Raw image from first attempt w ASI 294 Pro

[mantrain]

So after quite a bit of trial and error last night with my new camera ( i also got a new guiding camera the SSAG) I went to image for two hours, from just before 10Pm to midnight but, unfortunately I had no idea that my laptop turned off 1 hour into the session so I was waiting around reading in my car for 1 hour wow nothing was happening. But all in all it appears that I got decent raw data. I wished I knew what the eccentricity of the stars are though.  I will need to correct the issue of my laptop powering off prematurely. Perhaps all I need to do is click on something now prior to the hour.  But a couple of issues still remain:

1) I do not know what the debayer settings are.

2) Not sure how to do flat frames for this camera.

3) How did y Phd2 really do?  (does anyone know much about Phd2?)

How does the attached 2 min raw image look? Any tips or tricks w the 294?

 

THANK YOU!

 

[vlaiv]

1 - debayer settings are probably RGGB, but camera manual should specify that.

Actually it's given on ZWO website:

2. Same as any other camera. You need a source of light that gives uniform illumination. This can be flat box, or even white t shirt over scope aperture pointed to uniformly lit sky at dusk / dawn. Some people use lap top screen and software that produces white screen. Just shoot such frames and be careful that no histogram peak (and you should have three of them, since it's OSC camera) is clipping. Make them at about 3/4 to the right on histogram.

3. For PHD2 performance you can either look at live graph and observe RA, DEC and Combined RMS values (expressed in arc seconds - ", and not px / pixels). Do note P2P error as well. This will tell you how good your guiding is at any particular moment.

If you want to assess whole session - you can load PHD2 log files in suitable software to examine same values and other characteristics of your guide log.

As for attached gif, it's a bit hard to say since it's not debayered and pattern can be seen, but some stars look a bit misshapen. This could be due to different reasons - optics alignment, guiding performance, scope inherent aberrations (like coma in newtonian or astigmatism in RC or whatever).

Pinpointing it would require examining multiple frames and final stack.

[mantrain]

I was thinking that in Nebulosity the debayer values are like 1 or 0.