bortle 6 skies, light intermittent hazing high clouds and a full moon, I grabbed 10x 5 min 1xbin subs with the RASA8 and ZWO2600 MC Pro I am actually surprised how good it came out in less than idea conditions. More subs, darker and moonless / cloud less skies would certainly help, but it can do it. I could even use the dither data and drizzle to 2x size if I wanted to, but kept it at a 1 to 1 crop for this image. Just about make out the faint blue double shock ring.

In the winter, I am wanting to do a 12 panel mosaic of the Orion region with the RASA 8 and so I am using the summer / autumn months to test out the capabilities of the RASA8 / ZWO 2600MC Pro / ASI Air Pro combination. I am learning how quick this setup can capture images and the best workflow to use with the limited time available in my backyard. So tricks I have learnt with the ASI Air Pro Plane mosaics with https://telescopius.com/telescope-simulator and export the CSV. The CSV can be imported directly into the ASI Air Pro as a plan. On the ASI Air Pro, you can long press on an image to centre on a star and it will Goto on where you pressed. - A much simpler way than using the cursor keys to move the scope. Viewing an image on the ASI Air, you can press goto and it will plate solve and goto that location. Brilliant if you want to re-visit and shot the same image at a later date and it will be all framed the same. So how quick can a RASA produce a quick and dirty 2 panel mosaic. Well in 1 hour, I got this 2 panel mosaic 7x 4min x2 bin subs for each pane = approx 30mins per pane Bortle 6 skies Full Moon lEnhance 2 inch filter RASA 8 ZWO 2600 MC Pro NEQ6 Pro Mount I deliberately used 2x bin to speed up the learning process and there would be about 20% improvement on resolution if I used 1xbin (tested this the other night). And of course I could do more subs, on a moonless night, but wow !!!! This RASA is a beast when combined with the 2600MC

Condensation on your sensor. Happened to me this morning after a pretty dew wet night and took some flats and shat myself when I had a big black spot in the centre of a flat. I switched off cooling, switched it on again and it cleared itself up

Still getting to grips with the RASA 8 and ZWO 2600MC Pro combination. The other night, for once, was clear but with a big bright moon in the sky which proved challenging. A nice big FOV with this combo, allow me to crop / drizzle the image to aid processing. Still struggling to get the colour balance right, but I think a definite improvement over my 1st attempt. Here is 3 hours of IC1396

Excellent 1st light and nice image. I too decided on the 2600mc due to time on target. I live in Cheshire and so get all the clouds coming from Ireland pushing up the hills of Manchester / Derbyshire and so time on target is very limited I use the lEnhance filter to great affect, give that a try if you have not already.

Got me thinking on a new imaging method (still thinking it through in my head) 1. Gather data at x2 bin 2. Gather the stars at x1 bin (take some separate subs for the stars 3. Process the x2 bin frames with drizzle to get a 2x size, the same size as x1 bin 4. Remove stars with starnet and replace with the ones from the x1 bin. I my head it works, but I bet there would be terrible ringing around the stars and it would look fake.

Would gain affect this, even on a few second exposure ?

The best I could get with playing with Lanczos settings. Same Histogram Stretch on both Debayered images Looks quite definitive, 2xbin (firmware) is not the way to go on the ZWO2600 is you want resolution on the RASA 8 (not unless you are a wizz with processing)

Same 2 images debayered in PI using defaults that I have always used. Certainly a topic for a new thread.

Thanks buddy. I have changed my ways for this session and all subs are 1x bin and I have dropped my exposure down to 2min guided to see what results I get. Yes I will be loosing a lot from 2xbin (firmware) and 4mins, but I will be getting 2x as many frames, albeit only 1/4 of the effective exposure. Shall see how it progresses. What I love about this hobby, always learning and playing

Here you go. x1 bin on left, x2 bin on right. Screen grab from PI before debayer, both about 5 seconds. I repeated the test about 5 times and got the same results each time. Obviously differing zoom levels in PI to match scale

Yes noticeable difference between x1 and x2 bin on a 10 second shot. One the x2 bin the stars were merging and x1 bin they were separated. Was quite a noticeable difference. Will do a quick image test and post, but will be screen grabs from ASI Pro

Ok did some tests on IC1396 just now whilst setting up With the RASA 8 and ZWO 2600MC Pro, at 1x bin, I could separate the 2 stars near the tip of the trunk. at 2xbin, the stars were merging together (same exposure length) So that determines it for me on at least tonight's seeing, bin 1 is they way to go and probably keep it there in processing.

Like shooting a dslr in raw is recommended. You then have the raw data to do with what you like in processing which you otherwise would not have with a JPG (not binning, but the best example I can think of) That said, me binning 2x in my set = roughly what I would get with software binning, albeit smaller files and less exposure lengths needed for the same result (yes I don't have the raw 1x bin data and the ability to finer process it) It all then comes down to exposure lengths, something I need to look more into with my data / seeing Thanks