September 2, 2021: Struggling with the Veil

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Ultimately managed to get 2 hours of data with the Canon EOS 550D, APM 80mm F/6 and 0.8x reducer. This was after a long struggle with the APT and the ASI294MM I recently got. The live view was constantly freezing, or when shooting single shots, the image would not load. Really maddening. I ultimately gave up and used the old 550D, but I feel the camera wasn't quite square to the optical path, as stars in the corners aren't good. Still, it is the first capture of the Vail with the 80 mm.

Not too bad from an old sensor under Bortle 5-6 skies

 

 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

This morning I found the grub screws holding the focuser to the tube had worked themselves loose, and this is probably the cause of the tilt . I will first update APT and the ZWO drivers to see if that sorts out the issue with the ASI294MM-Pro. I also tried the ASI183MM-Pro, and that at first also had some hiccoughs, like the cooling going haywire (cooling well below the set point I had chosen), but that seemed to sort itself out using a different 12V power supply. Switching back to the ASI294MM-Pro with the better power supply still  caused APT to freeze far too frequently to be of any use.