powerlord

Shot last night. asi533, c925+f6.3f 600sec subs. 20 for m101, 10 for m33.

there is a comparison on the site: https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/asiair/asiair-pro-what-changes-and-improvement-have-been-made.html the big ones are usb3.0, power management and video so unless you need those, stick with the 1. assuming it still gets upgrades ? I suppose that's the other thing

I see astrobackyard just posted a video about the plus, and I reckon he's going to be impressed with it. And Cuiv of 'that lazy geek' on youtube was raving about last week, which was nice to see. It kinda feels good when you feel you've been telling folk about how good something is, but it's sort of ignored by the more experienced as somehow 'just for beginners'.. then they try it and are kinda shocked by how good it is. For example Nina was making a big thing of it's plugin support and new AP process. I tried it, and it look AGES. plate solving was abysmal. But if all you know is nina, and you had an even worse AP process before, it can seem great if you don't try something else like Cuiv did. As always - one size does not fit all, etc. But I think the positive press the Plus is recieving from these channels and reviews is going to drive a lot more folk down the asiair route - which is good for us 'mature users'* - bigger base, more features, better support. I'd urge those that have not tried it, or experience it yet, to have a go if you get a chance at a star party, etc. stu *4 months now! a relative geriatric.

Reprocessed. I still did it all in affinity. Tried startools, but preferred what I got out of infinity. Basically trying to pull that oiii out in the front and show the oiii swirls while still keeping the Ha. I reckon it's turned out ok ?

your wish is my command.. though I'm not sure I've done justice to the blend here to be honest - bit of a quick hack in affinity. I stuck in some RGB stars too. But probably need to try this again maybe in startools.

Well.. ok 2 x 1 minute Ha, oiii. And 1x5 second oiii for the core. this morning, I noticed Orion had appeared to the right of the trees that border my garden. I had time to shoot off these single 1 minute subs before the light whited out my guide camera. So - first M42 of the season ? stu

yeh I've thought of getting one of those. At present I've shot with my asi533 and the zwo canon adapter. you can screw the 2" into that - it's a pity tricky, but it does screw into the inside of the adapter. that worked fine for me.

you could always stick one on the front of the lens - that's what I do with I'm using a DSLR (2" l-extreme on the front)

10 x 300 secs. asi1600, c925+f6.3 reducer.

105mm. the celestron 42 on back of reducer (50), plus the 3 tubes that come with the asi1600 that add up to 55.

very nice. though as with all these DSOs, you do wonder about naming. I can't imagine the namer had ever seen a cat ! 🤪

115 mins oiii 115 mins sii 75 mins ha C925 and 6.3f, asi1600.

thanks - yes I would have done same - but it was done remotely from my bed at 3am when I'd finished shooting some DSOs - so I didn't fancy getting up. But next time for sure.

ASIAIR Pro used to take fits, then pipp, autostk, registax. I tried video on my mac, but for some reason it just wasn't getting me a decent frame rate last night fire firecapture - it's first time I've tried it with the asi1600. asi1600, f6.3 reducer and C925 - which altogether fits the moon like a glove. Shot with IR pass filter I did also take mosaic video avis of moon with asiair - 1080p sections x 6. And stacking one set, etc shows that is slightly better in the end that one big shot, which makes sense in terms of lucky imaging, but the difference is not massive, and the effort of trying to do all 6 panels, aligning them, etc just didn't seem worth it. So here's the 16mp:

that's the one I decided to spend last night on! - shot 60 subs at 300secs each in NB. integrating now! stu

