ASIair - wow

[Ant]

I'd all but given up on imaging. Night after night of frustration...

I have a vague recollection of Grant mentioning an new bit of kit, but i really wasn't in the mood for shelling out more money.

I sold everything except my ED80. Well slowly the bug got hold of me again, Grant again mentioned the ASIair, ill be honest i doubted that it would work with the EQ3, (NOT the goto synscan model). But he assured me that the ST4 port was all I needed.

Well I got the Mk1 a few days ago, and OMG. I haven't polar aligned, but within about 15 minutes I was guiding. I'll be the first to admit that it's not the best guide graph I've ever seen. But dammit its quiding. I couldn't be happier.

No laptop... it runs happily on my phone, or on my really old android tablet (it shouldn't but it does).

A very happy chap.

Ant

[barkis]

Nice to see you getting something back at last Ant. You have had
a lot of frustration over time, but a new lease of success is beginning .
Best Wishes. 👍
Ron.

 

 

[Ant]

Still seriously impressed with the ASIair, and the ASI120mini...!

The EQ3 only has standard drives, but does have the enhanced handset with the ST4 port. I was always a big fan of the Lodestar, but I'll be honest and say that I've never seen so many stars available for guiding. Usually there was only a few to choose from, there are loads in that screen grab. 

While I didn't polar align properly, didn't focus properly and the framing could have been better lol This is the result of the ED80/400D, 33 x 30s and 2 x 300s. It wasn't dark enough for the 5 minute subs, but who cares, the stars are round  

What an amazing bit of kit. After months of many wasted nights, fighting with drivers / leads / windows / software... this just worked. OK the dSLR was just doing its stuff, I hadn't added this to the ASIair (not sure the 400D is compatible). But I will be testing that out in due course.

Because the ASIair is controlled by an app, there is none of this focusing while trying to see the laptop screen - its there to hand, you instantly see affect that you're having. I got the finder focused in about 2 minutes. 

I had a couple of false starts with the guiding, but I think that was because the standard drives ont he EQ3 have a fair amount of backlash, and that needed to settle before the calibration and guiding. But I think it was 15 - 20 minutes from first touch - to guiding. Next time will be quicker as I know what I'm doing. 

Here is my M31. 

Ant 

[Ant]

Ha ha - I've also forgotten how to process images.... 

Ant