well at last up and running!!! apart from asi1600mm settings

[Wirral man]

im finally up and running with no issues so happy...but im trying different settings on the asi1600mm at the moment im running 100gain 50offset and 45sec exposure the images look nice and dark but cant see m51 but when i use auto stretch in apt histogram i can see it along with a redish noisy screen is that normal? i guess its going to be lots of testing to find the right balance 

[wimvb]

I believe that the new drivers use a fixed offset value, so you don't have to experiment with that. Otherwise, just leave it at 50 for the time being. Change gain to 139, which is called unity gain. This means that each detected photon will raise the pixel value by 1.

Experiment with exposures ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes, to figure out what works best for your conditions (lp and such). Is the camera cooled? If so, set temperature to a fixed value: -15 or -20 C. The camera can cool to 40 C below ambient, but in practice don't go lower than 35 C below ambient.

After gain 139, repeat for gain 300 (high gain). Exposure times will be much shorter now.

All the images you take may look dark, untill you start to image light pollution. You will need to stretch them in order to reveal dso's.

Good luck

[Merlin66]

I'm about to receive an ASI 1600MM (primarily for solar imaging/ spectroheliograph) and intend to use FireCapture.....it has worked very well for me with other ZWO camera - ASI 174 and ASI 183.

 

[alacant]

7 hours ago, Wirral man said:

stretch in apt histogram

Hi. Don't forget to try APT's live stack. It shows on my DSLR at 4 frames and is less fiddly than point and stretch. Almost real time too. HTH.

[mikey2000]

I have the 1600mm Pro Cool version.   The drivers I got from ZWO don't let me change the gain (I believe it's fixed inside at 50 apparently) with 139 gain, I take 60s L R G or B subs and 300s for Ha.  I set the cooler to -20C as that seems attainable on all but the warmest nights.  It seems to give acceptable data, not to faint, not to blown-out under my class 5 Bortle skies (my clearoutsied app tells me that's my sky quality)

 

At first, I got tied up in knots worrying about exposure durations, gains, sky quality, median values etc.  In the end, 60s and 300s seem to work quite nicely.  (for 300s, dark frames are absolutely necessary to remove the glow from the ede)

 

Admittedly, in APT, the autostretch of a just-taken sub looks pretty grim but then they look OK in PixInsight and with 60s, you get lots of subs for better pixel rejection.

 

Maybe under less LP, I could go for longer exposures.....  And I'll have to try the APT live stack  - I've not tried that.  (But I think it is only for Canon EOS cameras.)

[Wirral man]

9 hours ago, mikey2000 said:

I have the 1600mm Pro Cool version.   The drivers I got from ZWO don't let me change the gain (I believe it's fixed inside at 50 apparently) with 139 gain, I take 60s L R G or B subs and 300s for Ha.  I set the cooler to -20C as that seems attainable on all but the warmest nights.  It seems to give acceptable data, not to faint, not to blown-out under my class 5 Bortle skies (my clearoutsied app tells me that's my sky quality)

 

At first, I got tied up in knots worrying about exposure durations, gains, sky quality, median values etc.  In the end, 60s and 300s seem to work quite nicely.  (for 300s, dark frames are absolutely necessary to remove the glow from the ede)

 

Admittedly, in APT, the autostretch of a just-taken sub looks pretty grim but then they look OK in PixInsight and with 60s, you get lots of subs for better pixel rejection.

 

Maybe under less LP, I could go for longer exposures.....  And I'll have to try the APT live stack  - I've not tried that.  (But I think it is only for Canon EOS cameras.)

thanks for that info not sure on the zwo drivers as many report the same as you that you cant adjust the values!! yet on my settings driver i can it has several presets and a manual settings choice ..