First light with my new setup

[Space Oddities]

So, it took me some time to find my sweet spot, but I think I got it!   I'm really happy with my last session, when I could test both the ASI1600MM and the ASIAIR. 

I gotta say, the ASIAIR is amazing! For a beginner like me and given the gear I'm using, it's the perfect solution. It gives enough control, in a user friendly interface, and everything is in one place: imaging, guiding, polar alignment, filter wheel, telescope control. I've always found other software, well, not user friendly and sometimes too complex for what I'm doing. Plus, they require a laptop, unlike the ASIAIR that I can control with my phone  This makes my setup much more portable and everything fits in a backpack.

I'm happy that I chose ZWO's products, because they're directly compatible with the ASIAIR. It's just plug and play, everything just works, without any driver headache or Windows error.

With the Sky-Watcher AZ-GTi, I was afraid that it would be complicated to setup and use... But it worked flawlessly! This little mount is really amazing (provided you have a good copy), and is a huge upgrade compared to the Star Adventurer / SkyGuider Pro. The ability to plate solve, well, solves all the problems I had so far. I had to spend a lot of time aiming at the target, but with plate solving and GoTo, it's instantaneous. Icing on the cake, I can now also images targets that are very high in the sky, without breaking my back!

Of course, there's always something going wrong... When I wanted to select the aperture of the Canon 200mm, I realized it doesn't have an aperture ring   I'm so used to it, I totally forgot. Fortunately, it was set to f/2.8 the last time I used it, and though that's not the optimal aperture, that's definitely better than f/16! And focus isn't perfect, but well, I'll invite Mr Bahtinov next time.

So here is my first test  a 3 minute sub of NGC7000 in Ha with the setup shown below. Unity gain, -5°C, f/2.8. It's an auto stretch from the software I use, so nothing spectacular. I captures about 1 hour of Ha, and I plan on doing some OIII once the Moon is gone.

 I'm very happy that most of my astro-frustrations are gone, mostly thanks to the ASIAIR  

 

 

 

[Rodd]

Thats a nice FOV.  the small pixels will help the resolution .  The ASIAIR sounds similar to PrimaLuces Eagle platform.  Where do teh subs go when they come off the camera?  Are they stored in the system?   What is teh storage capacity?  Can it hold a couple hundred subs?

Rodd

[Space Oddities]

Indeed! And it's a good complement to the Samyang 135mm and TS Optics 60mm f/6 refractor I also own. There are lots of beginner friendly targets in this range!

The ASIAIR is basically a Raspberry Pi, and all images are stored directly on the micro SD card that also hosts the system. It's limited by software to 32 GB however, even if you use a card with a higher capacity. Also, ZWO recommends a certain type of card, apparently other brands might cause problems.

The ASI1600 seems to create FITS that weigh around 35 MB each, so you could store about 900 subs. I don't think that's an issue if you offload the card after each night.

However, it would be great to have an option to use one of the USB ports as an optional storage destination. I'd rather have the system SD card always plugged in, rather than having to take it out each time. It also has a tendency to fail quite often, so you need to backup the system.

I'm not sure how it compares to the Eagle platform, I'm not very familiar with this product. Ultimately I guess they do the same job. It's also close to the Stellarmate, though the latter is much more mature and has more features. But as I said above, I have very limited needs and I like the simplicity of the ZWO