First Image using APT

[PembrokeSteve]

Hi,

Finally got my courage up to try out APT on Thursday evening 19th July 2018.  Prior to this I have been on my hands and knees, mostly on wet grass taking my shots using my hand held Canon RS60 type shutter release. Anyway APT worked fantastic! While my exposures were being taken, I was even cheekily nipping back into the house to take sips from my cup of tea!  No more strains in my neck, back ache, shaky legs etc.  I did my star alignment ( for some reason I find  the 1 star alignment works better than a two star alignment) with my NEQ6, and then for the very FIRST time, used my Bahtinov Mask to actually get as much precise focus as possible. To do this I used the "zoom function" on APT to get a close-up view, to help me set my focus.  It worked perfect.
I had not been able to do this previously, before I was just looking through my Canon 450D camera eyepiece and hoping that best possible focus had been achieved. (mostly I failed on this, and wasted many evenings). Hopefully those days have gone!
APT seems easy to use, and next time, I am now thinking about "Setting A Plan" in which I believe one can pre-set how many exposures you want to take for a given object. However by doing this, could it have a negative effect on heating up my camera sensor?
Will I be able to set (ie) a 30 second pause between exposures, so to prevent the camera sensor warming up too much?
I Cannot  wait to get out again with APT. Using APT, it was so good to be able to view what my last image taken "actually looked like", ( just using the camera screen was a nightmare ), before, I was on my hands and knees on wet grass, struggling to see if the image I had captured was any good. Hopefully APT will now help me improve my Astro Imaging. 

Below photo - M57 The Ring Nebula. Vixen VC200L and Canon 450D, via APT.  Exposure: 1600ASA.   x19 1 minute subs and x1 Dark.  Put through DSS and then GIMP. 

 

[Atreta]

3 hours ago, PembrokeSteve said:

Will I be able to set (ie) a 30 second pause between exposures, so to prevent the camera sensor warming up too much?

Hi,   congrats on your first image. yes you can do what you want, you set up an imaging plan with how many pictures you want to take, the iso, and set the pause between exposures, its very easy.  Apt has a lot of cool features, you'll get the hang of it as you use. 

[MarsG76]

Great read, and I'm happy for your positive experience... I've been using APT for ages and I know what you're experiencing.. awesome bit of software, which has come a long way from version 1.

 

[bottletopburly]

Well done , use the bahtinov aid in tools in apt tells you exactly how near focus you are , you have opened a can of worms now , get the platesolving set up very very accurate, have you thought of powering camera from an external battery I find this helps keep camera cooler as no heat off batteries .

Apt forum is worth a browse and the author of Apt is on sgl as @Yoddha