The Challenge: One Full Moon. One Night. Five Fours of "darkness. Image Five DSOs So.. suddenly 5 solid hours of darkness as winter rolls in. And I'm not going to get a full moon spoil it. As long as you are shooting NB, I've found it makes little difference that the moon is out providing your not shooting a target right next to it. So I set myself this sort of mental goal - setup a plan in ASIAIR to try and image 5 DSOs. And hour each. My plan was: NGC7023 Iris 3x600 H, 3x600 O NGC7635 Bubble 3x600 H, 3x600 O IC1396 Trunk 3x600 H, 3x600 O M81 Bodes 3x300 R, 3x300 G, 3x300 B, 3x300 H, 3x180L NGC896 Heart 3x600 H, 3x600 O I checked my targets were all visible all night. but, in hindsight I should have had M81 first in the plan...by the time it came around the mooon dominated the sky. So.. things started well - I spend a while getting the balance as right as possible on the kit: EQ6R-pro, C935 + 6.3 reducer, asi1600 (cooled to -20), 8 position filter wheel fully loaded, EAF, 50mm guider with asi120mc and asiair pro. I set up at 8pm, for an 8.30/9 start. PAed down to about 0.2' and kicked it all off, with autofocus on filter changes and MFs set to auto Once on Iris, I watched the autofocus work nicely and start shooting. I was getting the best guiding I'd seen (which continued all night) of about 0.3" rms and the images started to come in. I had manually set some coordinates for the Trunk, so wanted to check they were right. When it moved to that target there were off a bit, so in to Safari (connected to scope), and an adjustment to position, back to asiair, and create new favourite with those coords, and then update my plan to have that target for trunk, and continue plan. I then set the alarm for 03.15 so I could give it a check out then (when plan should have just finished) At 3.15 - a check showed focus lost 😞 Seemed to have been when the H's of M81 were being done. I had a bit of a fart about from my bed trying to see what the issue had been, before eventually getting up and looking out the window to see a night sky glowing under the full moon, with the odd cloud..er.. that won't help. Obviously one illuminated cloud had screwed the auto focus routine. I have found previously that if an autofocus fails, that's it. I have requested to ZWO that this should be fixed - if it fails it should return to the previous point surely... Anyway it was then I realised my M81 images were not great anyway, because of course they are all wideband and I'd left taking them until the ruddy moon lit up the sky. duh!! Should have taken them at the start of the night!! So.. I moved to Heart, did an autofocus there on H, and then unpaused the plan. This morning, a check showed Heart H and O's all good. Flats taken, and kick off of 10x300 darks as I didn't have 300s in my library. So - a pretty production night. And even after 10 months in this hobby I'm still amazed I can do all this from my back garden (bortle 4/5) These will no doubt be built on over time, but I wanted to see what was 'the art of the possible' in one night. in 5 hours, under a full moon. And tbh - I'm more than happy with the results. Well, maybe not so much Iris and Bodes... With the forecast for more of the same tonight, I think I'll pick one and do it all night. However it was an interesting experiment to see what could be achieved in a single night stu

just an educational platform game - just sold to schools, local libraries.

clouds 😞

I just replace the grub screws with knurled bolts. that way, I can simply slacken then manually focus (via the other side of the focus axis which still has the knob) then tighen again. It's especially useful if you are changing cameras, barlows etc and you've no idea where focus is - to quickly manualy whirl back and forth and get it approximately right, then tighten the bolt for fine adjustment. simples ?

anyone please ? I've an hour or two before setup and still not sure what I should be doing ? stu

the stellarmate mobile app is very basic. yes - as you say, you are making a decision to work within the walled garden. either you are ok with that or not. In that regard it's very similar to apple ? As with apple, you get benefits like reliability and easy of use because of the limited support required. As with apple, you get the frustration of incompatibility with non apple gear. Macos/ios is berkley unix underneath. so what ? If you've ever used Berkely unix you'll know that it is about as similar to macos as a tree and a squirrel. I'm definately not saying asiair is a panacea. I am saying, they are different beasts. depending on what is important to you, one may be head and shoulder above the other. The op asked about asiair so I answered. It's good to go in eyes open for sure. imho, as a geek who published his first spectrum game aged 12, and as I very old geek who has spent the intermediate time writing, designing and architecting software, what zwo have achieved is very very good imho. stellarmate is 'just' some existing software put together (i know it's support, tesitng, etc and the minimum mobile app, but still..) . asiair is a solution to a problem. I have to respect them for that. And I can't fault them for making it a walled garden. Why on earth wouldn't they do that. Astroberry as open source is of course welcome to do the same thing, but so far it's devs have not. Maybe that will change ? Or maybe it won't. I do hope so, competition breeds innovation and we could do with some of that in astronomy where 'computer controlled' is still used in marketing like some sort of futuristic mantra in the 1980w, and gps addons are still sold for mounts as if they are flying cars. If nothing else. asiair might shake up the utter stagnation in the application of technology to astrophotography ?

there are of course other choices. stellarmate, astroberry, nina, kstars, etc. But I would generalise and say that all of those are comparible -they have a broad range of features in common, and most importantly a user interface which is reasonably common. asiair does not. asiair is a device build for simplicity with a mobile ONLY interface. If that is your prime requirement there ARE no other choices. If you prefer or are happy to use a full PC type interface, then yes, stellarmate and others are an option of course. Cuiv's latest youtube video is quite spot on at the difference. He is a long term nina user, which is not a million miles away from what stellarmate offers:

'fraid so. Other than dslrs and mounts it's a zwo only device. Luckily their stuff is good

Reviewed in guardian today. Yeh, he was human like the rest of us for sure. Parallels to Newton I think? Amazing thinker, still use his laws.. But also believed in alchemy, the occult and Bible code.

No non dslr cameras other than zwo ones are supported. Stu