Xio1996

Hi Ian, I started down the EAA road a couple of years ago. Once you start EAA there is no going back to those funny eyepiece things 😀 I use a CPC-800, that I have owned for years. I started off with the equipment I had and over the course of a few months ended up with a setup I could control from the warmth of my office. I purchased a colour camera (Altair Astro 294c Pro) as it appeared easier for a beginner, like me, to get to grips with. I was also amazed how much colour there is out there. A laptop outside runs CPWI to control the scope and the excellent and amazing SharpCap software for stacking. Microsoft Remote Desktop allows me to access the laptop. On the inside desktop I use Stellarium and Astroplanner all held together by ASCOM. I added one bit of equipment/software into the mix at a time. Using the posts and YouTube videos of many knowledgeable EAA'ers to guide me. It took a bit of time and there were problems to solve but those amazing near real-time images just kept me going. EAA re-energised my love of exploring the night sky. Please find a couple of images of the current scope and software setup I use. I wish you luck on your EAA adventure. Pete

Hi Pat, There is a thread on Cloudy Nights EAA forum with some images of distant objects and a link to a website 'Ultra Deep Sky'. Ultra Deep Sky - Electronically Assisted Astronomy (EAA) - Cloudy Nights It sounds like a fun project to see how deep you can go using EAA.

The Cloudy Nights February EAA challenge had the Twin Quasar in Ursa Major as one of the objects. It is a gravitationally lensed quasar. The distance is an amazing 8.7 billion light-years! The Quasar is highlighted in yellow in the image I took below. Twin Quasar - 11th February 2022 03:06 UTC Cropped SharpCap with Deep Sky Annotations. CPC-800, Altair Astro 294C, SharpCap, CPWI. 10 second x 60 frames, Gain 901, Darks, Flats, Background Subtraction (Blended Offset)

Great images Pat. I started EAA 2 years ago and was immediately amazed at the detail and colour you can see in objects. Once I saw what a camera could achieve over an eyepiece, I immediately purchased a Celestron focuser. Now I can sit in a warm room and observe all night long while my poor scope has to endure the cold 😃

Sorry, a bit late to this thread. I have a CPC-800 with an Altair Astro 294c camera for EAA. I have really enjoyed using this to explore the night sky and have seen so much more then I did visually through the same scope. I have only scratched the surface of what objects I can observe with this setup but this thread got me thinking about buying a mono camera. I can see that a mono camera would give me better detail from the amazing images in this thread. Would it also give more light gathering potential over the same exposure time, compared to a colour camera? My thought is to buy the mono version of the chip inside my 294c (ASI294MM ?). Would this allow me to see fainter objects for the same exposure times? I apologise if this all sounds very newbie.